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Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

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Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#111

Post by ultrasaurus »

yequalsx wrote: post #29
josefresco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll answer for him, it's your last suggestion It's hypocritical for someone in the US to criticize other nations about their prison systems when we're leading the world in locking people up for crazy shit. That's not to say we can't have an opinion, just not a holier-than-thou attitude about it.

I believe North Korea is number 1 in terms of percentage of its population in (formal) prison. The U.S. is number 2. The percentage of people in prison in the U.S. is grotesquely large. It's much larger than any other nation with comparable economic/religious/political freedoms. The U.S. judicial/prison system is quite bad in my opinion but the exact point that fijall was making was lost on me. Hence my request for a…

The US with a functioning bureaucracy has access to options that NK doesn't have, such as probation and house arrest (even suspended sentences need paperwork) -- 3.1% of the US is "on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole" (Wikipedia - that's more than I expected, how does it afford that?)

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#112

Post by eru »

Jun8 wrote: post #58
ck2 wrote: post #4

If they still made the sears catalog I'd suggest the key to starting a peoples' revolt in North Korea would be to airdrop hundreds of thousands of catalogs across the country. Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.

Airlifting catalogs may be impractical but the gist of your idea is so true! One big factor in USSR's fall, I think, was people's knowledge of the superiority and availability of goods available in the West.

That was even more pronounced in East Germany. (And actually Easterners thought the West to be a much better place, based on all the ads they saw. Everybody watched West German TV.)

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#113

Post by _delirium »

jacoblyles wrote: post #97

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for…

I'm mostly interested in looking at the problems with the U.S.'s prison system before North Korea's because it is: 1) exceedingly bad; and 2) nearby enough that there is some chance we (=Americans) can do something about it. "North Korea is really bad" by contrast, I already believe, and we have a ton of evidence for it. Is evidence that North Korean prisons are also big and inhumane surprising? Yes, we should do something about it if possible, but we've been at a loss for decades about what to do about it; it's not like we haven't already been trying to pressure the regime there, and get rid of it if possible.

The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one.

I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#114

Post by code_duck »

Estragon wrote: post #107
metatronscube wrote: post #102

Well America, are you going to spread "Freedom and Democracy" there? It sure needs it.

Do they have primary resources for us to mine?

They have a strategic location, how's that? Great to keep an eye on China and Russia. Well, I know we already have S. Korea in our pocket, but why not go for the whole peninsula?

(just a line of reasoning, not my endorsement or something)

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#115

Post by abas »

abbasmehdi wrote: post #44
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #9

"I can admire China’s growth in infrastructure and technology, it’s pursuit to compete on a global scale, but what good is all that growth if it allows these crimes to go on next door?" I admire America's prominence in infrastructure and technology, it's continuing domination on a global scale, but what good is all that power when over 40,000 people and rising are murdered because of a drug war for which they are com…

Come on muhfuhkuha, you're taking this out of context. The author is saying that China is an accomplice in crimes committed by NK because it expels refugees who face imminent threat in NK, thus making China an accomplice. China cannot push escapees back into shark waters and say "I am not the shark", I'd say "Yes China, but you kind of fed this person to the shark." The US has a very generous amnesty and refugee prog…

This is from close to 30 years ago, but I think it illustrative of what could still easily happen in the US (and perhaps does, I'm not too knowledgeable about refugee issues):

In the 80s around a million fled violence (from repressive governments, civil wars and paramilitary groups) in central America seeking asylum in the US. They were largely turned away due to political considerations (i.e. the administration wanted to maintain ties with the governments of those countries). You can read about it in this wiki entry about the sanctuary movement that developed to help some of those people in spite of the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#116

Post by code_duck »

[deleted] wrote: post #104
Goronmon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that prisons in the US are akin to what is described as concentration camps in the article, or that what is described in the article is comparable to what you find in US prisons?

[deleted]

The juvenile prisons are even worse. Act up in school, smoke pot - wait, we need to straighten you out! How about instead of going to school and living at home, you go to a privately run prison where several guards sexually assault you ever day for two or three years. The rest of the time your peers will beat you up and demonstrate dangerous ways to use drugs. Customer acquired, now you're likely to be generating business for our Prison Corporation for the rest of your life.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#117

Post by elliottcarlson »

tptacek wrote: post #106

157 votes so we can have an amateur North Korea/US comparative studies class. Respite from 3-year-old LKML security flame war, also on the front page? Maybe. Still sad. See you in a week or so. My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find som…

I respect most of what you post on HN - you have great insights and offer a lot of knowledgeable information to most of the threads you participate in - but I can't say this post was one of them. Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you? Otherwise you are, IMHO, adding a rant just like everyone you are criticizing.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#118

Post by zyb09 »

jacoblyles wrote: post #97

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for…

Well I agree with your point, but did you really had to drag reddit into this? I don't think reddit is at fault of these opinions here.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#119

Post by rick888 »

sedachv wrote: post #81
jhamburger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would you rather be? Is it a close decision?

If I was a black male in the United States, I would have a 1 in 10 chance of being in prison at this moment. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta... ) Amnesty International estimates there's around 200,000 "political prisoners" in North Korea, out of a population of 25 million. I think I'd rather be in North Korea.

"I would have a 1 in 10 chance of being in prison at this moment. "

Due to their own culture. At least they have a choice. They aren't forced to rob, steal, and kill their way through life.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#120

Post by lukeschlather »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #64
jhamburger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case the degree is fairly important though. If we ignore degree completely we have most of the liberal democracies in the world lumped in with NK, Libya and Zimbabwe. Obviously lines must be drawn.

That just begs the question. Where must the line be drawn? Those disagreeing with my point seem to feel that the line should be right between us and whoever is more ruthless than us. But why do we automatically view ourselves on the correct side of that line? I've we're engaged, as a matter of policy, in activities that many or most Americans believe to be evil, doesn't that put the drawing of the line into question?

I don't really care to judge where the line belongs, but if we were to draw the line to include just one country, it would be North Korea as far as my moral compass is concerned. If we drew the line so it included the US, then we would also be including Russia, China, Mexico, and the vast majority of world nations.

So yes, lets not go ranking countries by evilness - but North Korea is so beyond that that your equivocating is offensive.

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