Shocking sketches emerge of life in North Korea's gulags .

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[h=1]Shocking sketches emerge of life in North Korea's gulags showing how prisoners resort to eating mice and snakes and were beaten until they vomited blood[/h]

• Former prisoner of gulag commissioned artists to depict his experience
• Sketches show crimes against humanity, such as beatings and starvation
• Drawings were included in a U.N. report accusing North Korea of crimes
• Former prisoner Kim Kwang-il claims treatment is 'worse than depicted'
  
• Drawings follow warnings to China about their allying with North Korea

 

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Shocking sketches have emerged of the mistreatment of prisoners in North Korean gulags, depicting how inmates resorted to eating mice and were forced to drag other prisoner's corpses to the crematorium under armed guard.

The drawings come from the recollections of Kim Kwang-il, a 48-year-old man who was a North Korean prisoner for two years before he defected to South Korea in February 2009, Business Insider reports.
After he defected, he got professional artists to draw sketches of his experiences in the gulag prisons, depicting the different aspects of inhuman treatment by the North Korean prison guards.

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Each of the drawings comes with a title or description in Korean. This one reads: 'In this position, called "pigeon torture" prisoners are reportedly beaten on the chest until the vomit blood'

One of the drawings by Kim Kwang-il, simply titled 'Detention center' seems to depict a guard forcing a prisoner into a small opening in a wall

'Scale, airplane, motorcycle.' Survivors told the U.N. that they had to stay in stress positions until the collapsed

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Kwang-il's drawings were subsequently included in a U.N. report that accuses North Korea of crimes against humanity, including 'torture, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence' as well as continued starvation of inmates.
Kim Kwang-il told the U.N. that he: 'actually got worse treatment than the pictures that are shown in the book'.
The reports of the sketches involved in the U.N. report come after news that China rejected what it said was ‘unreasonable criticism’ of Beijing in a new UN report on human rights abuses in North Korea, but it would not be drawn on whether it would veto any proceedings in the Security Council to bring Pyongyang to book.
The reaction came as it emerged that prisoners are used as human punchbags during North Korean guards’ martial arts training sessions.
North Korean security chiefs and possibly even Kim Jong Un, the leader of the country, should face international justice for ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings comparable to Nazi-era atrocities, U.N. investigators said.
The unprecedented public rebuke and warning to a head of state by a UN inquiry is likely to further antagonise Kim and complicate efforts to persuade him to rein in his isolated country's nuclear weapons programme and belligerent confrontations with South Korea and the West.

This drawing depicts prisoners foraging among live wild animals. In the Korean description: 'out of starvation and hunger, find snakes and rats and you eat them'

Drawings of corpses being left in the gulag: 'The mice eat the eyes, nose, ears, and toes of the corpses'

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The U.N. investigators also told China, the North's main ally, that it might be ‘aiding and abetting crimes against humanity’ by sending migrants and defectors back to North Korea to face torture or execution, a charge that prompted a sharp rebuke from Beijing.

‘Of course we cannot accept this unreasonable criticism,’ Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing on Tuesday. ‘We believe that politicising human rights issues is not conducive towards improving a country's human rights.
‘We believe that taking human rights issues to the International Criminal Court is not helpful to improving a country's human rights situation.’
The latest revelation about North Korea’s treatment of its citizens is that prison guards use inmates as human punchbags, according to The Times.
Former camp guard Ahn Myong Chol told the UN Commission: ‘Sometimes the instructors would summon inmates who were working in the field so that we could practise our skills on them. The reason for actually practising our skills on these inmates was to make them stay on alert and to instruct us that those are our enemies.’
Hua, meanwhile, would not answer what she said was a ‘hypothetical question’ on whether China would use its veto powers if the report was brought to the U.N. Security Council for further action. Diplomats have said China will most likely block any such proceedings.

Prisoners were subjected to various exercises designed to inflict pain: 'Pump torture. After sitting, you stand about a hundred times'

'The corpses are taken to the crematorium'

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Asked why China blocked U.N. investigators from going to the North Korean border, across which many North Koreans cross illegally, Hua said she could not comment and would have to look into the matter.
‘These people are not refugees. We term them illegal North Korean migrants,’ she added.
China deals with these people appropriately ‘in accordance with international and domestic laws and the humanitarian principles’, Hua said, declining to provide an estimate for how many of these people have cross into China.
The investigators told Kim in a letter they were advising the United Nations to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court to make sure any culprits ‘including possibly yourself’ were held accountable.
In a statement in Geneva, North Korea ‘categorically and totally’ rejected the accusations set out in the 372-page report, saying they were based on material faked by hostile forces backed by the United States, the European Union and Japan.
‘The world is finally waking up to the fact that North Korea is a far-right state, in that the regime derives its right to rule from a commitment to military might and racial purity,’ said Brian Myers, a South Korea-based North Korea expert.

'Solitary confinement punishment. Capturing mice from inside the cell'. Routinely, the prisoners would have to catch mice, snakes and rats, in order to be able to eat

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[superbeets]

'You are haunted by the nightmarish image in dreams': Joo Il-Kim, a former military captain spoke about witnessing public executions in North Korea

Park Ji-hyun was sent to a prison camp after she attempted to escape from a Chinese farmer to whom she had been sold

A former prison guard speaks anonymously to Amnesty International about the atrocities that are committed in the prisons of North Korea

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[ScottL]

I can think of nothing worse (although I'm sure Kim Jong-un can) than, immediately after she gives birth forcing a woman to drown her infant.

Where are you God?