North Korea Labor Camps

I just read about this on MSN ~ how terrible.

Now that's not a highly suspicious source, is it?

Oh my gosh, that is so horrible........I am keeping the two American women in my prayers continually, that they will be released.....this is a nightmarish situation........I don't think Gore should get involved.....he may end up doing more harm than good.

Yea keep Al Gore out of this.

Gore owns the company the journalists work for.

I say we trade Gore for the two woman.  I'm not saying he's worth what they are.... but N. Korea doesn't know that!

Trading Gore's not the answer, Joy. At the same time, I don't think that he should get involved unless the president asks him to.

Joy. UR Funny! lol

I pray for their freedom... if the whole population of the Northern Korea, save the party elite, lives on the verge of starvation, what then to say about camps???

Blessings and best wishes - S.

Everything about North Korea is scary, they are very dangerous.  I hope they are able to get these two girls released.

This is a terrible. I hope and pray that some one can do some thing to get the two American women out of there

I will pray for their freedom too. This is so terrible.

It's difficult to know who is wrong since the trials were closed.  I feel as though reporters take too many risks trying to get high-stake, high-dollar reports.  I would have hoped that a journalistic company owned by former vice-president Al Gore would have been better able to determine the risk of being so close to the border.  Greed is an ugly beast. 

I feel badly for the horrible conditions these women will now endure, but... as professionals, I'm sure they understood that risk when accepting the assignment. 

(*Just for the record... I'm not saying they did or did not cross the border... I'm only acknowledging that they put themselves at risk being "close" to a volitile political situation.)

You are right but I's sure they learned tehir lesson now let them go.

It's because the leader of North Korea is a punk. They need to be dealt with. These women did nothing wrong.

The leader of North Korea is anything but a punk. He's more than likely one of the most well educated people in that part of the world. He leads a country that the west and Japan with the cooperation of the globes major countries have bankrupt through embargoes and the population is starving to death. If you'll recall we did the exact same thing to Iraq (killing 500,000 children) back in the late 80s and early 90s I think it was. Then we demonized the leader of Iraq and invaded the country. This creation of an "INSANE" country with an "INSANE" leader is nothing new. We did it to Muammar al-Gaddafi of Lybia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Manuel Noriega of Panama and now Kim Il Jong of Korea and others as well. This wasn't the fault of Korea or its leaders. Jailing the Americans is appropriate. Rest assured, they're being treated exceptionally well, will not be harmed and are pawns in a much larger game. They'll eventually be home, write books, maybe a movie and retire to a life of leisure.

The historic record is available for those who choose to know the truth. It isn't easy to separate distortions and lies from the truth but it's available for those with enough curiosity and concern to find it. Anything less is just more distortion.

This is terriable :(

THANKS FOR SHARING

they were very unwise to get anywhere near North Korea. It is our job to stay cool. North Korea is looking for handouts, and there is a great deal of posturing also going on there right now. Much of it apparently has to do with the Succession there- Kim Jong Il is not recovering from a stroke he had last year, and his 28 year old youngest son apparently is being groomed as the new God come down to Earth, Dearest Leader, or whatever they call their latest tyrant there.

We have very little power to affect what happens in North Korea. China could calm them down in a minute by cutting off their oil supply, but for cynical reasons China is not in the mood o do that right now. Half the people in North Korea right now are near starvation, and the other half are licking boots so that they will not end up in the near starvation group. It's horrible.

Then I say it's time for the Chinese to get involve and turn the damned tap off. If that doesn't get their attention, then I say we nuke them into dust.

Read some history, someday someones going to nuke you, or your children's children, or their children, into dust for thinking like that and failing to perform due diligence on an historic event with valuable and irreplaceable human life in the balance and making yourself look foolish.

At least they had a trial. Children are held in Guantanamo under same/worse conditions for years without a trial!

I hope something can be done for the two journalists, but you are right.  If Gore goes to negotiate their release, he will be held by these insane people and the U.S. will be totally over a barrel.

Usually we agree on most things. Here we don't.

Unfortunately people make decisions without having correct information. That's how opinions are formed in the US. With little factual evidence and media provided innuendo and distortions to meet the needs of the governing powers. It's commonly called propaganda.

In fact most decisions of this type, decisions regarding global politics, are determined by the media perspective that people obtain from only two sources, newspapers and television, with television being obviously the predominant provider of information blocks designed to persuade opinion but not based on anything at all like facts. Oh, I'll add the internet since the mainstream spoon-fed perspective is readily available there too.

