By For those that have watched Crossing Heaven’s Borders and want to get an even deeper understanding of the North Korean system of concentration camps that await defectors that are returned to North Korea, I highly recommend reading Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor
The book was translated by Kim Suk-young who is actually a unusual person to translate such a book considering she works in the theater and dance department at the University of California Santa Barbara. She actually did a good job putting this book together which I was actually surprised about considering the strange quotes she made in this interview in the Asia Times:
North Korea apparently contains more complexity than shines through in the media, judging by her interviewee’s “multi-dimensional” take that mixes the positive and negative. Suk-Young describes the country as “strange”, noting that there is nothing you cannot buy if you have money despite the abiding power of communist ideology.
Another twist from her perspective is that North and South are quite alike. The countries share a similar sense of humor and strong respect for family ties, she said.
Likewise, she is convinced that America is equally guilty of propaganda. Before making any uninformed assumptions about North Korea, the West should try to understand it, she said. Treat the country with respect is her message. [Asia Times]
I find this statement about understanding and respecting North Korea strange coming from a person that wrote a book about state sponsored gulags where people have to turn to cannibalism to survive. Is this something we should understand and respect or something we should loathe?
Anyway the book tells the tale of how the North Korean Kim Yong went from being an orphan, to a high ranking regime elite, to being sent to the most notorious North Korean gulag Camp 14, before ultimately defecting and receiving asylum in South Korea. Kim’s tale is so incredible that you would think it was a work of fiction if it wasn’t for the fact that his tale comes from North Korea where the horror and depravity described in this book is backed up by multiple sources making his story quite believable.
The book opens up by describing Kim Yong’s days growing up in a North Korean orphanage. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was abandoned as baby by his mom at the orphanage because his dad was implicated as a American spy during the Korean War. In North Korea class background is extremely important and being the son of a traitor would ensure that the young Kim had no future. By leaving him at an orphanage Kim was given a chance because then he would have no background. Kim’s description of his time at the orphanage along with his observations of how North Korean strongman Kim Il-sung took a special interest in caring for orphans in North Korea was interesting.
Kim’s mother’s gamble of abandoning him at the orphanage ultimately pays off when he was adopted by a couple that was part of the regime elite. The favorable background of his adopted parents ensured his success in North Korea. His stories of growing up as part of the regime elite in Pyongyang was interesting reading when contrasted to the stories you usually here from North Korea about how poorly the people live. When he attended college he makes mention of students from foreign countries attending school with him. This passage made me think of Aliou Niane who was a Zambian exchange student who attended college in North Korea and has since offered some insightful writings about his time in the Hermit Kingdom.
Kim Yong due to his family connections and hard work had a very successful career in the North Korean military as an exporter bringing in foreign currency for the regime elite. Kim found it ironic how the regime used very capitalist means to raise money for the regime elite while continuing to promote a communist ideology across the rest of North Korea. His exports involved legitimate trade, which was pretty much limited to seafood. While North Koreans were suffering from hunger the Kim regime was exporting seafood to Japan for foreign currency. Kim from what I read was not involved in any of the illegal activities that are bringing in a big chunk of the foreign currency to the Kim regime today.
Ultimately Kim’s life would come crashing down due to an extensive security background check that was done before he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. The background check discovered his past as the son of an enemy of the state and despite his absolute loyalty and dedication to the regime over the course of his life, he was sentenced to the worst possible gulag in North Korea, Camp 14. Kim to this day is one of only two people to have escaped from Camp 14. His tales about life in Camp 14 are absolutely incredible because of the depravity he experienced. The tales of cannibalism due to the extreme hunger the prisoners experienced was probably the most horrifying. Kim Yong’s tales of cannibalism weren’t just limited to Camp 14. He also recalls incidents he was privy to before he was sentenced to Camp 14 about North Koreans digging up graves and eating the dead bodies as well as even murdering others in order to eat them due to the Great Famine that was striking North Korea at the time.
