President Trump has repeatedly referred to Kim Jong-un as his “friend.” I recognize that this is a bargaining technique and that it is necessary to employ deception when dealing with the likes of Kim, but I wish Trump would not do it.
Kim Jong-un is not Trump’s friend; he is not anybody’s friend. He oversees the operation of brutal concentration camps, and he has reportedly carried out hundreds of executions, most of them public and involving firing squads but some private and involving the killing of pregnant women and teenagers and using blunt instruments such as pipes and hammers. No one who represses his people to this extent is a friend to America, the greatest democracy on the planet.
Many of these executions and long-term prison sentences are meted out to what we would consider innocent victims for the “crimes” of listening to Western music or videos; practicing religion; and, at worst, attempting to escape North Korea. Not only are the ones committing these offenses punished, but their entire family and circle of friends is swept up, something depicted in gripping terms in The Aquariums of Pyongyang. Even small children, such as the young boy who carries his prized aquarium to the prison camp only to watch all his fish die, are sent to prison camps for the “crimes” of friends or family.
When public executions take place, thousands of persons, including spouses and children, are often forced to watch. In some cases, these very family members are the ones who have betrayed the victims to the regime in exchange for leniency or perks of some kind. All of this has been documented in the many books and articles written by defectors and online sites such as NK Pro and our own Department of State site “Prisons of North Korea.” Articles in the Korea Herald, a leading South Korean newspaper, and Korea Joong Ann Daily, are extremely well informed and credible.
NK News is a particularly comprehensive site, on which hundred of articles devoted to accountability for prison camp abuses and other crimes against humanity in North Korea can be accessed. Typical of NK Watch is an article entitled “Core Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea: The Operations of Political Prison Camps (Total Control Zones).” Another is entitled “The Defector: Ahn Myeong Chul shares his experience at the North Korean prison camps and his new life in South Korea.” The information is out there; all that is missing is the heart and will of all persons in the West to object and insist that pressure be put on the North Korean leadership to change.
Unfortunately, this has not happened, and it appears that Kim has become even more intransigent. The number of persons sent to North Korea’s prison camps is rising, and the number of executions is rising as well, according to a new report by the Transitional Justice Working Group, in part due to stricter enforcement of North Korea’s “Reactionary Thought and Culture Rejection Law.” As of June 2025, it was estimated that there were 192,000 prisoners in the six notorious North Korean prison camps. An anonymous source pointed to “the arrest of many young people for collectively distributing foreign videos, with punishment extending not just to the individuals but to entire families being transferred together.”
Information officially coming out of North Korean prison camps is practically nonexistent, but reports from survivors, those released having served their terms, and the very few escapees paint a picture of corporal punishment on a daily basis, rape, torture, forced abortions, infanticide, starvation, untreated disease, and executions, all of which is supported by a system of obligatory spying among and reporting of friends, family, and associates. Along with these brutalities are the lack of adequate food, shelter, and clothing and harsh working conditions.
One reason for this crackdown is the growing familiarity of North Korean youth with Western and especially South Korean music and video. Punishments of this kind do not exist in the West. I myself possess a small collection of music CDs purchased in Beijing, and many others brought back from what was then communist Yugoslavia. No one ever confronted me about importing music from communist countries. Imagine if even listening to a foreign radio station could lead to imprisonment or death. That is the level of control exerted in North Korea.
This should matter to Americans, and it does to many, especially to conservatives. (For liberals, it seems to be different: I can’t recall any effort by the Biden administration to change North Korean policy, perhaps because so-called progressives in the U.S. and communists in North Korea share the same ideological groundings.) All persons of good faith should oppose the mistreatment of human beings anywhere, but especially on such as large scale and with such brutality as in North Korea.
We cannot remedy all the evils that exist in the world, and to attempt direction intervention in North Korea would be extremely foolish. But that does not mean that we should remain silent or fail to act. Economic pressure might be successful, especially if it involved the cooperation of China, North Korea’s chief supporter. Even without regime change, prisoners could be reduced or conditions in the camps be made more humane.
As conservatives, we have an obligation to stay informed about what is happening in the world and do what is possible to improve it. Otherwise, what is happening halfway across the globe may come back to bite us, as it did in WWII and again on 9/11. We cannot make the rest of the world perfect or engage in nation-building, but we can inform ourselves, condemn what is wrong, and pray for a world that respects the sanctity of life.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/kim_jong_un_is_not_our_friend.html
