North Korea is the weirdest country in the world, part 2

Continuing my previous blog post, here I'll deal with the absolutely worst dark side of North Korea: The concentration camps.

While the amount of information about the North Korean concentration camps is extremely limited, what we know is extremely likely at least close to the truth. This information comes from several sources, including satellite imagery, radio and other surveillance, and the testimony of the few defectors who succeeded in escaping these concentration camps and the country. While it is, of course, not 100% certain that all the information is completely accurate, the overall picture is nevertheless most probably at least close to correct (particularly because eyewitness testimony of defectors can largely be corroborated by satellite imagery.)

The North Korean government is so utterly totalitarian, controlling and paranoid, that any dissent, no matter how minor, could land you in a concentration camp. And not only you, but your entire family with you, just as punishment. (This, of course, is designed to act as an even bigger deterrent: If you misbehave it will not only be you who will be sent to the gulag: It will be your wife, your parents, your children, and probably even your siblings.) 

What makes the North Korean concentration camps special is how utterly unique they are. While concentration camps have existed for almost as long as humanity itself, the North Korean ones stand out because of how unlike anything else they are. It's probable that never before, during the entire history of humanity, have there been concentration camps like that in the world. Some might have been somewhat close, but not the same.

There are several things that make these concentration camps unique in the history of humanity:

1) Their sheer size. These are not just some encampments of a few city blocks in size, or the size of a small industrial area, like most of the camps from history. These concentration camps are absolutely enormous! The size of a big city! The fence surrounding these camps (which has been repeatedly confirmed with satellite imagery) not only covers the living quarters and buildings, but large forested areas. They usually are of the size of an entire town plus a good chunk of surrounding forest.

2) The infrastructure within these concentration camps. When one thinks of "concentration camp", the image of rows and rows of barracks immediately comes to mind, like the prison camps of Word War II, with perhaps some factories and other buildings at one side.

However, that's not what these North Korean concentration camps contain (once again corroborated by satellite imagery). Instead, they are often built like enclosed small cities in themselves: They often have a central plaza (with, rather obviously, statues or paintings of the two Dear Leaders), a central promenade, and buildings that somewhat resemble a town or small city, with pretty normal-looking roads, and surrounded by forested areas, agricultural land, and of course factories farther ahead. At a quick glance one would easily confuse them with just normal North Korean towns. Only them being completely surrounded (at quite some distance) by a fence and dozens and dozens of guard towers, and with a couple of very clear guarded entrance gates, gives away that they aren't normal towns.

3) Many inhabitants were born inside the concentration camps, and have never left in their entire lives. Moreover, they know pretty much nothing of the outside world.

Where it becomes absolutely dystopian and a stuff of dark sci-fi is that the few defectors who have successfully escaped tell that not only are the inhabitants kept in a complete information blackout, but moreover they are being told that there is no use in even trying to escape because the entirety of the outside world is a completely uninhabited wasteland, a toxic desert where they would die in a few hours, a few days at most. They are told that the fence surrounding the area is actually to keep the outside dangers out, and that it's way too dangerous for them to venture out. That the town where they live is the only safe place in the world, and is the only place where people still exist.

4) And, rather obviously, these are forced labor camps, where all people from about age 5 up are forced to work for 10 to 12 hours every day. (The propaganda being, obviously, that they need to do that work to survive, that it's necessary for their entire population to be able to live, that everybody has to do their part, and anybody who is lazy and doesn't participate will be harshly punished because that's necessary for the survival of everybody.)

And the thing is, these camps are not just some kind of light punishment and/or social experiments. Life in these camps is an absolute nightmare. Forced labor really means forced labor, enforced with an absolute zero-tolerance policy: If you don't perform well enough, or do something that the guards deem wrong, or even if they just suspect that you might have done something wrong (no proof needed), or even if they just feel like it, they will brutally beat you, sometimes to death. Any dissent, no matter how minor, will be punished similarly, even if the guards merely suspect that you may be thinking in a dissenting manner.

Unauthorized romantic relationships between the prisoners is absolutely forbidden. Some prisoners who perform exceptionally well may be granted the permission of a romantic relationship and slightly better living quarters. However, any children born from such relationships will be kept in the camp for the entirety of their lives, even though they haven't done anything wrong: In the North Korean "justice" system children "inherit" their parent's crimes, so they are kept in these camps as well. There are schools, and these children to go these schools, but they too are absolutely oppressive and authoritarian, where children are beaten to submission, both metaphorically and physically. Any behavior other than absolute obedience is met with harsh physical punishment, sometimes even causing the death of the child.

There have been myriads of concentration camps during the history of humanity, but nothing compares to this. Some might come close, but not quite. The sheer physical size, the infrastructure, the buildings, the multi-generational inhabitants, the absolutely insane propaganda fed to the inhabitants, it's just astonishing. It's literally like Shyamalan's The Village meets dark dystopian sci-fi. (There was an episode of a sci-fi TV series, I think it was Stargate, that depicted a concentration camp similar to this, in other words, the inhabitants were multi-generational and had been fed the lie that the entirety of the rest of the world was a dangerous polluted uninhabitable wasteland and thus it was too dangerous to venture outside. As far as I know, this plot was heavily inspired by North Korean concentration camps.)