Q. Why do conductors have so much juice?
A. “I don’t know. But even when others didn’t get rations, they did. Pilots are the same, maybe because they could escape in a plane. It’s difficult to become a pilot. The train conductors deal with lives. Mostly they’re party members. I think a conductor can join the party automatically after one year.
“We went to the town. Before we left the village we prepared documents saying I was a train conductor. But once we got to town the town refused to register us at our home address. So I couldn’t work for four months. I never actually worked for the railroad.
“Mother had asked her husband-to-be for help, told him her story. He agreed to marry her for humane purposes. But he died in October 1996, after we had been there for four months. During those four months he argued with town officials about registering us to that address. After he died there was no one to take up the argument. We stayed for four months after her husband’s death and did the rituals for him.”
Q. Did you see people starve?
A. “Yes. It was pretty severe by the time I left. I saw three or four a day dying in Hamhung, where we stayed after the four months following the conductor’s death.”
Q. What sort of people died?
A. “Probably they were all laborers and farmers. Officials of a certain rank wouldn’t starve. Old people and children, dressed very badly, were dying. The authorities weren’t checking for passes because the food situation was so bad. People could travel to look for food.”
Q. In 1992, I saw some really bad-looking people, filthy, unwashed, in bad clothing, riding a train in the northeast. The windows were glassless.
A. “That’s what happens when you ride a train. From Seoul to Pusan takes only three or four hours. But from Hamhung to Chongjin, because of lack of fuel and electricity what’s supposed to be a seven-hour ride takes up to a week. There’s no food on the trains. At the stations you can buy food, but most people don’t have money. So they travel for a week without much food, without washing facilities. At home they look a little better. It’s probably just as bad in Pyongyang, but when I watched television they looked fed and relaxed. It’s better than any other city—they still get rations.”
Nam Chung was banished from Pyongyang along with his mother and two of his brothers after the eldest brother, a student in Russia, defected. In 1992, the family was sent to Tongpo mining camp in Onsong County, North Hamgyong Province. “My mother’s an architect,” Nam told me. “My father died twenty years ago. My second brother studied in an East German military academy. My third brother graduated from Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and was a pilot for four years and six months. After we were sent off my mother was put to work at the mining camp as an architect. My second brother worked as a laborer; my third brother, in a paper factory. I was put to work laying railroad track. I had graduated from Pyongyang No. 1 Senior Middle School and enrolled in the Railroad College. I was expelled from college when my brother defected.
“We didn’t have any choice although we wanted to go somewhere better. The camp used to be a full prison camp with wire fence, but the wire was taken down in 1990 due to the furor abroad over human rights. Worse offenders were sent to other prisons while lesser offenders were kept there. We were watched by six families who had been assigned by State Security. Even if we worked two or three times harder than others we weren’t recognized. But I managed to graduate from the Railroad College via correspondence course. My father had graduated there, and his friends helped me. Usually it’s impossible. Anyhow, my degree wasn’t recognized in the camp.
“Due to the food shortage, other people didn’t work for ten days or so a month. But if we missed even one day we’d be fingerprinted and reported. They collect those reports. If-we do something worse they tack it on and punish us. The reason we weren’t treated even worse was that Mother was a very well-known and accomplished architect in Pyongyang.”
Q. Food situation?
A. “It’s difficult to describe in words. We used to eat one spoon of rice per day per three adults, which we bought. So we had to go out to the hills and mountains and fields and pick any greens that weren’t poisonous. We’d mix ‘green porridge’: assemble anything we could find, grind the greens, take the juice from them, add it to a single spoon of rice and make porridge. If you made porridge with pine bark and acorns, that was considered high-quality food. We also used to go to the farm fields and take the roots left after the rice harvest, or corn roots and corn cobs—-we dried them and ground them to make porridge. Until 1993, the rations were pretty regular. From 1994, we got no rations at all in that area. By the time we left, it was on record officially that they owed us 1,800 kilograms—one ton and 800 kilograms—of grain. The fifteen-day ration was supposed to be 11.8 kilograms of grain per person. My second brother had married, so our household had three people and was supposed to get rations for three. We were supposed to get 700 or 800 grams per day per person, but because of the shortage we didn’t. We bought food but by July 1996 our resources were so low we could only buy 100 grams to divide among three people—33 grams a day per person.”
Q. Which areas were best and which worst for food, based on what you learned working for the railroad?
A. “The best places were Hwanghae Province’s Yonbaek Plain. In South Hamgyong it was generally OK south of Hamhung. I heard that the worst areas were in North Hamgyong, Chongjin City and Musan County.”