It's unimaginable that Americans would ever decide to try and actually understand global politics from a version and perspective other than the version and perspective their government media sources provide. The truth isn't exciting and it surely doesn't smell of patriotism or American Nationalism and we can't have that now, can we? No, let's bury the truth and conjure up an "insane" (to quote Walker) dictator ruling with "insane" subordinates. THAT works!

Under the Six-Party agreements reached in 2007 and 2008, and in accordance with the "action for action" principle enshrined in the 2005 agreement, North Korea was to denuclearize, in stages, while a series of corresponding steps would lead towards normalization on all sides, ending the Korean War with a peace treaty and integrating North Korea within a regional web of economic cooperation. When North Korea in 2008 had almost completed its obligations under Phase Two, however, the agreement broke down. It broke down partly because the US tried to widen its terms, adding provisions on “verification” that would, if adopted, have entitled US-led teams to probe North Korea virtually at will, and partly because Japan refused to honor its obligation to provide heavy fuel oil.

Obama, having promised to talk to Kim Jong Il, made little effort to do so, instead choosing to follow the lead of Japan and South Korea in isolating North Korea. Since both those countries were reneging on their agreements with the North, he was in effect choosing stick over carrot. North Korea, required to yield more than it had bargained for, and offered less than it had been promised, slowed, stopped, and eventually reversed its compliance. The common understanding of the “North Korean problem” – that it stems from North Korean stubbornness, deceitfulness and fanaticism - is thus quite false.

The spiral of confrontation and hostility steepened as North Korea in February 2009 announced its intention to launch a communications satellite. Despite the fact that space "shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind" as guaranteed under the Outer Space Treaty (1967), the Security Council condemned the launch shortly after it happened. President Obama said that North Korea was in breach of “the rules” and would have to be punished - as if it were a schoolboy caught smoking. The Security Council condemned North Korea in unequivocal terms, even though it could not decide what it was that had been launched. If a missile, as Japan insisted (contrary to the CIA and South Korean intelligence assessments), then the world had seen over 100 such launches during 2008, and it was not clear why only this one was threatening. If a satellite, then North Korea was endeavouring to reach skies already clogged with US and Japanese satellites observing its every movement on the ground. What's one more?

In other words, driven hard by Japan, the Security Council sent the “North Korea problem” back into intractable crisis, and escalated the threat of nuclearization, not only in Korea but the region. The UN was in effect denying North Korea’s sovereignty. As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter observed, “it appears that the United Nations Security Council, and not North Korea, is acting in a manner inconsistent with international law.”

North Korea protested fiercely, and when its demand for apology was brushed off, proceeded with its May nuclear test. To that, the Security Council responded with even harsher condemnation and financial and other sanctions. With newspaper editorialists around the world joining in with vitriolic denunciations, one would have to say that North Korea was the most hated and despised country in modern history, seen as a tin pot dictatorship to be brought to heel like a mad dog. The language has virtually no parallel in international discourse. Nobody objects when senior US officials or public figures refer to the country as “not of this planet,” led by “dysfunctional” or possibly “crazy” autocrats, under a “mad” leader.

Strip away the verbiage of the Security Council 2009 pronouncements on the North Korea problem, however, and what they do is, first, condemn the exercise of a sovereign right guaranteed under an international treaty, and, second, condemn and sanction it for conducting the world's 2,054th nuclear test. That test was certainly controversial but it was scarcely illegal.

The North Korea problem is best understood not as that of a violent or aggressive state but as the unresolved legacy of a century of Japanese imperialism, national division and civil and international war, marked by persistent, irresponsible international intervention and the spread of racist or Orientalist stereotypes of contempt for Korean people. What is needed now is not more sanctions but a sense of history, wisdom and humanity, and the political will to launch negotiations for a peace treaty and comprehensive normalization.

People there are poor and starving to death, literally, and the government can't compensate with global embargoes stifling the economy. Through embargoes and sanctions we've virtually destroyed the infrastructure of the country, very much like we did to Iraq before invading it, in fact precisely. Remember the 500,000 dead Iraqi children that Madeline Albright called collateral damage worthwhile for an embargo? That's what embargoes do.

The only insane rulers are typically found in the west, not the east.

Sounds like we treated them like we treated the American Indian.

The frenzy of "let's nuke North Korea" and the chorus of "let's nuke Iran" is laudable. The propaganda works.

Strange to think that I was part of one of the first group of American civilians in North Korea back in 2000.

Why don't we just send some Seals in to "bust them out"?