There was one other notion that imputed bad faith to the North Korean officials. That was the theory that those thirty-nine counties were off limits because authorities didn’t want food monitors to know that the populace was secretly growing enough food to produce a surplus that could have alleviated the shortage elsewhere in the country. I heard no support for that idea during my interviews, although I did hear that North Koreans farming leased land in the Russian Far East were producing more than their compatriot workers there needed and were shipping the extra supplies back to North Korea.
But I felt I was getting especially warm in my quest when one official told me: “My gut instinct is that because the region is so blighted they just don’t want people to see it.” The strong points of that theory include its acknowledgement of the importance of face in Korean culture.
***
Besides officials, I interviewed recent defectors. One was Lee Soon-ok, a distribution center chief who had been imprisoned on what she said were trumped-up criminal charges related to her work. I asked her what was in those thirty-nine counties. “Special military factories,” she replied. “North Pyongan, Chagang and Yanggang Provinces are special military production areas. Hamhung has a huge chemical research center. It does research both for the military and for the civilian economy. There’s a military research center in Chagang Province.”
Q. Anything else?
A. “That’s where all the regular prisons and political prison camps are. There’s a huge prison in Kyowaso, Yongdam, Kangwon Province. There’s a big political prison at Mount Chol, Tong-nim, North Pyongan Province. In fact [that white part of] North Pyongan is all prison camp area. The white part near Pyongyang is Kaechon. That’s where I was. In the far northeast, at Hoeryong and Kyongsong are two political prison camps. Hoeryong is No. 13 or 14 and Kyongsong is No. 11. I know that because my son was a prison guard. Looking at the map, probably the places are where they have camps. That’s the likely reason for keeping the monitors out.”
Q. Would the authorities fear simply that foreigners would see that there are prison camps? Or is the fear that they would see that people are starving in the camps?
A. “There’s no way they’ll let foreigners in those areas. It’s not just the food—people do starve—but when they see the conditions that are created, it’s worse than any starvation that can be imagined. If the outside world sees that, North Korea can’t survive. Prisoners get beaten with belts while working. When you enter prison you get a uniform. You’re supposed to use it for ten years. You don’t wash it. People’s skin has turned dark gray due to malnutrition. The natural oils from their skin build up in the uniforms and they become like synthetic leather, like part of your skin.”
Q. Do you think it’s possible the authorities now have decided to cut or eliminate the rations for prisoners, in effect kill them off?
A. “It’s possible. But each of these prison camps is given an annual quota to produce so many truckloads of clothing and so on. It takes about six months to adjust to the environment, but lots of prisoners die off first. Because of those quotas there are also certain regulations. You have to have a certain number of prisoners. If you lose some you have to get more prisoners. If those die you have to get more.”
Q. So it’s in the interest of the prison authorities to keep them alive? A. “Right.”
Choe Dong-chul, Lee’s son, had been a prison guard until 1986 when his mother’s troubles with the authorities ruined his career and got him sent away. “I don’t think the prison camps are the reason” for aid workers’ exclusion from the thirty-nine counties, he said. “The camps are already remote, isolated, not so easy to see. The white areas on the map in Chagang and North Pyongan Provinces are where there are military factories. The Yongbyon nuclear complex is in North Pyongan. In Hwadae, North Hamgyong, there are Nodong missile launchers, not mobile but from tunnels.
“There are prison camps in Dongshin County, Chagang Province, and in Chonma County, North Pyongan Province. Chongjin has another camp, and it also seems to be in the white area. Dongshin is a coal mine; Chonma, a gold mine; Chongjin, a factory making bikes and military equipment. The Yodok prison camp is in the white area of South Hamgyong Province. The Hoe-ryong, Hwasong and Kaechon camps are in the green area. Kaechon is where my mother was sent. [It makes garments, artificial flowers, doilies and furniture covers for export.] Yodok, Hwasong and Hoeryong mainly farm and raise livestock. Anyway the monitors can’t visit every corner of a county. A prison camp is very remote. They wouldn’t necessarily see it. Generally a prison camp is forty to sixty kilometers from any ordinary village. Ordinary people can’t go in. But camps could be part of the reason why some areas are off-limits.”
Q. Are the prison camps still producing goods? Do they receive food?
A. “I haven’t heard [from more recent defectors] about any change. There’s a quota. You have to meet the quota. You can die, but you have to produce. The farms at the camps are not for the inmates. If they steal anything, even a grain of rice, they’ll be shot. So the situation is all the same.”
Q. Why should we think these prison factories and mines are operating when so much ofthe rest ofthe manufacturing sector has closed down?
A. “We don’t know for sure. But the reason to operate these camps is that it’s the easiest way to produce. Prisoners can be controlled.”
I digressed, asking Choe Dong-cheol whether he thought outsiders should continue to provide food aid to North Korea. “Continue it, but monitor it and insist on better protection of human rights in North Korea,” he said. “We need more control of distribution. And it’s not necessary to send high-quality grain. Send corn instead of polished rice, and there will be more possibility that ordinary North Koreans will get it. Officials want polished white rice.”
