The following is loosely based on an actual article written on the April 8, 2003 liberation of an Iraqi prison for children. Please dream the impossible with me for a moment.

HAENGYONG, NORTH KOREA (AFP) - More than 50,000 men, women and children held in a political concentration camp celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Haengyong amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot food from an army compound, a US officer said.

Around 5,000 children spilled out of a section of the camp after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel George Sanchez told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.

“Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us,” Sanchez said.

“There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back.”

“The children had been imprisoned because their great-grandparents came from South Korea or because their parents were Christians,” he alleged. “Many of these kids had been in there all their lives.”

The children, who were wearing threadbare clothes and looked under-nourished, walked on the streets crossing their hands as if to mimic handcuffs, before giving the thumbs up sign and shouting their thanks.

It was not clear who had opened the doors of the prison.

Civilians also took advantage of the collapse of North Korean president Kim Jong Il’s authority to grab supplies from government buildings, said Group Sergeant Howard Cooper.

A 19-year-old called Yong Chul said people had been ransacking government compounds since the morning to steal foreign goods and furniture.

“Since the morning, nine o’clock, they have been looting. They are stealing food, lots of UN food and medical supplies donated from foreigners, and I took three bags,” he said.

Amidst the joyful laughter of thousands of children, a reconnaissance team made a grim discovery behind the main prison camp.

“What looked like a dump site turned out to be a make-shift graveyard for hundreds of aborted babies,” Lieutenant Mike Harris said. “The stench alone must’ve been a form of torture for these poor families.”

News footage of the freed children produced mixed reactions in the United States.

“There wouldn’t be any North Korean kids in camps in the first place if the U.S. didn’t divide the peninsula,” Jim Rhee said. Rhee was joined by 500 others attending a Korean-American hip-hop anti-war rally in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles.

“First Kosovo, then Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now North Korea. We are not the world’s policeman. When will we understand that war is never the answer?” Paul Lee, president of Korean Campus Association, said while holding a poster, “Axis of Evil: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld.”

When the formerly imprisoned families of Haengyong were told about the recent protest rallies in Los Angeles, New York and Seoul, some expressed confusion.

“Why would they do such a thing?” Hae Young Lee asked incredulously while holding her seven year old daughter in her arms for the first time in five years.

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