Kang Chol-hwan - Oslo Freedom Forum 2010

North Korean defector Kang Chol-hwan talks about the dismal situation in his native country that is unlike anywhere else on the planet. At the age of nine, Kang was sentenced to ten years in a gulag for the supposed crimes of his grandfather. He spent his childhood in Yodok -- a prison the size of Washington, DC. North Korean prison camps, based on Nazi models like Auschwitz, are so common and their effects so wide-reaching that they are generally accepted by average citizens, as are public executions, which most North Koreans have witnessed. The entire country is like one gigantic prison; it is the only starving country in the world with perfectly good natural resources. Though an enormous supply of money and food have been supplied by the South Korean government and various international aid organizations, most of it has been confiscated to feed the People's Army -- the fourth largest standing army in the world. An exorbitant amount of money is also squandered by Kim John-Il on monuments, extravagant homes, and nuclear arms, rather than lifting his people out of abject poverty and starvation. In a shocking slideshow, Kang shows the reality of life in his country, hoping to raise awareness of the plight of the North Korean people, who are now on average several inches shorter than their South Korean brethren due to severe malnutrition. With a final night image of the Korean peninsula, revealing a bright south and a pitch black north, he demonstrates the difference between fear and freedom.

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• famine
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[KingDingaLing090]

This is advanced socialism. Western Universities should educate students about what it looks like instead of painting socialism as a Utopia to strive for. It is commonly accepted as cool to be socialists in Universities across the United States and if you talk to graduates from age 35 and under the overwhelming majority favor socialism. The most educated elite deny, excuse, or accept the massive terror, genocide, and slavery in advanced socialist societies such as the USSR, Cuba, & N. Korea

[AUgustusDeLaVega]

Soon coming to America

[jokertoker5593]

@AUgustusDeLaVega Shut up.

[LawrenceKennard]

Thank you for this video. I will save this for further showing to anyone defending communism.

[MrMatstutorials]

Brave man. I have shown this to my kids - they need to see this before they go to College and get indoctrinated. Inoculation from Indoctrination!

[leaderamongleaders]

Communism is evil. Even the root idea of having EVERYONE being equal is not a good idea either; humans require competition to perpetually innovate and motivate, two qualities that can be seen with great success in South Korea. Look at North Korea. It's an absolute hellhole with 70's Soviet technology littered around.

[LibertyDownUnder]

A lot of European and South American leaders see nothing wrong with the description this guy is portraying. In fact they're probably taking notes in the audience.

Same goes for many in Obama's adminstration.

[teapot55]

It's the fact that North Koreans don't know that that is what's going on in North Korea...

scares and surprises the hell out of me.

-Good testimony