Surviving a real-life version of ‘1984’
IF ANYONE doubts that a world approximating George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 exists today, just ask one of the survivors of North Korea’s prison labour camps.
I did, last week, when I was in Seoul, capital of South Korean. I interviewed one of the most well known survivors of Yodok forced labour camp known as “Camp 15” – Kang Cheol Hwan. It is one of the most secretive places in the world.
Hwan is not an easy man to get hold of, given the demands on him as the director of the North Korea Strategy Centre. These days there is hardly a spare half-hour in his diary with the flare up in tensions on the peninsula. But for someone who has met numerous world leaders, Hwan is remarkably humble.
It is never easy to ask someone about an agonising period in their lives, but even more so about their experience in one of the most infamous prison camps in the world – hidden deep in the mountains. Camp 15 is one of the rare prison campss from which there is a remote possibility of eventual release. For those imprisoned in 95% of the country’s prisons, there is simply no release, they will die in the impenetrable mountains of the hermit kingdom.
The story that led to Hwan’s family being incarcerated is of interest. His grandfather had resided in South Korea during World War II and was taken by the Japanese occupying forces to Japan. After the war he had remained there and headed the Economic Association.
“My grandmother was deeply committed to her communist beliefs and insisted on taking the whole family back to what was then North Korea.”
It was a decision that later traumatised her. Back in Korea, Hwan’s grandfather was given a senior position in charge of the state’s department stores for rationing food, and his wife held a highly respected position as the deputy chair of a committee in the national assembly. It was none other than the wife of Kim Il-sung who chaired the committee.
Following the death of Kim, power was transferred to his son Kim Jong-il. “It was the creation of a dynasty that drew criticism from my grandfather who believed it was not in keeping with communist principles,” Hwan said.
Such dissenting views were not taken kindly, and party officials tried to smear his reputation by suggesting he was an agent of the Japanese police. Hwan’s grandfather was sent to one of the most brutal and infamous prison camps in the country, while the next two generations of his family were sent to Camp 15 for what ended up being 10 years.
Interestingly, Hwan’s mother was spared the torturous experience as she came from a family that was considered like royalty to the Kim regime, and she was forced to divorce Hwan’s father to avoid being imprisoned. It was then that Hwan, his uncle, grandmother and siblings were taken to Camp 15 which began a decade fraught with pain and tragedy.
“My earliest memory of the camp that first autumn as a 10-year-old, was seeing the young boys running around looking worse than beggars. They were all skin and bones, without shoes, and many kids older than myself were the same height, as malnourishment had stunted their growth.”
From day one, Hwan was subjected to hard labour, which at the age of 10 entailed pulling heavy wood from the forests to the camp – sometimes 3km or more. “If you didn’t perform the work expected, it was not the guards who would beat you. They would instruct members of your work group to exact violent punishment.”
No one dared defy the orders for fear of being sent to the prison within the camp, where detainees were held for six months in a cell 1.2m x 1.2m. “Most never survived the experience as they were forced to sit for extended periods in cold muddy water. If they survived, their flesh was literally rotten.
“The memory which most traumatised me during those years was the day I saw a man hanged. It was not only the hanging itself, but the fact that the guards forced prisoners to throw rocks at the body and left it hanging there for a week until the birds had pecked at it so much it was beyond recognition.”
For many North Koreans who managed to escape to the South, it is the recollection of executions and hangings that have had the most prolonged and devastating effects. Many need lifelong treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, and even with counselling never recover.
“One-third of the prisoners in Camp 15 never made it past three months due to malnourishment,” Hwan said. “The only food we were given to cook for ourselves was corn and salt. Other than that they had to find sources of protein in the forests which meant eating everything from snakes, to rats, worms and frogs.” Many resorted to eating weeds. “Of all my family members, the person who was most devastated and affected by the experience was my grandmother. She blamed herself continually as she had insisted that the family return to North Korea from Japan,” Hwan recalled.
But despite the morbid conditions, it did not make many of the prisoners turn against the regime, precisely because they never had any other to compare it with. This was how all governments treated their people, and one had to simply accept it and hope to survive.
When Hwan and his family were released, it took years for him to become aware that there was a very different world beyond the borders of North Korea. Much of the information he garnered came from banned South Korean radio stations, and provoked discussions among him and his close friends.
Five years following his release, he and a former prisoner hatched a plan to escape across the Yalu river into China. They succeeded in their dangerous journey in 1992. When Hwan finally reached South Korea, he documented his experiences in a riveting book called The Aquariums of Pyongyang, which has been translated into English. The title depicts the ever-seeing eyes which watch your every move in the country’s capital, just as a fish would be constantly stared at in an aquarium.
Hwan has dedicated his life to covertly disseminating information about the outside world to North Korea through USB sticks using a sophisticated underground network. He is high on the country’s most wanted list, and has to be guarded round the clock. It is dangerous work, but with the potential to change the perspectives of many North Koreans.
Hwan’s story is testament to the fact that a world similar to the one depicted in the novel 1984 does exist in our own time, and its horrors are even more grave. Using satellite imagery, Amnesty International claims the forced labour camps have expanded since the time of Hwan’s release, with new buildings having been erected. But with increasing numbers of defectors fleeing the country despite the tightened border security, the truth of this secret world is being laid bare.