Today's topic is the Nazi-like meaningless lives lived within concentration camps in modern day North Korea. You remember the Nazis? They were the ones from whom the Communists "freed" places like Romania and Czechoslovakia. Similarly, Kim Jong-il is freeing North Korea from the Japanese, the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, the South Koreans, and the entire civilized world. To do this he has instituted elements of Stalin and Hitler and Ceaucescu in his pretty mix of poison.

And I do not speak of history here. This is what is happening as I type. Says Kim:

The regime depends on forced labor for every industry imaginable... prisoners are given strict quotas, and if they don't meet them, they will not receive food that day.... An MSNBC report indicated that products made by North Korean prisoners might end up in U.S. stores having been "washed" first through Chinese companies that serve as intermediaries.

Repatriated [sent back from China] refugees are worked the hardest of all the prisoners. Young-Kuk explained, "They would work us harder because we ate so well while we were in China. They made us carry heavy loads, and when they beat us, they would use all sorts of things with which to hit us..."

Mrs. Park, a refugee woman in her forties, described what her days inside a North Korean prison were like. "We started our physical labor early in the morning. We began working at 6:00 A.M. and then ate breakfast at 8:00 A.M.... we had to cut wood... Oftentimes we worked straight through the day until dinnertime... Even if there was no work for us to do, they made up meaningless work for us. There was a big pile of large rocks. The guards would say, 'Separate the rocks! Move all the big rocks to the right side and all the small rocks to the left side!' "

Then the directions would change. Put the rocks back in one big pile. Move all big rocks left, small rocks right, and so on and on... Kim reminds his readers that this is exactly how Hitler broke the spirits, and not only the backs, of his own people. Prisoners there died not only from exhaustion, but from "the purposelessness of their work."