We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony. For instance, we have satellite imagery of the prison camps.

Also, the guardian article that you linked to literally states that just because there are inconsistencies doesn't mean that there aren't serious human rights abuses, including the existence of prison camps.

there’s an industry of tabloids and publishers waiting with open arms for nork defectors to denounce their former government. these defectors are basically the dregs of society in south korea; impoverished, unskilled, widely despised and easily identifiable. many of them effectively live in the projects together, working low wage jobs and facing discrimination from the public. if you can make some bank telling a particularly lurid versions of stories you’ve heard back home, and there’s little other opportunity...

none of this is to say that the NK regime doesn’t commit atrocities. i’m certain some of the stories are true. i only mean to point out that there are perverse incentives that point exclusively in one direction.

> We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony.

For camp 14, the supposed concentration camp, we have two eyewitnesses. Shin Dong-hyuk, and Kim Yong. Both of their stories are hugely inconsistent, and they get paid based on how crazy their stories are.

> For instance, we have satellite imagery of the prison camps.

We have satellite imagery that they have prisons. We don't have any imagery of abuses.

> Also, the guardian article that you linked to literally states that just because there are inconsistencies doesn't mean that there aren't serious human rights abuses, including the existence of prison camps.

Yeah, it's a Guardian article. You can't rock the boat too much.

There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen. And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I'm unclear on what exactly your position is. Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand. Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist? What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense? Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

> There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen.

Over a dozen prison camps. Camp 14 was the "hotel California" camp supposedly, the others are focused on rehabilitation and release.

> Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

Dozens of the literally tens of thousands of North korean defectors. But it's only the ones with the sketchy stories for some reason that get the limelight.

> And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I mean, they were under sanctions during a famine. Nearly everyone was malnourished.

> Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand.

Yes, skeptical to say the least.

> Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist?

I believe that prisons should be focused on rehabilitation and integration back into society, I guess you can call that "political re-education".

> What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense?

I doubt that this exists. What's more likely is that political dissonance (which was outlawed by the US in times of war also), is hard to keep to an individual in the extremely family centric societies of the east, including North Korea and would tend to pull in family members who didn't report it.

> Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

I think that's true of nearly all prisons, including those in the US. And before you go calling "whataboutism", I think that's core to the distinction made between a "concentration camp" and a prison.

My main issue is how it gets portrayed as worse than the Nazis or Unit 731, when there's essentially no reliable evidence to the fact. All in a context where there's a push for a war with them, and we've manufactured evidence for the past few wars.

>My guess is that, like the incubator baby thing in Iraq, the more heinous crimes are just made up. It's easy to make up stories when there's no way to refute them.

It's also a nice way to prop up the "enemy du jour". You wine and dine some people who got out, and they'll tell any kind of horror story you'd like to hear.