Kim due to his many connections with the regime elite was able to get transferred from Camp 14 to the less deprived, but still horrid Camp 18 where a surprise awaited him. Kim would eventually escape from Camp 18 and make his way to China and finally South Korea via Mongolia. His story of escape from North Korea as well as from China is quite an incredible narrative that caused me to have a hard time putting the book down in order to read what would happen next. Finally, there was a story that Kim Yong shared about his time adapting to life in South Korea that I found of particular interest when he was driving in Seoul and slightly bumped a car in front of him. The woman in the car started pretending to be hurt and demanding money. His response to this was quite funny, but you will need to read the book to find out.
North Korea's Camp 14
North Korea's Camp 18
Overall the book is a good and fast read that I finished in one weekend. It shines a further light on the worst human rights disaster of our time which is the North Korean gulags. Some would say that Kim Yong’s story is too unbelievable to be true, but there are parts of Kim’s story that matches what other North Korean defectors have testified to. This book is not as groundbreaking on the issue of North Korea’s concentration camps as Kang Chol-hwan’s, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
7:11 am on July 22nd, 2009 1
I think the BBC documentary Access to Evil – which you can either find or download off the Internet – reported his story in part.
He was living in LA at the time with a garment shop, if I remember correctly. That would probably explain how the book got connected to the UCSB prof…
On her statements, I can remember listening to a group of profs back early in Bush’s term discussing North Korea after some provocation – I think maybe the spyplane incident, and I think someone in the audience mentioned not hearing anything negative about the North since the start of the Sunshine policy, and one of the profs on the panel said she understood that. That she and others had talked about it – about how they had modified their public statements.
She said she didn’t do it out of pressure or because she was afraid NK wouldn’t give her access anymore. (She had gone up there to do something with a noodle factory). She said she just felt it was her responsibility to withhold criticism — the help the North transition — that she was Korean —– and so on….
That makes me think of the James Bond film where South Koreans got so pissed off that the movie “made Korea look so poor!! We’re not like that now!!”. They specifically went crazy over some scene with a farmer leading an ox…
…Of course, the scenes with such dire poverty were set in North Korea, but South Koreans reacted as if their own honor had been walked on…
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July 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Yeah, it seemed clear enough to me that the scene was in North Korea. I haven’t the movie in years, but the plane was clearly heading north of the DMZ when the farmer was shown, if I remember correctly.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Oh, and wait for the Korean media to catch word about a joke in Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest movie…Something about North Korea and South Korea needing to get along. They will spin that one the wrong way, guaranteed.
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7:56 am on July 22nd, 2009 2
Here is the Google Video link to the full hour-long documentary.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7096673757347175289
Maybe GI Korea will embed it in the post?
This is the documentary that has an interview with a former concentration camp manager who talks about experiments done on prisoners.
The video is great overall. I was especially pleased by how it came about:
If I remember correctly, the program that produced it had been invited by the North Korean government to show the “real” story about the North. But, unlike a couple of other documentary makers who minded their minders and eventually produced a propaganda coup for the regime, this crew had its time in the North cut short, and when they left, they went to do investigative reporting on NK refugees and used their footage from inside the North + the refugee interviews to portray a sharp contrast of life inside the North.
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9:26 am on July 22nd, 2009 3
As far as Kim Suk-young goes, I’d most likely hit it like the fist of an angry god if no on was around to see it (and, of course, reckoning she doesn’t have sharp knees).
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9:30 am on July 22nd, 2009 4
I think what she means is people ought to take a step back and forget about what they think they know about North Korea and learn it from the people who know.
There is a lot of propaganda no matter where you go and America has plenty of it as well.
Propaganda prevents people from knowing what is really going on and leads to poor policy.
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10:55 am on July 22nd, 2009 5
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1:05 pm on July 22nd, 2009 6
#4 sounds nice. It is the kind of thinking drilled into our heads these days in Western education and society — but with NK it falls flat.
In fact, I’d say there is not too much of “learning from people who know” going on. There have been some good books and documentaries made since 2000, but are they widely known outside of the circle of people interested in Korea? Maybe but at best vaguely.
So, if the US (or any other nation for that matter) has been pumping out negative “propaganda” about North Korea, they have done a really shitty job of it.
In fact, I can think of two documentaries coming out of the West aimed at countering the handful of ones that looked at the concentration camps and refugee stories…
Basically —- It’s hard to claim “exaggeration” and “propaganda” in this case when it is so easy to “know” that North Korea operates city-sized concentration camps and keeps its entire population in the grips of fear and privation.
