Two American citizens were sentanced today to 12 years of hard labor. They are journalists, working for Al Gore.
I’ve been trying to Google around for more information on the DPRK’s labor camps, but part of the nature of the Hermit Kingdom seems to be that there’s relatively little available in the way of up-to-date information. That said, the U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea did publish this report on “The Hidden Gulag” several years ago based on defector reports mostly from the 1990s. You won’t be surprised to learn that conditions are terrible:
The concentration camp is a kind of closed town where a number of camps are linked together by a road. At least two of the camps, Hoeryong and Hwasong in Hamkyong Province, are larger in area than the District of Columbia. All the gulags are located in remote and desolate mountain areas to further their anonymity and isolation to foreigners and dissidents. Presently, there are six gulags known to the outside world where it is speculated that some 150,000 to 200,000 inmates are imprisoned.
Tom Gross at National Review:
Their sentencing came just three days after the State Department said it might send former vice president Al Gore to Pyongyang in order to negotiate their release. Gore is chairman of the San Francisco-based station Current TV, which employs the two journalists.
In a column published May 9 in the Washington Post, Victor Cha, a former adviser to President George W. Bush on North Korea, suggested that the Obama administration should send Gore to Pyongyang.
“The United States needs to send a high-level envoy to North Korea to bring these women home. The obvious candidate would be Gore,” wrote Cha, who is now a professor at Georgetown University.
Mitchell Bard in Huffington Post, comparing the US and North Korea:
That is supposed to be the difference between a country like North Korea and a country like the United States. North Korea can seize two innocent journalists, put them through a bogus, private, star-chamber trial, and then sentence them to 12 years of hard labor, all without any justification. The United States I grew up in, the United States that fought wars from World War I to the Cold War defending democracy and freedom against repression, could never engage in such conduct like the North Koreans did.
And yet, there it is, for all to read, that we took a man like Boumediene and locked him up without a trial for 7 1/2 years, torturing him while in our custody, even though two courts, one in the U.S. and one in Bosnia (one before his detention and one after), found insufficient evidence to charge him with any crime. While we clearly have a more open and democratic society than North Korea does, for Boumediene, his experience with us was no better than what the two American journalists are now going through in North Korea.
Nick Gillespie at Reason
Joe Gandelman at Moderate Voice
Gore’s got several points of entry he can make: among the few political issues Pyongyang takes “public” is climate change. The North Korean government loves to have their asses kissed, and the Department of State hasn’t ruled out Gore’s involvement, so him coming simply as a diplomat couldn’t be a bad thing.
So what’s Gore waiting for? Our government’s approval? A PR angle? Whatever it is, it better come quick. There’s virtually no idea out there of what Ling and Lee are going through, or how they’re being treated. Ling and Lee could be fine. They could simply get deported, get off scot-free. But Lee’s got family in South Korea. Who, you know, North Korea doesn’t really like. Which is besides Americans, which Ling and Lee both are.
UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman, via Sullivan.
UPDATE #2: David Frum
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June 9, 2009 at 9:15 pm
[...] A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To Al Gore [...]