I'm sure that most of you have heard about this incredible, courageous young man who escaped from a political internment camp in North Korea and is now telling his story. If you haven't -- well, here's your chance to watch an interview that is moving, haunting, and at times downright bewildering.
I've never been a fan of the mantra "well, someone has it worse off than you do". Yes it's true (and it's also true that someone always has it better off than you do, too), but the reason people complain about their situation -- and let's not kid ourselves, EVERYONE does -- is because you measure yourself against your peers and people you interact with face-to-face, not groups of people who you read about in the newspaper once in a blue moon.
Well, this guy has definitely had it worse off than you. So stop complaining.
First and foremost, I have to say I was, until recently, blissfully ignorant of the true gravity of the political situation in North Korea. Sure, I'd read about Kim Jong-Il's kids, the fact that Kim Jong-Un was reported by the Chinese to be the sexiest man alive, and the extremely impoverished 25 million people who dwell in North Korea.
Part of it is almost comedic -- a bygone relic of the former era of powerful Communist states still "exists", in the loosest definition of the word. Part of it is, of course, sad...especially when friends of mine from South Korea talk about the situation and how it would likely be extremely straining to the [South] Korean economy if suddenly those 25 million people were emancipated and the North imploded.
But I was not aware that things like this still happened in the 21st century. Click the link and see for yourself...
The "three-generation rule"? Public executions at prison camps? My grandfather spent 8 years in a Siberian internment camp following WWII, and never spoke fondly of the conditions, but based on all of the stories, those gulags were paradise compared to the treachery that is Camp 14.
Sometimes it is just too easy, and perhaps too convenient, to forget how good we've got it here in the US. There's a lot to be said for having the right to stand in front of the White House and freely speak your mind about the President. In North Korea, that'll get you and two generations of your family sent to a death camp. Absolutely jaw-dropping.
Had you guys already seen this video? Thoughts? How should America act in response to this?
There are few regimes in the world that are truly evil. The North Korean regime is pure evil, right up there with Nazi Germany.
Recently I read "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty" by Bradley K Martin. For part of the book the author had interviewed people who had escaped from the North, including prisoners and prison guards. Some of the stories were very grim. But outsiders still don't know the full extent of what goes on in those camps or what happened during the huge famine in the 90s.
That blew my mind...
This is just ridiculous. What is there to do to help the people of NK though? We got it good here in the US of A.
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