North Korea: A Real Gulag State

Fire of Liberty

While browsing through the July/August edition of AEI's magazine The American Enterprise, I came across a good first-hand account of the horrors of North Korea by Norbert Vollertsen. Vollertsen is one of the few western Dr. to visit Kim Jong Il's gulag superstate when he joined German Emergency Doctors - which provides medical assistance to ravaged nations - in 1999 and subsequently dispatched to North Korea some 18 months. After seeing the horrors of the frigid hell-hole of North Korea, Vollertsen wrote a powerful book titled Inside North Korea: Diary of a Mad Place which presented a clearer picture to the West of how terrible life has become in a hard-line Stalinist state like the Dear Leader's "Worker's Paradise." Though Vollertsen is deemed persona non grata in North Korea for his expose, he has made tremendous inroads into the human rights movement in South Korea on the behalf of the people North Korea. For those who don't have the time to read Vollertsen's wonderful book but want to understand the horrors of Kim Jong Il's North Korea, I'd highly recommend that you read Vollertsen's piece in the current issue of The American Enterprise. Here's a sample:

In my role as an emergency doctor, I also visited a number of other medical institutions besides the ten hospitals and three orphanages to which I was assigned. In every locale, I witnessed horrific conditions. There were no bandages, no scalpels, no antibiotics, no operating rooms—only ramshackle wooden beds supporting starving children waiting to die. Doctors used empty beer bottles as vessels for intravenous dripping. Safety razors were used as scalpels. I even witnessed an appendectomy performed without anesthesia. Meanwhile I found out, through my own investigations, about government storehouses and diplomatic shops carrying large stocks of bandages and other medical supplies for privileged classes.

There are two worlds in North Korea: One is the world of senior military officers, Communist Party members, and the countryÂ’s ruling elite. They enjoy a lavish lifestyle, fancy restaurants, diplomatic shops with European foods, nightclubs, even a casino.

The world for ordinary people in North Korea is completely different. In their world, one can see young children, undersized, undernourished, mute, with sunken eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces, wearing uniform blue-and-white-striped pajamas. Anyone whoÂ’s seen pictures of Dachau or Auschwitz would find the scene distressingly familiar.

Most of the patients in the hospitals suffer from psychosomatic illnesses. TheyÂ’re worn out by compulsory drills, innumerable parades, mandatory assemblies beginning at the crack of dawn, and constant, droning propaganda. They are tired and at the end of their tether. Clinical depression is rampant. Alcoholism is common. Young adults have no hope, no future. Everywhere you look, people are beset by anxiety.

Thank G-d we have people like Norbert Vollertsen who are fighting on the behalf of the people in North Korea. It seems that the White House is aware of the horrors in North Korea as well when he met Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector and author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang at The White House. I just wish that the leaders in South Korea would take some notice of the people suffering under Kim Jong Il.