Freedom, how long will it last?

North Korean defector Kang Chol-hwan talks about the dismal situation in his native country that is unlike anywhere else on the planet. At the age of nine, Kang was sentenced to ten years in a gulag for the supposed crimes of his grandfather. He spent his childhood in Yodok — a prison the size of Washington, DC. North Korean prison camps, based on Nazi models like Auschwitz, are so common and their effects so wide-reaching that they are generally accepted by average citizens, as are public executions, which most North Koreans have witnessed. The entire country is like one gigantic prison; it is the only starving country in the world with perfectly good natural resources. Though an enormous supply of money and food have been supplied by the South Korean government and various international aid organizations, most of it has been confiscated to feed the People’s Army — the fourth largest standing army in the world. An exorbitant amount of money is also squandered by Kim John-Il on monuments, extravagant homes, and nuclear arms, rather than lifting his people out of abject poverty and starvation. In a shocking slideshow, Kang shows the reality of life in his country, hoping to raise awareness of the plight of the North Korean people, who are now on average several inches shorter than their South Korean brethren due to severe malnutrition. With a final night image of the Korean peninsula, revealing a bright south and a pitch black north, he demonstrates the difference …