Friday, Oct. 24, 2003 | 6:11 a.m.
Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.
WEEKEND EDITION Oct. 25 - 26, 2003
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH upset diplomats and some politicians when he called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) evil. These weren't the words of a diplomat, but they had a ring of truth.
Last year in author Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" the president was quoted saying, "I loathe Kim Jong Il. I've got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people." Again the truth, and only a person entirely out of touch with reality wouldn't have a negative gut reaction to the North Korean dictator.
It was more than a year ago that Dr. Norbert Vollertsen, a German who worked in North Korean hospitals from July 1999 to December 2000, wrote his observations. In The Wall Street Journal he wrote, "It became clear to me that Kim Jong Il and his Stalinist regime had made little effort to distribute medical supplies and food to the people who needed it most. I soon realized that North Korea's starvation is not the result of natural disasters or even lack of natural resources. Like the Holocaust in Europe, the horror in North Korea is man-made. Twenty-two million people suffer under a dictatorial regime that uses torture, surveillance and starvation as tools to control its own people. Only the regime's overthrow will end it."
Fifty years ago the world learned of the brutal treatment of prisoners of war held, tortured and killed by Kim Jong Il's father, Kim Il Sung. Seldom has the world been exposed to cruelty experienced by American and United Nations soldiers captured by the North Koreans. Lt. Col. Felix L. Ferrante, a former POW, in his book "Tour of Duty" called the North Korean military "inhumane, sadistic bastards."
So Bush has more than enough examples to trigger his remarks about the North Korean government. If anybody still has doubts they should read the 120-page report written by David Hawk for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The report, released last Wednesday, Oct. 22, is titled "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps." The contents are from the testimony of prisoners and satellite photographs.
Allow me to give you a taste of the report. Some former prison detainees are listed as numbers. Number 24 is a 66-year-old grandmother who fled to China with her husband and five children to escape starvation. Later she was forcibly sent back with a group of 50 North Koreans, some of whom were pregnant. Because of her age and physical condition she was put in a medical building to help the pregnant women.
Here is her experience as recorded by the author: "The first baby was born to a twenty-eight year old woman named Lim, who had been happily married to a Chinese man. The baby boy was born healthy and unusually large, owing to the mother's ability to eat well during pregnancy in China. Former Detainee #24 assisted in holding the baby's head during delivery and then cut the umbilical cord. But when she started to hold the baby and wrap him in a blanket, a guard grabbed the newborn by one leg and threw it in a large, plastic-lined box. A doctor explained that since North Korea was short on food, the country should not have to feed the children of foreign fathers. When the box was full of babies, Former Detainee #24 later learned, it was taken outside and buried.
"She next helped deliver a baby to a woman named Kim, who also gave birth to a healthy full-term boy. As Former Detainee #24 caressed the baby, it tried to suckle her finger. The guard again came over and yelled at her to put the baby in the box. As she stood up, the guard slapped her, chipping her tooth. The third baby she delivered was premature -- the size of an ear of corn -- and the fourth baby was even smaller. She gently laid those babies in the box. The next day she delivered three more very premature babies and also put them in the box. The babies in the box gave her nightmares.
"Two days later, the premature babies had died but the two full-term baby boys were still alive. Even though their skin had turned yellow and their mouths blue, they still blinked their eyes. The agent came by, and seeing that two of the babies in the box were not dead yet, stabbed them with forceps at the soft spot in their skulls. Former Detainee #24 says she then lost her self-control and started screaming at the agent, who kicked her so hard in the leg that she fainted. Deemed unsuitable for further hospital work, she was returned to the detention center until her release several weeks later."
I would say that our president has been most moderate in describing Kim Jong Il and his government."
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