While North Korea's prison camps are visible
from spy satellites, we wouldn't know much
about them if not for the people who escaped
both the prison camps and the country as a
whole.
While some of the stories and reports that
these escapees have sold to the media have
come under scrutiny, especially as of late,
they still offer the only glimpse that we
have into the hermit kingdom's most awful
reality.
So, let's take a minute to look at the top
10 descriptions of the prison camps in North
Korea as told by those who survived them.
Jihyun Park
The first entry on this list, as bad as her
experience was, was one of the lucky ones.
Keep that in mind.
Park escaped from North Korea in her youth
after her father's dying wish was that his
remaining family flee North Korea.
She was able to enter into China after her
mother used the little money they had to pay
their way past a border guard.
In China, she found someone who was supposed
to give her a "good job", however, she was
actually sold into a form of slavery upon
being purchased by an alcoholic who took her
in as his wife.
She was forced to work like a slave for up
to 16 hours a day, with the only positive
in her life being the son that she had with
her husband-slash-captor.
When her son was five years old she was arrested
and deported back to North Korea, and then
sent to a prison camp where "the conditions
were unspeakable" and she was worked like
an "animal".
Her main job was to clear out areas to make
room for farm-land the inmates weren't even
allowed simple things like shoes.
Because of that, Park eventually ended up
with gangrene in her feet and legs from the
open sores that she ended up getting from
working shoeless.
She only was released from the prison once
her gangrene reached a level that the guards
assumed she was going to die; they forced
her out so they wouldn't have to deal with
her body.
She recovered and escaped back to China and
reunited with her son, who had been left to
starve by her former captor.
She luckily received asylum in Britain with
her son and a new husband, another defector.
Fairytale ending for a horror story.
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And now, take a deep breath, because it only
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Jeong Kwang-il
Jeong Kwang-il was a trader in North Korea
that worked with the two countries along its
borders: China and the loathed South Korea.
China is the main ally of North Korea, but
South Korea is an enemy - North Korea considers
themselves still at war with their neighbor
to the south, as the Korean War never technically
ended.
Therefore, trading with the South is against
the law, and it is a gigantic no-no for those
who have the nerve to engage in any sort of
partnership with the South.
Kwang-il was one of those people and was caught;
he was accused of not only trading with the
South but also of being a spy for them as
well.
Soldiers beat Kwang-il so severely in an attempt
to coax a confession out of him that they
permanently scarred the back of his head and
almost killed him.
After ten months of enduring torture techniques
like the "pigeon torture" method, Kwang-il
was sent to Yodok, one of the largest prisons
in North Korea.
He joined 50,000 other inmates.
At Yodok, he was awakened every day at 5 a.m.
and then forced to work after a meager breakfast
of rice and beans and corn.
Springtime meant working in the fields, but
when winter came they were forced to cut up
and carry huge logs that were over 13 feet
in length for more than two miles at a time.
Most people either ended up starving to death
thanks to this arduous work schedule, or some
died from accidents while carrying logs that
could easily crush a man.
Luckily, a senior guard checked into his file
and decided after three years that Kwang-il
was "wrongfully accused".
Unfortunately, there was no happy ending for
him as when he returned to his family he had
discovered that his home was gone and that
they had disappeared.
He then fled to South Korea and still doesn't
know what happened to his loved ones.
Kang Cheol Hwan
Kang Cheol Hwan is the perfect example of
how the system of oppression works in North
Korea.
Hwan's grandfather was labeled as a traitor
to the people, so his entire family were sent
to a prison camp when he was only ten years
old.
If you thought that he'd have a better time
because he was a child, you were wrong, as
Hwan described the other children as basically
being nothing but skin and bones, like "beggars".
He too was immediately sentenced to carry
heavy logs for hours a day, for miles and
miles.
Beatings were routine for those that couldn't
handle their share of the work, and those
beatings were mostly carried out by the other
inmates.
What differs from Hwan's account of the prison
camps is that he described a prison within
the prison, for people who refused to do what
they were told by the guards.
While all prisons have solitary confinement
and "holes", imagine the North Korean version
of a hole.
It's as bad as you'd expect, with people being
sentenced to over six months at a time in
tiny, filthy cells (which were often filled
with cold and muddy water).
Because of the exposure to the elements, and
the physical and psychological toll it took
on people, few actually survived it.
If you tried to escape you were either shot
or hanged.
Hwan was finally released after a decade in
the camp, which was half of his life at that
point.
Hyuk Kim
Hyuk Kim's story isn't different in terms
of what he experienced but rather how he explained
the ways it all affected him as a human being.
Kim was 16 when he was sent to prison for
attempting to sneak into China like many people
of all ages were doing, as they were literally
starving to death and were looking for any
help, or hope.
During his three year sentence, Kim witnessed
and was subjected to some of the "routine"
things that have propagated this list in terms
of extremely hard labor, starvation, beatings
and the like.
However, he was able to verbalize this experience
in a way that many others couldn't or wouldn't,
by saying that he felt like he lost all humanity
while in the camp and stopped acting as a
human, or stopped acting based on logic, but
instead started to just react based on fear,
like a cornered animal.
That's important because that lack of humanity
works both ways; you'll learn of other accounts
further down this list that basically shows
the guards were treating the prisoners like
animals and that disassociation is an important
topic in terms of how things like this can
happen.
Ji Hyeon-A
Ji-Hyeon A, like many others near the border
to China, had traveled there three times in
her life.
Each time she was caught and sent back to
North Korea.