Q. What was your railroad job?
A. “Railroad guard.”
Q. They trusted you?
A. “I could never work alone. Three to five people were always together. When I was talking about rations, I wasn’t referring to rice but to corn. But we wanted to have a little rice to make the soup starchy. We didn’t receive anything as rations. We had to buy food. To pay for it, starting in 1994, we sold the TV, refrigerator, camera and tape recorders. Toward the end we had nothing to sell, and from July 1996 we were reduced to buying ony one spoon of rice a day, from having eaten a little better before that. We were starting to sell our blankets, blanket covers, anything we could. Some people sell everything. A family finally sells its house and becomes homeless. They go to try to find food any way they can. When it comes to the point when they can’t get food, they die.”
Q. Sell their homes?
A. “You do it illegally, secretly. And women sell their bodies. If you go to any big city train station like Chongjin, you see a lot of starving people, thieves, homeless people.
“My family’s worst time was the latter part of 1996, before my eldest brother sent money starting in December of that year. We heard about my brother from some Chinese people. He had met a lot of Chinese while studying in the Soviet Union, and he paid about twenty people to find out about the family. Eventually, one of them succeeded, and my brother sent us money. We couldn’t leave, but we weren’t in cells. Other people could get in to give messages and so on. The camp wasn’t completely closed to visitors. Chinese came in and gave us money directly. We were a little better off once we got money from my brother. But rations hadn’t resumed.”
Q. But I never heard of any place with no rations for three years.
A. “That’s it. We felt it. It wasn’t uniform nationwide. Pyongyang was better. Hwanghae Province was better. Some areas were better.”
Q. Did you hear of or see donated food?
A. “Because I worked on the railroad I saw some, but it never got to the people where I was. I didn’t care because it wasn’t going to us.”
Q. To whom, then?
A. “To the military. In that area there’s one military ration center. All the food went there. Soldiers came and got about 50 percent, officials got some, restaurateurs got the rest.4
Q. You went to the distribution center?
A. “Yes.”
Q. When?
A. “That was in the area where I was working, the railroad area. Fifty percent or more of the rations went to the military. There were a couple of bases in t
he area. It was the county distribution center. You are supposed to ration to the rest of the distribution centers, but there wasn’t any left. It was mainly rationed to the military.”
Q. Did people feel bitter about that?
A. “There was nothing we could do. The military has the highest priority. Especially since Kim Jong-il became head of it, you can’t fight it. If a soldier comes up and hits you, you can’t do anything. They have all the authority.
“In 1997 the agriculture minister, So Kwan-hui, was executed for the agricultural failure. Poeple don’t dare talk badly of Kim Jong-il. If something like that happens, Kim Jong-il orders someone executed, putting all the blame on that person. People are taught to worship Kim Jong-Il so they don’t think of criticizing him.”
Q. Do people die of starvation?
A. “Yes. Most people when they die of starvation, contrary to what you might think, get swollen up. They drink a lot of water because they’re hungry and dehydrated, skin and bones. People who can afford to travel on trains usually eat one meal a day. At stations, beggars get on and beg for even a spoonful. Some get it, some don’t. A lot die on the trains. Railroad workers have to dispose of the bodies. I didn’t have to do that, but I’ve seen so many. The people who care for the dead bodies are delinquents. That’s a punishment—to take care of the dead. After they collect the bodies, if no one claims them, they dig a hole and bury several in a mass grave.
“When you talk about people who die of starvation, mostly the direct cause is a related disease. So many are dying they can’t handle them. There aren’t enough coffins. They make a metal coffin, put the body in temporarily. It costs 500 won to rent the coffin for the final trip to the grave, but still it’s so hard to arrange that people often wait a day or two to rent one.”
Q. How did you defect?
A. “We got help from my eldest brother Nam Hyun, the one who defected from Russia. I first heard in 1994 that my brother was in South Korea. I started wondering why he would go there, after all the bad things I had learned about South Korea. I saw Im Su-gyong and Moon Ik-hwan on television, then reports of their jailing after they came to North Korea. But when they came we could see they were well fed. Then she got out of jail, after only three years, and had a child. I thought they must have a lot of freedom in South Korea—only three years, then marriage and a child. Then there are the film clips of students demonstrating. It’s unthinkable in North Korea—we couldn’t even dream of such a thing. The North Korean media played it as a problem, but I thought, ‘If they have that kind of freedom to fight the police, what’s the rest of the society like?’ And they weren’t starving. That’s when I started criticizing the cronies under the Kims. I wouldn’t dare criticize the Kims themselves.”
Q. When did you escape?
A. “In August 1997 we left. My second brother is in an isolated cell under State Security. He told his wife about the plans and asked her to leave, too, so he was taken away.”
Q. Is she in jail?
A. “No, of course not. She has a strong revolutionary mind. She probably was re-warded.”
Q. His children?
A. “They have one child who was with the mother. If she requests a divorce it will be granted.”
Q. Do you resent her?
A. “Death would be too good for her. No, not her. It’s her family who went to the police. She couldn’t decide. [Fearing all would be punished], the family took hold of her and wouldn’t let her come.”
