[….

The torture at Moonsu was particularly severe. Unfortunately, a security agent, who we called Opbashi 3) for his cruelty, had spotted what Chul-min was doing and yelled:The shout made me raise my head toward the direction it came from, and I could see Opbashi already quite close behind Chul-min, who was oblivious to all but the mouth-watering chestnuts. KBA 550-52, 555, 546-47, 551.The constant hunger drives prisoners to eat almost anything they can catch, including frogs, snakes, rats, worms, squirrels, and grass.

It has been known that Kim Byeong-Ha, who was the There is a “Cadre Guest House” at No.

She said, “I saw a starving woman eat the flesh of her son who had died of a disease.”Hunger and disease cull weakened prisoners every year. There are no immunizations against contagious diseases; consequently, epidemics are common.Even suicide is no escape. When they are not in school, children must work: digging, weeding, planting, gathering fire wood, or making humus soil (fertilizer made from excrement). They discipline the children by beating them and kicking them in the stomach with jackboots. Unfortunately, Kim’s true parentage was discovered, quite by accident, after someone else turned up bearing his assumed name. Unless it is job-related, no contact between male and female is allowed.9. The White Paper is an invaluable work of research that accumulates the accounts of dozens of North Korean defectors, including concentration camp survivors. KBA 543.Camp 14 is a total control zone, and no prisoner is supposed to leave a total control zone, dead or alive. It was then the shout came:In situations like this, I had been taught to face the wall, put my hands on the back of my head, keep my forehead glued to the ground, and remain motionless until the security agent had passed by. KBA 555-56.

[This is not to suggest that life in Camp 18 was soft:The conditions at the camp kill many prisoners each year. [Kim also relates the history of the camps’ establishment:The establishment of the political prison camps was conceived by KIM Byong-hwa, who was then the head of the State Security Department, and carried out in 1972 under orders from KIM Il-sung. He was forced to labor since he was six years … You must be truly remorseful for your own mistakes.10. [When the car dropped him inside Camp 14, Kim was cursed viciously and told to put his head to the ground. Your uncle went south during the war and some of your father’s friends must still be there, too.” With these words and a long sigh she tried to encourage me. “[T]he prisoners have wounds that are sometimes filled with decomposed pus which causes a disgusting smell and causes them to move about on all fours.” The bodies of dead prisoners are wrapped in matting and buried in shallow graves without mounds, so that their graves cannot be found later. And I was doing just that when suddenly I was knocked unconscious. [The fence lines of Camp 18 are clearly visible for the camp’s entire circumference. Multiple witnesses from various camps describe a procedure similar to that secretly recorded One such execution at Camp 14 the late 1980’s is said to have triggered an uprising at the camp in which eight guards were killed. [Kim, who repaired the rail cars that shipped the coal away from Camp 18, discovered a hatch at the bottom of the cars that he could prop open with a piece of coal. Kim Yong recalls the summary execution of a prisoner for picking up chestnuts:Fifty-three-year-old Chul-min KIMs job was to drive trolleys for transferring coal. The inmate must sit on his or her knees with head glued to the ground and turned away from where the officer is. The administrator and internal guards of the camps are bo-wi-bu officers. In 1996, after a year in Camp 14, Kim Yong’s exceptionally bad luck ended with a miracle — a former At Camp 18, Kim found something completely unexpected: his mother. A security agent had hit me with the back of his pistol and was making me an example of an unproductive worker who deserved no better than death. For other prisoners the interrogation period can be much longer. I can’t believe that this is going on but there is nothing we can do about it.

By 1998, knowing that death was near, she spoke to her son about the most forbidden of things — hope and freedom:From my question she seemed to have read my determination and answered:“If you think of the trivial things, you will never become a big man.

He was suspended by his handcuffed wrists from his prison-cell bars, and he was submerged up to his waist for long periods in tanks filled with cold water. Kim Yong’s tales of cannibalism weren’t just limited to Camp 14. The only ideological education in total control zones is for the guards.

You must over-fulfill all tasks assigned to you.8.