Guardians of Grail

cheapbag214s · Posted: Fri 21:08, 30 Aug 2013 Post subject: Evil As Usual

Evil As Usual,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
One of the Russian locals rented out his services to us as a guide, offering a ride in his old white Zhiguli,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], right into the camps.
I had expected that the camps would resemble Stalag 17,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], with guard turrets, klieg lights and huge,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], fearsome gates. But it turned out that in a place substantially isolated from the nearest transportation hub by more than 300 miles of hills and forest,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], with Russian and North Korean security keeping an eye on the train stations, it doesn't take a lot of fencing to keep people in. Later, at the Khabarovsk train station,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], one Russian security guard said he was under orders to turn over any North Korean runaways to the local North Korean consulate--where they would vanish. Tears came to his eyes as he spoke.
reRedditI found and interviewed a number of North Korean lumberjacks who,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], despite the risk, had run away from the camps and were in hiding in Russia. I had assumed they'd been sent from North Korea to the camps as a form of punishment. They said no. Conditions inside North Korea were so bad that in some cases they had bribed officials there to be given a chance to come work in these logging camps. It brought them a step closer to the free world. But defecting was horribly dangerous. North Korean agents would hunt them. The penalty, if caught,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], could be death. Church groups were willing to help them. or South Korea.
Inside the camps themselves the scene was bleak. Portraits of Kim looked down on barracks with nothing but plastic sheeting over the windows,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. Loudspeakers broadcast anthems of glory to rail-thin loggers in ragged clothes,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
At one of these enclaves a North Korean worker was on duty,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], opening and closing a very ordinary gate. There was no drama to it. He was just a gaunt man,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], standing in the snow,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], wearing sneakers with no socks--peering out from that transplanted bit of North Korea into a world where asking for even a taste of his rightful human portion of liberty could bring him torture and death.
In the 16 years since,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], stories have surfaced from time to time about these North Korean lumber camps in Russia. Last August the BBC reported that they are operating still. Perhaps these days the loggers have socks? The horror is not these camps per se but the iron grip of the North Korean system behind them, which has destroyed millions of its own and can terrorize them even in other lands. Meanwhile,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the world looks on, recording here and there the desperate requests for asylum, all of it blending into yet more business as usual. When does it end? What will it take?
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