> At the same time, I really do not think it's a living hell for its citizens -- certainly not in the movie-style dictatorship we sometimes imagine it to be.
> At a public hearing in London last week, Kim Song-Ju told of his four attempts to flee North Korea because of a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans during the 1990s.
> After crossing the icy Tumen river that marks the border with China in March 2006, Kim was caught by Chinese guards and forced back to North Korea.
> He described beatings in a North Korean detention camp and how he was ordered to search prisoners' excrement for money they were believed to have swallowed.
> North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded.
No, NK is a living hell.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10...
> At a public hearing in London last week, Kim Song-Ju told of his four attempts to flee North Korea because of a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans during the 1990s.
> After crossing the icy Tumen river that marks the border with China in March 2006, Kim was caught by Chinese guards and forced back to North Korea.
> He described beatings in a North Korean detention camp and how he was ordered to search prisoners' excrement for money they were believed to have swallowed.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/17/north-korea-hum...
> North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIDPRK/Pages/Commissio...