Media Convergence Initiative

Ever since the end of the second world war, Korea has been split into two separate countries that have technically been at war for over 50 years. Originally, North Korea was sponsored by the Soviet Union as acted as one of their satellite nations during the cold war, sparking the Korean War in 1953. When it looked like the U.S. was about to win and reunite the country, China stepped in with thousands of troops that fought the U.S. lead U.N. forces back to the border before the war.

After the ceasefire, both sides militarized their borders and there they sat for 60 years. Since then, their main benefactor, the Soviet Union, have since collapsed, leaving only China to support their regime. That regime has devolved into a military dictatorship whose people are repressed and starved to the point of collapse. The North Korean population has created a difficult problem for the region. If the government were to fall, the humanitarian crisis that would develop would dwarf the reintegration of East and West Germany.

China is in the difficult position on the global stage. While they might not like North Korea’s war mongering, they can’t just cut support as the government would collapse and cause an even bigger problem. People would pour in from the south into Manchuria, while South Korea would have to spend trillions to reintegrate the north and population who have been conditioned to hate their neighbors since birth. While the world may frown upon the support the north receives from China, it has been carefully calculated has the least worst option.

The United Nations has investigated a situation that is all to familiar to Nazi Germany. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and the country’s security chiefs have been discovered ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings on the North Korean people.

So far the only effort to stop this atrocity has been a public rebuke by the U.N. stating its disapproval and asking the right people involved be punished. North Korea responded with a 372 page report saying that the whole accusation is a fake observation schemed up by the United States, the European Union and Japan.

Michael Kirby, chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, explains that this isn’t some ordinary series of wrong doings. This is real, and they are “wrongs that shock the consciousness of humanity.”

The U.N. investigators also have contacted China as well claiming that North Korea’s main ally has been  sending defectors trying to escape back to North Korea to face torture or execution. The Chinese government said  these remarks were not true.

The evidence is the result of a year long investigation incorporating public testimony by defectors as well as former prison camp guards. Human Rights Watch reported that they hoped this investigation would open the United Nation’s eyes to the crimes.

It is truly a scary situation, that the potential threat against humanity has gone unnoticed for so long. There had always been suspicion, but with these recent findings the truth is coming out. North Korean has shut the rest of the world out and only time will tell what the surrounding countries will decide to do.