Four friends of Shin Suk-ja, a South Korean woman being held at an infamous North Korean concentration camp, said this at an event on North Korean human rights in August, 2011.

Shin, 69, was born in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and graduated from Tongyeong Elementary School and Tongyeong Girls’ Middle School. Fate took her to North Korea, and confirming whether she is dead or alive is deemed incredibly difficult.

Hosted by the Tongyeong branch of the National Unification Advisory Council, the event feature the Rev. Bang Su-yeol, who initiated the drive, and members of Tongyeong Hyundai Church.

"I couldn`t sleep after I learned that Suk-ja, the quiet and smart girl, is now in North Korea. Even if she`s dead, her two daughters should be sent back (to the South),” said Kim Sun-ja, Shin`s close friend in middle school, sobbingly.
Recalling her friend as a pretty girl with a small mole under her eye and a dimple, Kim apparently could hardly believe her friend was in the North, more specifically in a prison camp

After graduating from middle school, Shin went to Masan Nursing School in 1958, leaving her friends in Tongyeong behind. In the late 1960s, the Korean government sent her to Germany to work as a nurse.

She met Dr. Oh Gil-nam, who was studying economics in Germany, and married him there in 1975. The couple had two daughters.

Her family life began to fall apart when her husband was caught up in a plot involving North Korea in 1985. A North Korean agent who approached him said Pyongyang would offer him a professorship and top-flight medical care to Shin, who was injured in a car accident.

Spurring Oh to go to the North were Yun Isang, a composer from Tongyeong, and Song Du-yul, a South Korean scholar residing in Germany.

Shin objected, saying, "I can`t trust North Korea.” She failed to talk her husband out of going, however, and moved to the North with him.

Isolated from the outside world, they underwent brainwashing for three months after arriving in the Stalinist country. Oh was then assigned to work as a broadcast agent of the "Voice of National Salvation," a propaganda organ geared toward the South.

A year later, the North Korean leadership ordered him to bring South Korean couples studying in Germany. Shin then told her husband, “We have to pay the price for our wrong decision, but you shouldn`t follow an order that victimizes others and just run away. Our daughters shouldn`t become the daughters of hateful accomplices. If you escape this country, please rescue us but if you fail, believe that we`re dead."

Oh eventually escaped from the North but failed to rescue his family. Shin and their daughters were sent to the notorious Yodok prison camp in 1987.

He lived in Germany in secret but contacted composer Yun, who had a close relationship with Pyongyang back then, to ask for help to bring his family out of the North. Yun delivered to Oh letters from his family twice in 1987 and 1988.

In 1999, the composer brought a cassette tape with the voice of Oh`s wife and daughters and six family photos. Yun then said, "Since you betrayed North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, who was generous to you, your family should be held hostage. You should go back to the North again and be loyal to the regime."

Oh turned himself in to the South Korean Embassy in Berlin in 1992 and came to the South. He appealed to relevant organizations about his family`s plight but got few responses.

Nearly forgotten for two decades, Shin`s story received global attention again thanks to So Shin-hyang, the wife of the Rev. Bang. She learned of Shin`s story at a lecture on North Korean prison camps in a prayer service called the Esther Prayer Movement in 2009.

Sage Korea, a group promoting human rights in North Korea, proposed an exhibition titled, “There Is No Love; Exhibition on North Korean Prison Camps” in Tongyeong. The rescue drive began as the exhibition was held in May and June this year by adding the phrase, “Tongyeong`s daughter is there” to the title.

While information about the current situation of Mrs. Shin and her daughters is difficult to confirm, recent news appears to indicate that they are no longer in the brutal Yodok camp, but instead are currently interned at Won-hwa-ri near Pyongyang.

In North Korea, when a person is convicted of a "political" or ideological crime, up to three generations of that person's family can be imprisoned as well.

I am 11 years old and I live in Australia.
I heard that in Korea people are hurting the Moon Bears. Tubes are put through their bodies and bile sucked out of the gall bladder, as if that wasn't bad enough they also rip out thier claws and pull out there teeth.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/nEBiDh_npiunDDIULWkg4Q?feat=directlink

So please please stop hurting these poor innocent bears.

Have a heart.

Yours sincerely
Ruby Osborne (fighting for the freedom of Moon Bears)

North Korea has been isolated for decades from the rest of the world because of the choices of the country's leaders to impose the communist law and to establish an ideology of self-reliance, mainly as a result of their leader's mistrustment to the Soviet Union after the disaster of the Korean war.

The country has failed to adapt itself to the global economic and ideological changes, due to the fear of the North Korean governmental elite of ending up similarly to the communist dictator regimes in eastern europe in 1990. Due to this fact, the North Korean regime has used every means to strengthen its control on its people and to keep them away from any influence from the outside world. This is necessary for them and they try to achieve this at any costs.

