With U.S. aircraft carriers on standby near North Korea, a single move can now trigger an emergency situation. Some critics have suggested ‘talks’ as a compromise for pressuring North Korea, advocating peaceful solutions.

Those seeking peaceful negotiations with North Korea are implicitly supporting the continuation of the current regime, and must be reminded of the atrocities unfolding in North Korea at this very moment.

This article aims to introduce fifty of the worst horrors as told by North Korean defectors. It turns out that North Korea is indeed an “Inferno” on Earth.

Three Million Killed by Starvation

1. Between 1994 and 1998, North Korea suffered the worst famine since WWII, taking the lives of 3,000,000 people: that is, 15% of the entire population. If their bodies were lined up, the row would be so long it would take a 6-hour flight to get to the other end.
2. Some people chose to eat tree roots and bark, leaving many mountains barren. They would boil the bark in sodium hydroxide to make it edible.
3. Houses collapsed in the poorer districts, leaving many adults and children homeless.
4. 1998 reports say that 2 out of 3 children had developmental disabilities or were underweight. It was double the number of such children in the Angolan Civil War that same year.

Government Ignores Starving Citizens to Develop Nukes

5. While all of this was happening, the government spent US$900,000,000 on Kim Il-sung’s burial chamber.
6. They spend around US$5,000,000 on each nuclear test.
7. When the Korean People’s Army suffers from penury, soldiers ransack crops from local farmers. This is what “military first policy” is.
8. North Korea’s population is 23,000,000 of which 100-200,000 make up the elite class living in luxurious apartments or mansions.
9. Around 30% of the food aid provided by neighboring countries between 1995 and 2003 went to government elites.

Those Deemed “Political Criminals” Are Sent to Concentration Camps

10. Persecution, torture or long arbitrary restraint awaits those who are captured trying to escape.
11. Women, in particular, are often sexually violated.
12. If pregnant women are arrested, they are forced to undergo an abortion.
13. Those deemed to be political criminals are sent to concentration camps without a hearing.
14. Something as innocent as listening to South Korean radio broadcasts makes them a political criminal.
15. Cringing at newspapers with the photo of Kim Il-sung printed makes one a political criminal.
16. People who are known to have been in contact with South Korean authorities, citizens, or Christians, are immediately sent to concentration camps.
17. If the government decides that someone is anti-party or a rebel, their whole family can be arrested as political criminals.

North Korean Concentration Camps Are a Second Auschwitz

18. PConcentration camps force the detained to work 12-15 hours every day until they die.
19. Wardens punish political prisoners who resist or fail the above requirements by beating them or shooting them dead.
20. Prisoners (including infants) must bow at a 90-degree angle when they see a warden or his children, and address them as “Your Honor”. Otherwise the prisoner is executed.
21. If one prisoner fails to meet the requirement, everyone is punished. This increases hatred amongst the inmates.
22. Wardens encourage inmates to betray each other about prisoners who slack off. Inmates can no longer trust anyone.
23. Prisoners who show sympathy for inmates who are punished or killed are considered equally guilty. Inmates gradually become emotionally detached about people’s deaths.
24. A defector who escaped from a concentration camp had his right middle finger cut off to the first joint as punishment for breaking a sewing machine.

Those Who Are Born and Grow Up in Concentration Camps

25. Those who show exceptional aptitude for work and inmate betrayal are rewarded with a chance to marry, albeit they cannot choose their partner.
26. Children who are born in the ‘reward marriage’ are immediately treated as political criminals, and are detained there until they die.
27. Children born inside concentration camps see their own mother as a threat to their food. The camp-escapee defector had never known that children love their mothers until seeing the outside world.
28. Another camp-escapee defector reports never feeling guilty for informing wardens of a family planning escape. They were executed.
29. If a prisoner betrays his/her friend and joins the warden in the beating, they are rewarded.
30. People in political concentration camps never hear the word “love”.
31. Suicide in concentration camps is treated like an escape. Their family is immediately executed.

Appalling Health Conditions in Concentration Camps

32. Prisoners only get to eat 350 grams of maize a day. Everyone is malnourished as a result.
33. Lack of protein can kill inmates in months unless they secretly catch mice, worms and lizards to eat.
34. People over 40 cannot walk unless they bend forward from damage due to the heavy daily workload.
35. Most prisoners die of malnourishment before 50.

Executions and Torture Every Day

36. Prisoners are often taken away for harsh torture. Sometimes they are suspended by their legs over a fire.
37. As torture for mothers, their children are fed to military dogs.
38. Camp surgeons perform experiments with prisoners without anesthetics. Prisoners cream so loudly that glass cups crack.
39. When a scandal broke out between a female prisoner and a warden, the government executed 250 handsome women to enforce discipline.
40. Those caught attempting escape are tied to a wooden pole with nails in their feet and spoons in their nostrils, and are mercilessly stoned to death by other inmates.
41. No more than 3 prisoners are allowed to meet at once, except on one occasion: public execution.
42. A prisoner who neglected the caring of cows was buried alive.
43. A girl who stole 5 grains of wheat was beaten to death.
44. Unauthorized pregnancy inside the camp is a crime punishable by death. This applies to pregnancies that result from rape by wardens.

A Yearning for Freedom

45. One prisoner never knew the existence of Pyongyang, money, or that the Earth is round until his 20s.
46. When he first heard about Korean barbecue, he was gripped by an intense desire to escape. For him, ‘Korean barbecue’ meant freedom.
47. Some prisoners are those who have been to Japan, or are supportive of the island country. They treasure Japan-made products: Seiko watches, clothing, drivers licenses, traditional clogs and kimono, and even the national flag of Japan.
48. Some prisoners begin to show mental abnormities from the harsh conditions. These people are put in isolation. Most frequent victims are former Japanese wives.
49. The UN speculates that there are currently 80-120,000 people held as political prisoners in those concentration camps. Human rights organizations and the U.S. Department of State estimate the number to be over 200,000.
50. The UN Commission on Human Rights believes that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in North Korean concentration camps in the last 50 years.

The Futility of Peace Talks

North Korea has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands in order to continue their nuclear developments. No magic in this world can ever persuade them to abandon their ambitions through talks.

Even now someone is screaming in anguish and terror to keep the country alive. Where in North Korea can we find even a morsel of potential for a peaceful solution?

Can those implicitly supporting the continuation of the current North Korean regime really take responsibility for the future that their decision may precipitate?