Though Alive, Worse Than Gutter Dogs In March 1999, North Korean diplomats and other agents kidnapped twenty-year-old Hong Won-myong, along with his diplomat father and his mother, who were attempting to defect, from a Bangkok apartment. The parents escaped in the confusion of an automobile wreck, but young Hong was in another car that was not involved in the wreck. His captors held him as a hostage while, with a degree of chutzpah that none but North Koreans could muster, they used him as a bargaining chip as they demanded that the Thai government turn the parents over to them and absolve Pyongyang and its gang of thugs of blame for the kidnap. Not buying that audacious pitch, the Thais threatened to break off diplomatic relations if the North Koreans refused to give up hostage Hong. Pyongyang considered Bangkok its most useful Southeast Asian diplomatic and trading outpost, so young Hong was released.
Amazingly, after his release, Hong held a press conference at which he announced he wanted to go home to North Korea, with or without his parents. "I love and respect my father very much," he said-adding, with emotion in his voice: "But if my father refuses to return I will ask to cut parental ties and return home alone."
No doubt re-wards awaited him. His countrymen would make a big fuss over him upon his arrival back in Pyongyang. They would parade him around as an example of the type of selfless patriot that the country"s educational system for decades had sought--with remarkable success up to a point-to produce. I could visualize thousands of chanting, flower-waving schoolchildren lining the route of young Hong"s motorcade from Pyongyang"s airport into the capital, "where he would be hustled onto state television (the only television there was in North Korea) to repeat in Korean his performance in Thai at the press conference.
There were various versions of why the parents were unwilling to go home to Pyongyang. North Korea alleged that the father, as number three in the emba.s.sy had embezzled $83 million that the country was preparing to pay for Thai rice imports. There was no way the regime would have entrusted him with that much money I thought. But financial irregularities of some degree had become a way of life for North Korean officials, in the environment of extreme uncertainty and rapid moral decline in which their country found itself. It would not have surprised me to learn that a defecting diplomat had dipped his hand into the cookie jar.
What the father told the son, the latter said, was that he wanted to live in a country that would offer the younger Hong more comfort than North Korea. "But for what should I go to live in a foreign country?" the son asked at the press conference. "Should I live comfortably like a selfish person, or should I return to join more than 20 million people in my homeland to bring prosperity and development to it?" And there was more: "I don"t think my country is poor, but it is very rich, because everybody works for the single aim of bringing progress to the country."
Here is another switch: The young man claimed that it was he who, for a time, had not wanted his emba.s.sy captors to turn him over to the Thai authorities. He finally agreed when he saw that it would be an opportunity to be with his parents for long enough to persuade them to go home, reunite with his elder brother and other relatives and friends, admit their mistakes and be accepted back into the bosom ofthe country. He did not think his father had been the traitor he was accused ofbeing, young Hong said-but the elder Hong might have made some mistakes. "I believe that ifanyone admits a mistake and asks for forgiveness, my country will give him another chance," he said. And he himself-would "work wholeheartedly" to make up for any mistakes his father might have made.
It was obvious that, during his two weeks in an undisclosed place of captivity, the youngster had received some great coaching from the A-team Pyongyang sent in to help him see the light. Even though he had been living outside North Korea for years, he managed to get the party line down pat in his press conference performance. No doubt he would do just as well in public appearances back in Pyongyang.
He probably would not be arrested immediately. Kim Jong-il had issued in 1993 a new policy-"Do not make internal enemies"-encouraging leniency toward defectors" family members who were willing as Hong put it to "cut family ties." But after he had served the regime"s propaganda machine sufficiently, he would be of no further use. The people in charge would not make him a diplomat, like his dad, and take advantage of his qualifications as a foreign-educated linguist, because they could never banish the suspicion he might some day try to defect and join his parents. That cosmopolitan background of his would count against him, not for him. After all, the North Koreans most inclined to complain about the regime were the cosmopolitan elements. Think in particular of the ethnic Koreans born in j.a.pan or China who immigrated with high patriotic spirit to help "build the homeland" but, having in their minds those inevitable points of comparison, found they did not much like what they found.
Judging from what I had learned about the North Korean system by talking with many of his former countrymen who had managed to escape abroad, I thought young Hong after the inevitable waning of his propaganda value most likely would be found wanting in the loyalty department. He might be exiled to one of the poorest, most barren and mountainous parts of his country. If he were lucky, his lot there might be to try to eke out a living, as a farmer or miner, in one of the communities of people cast out of normal communities because their loyalty to the ruler was suspect-not on account of any crimes they had committed but due to problems of "family background." Some were people whose families had been abroad and who had been overheard comparing North Korea unfavorably with other countries.
If he were really unlucky, despite the new policy young Hong might- like an estimated two hundred thousand of his countrymen1 -be sent to a prison camp. If his parents returned with him he might accompany them or not depending on whether the regime decided to just get it over with and gag the parents with stones-or bring the son forward in an arena, before a crowd screaming for justice, to accuse them of crimes-and then shoot them as he looked on. -be sent to a prison camp. If his parents returned with him he might accompany them or not depending on whether the regime decided to just get it over with and gag the parents with stones-or bring the son forward in an arena, before a crowd screaming for justice, to accuse them of crimes-and then shoot them as he looked on.2 The alternative would be to let the Hongs rot in one of the camps housing political criminals who had seriously offended the regime and the accompanying families of some of those criminals. Forget about the quaint notion that high-ranking would-be defectors could simply admit their mistakes and be forgiven. The alternative would be to let the Hongs rot in one of the camps housing political criminals who had seriously offended the regime and the accompanying families of some of those criminals. Forget about the quaint notion that high-ranking would-be defectors could simply admit their mistakes and be forgiven.
Shin Myung-chul, a former State Security telecommunications staff member whose story features in chapter 22, told me the sad tale of a fellow defector named Yoo he met after arriving in South Korea. That man had defected to South Korea in 1987 while he was an officer on the DMZ, Shin said. "In March 1988, I witnessed the family of Mr. Yoo being sent to Aoji in North Hamgyong province. It"s one of the three main prisons where they send families of defectors. The procedure for sending them off takes three days. The first day a wire comes from district State Security to village State Security to watch the family. There are various communications back and forth. On the day for sending them away, the State Security officials arrive in a truck around 2 A.M., with no warning, and take the whole family quietly. It"s all over in forty minutes.
