After first learning about the horrors inside Camp No. 22 in Hoeryeong (회령), North Korea near the Russian and Chinese borders, I had hoped its inevitable end would be under more liberating circumstances, but apparently the government decided to shut it down after its warden and a second official defected from the country in June. When we say “camp” here we are talking about 20,000 - 50,000 partially to fully starving people enclosed by electric fences and guard towers in the mountains with weekly executions and punishments like putting people in a box for a week. This particular camp has also had the infamous distinction of being used for human experimentation according to former officials from the camp who defected years ago. The large network of camps like this in North Korea are called kwanliso (관리소) in Korean or “political penal labor colonies”. Misdemeanors are one thing, but serious crimes or insults to the Kim family or Juche ideology merit a complete omission of judicial process and the imprisonment of three generations of the prisoners’ relatives in these special camps. Collective punishment of family members is one of the main incentives for all North Koreans to keep their mouths shut and tow the line. One of the many reasons people don’t know more about these places is the same reason it took one of the only publications with sources inside North Korea, DailyNK, most of this year just to separate fact from rumor and confirm the news of its closure. While we can’ know for sure why the camp has been closed, the fact that its prisoners are all being sent to other camps and the warden’s defection would suggest it’s out of fear of more defections in the camp’s remote and precarious location close to two national borders. If one wants evidence of the Kim Jong Eun regime’s comparative plans for human rights, they can note that since he took power the regime has greatly escalated its jamming of shortwave radio stations in South Korea that broadcast news into the North from the outside world and facts about human rights atrocities, damning lies endlessly spread as truth by the North Korean regime, defector stories, and so on. The civilian radio stations that make these human rights broadcasts are continuing to ask the South Korean government for permission to use stronger medium wave frequencies that cannot be easily jammed by North Korea. Unlike the technology otherwise ubiquitous to East Asia, analog shortwave radios are a very common form of media for North Koreans, and the one station all their radios are fixed to is Voice of Korea, formerly Radio Pyongyang, which still broadcasts “news” about the leader and ideology in eight languages including Arabic on shortwave frequencies every day. The fact that they broadcast it in Russian and Chinese does make sense, but I am convinced to this day that the only people listening to the Spanish shortwave broadcast of North Korean propaganda are radio hobbyists and Alejandro Cao de Benós, a Spaniard who moved to North Korea, wears a communist jumpsuit with a Kim Il Sung badge and calls himself North Korean.