The third time ended in horror as she had
met someone in China and had become pregnant.
Despite the alliance between the two countries,
apparently, it was against the law for women
to have "mixed-race" children.
Because of that law, Hyeon-A was given an
abortion against her will at the police station
without any medication to ease her suffering.
After that, she was sent to a prison camp
where she witnessed pregnant women being beaten
and crying in the night as they miscarried
their children.
There are other horrible accounts of this
practice elsewhere on this list, but Hyeon-A's
story does have a silver lining as she has
since testified against North Korea and her
story has at least in part, lead to some of
the sanctions against the country.
The worst part is that most of prisoners’
stories will never be told and the true number
of deaths will never fully be known.
The Camps have been Described as "Worse than
Auschwitz"
We're halfway through this list and are transitioning
from the first-person stories of those that
have survived the camps in North Korea to
more general facts about the camps as a whole.
It's important to provide some context for
just how bad these camps are in terms of prisons
around the world now and also historically
when compared to some of the more famous camps
that we grew up reading about in history class,
like the Gulag in the Soviet Union or the
concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
A survivor of one of history's most awful
and famous camps, Auschwitz, described the
conditions at the North Korean camps and the
conditions that the people in them faced and
said that they were being treated worse than
his experience at Auschwitz.
That's important because the treatment of
Jews (and others) in those camps was so terrible
that it was the impetus for creating Israel
as an independent nation, and the guilt felt
by countries that ignored reports out of German
territories is still felt to this day.
The question is whether or not anything will
be done to liberate the people in the North
Korean camps, and considering the climate
right now, I guess we'll find out sooner rather
than later.
They're No Fans of Religion
One part of life in prison is that people
are routinely executed for even the smallest
grievances.
In the early 20th century, when Communism
almost took over the world, one key element
was the atheistic angle which dominated the
governments and countries that fell under
the spell of Karl Marx's philosophy.
While Marx said that it was just that, a philosophy
(and not a blueprint for governance), most
of the communist (or neo-communist) governments
adopted Marx's loathing of religion.
While that loathing varies in terms of how
the governments control their people (the
Russian Orthodox Church, for example, existed
during the Soviet Union’s heyday), North
Korea appears to be on the more severe end
of that spectrum.
That extends to the prison camps, where people
are reportedly: “tortured and killed on
account of their religious affiliation, with
officials instructed, “to wipe out the seed
of [Christian] reactionaries.”
The Amount of People in their Camps Rival
the Size of a Small City
As with all things North Korea, it's hard
to actually get a tab on just how many people
currently (or historically) have been in the
prison camps.
Satellite photos can only show so much, and
considering the immense amount of underground
tunnels and facilities that the North has
dug in the past century, pictures from the
stratosphere can only scratch the surface.
However, the most thorough and accurate estimators
have tabulated that between 80,000 and 130,000
people are currently toiling away in the North
Korean prison camps.
While that might not sound like much compared
to the prison population in the United States,
North Korea has less than ten percent of the
population of the US, and the prison conditions
are clearly way less humane.
It makes sense, though, as North Korea is
famous for imprisoning the entire, extended
families of people they deem as traitorous.
Beyond that, the people that are sent to camp
are actually the "lucky" ones, as the number
of people that have been executed in lieu
of prison has to be in the tens, if not hundreds,
of thousands since the start of the Kim regime.
Despite that large number, there really are
only a handful of survivor stories that we
have to go on in terms of figuring out how
people are treated in a country that looks
at the human rights accords passed internationally
and laughs.
Just thank your lucky stars that you weren't
born in North Korea.
The Prisoners are Starved
It's no secret that the people of North Korea
have had times where their already scarce
food supply has become even more scarce.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in the
early 90's, for example, the financial and
food support that the regime was receiving
stopped, which toppled the controlled economy
of North Korea.
That created a famine that has defined the
country and while things are "better" now
(with "better" being a relative term), food
can still be a luxury.
That means the people in prison aren't fed
regular, complete meals.
The prisoners often have to scavenge for their
own food, by pulling plants from whatever
areas they're working in (in their seemingly
never-ending job of moving gigantic logs to
and fro).
According to multiple reports, though, the
prison guards don't just punish people for
doing this but they actually execute them.
While that may sound like cruelty for the
sake of being cruel, it may serve a purpose,
as the guards could be tasked with lowering
the population of the prisons, so there's
more food to go around.
Seems like they're just punishing whoever
rubs them the wrong way, which I guess is
a justification but shows you how horrible
life in these camps can be and is.
It's Even Worse for Women of Age
The worst stories to come out of North Korean
prison camps come from those who either were
with child while in the camp or those that
witnessed the treatment of women who were
of age.
Clearly, food is a problem for everyone in
North Korea and was especially bad during
the famine periods that the country has had
to deal with in its history.
Because of the limited amount of people who
have escaped and the monetary component when
it comes to giving information to newspapers
or television statements, it's hard to really
tell if what someone is saying about their
experience in the camps is true.
The only way is to see if that information
makes sense when applied to the information
gathered from other survivors and unfortunately
that's the case when it comes to the treatment
of women who become pregnant.
Because of the work involved and the time,
it would take for a woman to have a child,
or rest before and after having one, guards
often beat women to induce a miscarriage.
For the unlucky mothers and babies that survive,
a truly horrific death welcomes the surviving
child into the world as multiple survivors
of the camps have described prison guards
feeding newborn children to guard dogs.
That's just the definition of the worst of
humanity.
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