North Korea Defector Issues Open Letter To Denis Rodman

The Washington Post has issued an emotional plea by a North Korean defector to basketball star Dennis Rodman, whose recent chumminess with brutal dictator Kim Jong Un has become the stuff of tabloid legend.

Former North Korean citizen Shin Dong-hyuk is an internationally respected advocate for human rights. He is currently the only person born in a North Korean labor camp who is known to have escaped to the West. In his open letter to Rodman, Shin Dong-hyuk makes an emotional appeal to Dennis Rodman to do more than just use his visit to North Korea as a publicity making opportunity. He writes of his experiences in the infamous North Korean prison camp system, a hellish environment in which he claims to have been born and raised.

In the open letter to Rodman, the former camp prisoner writes, “On orders of the guards in Camp 14, inmates are forced to marry and create children to be raised by guards to be disposable slaves. Until I escaped in 2005, I was one of those slaves.”

No word has yet come from Rodman’s camp on whether this open letter has had any impact on his decision to visit North Korea once more.