Some may be shocked by the existence of concentration camps in 2009, but the psychology of oppression never seems to leave human existence.
Shin Dong Hyuk / Photo: Japan Times
Few of us think that concentration camps could exist in our world today.
But with the recent decision by the North Korean court to sentence two American journalists to 12 years hard labor, the stories of escapees and former guards hitting the media show these camps are very much alive.
Shin Dong Hyuk was born inside of North Korea’s “total” control prison No. 14, where he was forced to watch the execution of his mother and older brother because of their attempted escapes.
His mother was hanged and his brother shot nine times.
Falling under the state’s guilt-by-association law, Hyuk was set to be in the camp for life. Due to his family’s attempt to escape, he suffered particularly badly by the hands of the guards.
This included being severely burned all over his back when he was 13 and having his middle finger chopped off for accidentally dropping a sewing machine.
He decided to try escaping himself when he was 22, only after hearing stories of the “outside world” from a new inmate. He has scars on his ankles to always remind him of that day, when his feet got tangled in the electric fence that took the life of his fellow escapee.
Breadth Of The “Work” Camps
An ABC News article says that according to US State Department estimates, there are somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners in the camps, some of which have been depicted to be 200 miles wide.
The same article notes, “North Koreans have been sent to work camps for watching DVDs of South Korean soap operas and sitting on a newspaper that contained photographs of President Kim Jong-Il.”
At least one of the camps had a gas chamber where chemical experiments were conducted on the prisoners.
Worst of all, several years ago it was determined that at least one of the camps had a gas chamber where chemical experiments were conducted on the prisoners, including babies.
As I read through the articles, I couldn’t help but wonder how? How do these camps exist at this point in time?
And yet the accounts of both Shin Dong Hyuk, and Kwon Hyuk, a former military attaché who revealed details about the gas chamber, both believed for many years that the treatment of the prisoners was justified.
For Shin Dong, he felt no pity for his parents because “they tried to escape. Naturally, death was the price they had to pay.” Kwon believed that all bad things that were happening in North Korea were the fault of these prisoners – that is what they were “led to believe.” He explains:
It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.
The Psychology Of Oppression
I then realized that once again, it was all about psychology.
Even the young are ready to fight / Photo: ^Berd
Many of us who live in the West often wonder how in the 21st century, the continued bloodshed in Darfur is possible, and why China continues its crackdown on Tibet.
When we look back in history, how could the Nazis ever gain the power to exterminate over six million Jews?
But yet there were few (mainstream) dissenting voices in America of invading Iraq in 2003 and even less of going into Afghanistan after 9/11.
I’m not here to say the latter was right or wrong, but rather to say the psychology behind those actions – threaten what we stand for and we will band together to retaliate, no questions asked – is the same psychology used in all forms and on all sides of oppression, including in the Germany of the past and the Darfur, China, and North Korea of the present.
Sometimes the truly oppressed will use this mindset to creatively gain ground. Other times, instilling beliefs around who is a threat, and who is the enemy, is a way to make people do things we can’t imagine a “normal” human being doing, such as feeling no pity for the death of one’s parents or having no sympathy for a baby who is being killed.
The most important question is, how do we use psychology to free people from beliefs around threat and retaliation? Share your thoughts below.
Feature photo: yeowatzup
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11 Comments... join the discussion!
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This article appears to be written by an incredibly naive individual.
“Few of us think that concentration camps could exist in our world today. ”
“As I read through the articles, I couldn’t help but wonder how? How do these camps exist at this point in time?”↵ -
Fishbulb,
I do not consider myself “incredibly naive,” but rather simply stated the fact that many people in mainstream western societies do not actually know that these incredible atrocities, that are tantamount to the worst of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, are occurring at this very second. The point is to get people riled up.
As for the wondering how, it is a philosophical question of how at a time when we are supposed to have evolved as a human race, do “normal” people, which most of the guards and those who inflict the most suffering start off as, still participate in such death mongering.
It also would have been helpful if you added a point to your comment, as in “I’ve seen firsthand” or “I’ve read extensively” rather than to simply say something rude and then quote me. Maybe then real dialogue could have commenced.
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Cult of Personality.
Kim Jong-Il is the harshest, cruelest, most ruthless dictator since Hitler. Like Hitler and Stalin, Kim uses the government media to portray himself as the God-head of the “Democratic” “People’s” Republic of North Korea (Quotey fingers exaggerated). Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When put into the hands of a stark raving mad lunatic such as Kim, this maxim rings truer than ever. The people in NK don’t know any better because knowledge of anything other than their “Great (formerly Dear) Leader” or “Eternal President”, Kim Il-Sung (Jong-Il’s late father), is outlawed. It’s easy to control an uneducated or miseducated population.
