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North Korean prisoner escaped after 23 brutal years

December 2, 2012 4:42 PM

Born in a prison camp, Shin Dong-hyuk describes how three generations of a family are incarcerated if one family member is considered disloyal. Anderson Cooper reports.

North Korean prisoner escaped after 23 brutal years

60 Minutes OverTimeAnderson Cooper on North Korean born in prison camp

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by susiezoos7 May 20, 2013 12:51 AM EDT
This report was extremely saddening. The first thing i did after it was over was crawl to my knees and pray!! Please do not let this moment pass you by... PRAY!! Pray for God's power to decend on North Korea.
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by soaponapope May 18, 2013 1:27 AM EDT
no, tragically hilarious is coming into a discussion about the plight of the north korean people and rather than putting your own domestic political beliefs aside in the interest of a respectful dialogue of an entire country's suffering, you instead choose to hijack this thread in the most self-serving manner imaginable. this should be about THEM, and THEIR suffering, not about YOU. by hijacking this thread as you did, you are attempting to recenter this discussion on to YOU. this isn't about you, it's about the suffering of the NK people. get down off your soapbox, have some class and stop being selfish. shame on you, and shame on anyone who would also exploit this man's suffering as a vehicle to selfishly deliver your completely unrelated political beliefs
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by CGPatriot March 22, 2013 4:13 PM EDT
What is tragically hilarious is how Anderson Cooper and so many who watch this show support the same political ideology and the same agendas that make communism possible.

How could Cooper be outraged when he WANTS people who control the masses to have power? This is a logic that only a liberal on drugs could understand.
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by trojanny February 20, 2013 11:17 AM EST
That's it! It's really time for world action to pull out the carpet from that government's feet. No joke, & united effort on humanity. No way should people, even those freer, be forced in the modern world, to live in such insurmountable hell.

Write our legislators. Even Red China wouldn't support this!!!!!!
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by lovedavidk January 17, 2013 7:44 AM EST
Let My People Go!
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by wonderboy1 January 16, 2013 1:06 PM EST
We should do something about China. Chinese people are exploiting North Korean refugees who risk their life for freedom. Chinese people know their vulnerable point, and take advantage of it. If North Korean refugees are sent back to North Korea, they will be tortured, and be sent to a labor camp. Many North Korean refugees want to rather die than sending back to North Korea. When they escape from North Korea, they actually carry poison for suicide. Chinese threaten the refugees to report Chinese police, beat them and lock them up, and then finally Chinese people traffic in North Korean refugees. The refugees are sold between $200 ~ $300 per person as sex slaves, and slave labors in China. If US really want to change North Korea, the first thing is changing China. Without support from China, North Korea will collapse itself.
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by zebrateas January 16, 2013 4:57 AM EST
This is one of the most emotionally provocative stories I've ever seen. It makes me think back to middle school, when we had a series of lessons on the Holocaust in Judaic Studies. One of the most important questions I remember us kids asking was "Why didn't anybody do anything about it? If someone knew about the unimaginable atrocities in the concentration camps (and some did), why didn't they try to stop them?" That question is the first to come to my mind when learning about a modern day concentration camp, which, prior to this segment on 60 Minutes, I had no idea was still a reality anywhere on Planet Earth. I think the answer lies in the fact that it would be very, very hard. Considering that it took WWII to end the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, it just might take a large war to end the concentration camps in North Korea. And that raises incredibly challenging ethical questions: Are we responsible for helping these people? Is it okay to let an evil force on the other side of the world do as it pleases within its borders? Does the potential for loss of life and suffering that would result from a large war outweigh the loss of life and suffering that persists indefinitely in North Korea? Are there solutions that would not require war? How does it make one feel to think that these solutions would likely take a long time, and meanwhile people like the one we saw are living literally loveless lives? How does that make one feel--to hear him say "I still don't know what love is." It makes me feel so sad. To think in my next life I might be born into one of these camps and have my reality be constant hunger, pain, and fear--not only through no fault of my own, but with no knowledge of any alternative--is quite possibly the most horrible thing I can imagine.
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by Milaireny December 10, 2012 8:19 PM EST
Hey Anderson - Did you ever publicly apologize to Shin Dong-hyuk? Sir, you using a pejorative to describe that poor young man's experience-A RAT Really?
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by whplcbs December 9, 2012 11:28 PM EST
In case no one else has said it yet, the North Korean regime, or should I say the Kim Estate, has the unmitigated gall to put Anne Frank in their curriculum and subject their own people to such inhumane and capital treatment.
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by industrial291 December 8, 2012 7:20 PM EST
Why are we so scared of these people.We are Americans and if it happened anywhere else it would be considered outrageous. The president should do something ,Torrow we should bomb them and take out their leaders why so many excuses lets get these scumbags off the earth their not human
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