I received a telephone call from a friend who bakes and sells bread. “Can you translate some writing with regard to North Korea’s forced internment camps for an international conference to be held in Tokyo?” she asked. “I don’t have any money to pay for the translation, but I can pay you in bread.”

Thinking this would be an opportunity to learn more about North Korea’s internment camps, and drawn to the idea of trading my skills for hers, I took the job.

Japanese television has been reporting on the situation in North Korea for some time now. There are at least six internment camps deep in the mountains of North Korea, and it is thought that they hold more than 250,000 prisoners. With food rations limited to several grams of salt and several hundred grams of cornmeal a day, the prisoners are forced to work 14-hour days, mining, farming, making clothing or bricks and the like. What is more, they endure inhuman treatment at the hands of the guards as they are tortured, raped, killed and submitted to medical tests reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Some of the imprisoned spoke out against the North Korean government. Others attempted to flee to China and were caught and brought back. From babies to the elderly, entire families are placed in these internment camps. I was shocked when I learned that this despicable slavery has continued for some 50 years.

Completing the translation, I thought, “We are totally numb.” Is it not true that the more we are shown acts of brutality here and Japan and around the world, the less real they become? It seems that we have come to watch and read the news as if it were drama.

I found myself wondering what Chinese character I would choose if I, like the priests at the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, were to select one character to define the era in which we live. The character for “side” or “edge” came to mind, the character used in the words “bystander” and “onlooker” for those of us who sit in front of our televisions and watch the suffering of others from the sidelines as if it were a form of entertainment.

I am reminded of when I used to kill chickens. There I was cutting the throat of one of their own, but the other birds continued to walk around, pecking the ground as if nothing was amiss.

Even if the press were to report more fully with regard to the internment camps, could we realistically expect public opinion to change? Most people would continue to see those imprisoned as pitiful, eat their dinner as usual, and take a bath.

I think it is about time that we, as humans, raise our standards. Given the difficulty of predicting what Kim Jong-il would do, it is certainly hard to know what action to take with regard to North Korea. But just the same, we should be rebelling against the fact that just across the ocean our fellow humans are not being treated as humans, and that they are suffering so.

Not limiting ourselves to the internment camps, each of us might choose one problem from among all the problems in the world. We might then study about it, share what we learn with others, and take action towards its solution. I think it is fine for that action to be small. It can take the form of the support of an existing organization or of a personal and creative intervention.

We must move from being observers to being participants and collaborators. We must take responsibility. If only the number of us who are aware and take action could grow.

The poet Audre Lorde asked, “Are you willing to put what power you have at the service of what you believe?”

Jeffrey S. Irish
from an article originally published in Japanese
in the South Japan News (Minami Nihon Shimbun)
January 25, 2009

The May 11, 2008, issue of the Tokyo Shimbun reported the existence of a confidential report, Yanbian Prefecture, the Situation around the Chinese-Korean Border (Chinese) issued in June 2000 by the Ministry of State Security, an intelligence agency under the State Council (the government cabinet) of China. A noteworthy account is that more than a dozen political prison camps called “farms” are placed across North Korea, in which political prisoners and their family members estimated to amount to approximately 300,000 were confined. Until today, the North Korean authorities have denied the existence of any political prison camps in the country. The neighboring socialist, China, however, acknowledges the existence of such prison camps in a report, albeit a confidential document, issued by a government agency.

This report is said to have been obtained recently by a Japanese researcher in China, which is about 270-page long, describing Korean People's Army, the personnel deployment along the Chinese-Korean border, direct call numbers of relevant departments, a North Korean intelligence organization in China called “the 312th Room” (established in 1992) that collects information about South Korea and “Guard Troops” (established in 1995) under the national military.

The description about the prison camps draws the most attention of people wishing for the abolition of North Korean prison camps. As to whether the statement that the number of camps is more than a dozen corresponds to the 12 camps previously reported in Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (jointly published by Minnesota Lawyers and Asia Watch, 1988) or whether it was the number current at the time of the investigation (1999-2000), an examination and assessment by Democracy Network against North Korea Gulag (represented by Tae-jin Kim) in South Korea, which considers that the number is five or six in recent years, are awaited.

The significance of the fact that China, a friendly nation to North Korea, acknowledges the existence of prison camps in the mountains of North Korea is immeasurable. Refer to the article in the May 11, 2008, issue of the Tokyo Shimbun for details. The article includes a photograph of the confidential report.