"After I came to South Korea, Mr. Yoo kept visiting me. Finally, after the tenth visit, I told him what had happened to his family. He had expected it, but he was devastated all the same. They usually take the wife, children, parents and siblings of the defector-all the direct relations, except in the case of a sister who"s married off; her husband can be reprimanded or have his job taken away. I believe it"s to help the regime retain power. It shows people the consequences of defection so people will feel responsibility. It takes forty minutes because the law says people who are resettled are ent.i.tled to take about 500 won won worth of property-with them. Anything over that the government takes. worth of property-with them. Anything over that the government takes.
"There are two categories of people. One group would be sent to a provincial State Security evaluation department when they"re removed from their homes. They get evaluated for about a year: Are they spies for South Korea? Do they oppose Kim? But in cases like Yoo"s relatives they have no hope of ever returning from the camps."
Did young Hong know the bleak reality that most likely would await him if he should go back home? Maybe not. Maybe all he remembered of North Korea, from the time before his family had last moved abroad, was life among the elite of Pyongyang: enough to eat, in those days at least; schools where you grew up learning to worship the Kims, father and son, and to believe more or less wholeheartedly in the sort of sentiments the just-released hostage gave voice to so stirringly at his press conference. It would not be unusual for such a privileged young man to know little of the darkest side of his country-until his turn came to experience it.
More likely, I thought, he did have some idea-but was really the nice, sincere kid his Bangkok college friends said he was. In which case it should not have been too hard for the team that worked on him for the two weeks of his captivity to use, as leverage, reminders of his remaining relatives and friends in North Korea-and hints of-what would happen to them in case he should defect.
That kind of pressure could make it a tough call for anyone, but if he had asked me (I was in Bangkok at the time) I would have sat him down to go over the interviews that follow, several of them with members of families that had suffered together. Then I would have given him some unambiguous advice: "Don"t go back to Pyongyang. Stick with your parents. If the three of you get to the United States or Canada or South Korea, especially if your dad has even a few grand, not to speak of the $83 million he is accused of having ripped off from the regime, you will find that for a price a rescue expedition can be dispatched into North Korea via the China border to bribe authorities and bring out a whole family of internal exiles, even prisoners. Don"t go back, kid."
Hong, at twenty, was young but that would not win him special treatment. Ahn Hyuk was even younger, eighteen, when the junior table tennis champion was imprisoned. At age eleven, in 1979, Ahn entered and won a tournament for elementary school pupils. Thenceforth, he was groomed at a training center in Nampo to become national champion. (A woman star named Pak Yong-sun had won two world championships-although she didn"t make it into the finals for the 1979 tournament that I attended. It was Pak"s winnings that had been used to build the Nampo training center.) Q. How did a table tennis champion end up in a concentration camp?Ahn Hyuk. "I went to a ski resort used by sons and daughters of high officials. Skiing down Mount Paektu one day in February of 1986, a group of us came close to the Yalu River. Some ethnic Koreans living on the Chinese side started talking to us. They said, "You talk about Kim Il-sung"s paradise. You ought to come to China and see how we live." Six of us walked across the frozen river, just out of curiosity, and stayed in China for three months. Then we returned to North Korea. I was sent to the camp as the youngest political prisoner there."Q. Why did you return?A. "Because of our families. They would be worried. I had $200 when I went skiiing. I used that to go around China for a month or so. We returned to the Yalu River to find the ice melting. It was still too cold to swim across, so we waited until May That"s when my destiny was overturned."I had no idea what would happen. I was the only son, pampered, the son of a high official who had access to a lot of foreign currency for his work. I thought my father had enough power to fix it. The other guys when they got back went to their parents, who told them, "Don"t ever mention that you"ve crossed the Yalu." But I first went to see my relatives, not my parents, and my relatives said, You"re dead meat." I realized I"d done something wrong, and I was scared. So without seeing my parents I went on my own to State Security. I thought if I went and confessed it would be all right. I told the authorities I was the only one who crossed, so the others didn"t get caught. North Korean society works on criticism. I thought if I went to State Security they would criticize me and forgive me. But after my confession State Security sent me to its secret prison at Malamdong in the Yongsong area of Pyongyang. My Kim Il-sung portrait-badge was taken away, and I felt like the lowest thing on earth."At the prison I was kept in a dungeon for about twenty months. The cell was 2 meters by 180 centimeters. From 6 A.M. to 11 P.M. I had to sit very straight, with my fists extended in front of me. I wasn"t allowed to utter a word without permission. I was supposed to raise my right fist when I needed to pee, raise my open right hand for a bowel movement. Raising the left fist meant, "I have something to ask you," and raising the open left hand meant "I"m very sick." We only got to leave the dungeon to see the sun once a month."I was the youngest, so I ended up doing a lot of the cleaning. My fellow prisoners included Yang Sung-hyon, former amba.s.sador to Libya, and Kwon Song-chol, former vice foreign minister, along with a student returned from Guangzhou in China and one of the chauffeurs who drove the Volvos and Mercedes Benzes around. Yang hadn"t done his job right, somehow. Kwon had been with Kim Jong-min when Kim defected from Russia, but hadn"t defected himself. He was being punished for not stopping Kim Jong-min"s defection. The chauffeur had merely noticed that Western pa.s.sengers carried a lot of foreign currency and remarked, "Wow, the West must be really developed." That"s all he said."The only food in the dungeon was cooked corn in a bowl. No side dishes. You can hardly get rice outside, so how could we get it in prison? They cut the handle off the spoon to help prevent suicide. They give you the bowl but you can"t eat right away. You have to say, "I"m ready to eat now." All six in your row of cells have to say that before the warder says, "OK, you may eat.""When I went out to get my monthly sunshine I had to strip first. I thought, "I can"t go on living this way. I must commit suicide." On my way out I would look for a nail, or even a toothpaste cap to put under my tongue. But there was no way. I did swallow a nail, trying to kill myself with internal bleeding. I cut the inside of my mouth with the nail, then swallowed it. I sat for about ten minutes and fainted. I was sent to the hospital. They treated me there and I lived."Q. Did they ever explain why you were being punished?A. "They said I had acted against the people. Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are the most dignified leaders of the world, and by going to China I had injured their dignity."Q. How did you get out?A. "After twenty months I was sent to a camp at Yotokun in South Ham-gyong Province, a place surrounded by 1,800-meter mountains. I was lucky that I had connections, so I was able to get out of the dungeon. Others would never get out."Q. Who else was at the camp?A. "There was a son ofthe amba.s.sador to China who had said the Soviet Union was a good nation. State Security inferred that he meant Gorbachev"s rule was better than Kim Il-sung"s, so he was sent to the camp."The camp was divided into two parts. Prisoners in one part never get out. Kim Hyon-hui"s family is there. In the other part are people who may get out some day. In the center of that part are individual political prisoners, and around them are the prisoners who have their families ?with them. The rations are the same in both parts of the camp." Q. Tell me about conditions at the camp.A. "I got 120 grams of corn three times a day the same as in prison, plus salt and a weed called shiregi. shiregi. That"s all. They worked us tremendously hard in the mines or timbering. I talked with some other defectors and even they don"t believe all I went through. Nowadays when I go to give speeches, I tell my audiences there is nothing on earth you can"t eat. You can eat any gra.s.s that grows, mice, snakes, anything crawling on the floor. Many people die from lack of vitamins. I"m 175 centimeters tall [5 feet 7 inches] and weighed 38 kilograms [84 pounds] when I came out of the camp in 1989. My parents had prepared two boxes of ginseng to help me recover. Now I weigh 68 kilograms [150 pounds]. That"s all. They worked us tremendously hard in the mines or timbering. I talked with some other defectors and even they don"t believe all I went through. Nowadays when I go to give speeches, I tell my audiences there is nothing on earth you can"t eat. You can eat any gra.s.s that grows, mice, snakes, anything crawling on the floor. Many people die from lack of vitamins. I"m 175 centimeters tall [5 feet 7 inches] and weighed 38 kilograms [84 pounds] when I came out of the camp in 1989. My parents had prepared two boxes of ginseng to help me recover. Now I weigh 68 kilograms [150 pounds]."It still hurts me to this day to talk about my life there. I was very lucky. Grandfather wrote letters and I got out after one year and four months."I buried so many people there who died of malnutrition. The pitiful thing is that when someone died, everyone rushed to get the dead person"s clothes to wear them."They hit you with an iron pole for talking without permission. My front teeth are all fake-the originals were smashed in prison. My lower teeth were broken, too, in camp. One day we were working and I was too hungry to go on. I looked on the ground and found the bone of a pig-someone had left it. So I crushed it and put it in a pot to make some soup. The guards saw it and said, "You aren"t supposed to eat food thrown away by regular people." I was tied to a stake and beaten. That"s when my lower jaw was smashed. I"ve invested so much in my teeth since I came to South Korea."Once we were so hungry that about twenty of us went to the pigsty and started eating the pigs" feed. When I think of it it"s so disgusting. The pig keeper reported us. He complained that the pigs would get thinner because we were eating their feed. They sent us to the river and made us put our heads in the water. The first to put his head up would be beaten brutally. We had to do this until we drank enough water to urinate in our pants."The prison guards used to shoot birds that came into the camp. There were so many gunshots, the birds got to the point they weren"t frightened and wouldn"t move. So the guards sent prisoners to climb to the tops of the trees and shake them so the birds would fly out and the guards could shoot them."One ofmy campmates died after a falling tree cracked his ribs. He got no medical treatment. When you bury someone in Korea, you make a mound ofdirt over the grave. I did that for him, but the prison guards said, "Why make a mound for someone as low as a dog?" They beat me."When Billy Graham visited North Korea, he returned and said Christianity is reviving. I"ll tell you the real story of religious life in North Korea. There"s absolutely no religion in North Korea. I saw so many people in camp who came in because of religious belief. Even secretly praying is enough to get you sent to camp. Probably everyone in North Korea who is a religious believer is sent to a camp. I want to write a letter to Billy Graham: "If you really want to know religion in North Korea, go to a prison camp." When Billy Graham went to a church service, he should have asked people in the congregation to recite Bible verses."Q. You eventually got out of the camp, and later defected.A. "I left the camp on Kim Jong-il"s birthday [February 16], 1989. After I got out, I tried to lead an exemplary life since I had caused so much trouble for my relatives. But I was put under surveillance. To live in a society that closed, one that wouldn"t allow me freedoms-I had to defect."I could have led an affluent life if I had wanted. Many who defect to South Korea do so out of greed and materialism. For me, since I had money in North Korea, I wouldn"t have thought of defecting if there had been a slight chance of individual freedom."Before I was accused of political crimes, I didn"t even know the word politics. But after I got out of the prison camp I was really a political offender. I talked with my friends. I almost got caught again for listening to KBS Radio. My-whole family-would have gone to a camp. That would have been the end of everything. There were about ninety party members in my family. My parents were forced to divorce on account of me. Someone in State Security said I might be sent back, and then all ninety would have gone, too. So the head of State Security advised them to make me an orphan by divorcing."Q. What-was your father"s job?A. "He headed a department of external management. Its role was to get investment and money to maintain the hotels around Pyongyang. He was working as a foreign trader, exporting mushrooms and so on, both bartering for goods and selling for money. He gave some of the money to Kim Jong-il and the rest went to the hotels."Q. Were you still playing table tennis when you were arrested? And how did the regime feel about ruining the career of a future champion?A. "I was still at the table tennis inst.i.tute when I was arrested. Even the vice-president"s son is sent to political prison. Why would they spare a mere Ping-Pong star?"Q. When Li Song-suk won the 1979 women"s singles world championship, the Pyongyang papers said she had been able to win thanks to the guidance of the Respected and Beloved Great Leader Kim Il-sung. Is he indeed such a renaissance man that, besides his other accomplishments, he ?was a top table tennis trainer as well?A. "Kim Il-sung didn"t know how to play. That"s just the usual North Korean formula."
Ahn Hyuk escaped from North Korea in January 1992 in company with Kang Chul-hwan, and they made it to South Korea the following August. As we saw in chapter 16, Kang Chul-hwan and his parents and grandmother, ?who had been Korean residents of j.a.pan, spent ten years in a prison camp before relatives in j.a.pan pressured and bribed officials to treat them better. Kang had been only nine when he was imprisoned. After his release he got in further trouble.
When I met him Kang was in his mid-thirties but still boyish looking. With his hair in bangs over a thin face, he looked perhaps sixteen-an impression accentuated by his student garb: a jacket, like American high-school athletes wear to display their letters, over a turtleneck sweater. He ?was studying business at Hanyang University.
"It"s such a shame a place like that [prison camp] still exists in this world and is not known to the outside world," Kang told me. "Because of the nuclear issue, people are not focusing on human rights. That should come first. Along with inspections of nuclear sites, they should have inspections of the prison camps. Isn"t human life the most important value? Just for opposing the Kim Il-sung regime people are sent to such places. Does that make sense at all?"
