Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

by Bradley K. Martin

  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 ambassador 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. 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 grass 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 institute 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 Japan, spent ten years in a prison camp before relatives in Japan 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 assigned 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 participating 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 pass 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, and the party journal, 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.”

  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 cassette 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 passerby 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 Institute 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 Institute of Science and Technology as a lab assistant, 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 passes. 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 Japanese 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 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, getting a bouquet fr
om 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, 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 I could see the smoke coming out from burning bodies. I worked as a driver delivering prisoners to Samguk. Once I entered the basement and found it full of blood. But basically I heard about 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 sexual activity. Friends told me these stories.”