People have no individual freedom: it is overwhelmingly clear that the government of North Korea controls virtually all activities within the nation. Citizens are not allowed to freely speak their minds and the government detains those who criticize the regime.

The only radio, television, and news organizations that are deemed legal are those operated by the government. The media universally praise the administration of Kim Jong-Il, who remains the unelected leader of the country. A number of human rights organizations and governments have condemned North Korea's human rights record, including Amnesty International and the United Nations.

Criticism of the government and its leaders is strictly curtailed and making such statements can be cause for arrest and consignment to one of North Korea's "re-education" camps. The government distributes all radio and television sets; citizens are forbidden to alter them to make it possible to receive broadcasts from other nations, and doing so carries draconian penalties.In addition, the media is said to make false claims, and the use of the United States as a scapegoat is common. All media is strictly controlled by the government.

The national media dedicates a large portion of its resources toward political propaganda and promoting the personality cult of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.For instance, the North Korean media claims that the United States started the Korean War, which Soviet archives show to have started with a premeditated invasion from the north.

In its 2006 country report on North Korea, Freedom House stated that, "North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship and one of the most restrictive countries in the world. Every aspect of social, political, and economic life is tightly controlled by the state. The regime denies North Koreans all basic rights, subjects tens of thousands of political prisoners to brutal conditions, and maintains a largely isolationist foreign policy."

North Korea's government is said to routinely detain, torture and imprison thousands of individuals who are either dissidents or alleged saboteurs. The administration of Kim Jong-il maintains that it does not do any of these things. Many refugees have come forward and recounted stories which describe conditions within the country. The government is accused of employing political prison camps, believed to hold as many as 200,000 inmates, including children whose only crime is having "class enemies" for relatives. There have been widespread reports from North Korean refugees of abortion, infanticide, and famine in these prison camps. Extreme physical abuse is common (beatings often result in death).

Famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, set off by unprecedented floods and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As late as 2000, there were frequent reports from certain sources (such as the UN) of famine in all parts of North Korea except Pyongyang. North Korean citizens ran increasingly desperate risks to escape from the country, mainly into China.North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. n the spring of 2005, the World Food Program reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea.

Usually citizens cannot freely travel around the country or go abroad. Only the political élite may own vehicles and the government limits access to fuel and other forms of transportation. (Satellite photos of North Korea show an almost complete lack of vehicles on the roads.) Forced resettlement of citizens and families, especially as punishment for political reasons, is said to be routine.Only the most politically reliable and healthiest citizens are allowed to live in Pyongyang. Those who are suspected of sedition, or have family members suspected of it, are removed from the city; similar conditions affect those who are physically or mentally disabled in some way. This can be a significant method of coercion as food and housing are said to be much better in the capital city.

North Korea's society is highly stratified by class, according to a citizen's family and political background.Refugees International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Amnesty International have all accused North Korea of discriminating against those in "hostile" classes in the distribution of basic necessities, including food. In some "closed" areas that contained a higher concentration of "hostile" class members, the government appears to have prevented the delivery of significant amounts of food aid.

On March 22, 2006, the Associated Press reported from South Korea that a North Korean doctor who defected, Ri Kwang-chol, has claimed that babies born with physical defects are rapidly put to death and buried.A United Nations report also mentions how disabled people are allegedly "rounded up" and sent to "special camps."

North Korea claims to possess nuclear weapons, and the CIA asserts that it has a substantial arsenal of chemical weapons. North Korea was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but withdrew in 2003, citing the failure of the United States to fulfill its end of the Agreed Framework, a 1994 agreement between the states to limit North Korea's nuclear ambitions, begin normalization of relations, and help North Korea supply some energy needs through nuclear reactors.

On October 9, 2006, the North Korean government issued an announcement that it had successfully conducted a nuclear test for the first time.

The country is believed to possess a substantial arsenal of chemical weapons. It reportedly acquired the technology necessary to produce tabun and mustard gas as early as the 1950s,[17] and now possesses a full arsenal of nerve agents and other advanced varieties, with the means to launch them in artillery shells.[citation needed] North Korea has expended considerable resources on equipping its army with chemical-protection equipment.[citation needed] South Korea, however, has not felt the need to take such measures.

North Korea's ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction to a hypothetical target is somewhat limited by its missile technology. As of 2005, North Korea's total range with its No Dong missiles is only 1,300 km, enough to reach South Korea, Japan, and parts of Russia, and China, but not the mainland United States or Europe--although they could potentially reach US islands in the Pacific Ocean such as the Northern Mariana Islands and possibly even the state of Hawaii.