Q. What sort of-work did you do after you got out of the camp?A. "At first when we were sent to a farming district I was a.s.signed to a farm group, but I didn"t farm. A little later when we moved to town I got a job in a factory for recycling shoes. I worked as a supplier of raw materials. It helped that I had access to foreign exchange from my relatives. I went to other factories and traded to get the raw materials my factory needed. I wanted to go to Kim Chaek University, so I tried to bribe and study my way in, but I wasn"t admitted. I applied then to Hamhung University, but it was such a poor university that I decided not to enroll."While working for the shoe recycling factory I was feeling negative about things, so I started partic.i.p.ating in anti-regime activities. I was listening to South Korean broadcasts and telling friends what I heard. I would sing South Korean popular songs to them. Because of my work as manager of supply, I had a pa.s.s to travel all around North Korea. And because I was young I wanted to travel. My friends were all members of the elite. I would propagandize to them against the Kim Il-sung regime. Most university students have anti-regime feelings."At 1 A.M. we would put a blanket over our heads and listen to South Korean broadcasts. A department store in Pyongyang deals in foreign goods, including radios that are not fixed to a single channel. You need foreign exchange to buy them, and they"re intended for foreigners. I had a short-wave radio."Q. What do you think of Radio Free Asia?A. "Very good idea."Q. What percentage of people would have access to it?A. "I guess about 6 to 7 percent, usually high officials-the ones with the power."Q. Does it make sense to try to reach those people?A. "Of course. They already know a lot about the Western world and about discrepancies involving the Kim Il-sung regime. I knew some people working at Nodong Publishing Company [publisher of the party newspaper, Nodong Shinmun, Nodong Shinmun, and the party journal, and the party journal, Kulloja]. Kulloja]. In front of other officials they would hail Kim Il-sung, but in private they would criticize him. They don"t know as much as they need to know, though. Giving them more access to the facts would change them more. The trend today is to listen secretly to foreign broadcasts. Since there are so many fabrications in North Korea, they"re interested in getting information from the outside world. All they get now is KBS, and it can only be tuned in from 11 P.M. to 2 A.M., so it"s not very convenient. Usually KBS broadcasts talk just about South Korea. North Koreans sometimes can"t even imagine what they"re talking about. What"s needed is to report on what happens in North Korea." In front of other officials they would hail Kim Il-sung, but in private they would criticize him. They don"t know as much as they need to know, though. Giving them more access to the facts would change them more. The trend today is to listen secretly to foreign broadcasts. Since there are so many fabrications in North Korea, they"re interested in getting information from the outside world. All they get now is KBS, and it can only be tuned in from 11 P.M. to 2 A.M., so it"s not very convenient. Usually KBS broadcasts talk just about South Korea. North Koreans sometimes can"t even imagine what they"re talking about. What"s needed is to report on what happens in North Korea."Q. What kind of equipment do the potential listeners have available? Do many have short-wave radios as you had?A. "Most of them have AM/FM radios with ca.s.sette decks."Q. You were in the camp at the same time as Ahn Hyuk, and you two defected together. Did you know him in the camp?A. "We were in different parts of the camp, so we didn"t know each other there. He was in the central part, and I was in the family complex. Anyway, he went in about the same time I got out. But one of my friends in the camp got out at the same time as Ahn, and he introduced us in 1989. Ahn and I talked a lot. Both of us were dissidents, so we had similar ideals and we grew close. We were listening together to KBS, singing popular songs and dancing disco. That caused problems, because rumors spread. One day we wanted to have fun. We went to the mountains with some other friends, taking our stereo and some drinks. We started listening to South Korean popular music and dancing. A pa.s.serby reported us. We had some talks with State Security but used bribery to get out of it. That"s when the intensive surveillance started, though."After some more bribery we were able to move to Pyongsong city a "science city" very near Pyongyang, late in 1990. Before going to the camp, my youngest uncle had graduated in science with a grade average of 4.0. North Korean law says if you get a perfect score, you can have a job at any university in your field. So he worked at the Inst.i.tute of Science and Technology at Pyongsong. That took a lot of bribery too, but this time we handled it ourselves with money from our relatives. North Korean society is very corrupt. From top to bottom in the society, all ranks are linked with bribery. Without bribes you can"t get anywhere."At Pyongsong I tried to get a job at the Inst.i.tute of Science and Technology as a lab a.s.sistant, but the job didn"t come through so I didn"t work there. I got caught by State Security again after I moved there because one of my supposedly close friends there was a spy sent by State Security. He reported all my criticisms of Kim Il-sung. I was taken in for questioning and was under surveillance. I knew I would be sent to a camp again. Ahn was in trouble, too, since we had been to the mountains together and hung out together."We were close to one Public Security guy we had bribed a lot. From him we got travel pa.s.ses. In January 1992, we took a train from Pyongyang to Haesan on the Chinese border near the Yalu River. We bribed some border guards, telling them we were traders and wanted to buy some goods in China to resell in North Korea. The river was frozen then, and we were able to walk across it. We had thought of going to South Korea, but our first priority was just to get out. We went to China and hung around there. We heard that it was better to go to South Korea."Q. You said most university students have anti-regime feelings.A. "Just by watching as China has changed to a free-market system they can see that people are living better. And look how well the j.a.panese live. University students believe that if the regime stays in power, it will be the downfall of North Korea."Q. How would the regime lose power?A. "The only way to get rid of them is a united uprising. If it were a scattered uprising, they could suppress it and send the people involved to camps. The problem is, it"s impossible to get a united movement together. Even your closest friend may be a spy from State Security. To have a united force you need to talk with each other, and that can"t happen. There"s no one in North Korea who has hope for the future. North Korea is as good as ruined."Most North Koreans don"t even care about the nuclear issue. All this attention to the nuclear issue is not important. What people should focus on is human rights, saving people from the camps. As a citizen, I knew there were nuclear weapons. So why all the fuss about whether North Korea has them or not? Why all this fuss about inspection?"Q. How should we deal with the human rights question?A. "I don"t have any specifics. I was shocked when [South Korean] Unification Minister Han said, "We should not talk about human rights at this point." The essential reason reunification doesn"t come is a matter of human rights. Everything in North Korea is done for just two people, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. They have no consideration for the people. We can only reunify the country if North Korean society opens, so that people can stand up and talk freely about their complaints. The whole world should focus on human rights in North Korea."Q. Would the people fight if a war came?A. "People want war to break out. It"s the only way to bring about the fall of the regime, or to end their misery. Young kids conscripted into the army at age seventeen are all brain-washed to believe that South Korea and the United States are the enemy. Of course they would fight. But once they got to Seoul and saw the reality of South Korea, there would be chaos and they would change. And while the new recruits don"t know the real world, I imagine the veteran soldiers have more understanding of reality."Q. Tell me about the food situation.A. "While I was there, people were having two meals a day, sometimes rations of animal feed. That"s what I got in the industrial city where I worked in the factory, a city with a big population and not enough food. In the camp, people like Ahn got around 300 grams a day. [Ahn himself said 360.] People like us, in the family complex, got around 500 grams a day. Corn and salt. The corn was uncooked. You had to cook it yourself."Q. What is your goal now that you"re out?A. "I want to be part of the exchange between South and North. My dream is, when reunification comes, I want to make a monument in front of the camp to all those who were sacrificed there."