Trying to relativize NK isn’t good…
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July 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
No you misunderstood me completely.
It’s not about how good or bad North Korea is it’s about the details really.
For example:
1) “Kim Jong-il is crazy.”
He isn’t crazy. Evil, yes, but he’s not crazy. That guy is perfectly rational.
2) “Kim Jong-il wants to bring his country to war with South Korea.”
All indication is that he is interested in self preservation and also the continuation of the Kim dynasty in North Korea. North Korea had several chances or reasons to start a war but has never taken them other than the 1950 Korean War.
3) “North Korea supports terrorists.”
This would have been true decades ago, but not anymore.
Those are some examples I’m talking about.
In other words, it’s not about whether or not North Korea is good or bad, but the specifics involved in the whole matter.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
1)Can’t remember reading anywhere that Kim Jong Il was crazy. I have heard people say it in reference to his leadership (Man, that guys crazy to let his people starve to death)
2)The North Korean news agency constantly bombards the west with threats of war. What is the AP supposed to report? (Ha! Ha!, those silly ole North Koreans just said “you know what again.” Don’t worry, its just their way of saying kumbuya.)
3) Of course North Korea doesn’t support terrorists. They were only in Syria to build a hospital, not a nuclear facility.
Methinks you are making excuses for North Koreas actions. Sometimes the best propaganda is the truth.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
“That guy is perfectly rational.”
Rational? I guess that depends how you define the word.
Some high-ranking North Korean defectors have suggested that he may have been responsible for his younger brother’s mysterious drowning when he was a child. Accidental drowning or not, that can’t do any good to a person’s psyche.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
…but, yes, the US produces its fair share of propaganda.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:39 pm
1) I believe “madman” is about the same as a crazy man.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/05/26/2009-05-26_north_koreas_kim_jong_il_your_average_madman__armed_with_nuclear_weapons.html
That’s not the only one. You can find plenty of Kim Jong-il connected to the word “madman.”
2) Just because someone says they’re going to do something to you doesn’t necessarily mean they will. The North Koreans haven’t got the stomach (pardon the pun) to attack the South. They know if they do, they’re finished.
They’re issuing empty threats and the Press love to trumpet it up to get more people to read their stuff. It leads to people and perhaps even policy makers getting the wrong picture as to why North Korea issues threats all the time.
3) North Korea hasn’t launched a terrorist attack in the longest time. They do assist others who are closely linked with terrorists but they do not go about funding, training and conducting terrorism themselves. If you’d like to go that far, you can argue that the US is a supporter of terrorism due to its Irish American population having supplied and funded the IRA directly.
Rational as in he knows what he’s doing. It doesn’t mean he’s doing the right thing or he does what he believes is right. It just means that the chemical processes in his brain are working as it should, and if arrested at any point, an insanity plea would never work.
I did a study on serial killers (was a high school project for my psychology class)… about 10 years ago. But what surprised me the most was that these guys were often not crazy. They were rational, but they had this addiction to the game. They were also very smart, the average serial killer having a much higher IQ than the average Joe.
Kim Jong-il’s survival depends on his power. In fact the survival of his family does. If he gives it up, the enemies in his country will come after him. That’s why he will protect it at all costs. Launching a war against Korea means he’s only going to speed up the process of him either getting arrested or having some North Korean General Officer shoot him in the back at some point.
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10:38 am on July 23rd, 2009 7
BS-Buster,
Your follow up does not exactly mesh well with either the sentiment in the first or the Korean woman’s quoted thought. Maybe it is an issue of wording. Or, maybe it is an issue of having a different tract or focus when formulating the rebuttal, I don’t know…
Dismissing much of what is said about the North in the US or elsewhere as propaganda isn’t a very good way to demand more attention to details.
In fact, it does the opposite: it tells people that the groups/nations offering the statements should be ignored because they can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
As Gerry pointed out, that seems to be a rather harsh direction to shove people in due to quibbling over the examples you brought up.