Q. What are you doing now?
A. “Working as an assistant manager at a trading company founded by my eldest brother, Nam Hyun.”
Q. School?
A. “Next year I want to go. I’m thinking of working for the Railroad Authority.”
Q. Maybe you’ll put track across the DMZ.
Nam Chung’s mother, Chang In-sook, was fifty-seven when I interviewed her in 1998, and with her weathered face and short hair she looked her age. Her face, like that of her son Nam Chung, was wide and she resembled him. Her previous occupation as an architect-engineer showed in her tastefully chosen clothing and accessories: navy jacket, deep blue patterned blouse with white collar, big brooch on the jacket, gold ring, gold watch with black leather strap.
Chang had a brilliant résumé by North Korean standards. Having earned multiple degrees in civil engineering, specializing in tunnel and bridge construction, she had worked for twenty-six years as an architect in the Pyongyang city planning department. Considered one of the top three female architects in the country she had participated in construction of about thirty bridges and the Juche Tower, a monument lighting the night sky with a huge flame representing the juche ideal. She had received nine awards, several of them directly from Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. She had been photographed three times with Kim Il-sung, and on the last of those occasions Kim Jong-il also had been in the picture. She was Workers’ Party secretary for her unit.
Q. What did you do on the Juche Tower?
A. “I was in charge of the structure of the tower. As party secretary I led weekly meetings and designed the structure.”
Q. Tell me about the national construction policy.
A. “The policy can be summarized as showing the world North Korea’s pride. Construction is to give pleasure to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. This is to show the juche spirit to the world. The Juche Tower and the memorial tower commemorating the founding of the party are examples— and also the West Sea Barrage. Lots of money and manpower went into that. It was big propaganda. But in fact its practical effect was very small. They just wanted it to show the power of socialism and the party. Even in Pyongyang there are so many buildings but you can’t operate them so they remain empty: the new tall hotel, for example, the world’s widest road and so on. They shouldn’t have built the hotel. The Koryo isn’t even full yet. Also, they’re now building a dining hall for 10,000 people. Nonsense!”
Q. Tell me about the problems you had after your eldest son defected.
A. “My son had been studying in Russia for five years. He came to South Korea in December 1990. All of a sudden the family changed from a revolutionary family to a family of traitors. I lost my job. When they kicked us out of Pyongyang they gave us forty-eight hours’ notice to evacuate. Our household goods were to be packed in twenty-four hours and we would leave ourselves in forty-eight hours.
“If it had been 1989, we’d have been sent to a political prison camp. But after the 1990s there were so many like us that there were no vacancies. So people started getting sent to coal mines, and to cut timber in the forests. My son who defected knew we wouldn’t be sent to a prison camp. And he thought North Korea would collapse in a year. He was wrong.”
Q. But I’ll bet you were angry with him.
A. “Yes, at first I felt a great bitterness. He had betrayed the nation and the Great Leader.”
Q. I’ve heard that the Pyongyang population is shifted every two years.
A. “Not every two years but it’s shifted frequently. After the Korean War the landlord class was kicked out, and people who had gone to South Korea during the war. A big transplantation came in 1976 when the Pan-munjom incident occurred. Also, at times of international festivals and conferences the government wants firm control so it moves questionable people out. In addition, whole groups belonging to laboratories and factories are moved because of environmental questions, to clean up the city.
“They want people in Pyongyang who can be trusted. Whenever American reporters come, the government tells citizens to wear the best clothing they have. The authorities distribute sample questions and answers to prepare people. If someone is questioned by a reporter, he or she will be debriefed afterward on the exchange.
“When we were banished from Pyongyang we were sent to Onsong Mine. There used to be two prison camps, Changpyong and Tongpo, in Onsong County. They moved Chanpyong camp to Tokson in South Hamgyong Province in 1988. Tongpo camp moved there in 1990 to get it farther away from the border. I was in Tongpo. Both of those ar
e tough areas developed by political prisoners. After the camps moved, at Champyon the government sent free settlers, but those people ruined the soil. So in the case of Tongpo the government sent organized people— factory workers and union people—to control the cultivation and mining. I was sent there as a settler after they moved the camp from Tongpo. They moved the camp because they were worried about human rights organizations’ condemnations. And during high-level North-South meetings South Korean officials expressly named those camps. The other reason was that they were near the border and the authorities worried about what the prisoners might do. Those were the only two camps in border areas.
“When I arrived at Tongpo it was in the final stage of evacuation. I met some of the remaining prisoners and heard the story from them. I didn’t start at Tongpo but at Onsong because I met someone I knew who was in charge of the mine. I could move there instead. Onsong is relatively better because it has farmland in addition to mines. Tongpo has coal mines only. I stayed at Onsong for six years and seven months, working as an architect-engineer. I was the most experienced person in the area, so I was designing bridges and rail-ways and a big storage tower for coal. I also participated in financing of rail-way construction. I didn’t participate in prison-camp architecture. Bridges were my field. But when I went to the camp in Onsong and saw the harsh reality—people lived in dugouts, no heating …
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader Page 92
