Present Day Detention Camps: North Korea Vs. The United States Essay

Present Day Detention Camps: North Korea Vs. The United States Abstract The purpose of this research was to determine how similar detention facilities run by the U.S. government are to the gulags of North Korea. The research spanned many different media sources from online news articles to reports in scholarly journals to an anthology of memoirs and articles concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. detention facilities. Although some of the specific details of the camps were inconsistent across sources, this can be attributed to the secret nature of the prison system. However, despite those inconsistencies, an overall theme present in all the sources was the secret nature of the camps as well as U.S. lack of cooperation with human rights standards presented by the United Nations. The research also showed that the U.S. in fact had imprisoned innocent persons. Because of the similarities to North Korea camps in terms of secrecy, the incarceration of innocent people and the deliberate avoidance of compliance with human rights laws, it is possible to compare the U.S. â€Å"democratic† government with North Korea’s communist regime. Review of the Literature Kang Chol-Hwan’s The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a memoir of life in a North Korean gulag, presents the stark reality that concentration camps do still exist to this day. However, the existence of these camps alone is not the only harsh reality. Not only do these detention camps exist under the communist regime of North Korea, but such camps are also present under the supervision of the democratic United States government. Therefore I wonder: how do the U.S. detention camps compare to North Korean gulags? The research of information on U.S. camps included a variety... ...s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the â€Å"War on Terror.† New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. Priest, Dana. â€Å"CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons.† Washington Post 2 November 2005. 5 October 2006 R2005110101644.html>. Reuters. â€Å"US has secret prisons: rights groups.† ABC News Online 18 June 2004. 6 October 2006 . Thorne, Kym, Alexander Kouzmin. â€Å"Borders in an (In)Visible World: Revisiting Communities, Recognizing Gulags.† Administrative Theory & Praxis 26.3 (2004): 408-429. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts. 6 October 2006 18&sid=eabd6560-ec4b-458e-b598-c2bc9c9ee450%40sessionmgr101>.