Choe Seung-chan, an army paratroop sergeant turned factory supply official in Kaesong, told me: “I don’t think there are military bases up north. It’s a tough area for farming. It’s the fertile areas the monitors have been to—the white area is the bad land for growing. I guess for propaganda they wanted to show better places. The roads in general up there are not paved.”
Q. Are there underground military facilities up there?
A. “Yes. Missile factories. But they’re underground so foreigners wouldn’t be able to see them anyhow. I doubt that’s the reason.”
Nam Chung and his family had been exiled to Tongpo mining camp in On-song County North Hamgyong Province, in 1992. “From around April 1994 we got no rations at all,” he told me. “People sold everything they could, to buy food. We did get 500 grams a person on the three holidays. The situation varied from area to area from April 1994, as I knew because I worked for the railroad. Farming areas ofthe country got a little.”
Q. Did that situation apply to people in your area who were not being punished as well?
A. “They didn’t get rations either, although the people who watched us got paid every time they gave information to the authorities. It’s not that everybody was without rations. Officials, State Security and party people, the military and bureaucrats always got rations. Sometimes they got more than they needed and would sell the leftovers. The officials’ theme song is ‘These Days Are So Good; Don’t Let Them End.’ They make incredible profits. They buy things from the ration centers. If they pay eight cents, they sell for 150 won for a 2,000 percent profit.”
Q. How do you analyze the map?
A. “In Chagang Province there are lots of military factories. Workers there were given rations. The two areas in the north-western part of the map are well known for military factories. There are lots of political prison camps in the middle of the map. In the far northeast are marine and navy bases. There are lots of military bases in Kangwon Province. Near Pyongyang, that’s a political prison camp. As for the northeastern mountains that aren’t on the coast, I don’t know why they are shown in white. The south-western areas are military. Most camps are in the middle of the map in South Pyongan and S
outh Hamgyong Provinces. As for Yanggang Province, I don’t know. Chagang and North Pyongan Provinces have lots of military factories, mostly in tunnels carved underground. There are few people living above ground. People living in the villages eat more than other people. They usually don’t show outsiders those areas. Also, I heard that in South Hamgyong near Tanchon they mine uranium; I heard it’s for nuclear weapons. My friend’s father worked for a nuclear reactor plant. He used to go on a lot of trips to South Hamgyong.” (Nam was a recent enough defector to retain a South Korean police minder. The minder was present in the room during the interview, but had shown no interest in other parts of the interview. He paid close attention to this map talk.)
Q. Were any areas of the country written off treated unfairly during the food crisis?
A. “I don’t think so. Each area has its quotas, how much it has to give Pyongyang. A certain portion of the leftovers goes to Pyongyang, a certain portion to the military. They decide in the province how to distribute the rest.”
Q. Yanggang Province?
A. “Their basic staple is potatoes. They produce a lot of them. Farming areas are in most of the green shaded area. They carve out the mountains and make farmland.”
Nam Chung’s mother, Chang In-sook, had been a prominent architect-engineer in Pyongyang before the family’s exile. “Chagang Province is military factories,” she told me, “the ‘second economy’ as that sector is called. Yanggang Province is forest area with a very low population. That could be a reason—it may be the poorest area. Maybe Kangwon is white on the map because it’s mountainous and faces the DMZ.
“UN agencies came thorugh Sinuiju and Onsong. I saw people from the UN several times while I was in Onsong. I’m not sure about South Hamgyong Province. In North Pyongan there are the Yongbyon and Pakchon nuclear power plants.”
Q. What do you know about actual prison camps as opposed to areas of exile such as yours?
A. “Susong camp is just next to Chongjin. Yodok is in North Hamgyong, Tokson in South Hamgyong, Kaechon in South Pyongan. I’ve only heard of them. I’m not exactly sure where they are. They’re supposed to be in remote areas to prevent escape.”
Q. I heard Kim Jong-il issued a decree, “Don’t make internal enemies.”
A. “There are some policy changes, but still there are people sent to political prisons. I think Li Kwan-gu, who was in that stranded submarine in 1996 that directly affected North Korea’s world-wide reputation, could be sent to political prison camp because he talked too much before returning. And still there are public executions, to warn people.”
Q. So what are the actual changes?
A. “There are six major changes. First, from the 1990s, political prisoners’ camps received people more selectively. Second, there are more joint ventures with Russians and Chinese. Third, border control between China and North Korea was loosened. People used to need a passport, but now just a permit document is sufficient. Fourth, there are public relations changes, especially toward the media. In the past when people were interviewed they said, ‘We’re the best, we want for nothing.’ Now when the United Nations comes people say, ‘Thanks, please give us food again.’ This caused a controversy between State Security and the local party of Ongson. State Security wanted people to beg for further food aid but the local party in Ongson didn’t want them to. They produced a children’s show before the UN team came, so that when the team arrived they could see kids eating the donated food.