I’d love nothing better than to send the US Navy SEALS in to NK to cleanly chop off the head of this ridiculous dictatorship, but such action would be a PR nightmare for our country, potentially causing more harm than good,, and emboldening similar dictators to mobilize their lemmings against us. (i.e. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia and Mahmoud Amedinejad, Iran).
Unfortunately, all we can do right now is wait for Kim to give us a good, solid reason to destroy his oppressive regime once and for all. A reason that will be backed by the UN. Either that, or wait for the ultimate eventuality of his regime consuming itself comes to pass. One or the other will happen. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
fishbulb: You’re obviously very naive. I don’t care to explain.
Christine: Great post. People need to know what’s going on out there. I’m sometimes appalled at how little my closest friends and family know about what goes on outside their circle of influence.
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UNBELIEVEABLE! – “incredibly naiive” is an understatement – from the Gulags of Siberia to the fields of Po Poht to the torture rooms of Saadam – these practices have been in place throughout my lifetime and therefore throughout the author’s. Only someone with an immature and cloistered view of the world could miss them. I am lost at the equivalency between “few dissenting voices ‘objecting to’ [sic] the Iraq & A-stan invasions” and those that said nothing to the Nazi camps. Even if you object to those bone fide military actions levied against bone fide military targets, the difference between torturing and exterminating captive civilians and the direct or collateral causualties of war is so stark that even the most abject partisan with any measurable intellect could discern. The purpose of Kim Il’s camps is to make people suffer……. 3 generations deep. This is so word can get out to the rest of the populace that if you disobey, you and your family disappear. It is about control via fear & terror. Otherwise the people might revolt having to eat cow dung for one meal a day in order to survive while Kim and his family live in luxury with 3 swimming pools, 4 man-made lakes, a 30,000 sq ft mansion, ski boats, helicopters, Ferrari’s and european prostitutes. And these people are not madmen. They are siimply the result of power vested in government bureaucrats rather than in the citizens. It is the salient difference between what we call a democratic republic and a socialist state. You better stick to your core competencies……… yoga and pretending to be a California hippie.
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Without a doubt, S., I know that no one I know personally would say yoga is one of my core competencies, and as for “pretending” to be a California hippie, I eat too much meat and don’t smoke enough weed for that. I get threatened with Socialist a lot more than hippie, so thanks.
As for “an immature and cloistered view of the world,” I hardly think that my years of social justice work with international organizations lends itself to that. I won’t even go into the specifics, other than to say I met some of the most oppressed people in this world who were able to fight their way out of the place they had been forced into, and now were helping countless more in the process. They inspired me more than I think anyone else will ever be able to.
My point was that the “psychology” behind “let’s go in there and bomb the shit out of everything” in Afghanistan and having the entirety of the US backing that because we felt threatened instead of looking at the realities of what led to the Taliban to coordinate a mass killing, after we essentially helped both Osama and Saddam–who of course had nothing to do with 9/11, but hey, let’s bomb the shit out of them while we’re at it–come to power (I’m assuming even you would agree it wasn’t just because they “hated our way of life”) is at the base the same as to why a boy born in a gulag camp, and a NK military officer would believe people DESERVED to rot or be murdered in a camp (this belief, or psychological strategy if you will, is one of few reasons that people can carry out terror). Not everyone who does something evil is born that way, but our minds are highly susceptible to messages of what threatens our base fears, the largest of which is our own existence. Therefore, manipulation is ripe for the pickin’.
I like to tackle some of the larger questions in life, because apparently, the way things have been handled for most of time has led to just more and more bloodshed. I refuse to shed blood with you–it’s not worth it to me. So if you need to think of me as naive, immature, and cloistered to make yourself feel better, go ahead. Me, I’m going to keep on focusing on how we might try and stop killing each other.
Peace.
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Jeez, what a dick
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Few of us think that such a dick could exist in our world today.
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Oh, and it’s “Pol Pot” “Saddam” and “naive.”
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Christine, great article. At least you have the courage to write an article about this subject for the people who truly don’t know that it still exists today.
Remember, there will never be a time that everyone agrees with each other. It’s part of life, and it’s quite unnecessary to put someone down just because you have a different view or opinion on the topic that they authored.
Thanks, and I look forward to reading more from you.
Ry
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Christine, I would like to hear from you. A friend and I are involved in a food strike in sympathy for the North Korean prison inmates. We have learned one heck of a lot about Kim Jung Il just from the fact that we are eating the same diet as those inmates and we are essentially starving, and therefore, what he is doing is definitely cold blooded murder with malice aforethought. Our blog has already been reported by Voice of America in Korea–amazingly, in KOREAN. This means that people over there may realize that some Americans empathize with their plight, which was our whole goal to begin with. I hope to hear from you.
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