In the meantime Kang became a journalist, watching North Korea for the influential Seoul daily Chosun Ilbo Chosun Ilbo and publishing a book about his experiences. and publishing a book about his experiences.3 ***
Powerfully built, suntanned, his hair cut short, his belt buckle big and gold like the buckle on a cowbow belt, Ahn Myong-chol very much looked the part of a former prison guard. He thought he recognized me when we met: "I think in 1989 or so I saw a picture of you in Nodong Shinmun, Nodong Shinmun, getting a bouquet from a little girl," he told me. getting a bouquet from a little girl," he told me.
"I dropped out of agricultural college to join the army," he said. "If I"d graduated from that school I wouldn"t have been able to apply for the military. I wanted to join because they usually treat those who haven"t done military service as fools; unless they"re technocrats they can"t join the party. When I first joined the army I worked as a prison guard for three years, then for five years as a driver delivering food for an army base.
"I know about ten prison camps total and worked at four of them. Friends and colleagues worked at the other six. Usually the offenders were separated from their families. All four of my camp jobs were where the families were kept. Ahn Hyuk and Kang Chul-hwan"s camp was totally different from mine. Prisoners were divided according to whether they had any prospects of leaving or not. The ones where I worked were all hopeless prisoners. No one would get out. All would die there. The guards kept urging them to work harder-"You can get out, get married." So they believed there was some reason to hope."
Q. How did you convince them if they couldn"t see anybody leaving?A. "People did leave-but for other camps. At night some prisoners were taken from the camps by truck. Guards told those left behind that these were going out to society, to a new life. But basically they were sending them to another camp, another "country" I was in the Seventh Department of State Security. Country and department in Korean are both guk. Samguk, guk. Samguk, the Third Department, is just like Hitler. They do biological experiments on their prisoners. The Third Department facilities are right next to the prison camps. In North Korea when a person dies we usually bury his body. Cremation is rare. But in the Third Department, is just like Hitler. They do biological experiments on their prisoners. The Third Department facilities are right next to the prison camps. In North Korea when a person dies we usually bury his body. Cremation is rare. But in Samguk Samguk I could see the smoke coming out from burning bodies. I worked as a driver delivering prisoners to I could see the smoke coming out from burning bodies. I worked as a driver delivering prisoners to Samguk. Samguk. Once I entered the bas.e.m.e.nt and found it full of blood. But basically I heard about Once I entered the bas.e.m.e.nt and found it full of blood. But basically I heard about Samguk Samguk from guard friends, who told me. One rumor was that they squeezed fat from people to make soap for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung and mixed wombs with other substances to make an injection that would stimulate Kim Jong-il"s s.e.xual activity. Friends told me these stories." from guard friends, who told me. One rumor was that they squeezed fat from people to make soap for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung and mixed wombs with other substances to make an injection that would stimulate Kim Jong-il"s s.e.xual activity. Friends told me these stories."Q. Did guards inflict violence on prisoners?A. "That"s just a part of daily life. Not to be very aggressive would be seen as condoning the offenders."Q. How many times a day did you hit someone?A. "I can"t say I did it once or a hundred times. But when a prisoner sees a guard he has to bow at a ninety-degree angle. Any less is reason to hit him with a stick or rock or whatever. If they don"t respond loudly "Here!", you hit them."Inmates" housing from the sky would look like an ordinary village, but the border is a 3,300-volt electrical fence. Guards usually call the dwellings pigpens. They look like traditional rural houses. There"s one very small room per family plus kitchen, regardless of the number in the family."As for food, they"re supposed to get 500 grams of corn. But the guards take a lot of it, so they can barely sustain life. They get corn alone only on holidays. Other times they mostly mix it with gra.s.s and pine bark. Before 1989, guards didn"t feel hunger. But as Kim Jong-il took over, we got hungry and had to steal rations from prisoners. The military people are the best fed in North Korea, but from August 1994, guards got pears instead of corn. For a month guards lived on pears, usually boiled, but then started having heavy diarrhea and couldn"t train. Afterward they started providing rations from the war reserves. I was a driver hauling foodstuffs by then, not a guard."Prison personnel are better nourished than other soldiers because the prisons grow food. As a driver I was able to steal more food. There"s a law Kim Jong-il pa.s.sed. Anyone caught stealing food would be sent to prison camps. A military man caught stealing food would be demoted or prevented from entering the party. But it"s human nature. How can they not steal when they have the opportunity?"I had a 700-gram ration. Anyone who was able to eat the full 700 grams would be considered well off. But they took out "patriotic rice" and war-reserve rice" and there were only 500 grams left. All together, including stolen food, I ate almost 800 grams a day. Yes, prison camp is the place to be to keep in good health-if you"re a guard. Prison camp guards are treated second only to fighter pilots. After finishing their terms they go to State Security, like the KCIA in South Korea. They are trusted by the regime. Three categories of people get the prison guard jobs: (1) kids of high officials; (2) kids of State Security members; (3) kids of camp workers. When I entered the army my mother paid a bribe to get me a good job. She worked in a dry goods store, so when they decided to make me a prison guard she gave officials some textiles, foreign liquor and so on. She just asked for a good job. She didn"t specifically ask for a prison guard a.s.signment-in fact, she didn"t know prison camps existed. Now through the grapevine lots of people know, but when I entered in 1987 hardly anyone knew." Q. [I mention the demonstration at the 1989 youth festival.]A. "During the youth festival we were on alert. Kim Jong-il feared the inmates would escape and tell the world about the camps. I hardly got any sleep because we had to be constantly alert and heavily armed."The four camps I worked at were: No. 11, Kyongsong city in North Hamgyong province, where I trained; No. 13, in Jongsong district, On-song county, North Hamgyong; No. 22, h.o.e.ryong City, North Hamgyong; and No. 26 in Hwachon, Pyongyang City. The numbers go up to 27, to my knowledge.Q. What offenses landed people there?A. "Calling the name of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il without using the honorific prefixes, for example. One man went to the food ration department and they told him to come back again since there was no food that day. He said, "In a socialist country like ours, how can this happen?" He was sent to a camp. Factionalists, people who opposed Kim Jong-il"s succeeding Kim Il-sung in power of course were sent to camp. It"s not just political att.i.tudes that will get you there. Religious fanatics are imprisoned, too. The prisons where I worked were for dissidents and factionalists."Q. Did you agree they were bad people?A. "In army training they