The Spectator’s Notes | 23 June 2007

Tyranny is most successful when most extreme. Because we all know that North Korea is absolutely foul, we do remarkably little about it. The new report into mass killings, torture and arbitrary imprisonment there by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (North Korea: A Case to Answer) is amazing not only for the horror of what it reveals, but for the fact that no such work has been produced before. It could be that as many as a million people have been killed by the father-to-son dictatorship. The case for international investigation is overwhelming, yet, until now, so little has been done. On Tuesday, I chaired the press conference in London to launch the report. The most extraordinary testimony was from Shin Dong-Hyok, a young man who was born in a political prison camp in the ‘absolute control zone’ which, for all its inhabitants, is a life sentence. Until he escaped (almost a unique event) he had never seen any other life.