Google Earth Is Key To Revealing North Korea’s Prison Camp System, Activists Say

Google Earth Is Key To Revealing North Korea’s Prison Camp System, Activists Say.

Wow you really can find anything in real time on Google Earth, but in this case maybe this Google Exec better be a little more careful. Earlier this month, Eric Schmidt embarked on a journey to North Korea even though he was criticized by the U.S. State Department for timing and intention, human rights activist said that the visit is a reminder of something significant. Many believe that Google Earth will help to unlock the mystery surrounding North Korea’s system of labor and prison camps that hold some 250,000 political prisoners who are starved and forced to do intense manual labor. One Free Korea has complied a lot of information on 6 of these prison camps (the one shown above is camp 22 which can be seen on Google maps above). The blog notes that 50,000 men, women and children are housed here where they are forced to stone each other to death, women are raped by prison guards, about 2,000 people die from starvation each year. Many families are guilty by association and forced into these camps where some families see three generations of their lineage live and die within the walls for crimes committed long ago. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a non-governmental U.S. organization, has credited Google Earth with bringing more of these camps to light in North Korea in the updated version of “The Hidden Gulag” released in 2012 focusing on the prisoners in these camps now being able to identify specific locations within the camps where they were held. As many people have said, the above project shows how hard it is for governments to hide these types of facilities and keep them a secret  anymore that eventually the full disclosure of the atrocities committed by the North Korean regimen will be revealed as it opens up more and more.