The North Korean Gulag

For John, BLUF:  We can't all fix the problems of the world.  And what some see as problems others see as solutions.  It is tyranny to demand everyone see through our lenses.

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The Editorial Board of The Washington Post addressed North Korean "death camps" and the thousands of prisoners who have disappeared into them.

CAMP NO. 22 covered some 775 square miles, a larger geographic expanse than London, New York or Los Angeles.

In a way, the camp was a city in its own right, albeit a locus of inhumanity rather than a bustling metropolis.  Camp 22 was one point in North Korea’s constellation of concentration camps that run on unadulterated cruelty, a secret world where prisoners are fed poison for experimentation, women are forced to kill their own children and entire families are murdered in gas chambers.

As the world sits by, North Korea has imprisoned as many as 200,000 people in these camps.  Although human rights violations remain unfortunately common in many nations, these camps form a category of their own in today’s world.  North Korea’s gulag is a place where people aren’t people but rather objects for exploitation and elimination.

The recommendation of the Wash Post Editorial Board is (more) sanctions.  But, with the short description above, don't we see this as a humanitarian issue?  Do we not have a responsibility, in the name of humanity, to intervene, or at least bomb the rail lines to the camp?

As one person noted to me:

Should we bomb them because of the way they are killing their own, or is this different because they're killing their own?

These kinds of questions are why Syria and their use of chemical weapons is a slippery slope.

Regards  —  Cliff