A North Korean ambassador announced that Kenneth Bae, a U.S. citizen who is currently imprisoned, will be moved from hospital to a labor camp. Kenneth Bae has been sentenced to 15 years-worth of hard labor in this so called “Education Place” with the charge that he had plotted to overthrow the current North Korean regime.
Kenneth Bae is a Korean-American missionary who has been detained in North Korea for over a year. He had been arrested from the city of Rajin on the 3rd of November, 2013 while leading tours into North Korea. Other prisoners such as Korean War veteran Merrill Newman had been released, but the regime is still refusing to comply to the U.S. or Bae’s family.
In the case of Merrill Newman, DPRK government officials had announced that he had been released after sincerely apologizing for the “crimes” he had committed during the Korean War. However, Kenneth Bae’s mother, after a brief visit to her son in prison expressed her opinion that Bae’s firm beliefs as a Christian may have been looked upon as acts of hostility towards the North Koreans. It is apparent that Bae may be showing a rather different attitude from that of Newman’s.
The North Korean labor camps where Bae has been sentenced 15 years are said to be places of hard labor, torture, and even human experimentation, according to North Korean defectors who were both prisoners and even guards there. There are hundreds of camps like these all across North Korea and very few have made it out alive.
Despite harsh punishment and the hereditary rule, there are still over 100,000 believers in North Korea, and Christians all over the world continue to do all they can to spark change in this isolated nation.
