News ABC News : North Korea reportedly executing cannibals

[N_Molson]

North Korea reportedly executing cannibals

By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy
Posted May 11, 2012 19:33:47

A new report quoting eyewitnesses in North Korea says officials have publicly executed several people for cannibalism in recent years.

The South Korean-run Institute for National Unification says in recent years the North has publicly executed at least three people on charges of cannibalism.

It quotes one defector as saying a man was shot in the city of Hyesan in 2009 for killing a girl and eating her flesh.

It also cites the case of a father and son who were executed in the town of Doksong after being found guilty of cannibalism.

During the terrible famine of the 1990s, in which up to 2 million North Koreans starved to death, rumours of cannibalism and the sale of human flesh emerged from the closed state.

 

[Codz]

That's disturbing.

 

[Mattyv]

Sounds like something that was bound to happen with the famine and all.

 

[N_Molson]

Sadly, it had to happen... When people are starving, they are ready to anything. Anything. The primal instincts take over anything else.

"It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking." - Caius Julius Caesar

 

[Codz]

Even in the worst of situations, I find it incredibly hard to imagine eating another person.

 

[Cras]

So the general assumption is that the charges are true? and this is not just an excuse to execute some people, like calling them a witch or something like that?

If this is indeed the case, we have quite a human rights issue here. What does the world do? Sit by and let the people starve so much they resort to eating each other? Do we try to get food in there and thus help uphold a despicable regime? Or will the regime need to be taken out at some point?

 

[N_Molson]

Even in the worst of situations, I find it incredibly hard to imagine eating another person.

We all do (I hope), but it seems that when you are in those situations, your brain works differently. No matter of being a good or a bad guy, respectable or not, well-educated or not...

The human body just wants to survive, by any mean. When you are exposed to extreme cold, the blood circulation is restrained to the vital parts, even if that means losing a foot or a hand. Thats another survival reflex. For that reason I doubt that public executions are going to change anything.

In this case, I wouldn't say that the criminals are the cannibals, but the regime that pushed them into that state (and executed them).

So the general assumption is that the charges are true? and this is not just an excuse to execute some people, like calling them a witch or something like that?

No, there have been rumors in the past of such an "organized human flesh black market".

 

[Cras]

In this case, I wouldn't say that the criminals are the cannibals, but the regime that pushed them into that state (and executed them).

I understand the sentiment there, and it is one I agree with, but with that being said, you still can't have people eating other people. They must be punished.

 

[Codz]

I'm neutral on this issue. I disapprove the death penalty for any crime, but cannibilism is dispicable, especially if it involves murder. I know that they aren't entirely to blame for it, but that still doesn't really excuse their actions.

 

[N_Molson]

That's indeed a complex issue that rises everytime than a crime is comitted and that his author is hard to define as responsible or not (mental insanity).

I don't know what a psychiatrist would say, but I think that their mind has been crushed again and again by the regime, and that they have been put in such a desesperate condition that they couldn't control their primal instincts anymore. If I had to pronounce the sentence, it would be long-term internement in a psychiatric institution (it costs much much more than a bullet, of course).

 

[Ripley]

Even in the worst of situations, I find it incredibly hard to imagine eating another person.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember this plane crash: Chile, 1972.
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571"]Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

http://www.viven.com.uy/571/Eng/default.asp

 

[C3PO]

Even in the worst of situations, I find it incredibly hard to imagine eating another person.

Can you imagine how starving to death would make you feel?

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive:_The_Story_of_the_Andes_Survivors"]Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

I've seen interviews with the some of the survivors, and they said it wasn't even a very difficult decision. It wasn't even the most memorable part of the experience.

 

[Codz]

If it wasn't even a hard decision then I can't say I'm not a little horrified.

 

[Cras]

It is sad . The whole situation in North Korea is sad. And there just seems to be no hope in sight for the people who live under that incompetent and corrupt regime.

 

[Quick_Nick]

A black market of human flesh is a little different than a starving consumer.

 

[Ghostrider]

I've seen interviews with the some of the survivors, and they said it wasn't even a very difficult decision. It wasn't even the most memorable part of the experience.

Yeah, but then they didn't have to kill anyone. Eating human flesh from a corpse is a whole different moral event horizon than killing someone to eat them.

 

[N_Molson]

My worst fear is that the phenomenon is far to be new. Its just that people begin to speak.

It could have become such an habit that some people don't even see it like immoral anymore. The article says that a father and his son were executed, which suggests that in some areas there is a "teaching" of hunting human flesh. Things have gone even more wrong than suspected in North Korea. :shifty:

I'm usually against declaring war to others, but to the light of those events, I wouldn't be against an all-out offensive against NK, just to end the nightmare and reunify the North with the South (or making the North a Chinese province).

 

[Codz]

Yes, but such a conflict has a very high chance of nuclear weapons being exchanged.

 

[N_Molson]

That's the problem, and I know I wouldn't even consider that possiblity if I was living in a 3000 kilometers radius of Korea.

 

[Keatah]

Even in the worst of situations, I find it incredibly hard to imagine eating another person.

If you have no choice, the idea mutates into becoming an effective solution. Been that way for thousands of years.