HUMAN RIGHTS/NORTH KOREA/TORTURE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Early in the reign of North Korea’s current supreme leader, merchant Kim Young-hee shared a flea-infested prison cell for a year with more than two dozen other women, enduring regular whippings from guards. Her crime was helping her sister’s child flee one the of the world’s most repressive dictatorships. Conditions have only grown harder. Kim Jong Un, the nation’s third-generation dictator, has tightened border controls to prevent escapes since taking power at the end of 2011. Those caught risk prolonged imprisonment. North Korean women sent back from China have been forced to have abortions if the fathers were Chinese, defectors say. Torture and starvation are routine in a vast network of North Korean prison camps operated since the 1950s with a total land area about 20 times the size of Manhattan. Around 100,000 people are held in five camps, according to the United Nations. Camps in central areas have added new facilities to house more prisoners, satellite images show..As President Donald Trump prepares for a planned summit meeting with Mr. Kim on June 12—the first between a U.S. and North Korean leader—it isn’t clear whether he will raise the issue of Pyongyang’s human-rights violations, or if doing so would lead to any improvement. Mr. Trump has indicated that he sees human rights as a major concern…But at a meeting on Friday [6-1-18] with one of Mr. Kim’s top lieutenants, the president said they didn’t discuss human rights.”
-Alastair Gale, “As Trump Plans North Korea Summit, Defectors Tell Harrowing Stories,” The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2018 12:42 pm