taught us that those were serious offenders who should be punished; if they tried to escape we had the right to kill them. But after three years as a guard, when I switched to driving, I had more personal contact with prisoners and realized they were not what I had thought. Sometimes I had to deliver produce grown by prisoners, and I chatted with them when I picked it up. I had to distribute rations from the central distribution point in the center of the camp to the outlying areas."The first incident: I was still a guard but learning to drive a truck. I took the truck to prisoners and told them to repair it and clean it up. I was nineteen. One prisoner was about forty-five. He bo-wed to me ninety degrees and said, "I"m all finished, thank you, sir." I thought, considering his age, he could be my father. I felt sudden pity and decided to give him a cigarette. He cried. We talked and I realized he had been sent to prison because of his father"s offenses. Kim Chang-bong, who was head of the KPA in the 1970s, was ousted by Kim Jong-il and sent with his family to camp. Others under him were also sent to prison camps with their families. This man"s father probably-worked under Kim Chang-bong."Q. After that incident did you start treating prisoners nicely?A. "At that time I was just learning what sort of people had come to the camps. I didn"t really change my behavior. It was 1992 when I started being kinder toward them. Even from the moment I entered the army I felt some pity for them. But 1992 was when I totally changed my mind and decided to do something active. I gave them my meat. Once in two weeks I got about this much [shows the final two joints of three fingers- maybe 50100 grams or two to four ounces]. I had more access to meat, so I was able to give them some and still eat meat myself. Some other guards did the same and had to quit when they were discovered. I didn"t discuss this matter with any other guards. I did talk with my most intimate friend about how the dissidents were not so bad. He agreed."Q. Did you dislike Kim Jong-il then?A. "I can honestly say I lean toward liking Kim Il-sung. As for Kim Jong-il, when I was in North Korea I was indifferent to him. That"s not to say I hated him. I sensed some discrepancies in the regime"s policies. They propagandize that North Korea is a very peaceful society but they say in all the orders to prison guards to be very aggressive, make sure you get rid of three generations of prisoners, root them out of society."Q. Why did you defect?A. "I went to my hometown. My father had committed suicide but I hadn"t been told that. My father worked in a granary. One day a friend said, "My son is starving. Please get me some food for him." Father stole a bit for that man"s son. He didn"t get caught then. But the granary boss stole two tons of rice. He framed my father as the culprit. My father was to be sent to prison camp, but he committed suicide, in January 1994. They didn"t tell me. I knew my father had died, but the letter said it was a heart attack. I learned the truth in May when I visited my hometown. When I arrived, I found my house gone, totally demolished. In April, my mother had been sent to prison as a traitor. If any family member commits suicide, other family members including the spouse, are "traitors." Someone who worked under her wanted her job and said she had poisoned my father. So there were two charges against her-spouse of a traitor and murderess. He did die of poison-alkali. I found that my younger sister was by herself. My younger brother was working as a border guard and didn"t know about father"s death. [They were sent to prison after Ahn defected.] In Oriental society there"s a family head. If the head commits suicide the spouse is a traitor. If the children commit suicide the parents are criticized and banished from the village, not sent to prison camp. I stayed in my hometown for a week, then went back to h.o.e.ryong. When I went back, they termed me the son of a traitor and had someone watch me. It meant they didn"t trust me any more. During my time at home I had already realized that if I stayed, in the end, I probably would be sent to a prison camp myself. So I had to defect to South Korea."Q. Why South Korea?A. "I wanted to tell the world about the reality of prison camps. The only country that came to mind as an enemy of North Korea was South Korea."Q. Did you know anything about South Korea?A. "Only that it was better off economically than North Korea."Q. How did you know that?A. "I heard rumors. When I watched televised demonstrations in South Korea I could see the buildings in the background-the South Koreans looked pretty well off. I heard rumors of vast numbers of cars. The big year was 1989. After Im Su-gyong"s visit, people"s thought changed. They figured North Korea couldn"t feed them, but South Korea was better off. It was seeing her appearance-she seemed "well off, acted free and confident."Q. How did you defect with someone watching?A. "I thought I had to make the watchers believe in me. I worked really diligently to instill trust. Kim Il-sung"s death brought the perfect opportunity. After his death there was a mourning ceremony at h.o.e.ryong. We didn"t tell the prisoners-this was for the guards and their families. Only women cried, not the guards. So that night they had rigorous training to make the guards cry at the next mourning ceremony. Still none of them cried. I cut my finger and wrote in blood: "Loyalty to Kim Jong-il." From that moment they really trusted me and didn"t watch me anymore."Initially I wanted to bring my brother and sister along but timing didn"t allow it. I did take a pair of prisoners from camp-a brother and a sister-in a truck. These were the people I"d given meat to. I was close to them. They got scared in mid-escape and decided not to defect. They got on the truck inside the camp. I said, "Let"s go to South Korea." They initially agreed, but then got scared before we got out of the camp. They weren"t confident we could get across the border. She was twenty-six. Her brother was twenty-four. She wasn"t my sweetheart. We were just friends. I took the truck to the border and swam across the Tumen River."
Choe Dong-chul had been miscast as a North Korean prison guard, I thought. His build was too skinny, his facial features too sensitive for someone doing such brutal work. He neither walked the walk nor talked the talk. When I asked him what he thought of post-defection life in South Korea he replied with a nuanced critique: "I don"t like the consumerism of Seoul. It"s not good to spend so much on these fashions. I always tell people, "Our generation will experience reunification. You should save the money you"re spending now so you can use it after reunification to build some factories in North Korea.""
Suitability aside, Choe entered the army after high school and was stationed for three years at political prisoners" camp Number 11 in Kyongsong, North Hamgyong Province-the same camp where Ahn Myong-chol trained later. "The prerequisites were good family background, a university entrance-level exam and an interview-so they could see your appearance," he told me. "I was lucky to get in. The benefits are good. In 1982, Kim Jong-il issued a new regulation: To be a member of State Security you had to have spent at least three years in the army and have a university education. So from 1983, they started selecting elite young men as future State Security officers. We would do our army hitch, get recommended to universities and, after university graduation, would become members of State Security.
"After I got into the army I found there were political prisons numbered from 11 to 22. At Number 11 there were about twenty thousand prisoners," he said.
