Kim Yong seemed to have it all. He was a trusted lieutenant colonel in a North Korean police agency and worked for a company that exported fish to Japan. He had access to dollars, foreign goods and a chauffeur-driven car.
Then one day, North Korean authorities learned that Kim had been living for decades under an assumed name. He actually was the son of a man who, decades earlier, had been executed as a spy for the United States.
Kim was immediately sent to a detention facility in Pyongyang, where he was forced to kneel for long periods with a wooden bar placed between his knees and calves. 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.
After spending several years working in labour camps, Kim was able to escape by sneaking a ride aboard a coal train into China.
Kim’s account is part of a lengthy report being released on Wednesday by the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Based on satellite photography and testimony from escaped former prisoners, the report estimates that between 150 000 and 200 000 political prisoners are confined to these camps, known as kwan-li-so. The study contains more than 30 pages of satellite photographs of North Korea’s prison camp system.
”The injustice and cruelty these prisoners suffer is almost unimaginable,” said David Hawk, a veteran human rights expert and author of the report.
”Beyond a starvation diet, torture and inhumane living and working conditions, the regime preaches a form of collective punishment where three generations of family members are given life terms along with family members charged with political crimes.”
Kim was seven years old in 1957 when his father, along with his father’s brother, were executed on the spy charges. To spare the boy the collective guilt attributed to families of political wrongdoers, Kim’s mother placed him in an orphanage under a false name.
The report says Kim’s true parentage was discovered years later by accident after someone else turned up bearing his assumed name.
After two years working on the coal mine, he was transferred in 1996 to an adjacent camp, where he repaired coal trolleys.
There, to his surprise, the report said, he was reunited with his mother. He had no idea that she was confined there as well. He was given permission to live with her at the camp. The report says she encouraged him to escape after she was crippled by camp guards for gathering edible weeds outside the camp compound beyond the allotted time.
At the camp where Kim mined coal, some prisoners raised livestock, considered an occupation of choice as the prisoners had the opportunity to steal animal food and even pick through animal faeces for undigested grains, the report said.
Kim said daily meals were limited to 20-30 kernels of corn and watery cabbage soup. When he first arrived at the camp, he was shocked by the skinniness of the inmates. They looked to him like ”soot-covered stickmen.”
The report says that for two years, all that Kim saw was the inside of the mine shafts and the adjacent barracks — six rooms with 50 people per room sleeping on three tiers of wooden bunks.
According to Kim, many prisoners died of malnutrition and disease. He reported that one inmate was executed for collecting, without authorisation, ripe chestnuts that had fallen to the ground.
Another hunger-crazed prisoner, the report said, died after having his mouth-smashed by a faeces-covered stick for stealing a leather whip, soaking it in water and then eating the softened leather. – Sapa-AP