Trump minimizes the human rights abuses in North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — It was just months ago when President Donald Trump used his first State of the Union address to condemn the cruelty of North Korea’s government. But after his historic summit on Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he described as “very smart” and having a “great personality,” Trump seemed to play down the severity of human rights violations in North Korea.
Few expected Trump to seriously raise North Korea’s horrific human rights problems during his first meeting with Kim, but Trump drew an angry reaction from activists by playing down the North’s record of abuses against humanity.
Here’s a look at North Korea’s record of rights abuses:
Prison camps
While North Korea officially denies this, outside governments and human rights group believe the country runs massive prison camps where people are detained without trials and often without their families being notified about their whereabouts.
South Korea’s Korea Institute for National Unification, a statesponsored think tank, estimates that as many as 120,000 inmates were held at the country’s five major political prisons as of 2013.
It’s believed that the inmates, are subject to horrific conditions, including forced labor, torture and rape. Inmates are often executed. The death tolls are further exacerbated by torture, denial of adequate medical care and high incidence of work accidents, said a 2014 United Nations report on North Korea.
Executions
Since assuming his father’s throne in 2011, Kim, a thirdgeneration hereditary leader, has shown a brutal side while consolidating his power. In what critics called a “reign of terror,” Kim executed a slew of members of the North Korean old guard, including his uncle Jang Seong Thaek, who was convicted of treason, and senior government officials accused of slighting his leadership.
Kim has also been accused of ordering the assassination of his estranged half brother, Kim Jong Nam, last year at a Malaysian airport by assailants using a highly-lethal nerve agent.
In 2015, South Korea’s spy agency said Kim Jong Un ordered his defense chief, Hyon Yong Chol, executed with an antiaircraft gun in front of hundreds of spectators at a military shooting range.
Detainees
North Korea has abducted thousands of South Koreans and other foreigners to use them for spying and propaganda purposes. Outside governments have also accused Pyongyang of using foreign detainees as political pawns to gain concessions.
The abductees include South Korean government officials, students, fishermen and Japanese citizens. In recent years, North Korea has often detained South Korean activists, many of them evangelical Christians who smuggle out defectors and sent anti-Pyongyang literature and Bibles into the North.
Ahead of Kim’s summit with Trump, North Korea released three American detainees as a gesture of goodwill.
However, the country only released American student Otto Warmbier last year after he had lapsed into a coma. After his death at a U.S. hospital, North Korea called itself the “biggest victim” of the incident and denied that it tortured Warmbier who had been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster.