Interviews with Kang Chol-hwan

The section of the prison camp where I was held was for people who had a chance of being released. Usually, the authorities would hold meetings discussing the possibility of release around twice a year.

For people from the upper class who are sent to prison camps, such as a high level official of the Workers’ Party, if they had done something wrong or something against the regime, they would be sent to a prison camp for about three to five years.

[The Workers’ Party of Korea is the communist party that has run North Korea since the state was established in 1948.]

After going through that much suffering, the authorities would have this person pledge strong loyalty to the regime once again and have this person released back to Pyongyang.

As for people like me, many times the families are detained in these prison camps for 10 or even up to 20 years. After we had spent 10 years there, there was an order by Kim Jong Il that prisoners who had relatives in Japan should be released.

[Kim Jong Il (1941 – 2011) succeeded his father Kim Il Sung and led North Korea from 1994 until his death in 2011.]

This is because in the mid-1980s, North Korea depended heavily on foreign currency remittances. Many Koreans living in Japan were sending their remittances to North Korea. These people were protesting the regime’s sending their relatives to prison camps.

This had a bad effect on public opinion and the amount of remittances coming from Koreans in Japan was declining. This is why Kim Jong Il ordered not only the release of my family, but of many other families.

I’m thinking if my family did not have that Japanese connection, we would probably never have been able to leave.

After I left the prison camp, I was sent to live in that very area of Yodok, in a village. I couldn’t go all the way back to Pyongyang. Later I moved to the city of Pyongsong, near Pyongyang city.

Pyongsong is a science city in North Korea, and my uncle was working at the National Science Research Institute there. He had an academic title somewhere between a Master’s degree and a PhD. I lived in this science city up to the point that I escaped and came to South Korea.

I was studying there and preparing to go to college.

My friends and I were very interested in foreign broadcasting, including the broadcasts coming from South Korea.

We were very much into outside information and I became involved in anti-government activities.

But I felt that I was identified and being watched by the authorities, which made me fear I could be sent back to the prison camp. That is why I decided to escape.

Kang Chol-Hwan escaped from North Korea in 1992 and has dedicated his life to bringing attention to the horrifying conditions in North Korea.

When Kang was 9 years old, the North Korean government accused his grandfather of treason and sent the family to one of its most notorious concentration camps, Yodok. Kang lived in the camp for 10 years, surviving on meager corn rations along with rats and earthworms. He and his family were forced to work in fields and mines and to witness public executions of their fellow prisoners.

Following his release from the camp, Kang bought an illegal radio receiver and began listening secretly to broadcasts from South Korea. These broadcasts allowed Kang to understand the differences between totalitarian societies, like North Korea, and free societies. Kang and a friend escaped North Korea by sneaking across the border to China and went from there to South Korea, where he lives today.

Kang described his experiences in his powerful memoir, “The Aquariums of Pyongyang.” President Bush welcomed Kang to the White House in 2005 .

North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a country of 23 million people in northeast Asia, ruled by Communist dictator Kim Jong-Un. His deceased predecessors—father, Kim Jong-Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-Sung – respectively retain the titles of “Eternal President” and “The Great Leader.”

The Korean War began in 1950, when Kim Il-Sung, backed by the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea. The conflict ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, and the border between the two Koreas remains tense and heavily militarized.

Kim Il-Sung employed harsh tactics to consolidate his power and propagated an extreme personality cult that has been continued by his successors. A blend of communist doctrine, state terror, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism has given North Korea its unique ideology. Despite some recent openings, North Korea remains largely isolated from the rest of the world.

With the end of Soviet communism and withdrawal of economic support, North Korea’s economy collapsed in the 1990s. A massive famine, aggravated by the regime’s indifference, killed as many as 2 million people between 1994 and 1998. While conditions have improved, even today, North Korea faces problems of malnutrition and insufficient access to food.

Tensions between North and South Korea remain high. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors and attacked a South Korean island, killing four civilians. North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons in contravention of several international agreements. The country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 in order to test ballistic missiles and eventually a nuclear device. Multilateral negotiations have so far failed to constrain North Korea’s arms buildup and nuclear program.

North Korea is among the world’s most repressive states, engaging in widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and denial of the rights of expression, association, assembly, and religion. The government pervasively regulates all aspects of the lives of its citizens, each of whom is categorized as “core,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” according to the history of his or her family’s relationship with the regime. Access to housing, employment, education, and other social and economic goods depend heavily on these security classifications. The government determines where each citizen will live, and travel within the country is strictly limited.

Emigration is prohibited. Refugees who have escaped to China have frequently been forcibly returned to North Korea where they are imprisoned, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and sometimes executed. The government operates a network of forced labor camps for an estimated 120,000 political prisoners. While persons convicted of ordinary crimes serve fixed sentences, those convicted of political crimes are confined indefinitely. Punishment is extended to three generations – the offender’s parents, siblings, and children are also incarcerated, as a way to pressure North Koreans to conform. Political offenders are often denied food, clothing, and medical care, and many die in prison.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report classifies North Korea as “not free” and as one of nine nations whose lack of political rights and civil liberties are considered the “worst of the worst.”