Q. What did you see and hear at the camp? A. "Very gruesome stories." Q. We can handle them.A. "The summer of 1985 a family of five tried to escape. They were caught after three days. After a week the grandmother and father were hanged in public and the three kids-none of them even ten years old--were executed by gunfire."The camp was in a typhoon region. On April 5, 1986, heavy winds spread a forest fire. The prisoners were forced to fight the fire. Afterward we counted forty prisoners dead-no State Security or guards. State Security officers didn"t pity them. "It"s a good thing." "Serves them right.""Some families were sent there during the land reform period- mainly capitalists and moneyed people. Some others might have been families of people who were proSouth Korea in the Korean War or "fac-tionalists" or families of defectors to South Korea. The prison camps were established when Kim Il-sung was vowing that factionalism would destroy three generations of a family. The factionalists themselves were sent into coal mines, separated from their wives and children, who went to prison camps. The separated people were not to know if the others were alive or dead."The houses at the camp were made of clay; the roofs, straw; the floors, clay or rocks, or straw on clay. Most prisoners were short-140 to 150 centimeters [4 feet 6 inches to 4 feet 9 inches]-probably because their jobs were burdensome. They always carried loads on their backs."Soldiers in a guard unit usually wear a uniform almost a year. The previous year"s uniforms are dyed another color and given to prisoners. It"s the same with shoes, which the soldiers had worn every day."Prison guards weren"t permitted to go in and see the inmates" food situation but from appearances I could speculate they usually had potatoes or corn. They-were too skinny-when you looked at them. If someone lives on a diet of mainly potatoes, the face puffs up grotesquely."The guards treated them like slaves. We could beat them at will. Some guards or State Security officers would kill prisoners for fun."Q. Did you see it happen?A. "No. I just heard a story that a guard asked a prisoner to pick up a very sharp farming tool. As the prisoner held it, the guard shot him. He explained: "I thought he"d kill me with that.""Q. You?A. "As you can see from my face I"m not that cruel."Q. What was in your mind?A. "I stayed three years, a short time. We were taught: "These were the people who exploited your parents. They are enemies." I heard that some who worked there for seven or eight years got to thinking this was too cruel even for a political prisoner. But I didn"t get to that stage. I have to admit that when I was in a favorable situation I was very devoted to the regime. Only my mother"s troubles later made me question the regime."
After three years as a guard Choe entered Kim Il-sung University majoring in computer science. From June 1986 to April 1988 he lived in a dorm.
Q. How advanced is the computer science program?A. "While I was at KISU the computer center had about fifty computers, half of them Bulgarian. We had Sharp N2-1200 and N2-800 models. The center was open to all in the university and it wasn"t adequate. You had to wait a couple of hours to use a computer once. You needed to hurry to make it available to others who were waiting. The soft-ware was in English: BASIC."Q. When I visited the campus they told me all twelve thousand students were in a meeting.A. "It"s really true they have meetings of all twelve thousand on campus, but they don"t have a big enough room for them all to be physically present. The auditorium seats seven hundred. The rest sit in cla.s.srooms and listen via loudspeaker to the teachings of Kim Il-sung, lectures on new books, ideology and so on. Unfaithful students have to stand and confess their wrongdoings. Everyone is either in the auditorium or in a cla.s.sroom. You can"t find anyone walking around the campus. It usually happens on Sat.u.r.day. And even at other times students don"t stroll around on campus or have outdoor cla.s.ses as South Koreans sometimes do. They"re outside only for coming and going. The rest of the time they stay in cla.s.s. All students have lectures from 8:00 to 9:30 A.M., from 9:40 to 11:10 A.M. 11:10 A.M. and from 11:30 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. and from 11:30 A.M. to 1:00 P.M."Usually when foreigners come, they"re invited when all students are in cla.s.s. I saw some foreigners myself-while at KISU, but the North Korean government is very cautious about American reporters like you. First, the police and military men don"t wear their uniforms while you"re visiting and all universities and schools keep their students on campus for the duration of the reporters" stay."I never heard of any demonstrations. Those rumors are unfounded, especially regarding People"s Economic University. All students there are current officials getting on-the-job education. Why would they demonstrate?"(Choe"s elite status as a student at the country"s top university and a future State Security officer ended when his mother got in trouble.)"My mother was in charge of a distribution center back home. The police chief and other authorities framed her and forced her to sign a confession to an alleged crime. In court, in November 1987, she got a thirteen-year prison sentence. After that, the authorities told me, "Your mother is in prison so you can"t stay in the university." My father and I were sent as farmhands to a tobacco field about 25 or 30 kilometers from our hometown. It was the 4/25 Tobacco Farm in Onsong, North Ham-gyong Province."
It was two years after I first met Choe that I was able to interview his mother, Lee Soon-ok. She was grandmotherly-looking, with graying hair, wearing gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. I asked her how she had arranged travel permits for her trips to China. "Even if they can"t eat, people can find a way to get a bottle of liquor or some cigarettes to use as bribes for permits," she said. "Often the food that"s supposed to go to ordinary citizens goes to officials instead."
Q. What was the police chief"s scam?A. "He used to come to the distribution center and demand things that were supposed to go to others. I had to comply at first. But he would take ten sets of underwear when some people got none. I started resisting toward the end. After I returned from China the last time, he wanted cloth as a bribe. I refused to give it to him. I thought that was what got me imprisoned. The real reason, I found out, was that since the early 1980s there had been economic difficulties due to Kim Jong-il"s policies."They tortured me because I refused to confess to sabotaging Kim Jong-il"s economic policies. I held out for one year and two months. I said, "How could I be responsible for something as big as that-Kim Jong-il"s policies?" Finally they promised me that my husband and son would be permitted to keep status. I was just holding on to life then. I gave in and signed the confession."My son went to the judge and asked what I had done. The judge said, "I don"t know what she did. I was told by the party to give this sentence." I went to a prison at Kaechon in South Pyongan Province. I came to realize I"d been part of a national purge of all the people who had run distribution centers. They wanted to blame us for the failures of the policies. For the first seven months I thought I was the only one. But in the winter they would send us out for an hour in our underwear to freeze. I went out and there were twelve people there. There were twelve distribution centers in North Hamgyong Province, where I lived, and the chiefs of all of those were imprisoned there. Six men out of that group died of torture; one got twenty years; one, fifteen. Being a woman, I got only thirteen years."While I was in prison I saw some people starve to death. By that time I had abscesses in my body that were full of fluid, because of torture. The organs on my left side were filled with water. After I left I couldn"t work for a year. I was puffy, swollen. My leg didn"t work."Q. What was the food situation in your prison?A. "We got 300 grams of corn and would make it into a cookie-sized cake. That plus a small cup of salt soup three times a day."Q. Prisoners had to work?A. "They had thirty-three factories in the prison where they made military goods, from helmets to shoes. There was a coal mine, too. I didn"t have to do physical labor but the men worked eighteen hours a day. There was a rubber factory, a gun holster factory, a uniform factory. The men who worked got the same 300 grams. There were more people dying than staying alive. We were all living together. Hundreds died during the seven years I was there. Six months is the turning point. After that, people"s bodies start adjusting to less food and hard labor. If you survive the first six months, you should be OK. Lots of people don"t. They think of how the food compares with what they got back home. Lots die of dehydration and hunger the first six months. We were working in an enclosed place, with nothing to pick from trees or fields. No food. Sometimes we"d use such things as wallpaper glue as food. Lots of people died that way. People who were dying of dehydration cried out for water, but the guards wouldn"t give it to them. They got none. Just the salt soup, three times a day. So, with the last breath of their lives they"d crawl across the room and suck on the mops-s.h.i.t water-and they"d die drinking that. I worked in the office in charge of accounting for the factories. After work we"d be lined up to go back to the cells. I saw hungry dehydrated people who became delirious. The path from factory to cells wasn"t paved. Sometimes a small pebble or piece of dirt looked like food. I saw people pick such things up, swallow them and die on the spot."There was an export factory. They"d get commissons from abroad to make goods to export for foreign exchange. For Russia, work uniforms, shirts, bra.s.sieres. For j.a.pan they knitted sweaters. Prisoner labor. The j.a.panese sent the yarn and the patterns. My friends used to make roses for France, small roses, twelve to a box. For Poland they made doilies and embroidered chair covers."Q. So this was a regular prison, not a political prison? What was the difference?A. "Right. Even political prisoners like me are sent to prisons, not camps, if their crimes are severe enough. In a regular prison we were worked more, and the treatment was harsher, than in a political prisoners" camp. My son knew the camp situation and I compared notes with him. The treatment is so much worse once you"re put into such a prison. Your rights are taken away. They can work you eighteen to twenty hours a day. There are quotas. If you don"t meet them your food gets reduced to 240 grams a day. If you fail to meet the quota for five days, you get 60 grams per meal-180 grams a day. If you"re in isolation you get 30 grams per meal, 90 grams a day. Prisoners can go to the toilet only three times a day. You get up at 5:30 A.M., go to the toilet once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once in the evening and stop work at 12:30 A.M., with no rest period except the three toilet times and three meals that take one hour total."I was a political prisoner because I supposedly messed up Kim Jong-il"s plan by unfairly distributing goods, not doing a good job. I wrote a letter to Kim Jong-il after I was paroled. I couldn"t write it while in jail or I"d get a double sentence for refusing to repent. I sent four letters to the central party. I wasn"t supposed to. I was being watched. But there was an official I"d been close to when I was at the distribution center. I asked him to post them when he went to Pyongyang. I think two of them got through. I know one arrived because one central party official came to talk to me. My husband, a school princ.i.p.al, had been sent to a farm, along with my son when I went to jail. The central party official acknowledged that things had been done unfairly. But what to do? Lift the punishments off my son and husband, let my son return to university, that"s what I wanted. The official"s initial response was, "I understand." He left. Then he came back from the party center and said, "If you ever pet.i.tion like this again, you"ll be sent back to prison." I asked, "Why if you know that I was punished unlawfully?" His answer was, "If your son and husband were reinstated, many layers of the officials who sent them off would have to be fired. We can"t do that. Please make a sacrifice for the revolution. What"s done is done." He also said, You should be thankful you got out of prison alive.""Q. What was his name?A. "I never knew it. He was a high official. They don"t usually give you their names. He was chief of the central party Pet.i.tions Department.
"The local authorities had taken all our material goods away, I didn"t know where, when they took my husband and son away. I went to the judge who had sentenced me. I found out from my friends that the people who had put me in prison-judge, policemen-divided my goods. The judge got my color TV; the prosecutor, my refrigerator; somebody else, my sewing machine and so on. The police chief got the bicycle. I took my son, with the help of a friend who still worked at the distribution center, to each of those houses and saw my things there. When I pet.i.tioned Kim Jong-il, I wrote all those points down as well. When the central party man came, he went to the houses and saw that it was true. "But if we take those things back and exonerate you, then all those involved will have to be punished," he said. He pointed out that I was already on the bottom while they were holding official posts. Therefore, he said, the central party was on their side. Although he acknowledged completely the wrongdoings, including my wrongful punishment, these were party members. For all those several members to be punished as thieves would undermine the party"s image and credibility. I just requested that they reinstate my son in school. But, no, we would have to live the rest of our lives in the place of banishment. We decided to leave, my son and I.
"Our place of banishment was a large tract in Sansong-ri, Onsong County, North Hamgyong Province, where they formerly had a political prison. It"s in the far north-west of the county. We had lived in the county seat. I heard when I got out of prison and joined my husband and son that the political prison had been closed and the prisoners moved. It had been a huge prison holding about thirty thousand inmates. Some were sent to h.o.e.ryong, some to Kaechon, some to Kyongbuk in North Pyongan. North Korea claims it has no political prisons. The reason they moved the prisoners is that the place is right on the Chinese border. They feared other people from outside would see it because border residents have contact with foreigners. I heard that from officials who used to work at the prison."The place had been turned into a tobacco farm although it was on very difficult mountain terrain with not enough water. They called it 4/25 Tobacco Farm, after the founding date of the People"s Army, because it supplied all the military"s tobacco. The prison had used that land to grow corn before."When I got up there from prison my son had no shoes. They"d never given him any. His one pair of pants weighed five kilos, he had patched it so often. The pants were all patches. Those were the pants he"d been wearing when he was kicked out of university. He wore them for five years. On his feet he had only soles, with rope wrapped around them and around his feet to keep them on."Q. What was the food situation at the tobacco farm?A. "The rations didn"t come regularly. I couldn"t work and wasn"t given food. I had to share my son"s rations. On his way home from the farm each day he"d bring gra.s.ses and so on. We"d grind the corn we got into meal, add greens to make porridge or steam it to make corn cakes."Q. Another woman who had been banished told me that there was less starvation in the banishment areas and maybe in prison camps than in cities, because prisoners and banishees grow their own food.A. "I only lived in the banishment area about a year but, yes, it"s a little better on the farms than in the cities regarding starvation. In the villages, if you plant, you have to do it secretly. People usually go into the mountains an