“Fifth, there are changes in the attitude of local people. People were compliant and always obeyed. They believed in the party and nation and talked of the Great Leader. Now they complain while watching TV and say, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it. What I can get is what I’ll believe.’ Sixth, government attitudes have changed. Smugglers who got caught used to be sent to prison camp but now get just ten days in a police station.”
Q. Did these all come about in the 1990s?
A. “Especially since 1994.”
Q. What happens to donated food?
A. “It’s a trickle-down situation. I can’t say none gets to ordinary people. Maybe 10 percent does. The rest goes to the military and to local officials.”
Q. The monitors are foreigners?
A. “The UN monitors go to the local yard and see workers get rice. But they take it to subdistribution centers, not directly to the people. The rakeoffs come at the sub-level distribution centers. [She smiled sardonically as she described the scam.] On the way to the people, the truck goes to a military camp, to officials, finally gets to the people. Now local people don’t trust announcements that rice has arrived. I had neighbors who worked for the local storage yard. I heard, ‘Rice is stored in the local yard.’ But there was no rice. Other people told me where it went.”
Although the responses varied, I was relieved to find that the interviews in Seoul did not bear out my worst-case theory. In particular, in the interviews with defectors, not a single person agreed with the notion that there was a conscious policy to starve political prisoners and the members of banished families more systematically than had been the case in pre-famine times. For example, Kang Chul-ho, a former inmate in prison camp No. 19, which had been situated in the map’s white area (see his story in chapter 16), figured that inmate deaths from malnutrition would have increased as the famine worsened. But “in a state-operated prison camp, I guess the authorities try to keep the prisoners eating barely enough to sustain life,” said Kang, who had defected in 1997.
“I heard the political prison camp I had been in was moved in 1993 and that site was made into a regular prison camp. The camp I was in, No. 19 Public Security prison camp, maximum security, used to mine magnesite clinker. The result wasn’t good enough so they sent inmates elsewhere and now use the site as a general prison.”
Q. Why do you think the thirty-nine counties have been kept off limits?
A. “Basically military reasons. In the north there’s a concentration of air force bases, military matériel factories, special forces. One reason it took me eight days to escape is that I had to be so careful. There were so many guards, I had to move only at night.
“Also maybe this area has only very poor people. It’s a mountainous area.”
The response of defectors I interviewed on this question was strong if anecdotal, speculative and thus inconclusive evidence against my worst-case theory of the regime. (At the same time it was evidence that defectors and refugees during much of the decade of the 1990s did not, generally speaking, devote themselves to badmouthing the North one-sidedly, as propaganda proxies for the South Korean intelligence service, which quite a few of their predecessors had been accused of doing.11)
Even the official in Seoul who suspected that the Northern regime was intentionally starving some groups to death acknowledged that prison camp inmates probably were not among the targeted groups—if only because of the prisoners’ value in continuing productive work. “At a camp, the guy in charge is in charge of everything including self-sufficiency” that official told me. “He must support the prisoners and the guards. They’ve got to keep most of them alive to do the farming.”
My effort to solve the mystery of the thirty-nine counties ended up providing additional evidence for a view of the North Korean government as being at least marginally less diabolical than might have been suggested by Kim Jong-il’s election district number and my worst imaginings. It fit into a picture that I had been developing since conducting some of my earlier defector interviews in the early and mid-1990s. In that picture, the DPRK not only proclaimed that its citizens had rights and entitlements; furthermore, the apparatus attempted some of the time to act as if that were definitely the case. And the citizens tended to believe, until something untoward happened to make them doubt it, that they possessed some or most of the rights they ?were guaranteed and that officials were at least somewhat sympathetic to their needs.
To put it another way in this view North Korea was a country that functioned to some extent under the
rule of law or regulations, and written procedures. The wheels of justice normally ground exceedingly slowly, and that afforded time for people to anticipate what was coming. They also had some opportunity for petition and appeal, and where that was the case it was not always a totally empty formality. What made the DPRK a highly repressive country, a nightmare by human-rights standards, was not so much aspects of the formal system itself as the number and severity of the lapses from the officially prescribed standards.
Consider, by-way of illustration, the story of Yoo Song-il, an army supply colonel turned university administrator who fell afoul of the authorities over a chance remark. The elfin Yoo when I met him looked—-with his big ears, big nose, high cheekbones and sleepy eyes—exactly like a cartoon hero of my teenage years, Alfred E. Neuman, the “What, me worry?” mascot of Mad magazine. His hair combed forward over his forehead in the style so many men were displaying in Seoul in the late 1990s, Neuman—I mean Yoo—-wore a brown, chalk-striped suit; brown, blue and white figured tie; white, starched shirt; gold, rectangular watch. His military career (-which figures in chapter 30) had taken place entirely along the DMZ in Kangwon Province’s Kimhwa County, one of the closed counties I was inquiring about.
“I was in the military for twenty-four years, until April 1992,” Yoo told me. “It was only after I became a civilian that I realized how unequal everything was and starting thinking about Kim Jong-il’s politics, which I decided were self-centered—not for the people.
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Page 83