The internship I’m at has it’s ups and downs. Downs: disorganized. Ups: amazing opportunities.
We arrived this morning to find out a North Korean defector was coming to talk to us about her experience. It’s very rare for defectors from the North to talk to groups about their situation because a) there’s no trust and b) if their name gets out, there could be repercussions (from the North). By repercussions, I mean, if the NK government finds out that someone has defected, their families will be put into prison camps and possibly (likely) murdered. So… yeah.
Her story was very emotional and left majority of us in the room in tears. I know quite a bit about the situation in the North but sometimes you aren’t prepared for what you may hear. To make sure I don’t write anything that may identify this woman, I will simply write about the situation in prison camps in North Korea. This woman has only been in South Korea for not even one year yet and she spent almost 30 years in a prison camp only to find out the reason for her family’s imprisonment after bribing government officials and being released (her grandfather had defected to the South in 1970).
She told stories of extreme starvation; families forced to live on rations for one person. People are forced to go to the mountains and forage for mountain vegetables which are not plentiful enough to fill bellies and do not have an enjoyable taste. You receive more rations if you do mining work so even though it’s dangerous men and women alike choose mining over farming. Children are educated for 4 years for elementary school and 5-6 years for middle school. Education is focused on the heroes of the Kim family (Kim IlSung, Kim JongIl and next will be Kim JongIl’s son, Kim JongEun, who will take his place when he dies), basic math and fine arts.
The starvation is so bad that 10 year olds are the size of 5 year olds in South Korea (height-wise) except they are also skeletal. Children, like adults, are forced to work and can also be arrested in they refuse. One story she told us was how prison guards will stop children on the street and tell them to open their mouths. The guards will then spit in the child’s mouth (not just spit, phlegm) and tell the child to swallow it. She said it happened to her several times and you can smell the phlegm for days.
Perhaps the saddest part of her story was her describing how her daughter would cook dinner for the family. She’d serve up the bowls so dinner was ready when everyone returned from work. One day, by mistake, she took her daughter’s bowl and only then realized that her daughter had been placing a small bowl upside down in the bottom of her bowl and putting food on top of it, creating the illusion that she was eating the same amount as everyone else when really she was giving extra food to everyone else. Her daughter later died in a flood and she said her biggest regret was that her daughter never was able to experience a full, satiated stomach before she died.
I think it’s hard to wrap your head around how dire the situation really is in North Korea. She said people have become so desperate that they have killed their own children and eaten their flesh. She personally knew two people who did this. Because the stories are so gruesome I will leave it out. Suffice to say it takes an extreme amount of desperation to murder and eat the flesh of another human being, especially when it’s your own child.
As is typical for most defectors, they escape into China and through hiring “brokers”, they will go down into Laos and into Thailand where they are able to get to the South Korean embassy. If caught in China, they may have hands, feet or fingers chopped off and they will be forcibly repatriated into North Korea, where they will undoubtedly be sent to a prison camp and possibly put to death (there are also many public executions and prisoners are forced to watch). If they are caught in Laos, they will be taken to the North Korean embassy. Human trafficking is also a problem among North Korean women who escape into China (remember: it’s impossible to escape directly to the South because of the DMZ). She recalled two women in her group who were in their 20s who were sold, either into forced prostitution or slavery. Women are also forced to marry Chinese men where they typically experience a lot of domestic abuse.
I wish I could share more of the story she shared with us. Instead I’m only able to speak mostly in generalizations about the typical on-goings in the prison camps there. If you want to know more about defection there is a documentary called Crossing that has been uploaded to youtube (I believe it’s broken into 10 parts).