And I return to my earlier key point: If anything —– judging by what experts know about North Korea (or anybody who has paid close attention —- and what gets widely reported (and not) in the US and West about those facts ————– the West is certainly NOT talking about the North as much as it SHOULD…
….and to call what they have been putting out “propaganda” only demands they become MORE silent on the VAST amount of human rights abuses that go on in North Korea as a matter of routine day-to-day, decade-to-decade.
That is why saying there is too much “propaganda” out there from the West concerning the “truth” about North Korea is so galling…
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July 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
It doesn’t discourage people and groups talking about North Korea from talking so much as it gives people a bit of an awareness as to be cautious as to which story they believe.
Every one of the most disgusting groups of people on earth do need to be looked at objectively and with some kind of “respect” to get the full picture. If you don’t, you’ll already have made up your mind and you’ll just believe the sensationalist BS surrounding that group or an issue that the group is involved with.
It doesn’t mean you have to respect them, it means when you want to understand them you have to forget about what you think you know and there’s a lot of folks who don’t know the first thing about Korea who’s already got some kind of opinion about North Korea. Usually the Neocons seem to have the lowest level of understanding and the biggest opinion “WE” should strike (though they don’t serve and never will serve in the military in any capacity).
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10:41 am on July 23rd, 2009 8
On madmen — a serial killer is cold and calculating and methodical and some have been very good at what they do. They are still crazy.
North Korea, as it functions, is lunacy.
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July 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Like I said, I had a hard time believing it the first time around. They are not crazy. Crazy people aren’t really in control of what they are doing. Their chemical workings in the brain and in their hormonal glands are actually damaged.
The chemistry of serial killers is normal.
A crazy guy is like the Chinese guy who took off the head of a Chinese female student at VA Tech in January.
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2:00 pm on August 5th, 2009 9
I’ve read Aquariums of Pyongyang. Now I’ll need to read this one.
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August 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Frank if you liked Aquauriums of Pyongyang this book is a good supplement to that one and provides even more information and context of the horror of the gulags in North Korea.
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12:19 am on November 15th, 2009 10
Hi My name is Aliou Niane,
As per my co-op interview with Jodi Kiely posted on One Free Korea’s website on May 28, 2009, it is stated that I am originally from the republic of Guinea not Zambia. Although I had 2 Zambian classmates.
At Wonsan University campus reserved to “African”, were students from Zambia, Tanzania, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea and Cambodgians who were moved to an undisclosed location.
We were granted free scholarship from the DPR Korean government in 1982 – 1987.
The most difficult thing any visitor to Pyongyang will find hard to believe is getting the truth out of North Korean guides or translators, because of the propaganda machine that obstructs any reality.
I spoke about that again in a radio interview with RFA journalist Ms. Soo Kyeung Lee. The interview with Korean language transcript is posted on Radio Free Asia’s website. http://adjix.com/niwp
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November 15th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Aliou thanks for visiting the site and the correction has been made.
I will have to check out the RFA transcript. Do you know if African nations are still being given scholarships to send students to North Korea?
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6:05 pm on November 15th, 2009 11
GI Korea,
No problem! Glad for the correction, I don’t want my fellow Zambians to think that I am taking away the fame from them if any fame living in DPRK’s Gulag
I heard (but could not confirm) that two sons of a west African deceased president were there for military training during the 90ties. I’m chasing that info down but I could not get names yet.
It looks like that my secondary job as become an investigative work to find Africans or anyone who lived or studied in North Korea. I even dedicated a page on my website http://www.niane.net in vain.
I am browsing social network sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter with names that sounds similar to the names of former students in the 80ties with no real luck.
However, yesterday, I found a Canadian with Slavic name who contacted me and told me that he was in Pyongyang in 2005. I sent him an email that he is yet to reply to.
I still want to cross check or confirm few things that occurred but have not clear recollection in my head, but need someone to help me out with pictures, memo paper, newspaper, or books.
By the way, I might be one of the rare students from North Korea being exposed. It was a toll to must student who remained hidden. We were about 80 students, no one could be found after 20 years. That is beyond any
I could not get back to DPR Korea despite my numerous requests for Visa in the late 80ties and early 90ties. I lost all my books in Korean and French language!
Cheers!
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