Our dinner is not served in the house but at a nearby restaurant that is only a few minutes’ walk. It’s easy to see which dining room is for the North Koreans — rows of shoes are lined up outside the entrance. They eat sitting on the floor, and no meat is served with the kimchi, rice, and vegetables; they have to make do with dried fish. It’s also not a restaurant for the villagers — it’s for the guides and the chauffeurs. It’s made clear to us that there are no other restaurants or bars in the North Korean countryside. When we ask Mr. Song about it, he says that “people prefer to socialize at home.”
WE DISCOVER THAT members of the German Friendship Association are in the next room. In many European countries, small Friendship Associations of North Korea were established in the 1970s. Their members believe that everything about North Korea is fantastic, and nothing can change their minds. They aren’t allowed to spend time with their Korean brothers, however; instead, they have to endure dining in the tourist section, where we sit at tables in the Western manner, on chairs. We look at the Germans in the adjoining room. They are bearded and wear large sunglasses and knitted vests. They don’t look happy.
We don’t feel well and leave the rest of the group at the restaurant. Back at the house, food poisoning breaks out with full force. After a few hours, Mr. Song is informed. He is worried and calls a doctor.
The electricity goes off again, and the only source of light is the guide’s flashlight. The smell of dried fish is intolerable. A man wearing a cap and no shoes arrives, followed by two women; they give the impression that they’ve come straight from the fields. The barefoot doctor and his assistants put on white jackets. Then the doctor pulls a blood pressure monitor from his bag. After an examination and a conversation with the guide, the doctor ponders. He explains that our illness is a symptom of shock from coming into contact with Korean culture. One of the nurses takes out a giant syringe. The doctor offers us a shot against culture shock, but we politely decline.
LATER, WE HEAR about the rest of the night at the restaurant. Trond — the large, bald, jovial Norwegian — and the two young farmers from Värmland ordered beer after beer. Soon a squalling, singing gang gathered around Trond. Up until that point, the farmers hadn’t said much, but this broke the ice and they joined in the singing. Trond toasted loudly, clinking bottles of Taedong.
The bearded Germans in the next room didn’t appreciate the festivities; they wanted the Norwegian and his friends to take it down a notch. It’s not appropriate to act like this in North Korea; it’s disrespectful. But Trond paid no mind to the buzzkilling requests, until one of them stormed into the room and shouted in English that a spell in a camp would do them good.
It was remarkable that the German sympathizers acknowledged the prison camps — Friends don’t tend to broadcast their existence and not much is known about them. There are a few eyewitness accounts, but some of them have been manipulated for South Korean propaganda. It is said that they are in isolated areas, but a number of them are only tens of miles from South Korea, Russia, and China — countries where you can generally move about freely.
A U.S. mapping project called “North Korea Uncovered” has collected testimonies from defectors, investigative reporters, academic texts, accounts from visitors and specialists, and they’ve studied satellite images and photographs. There is evidence of six camps, totalling 200,000 interned people. According to the project there are two kinds of camps: camps for political prisoners and their families, where most are locked away for life, and camps for criminals who have been tried in court and are serving a sentence. Some camps have both political prisoners and regular criminals.
The German concentration camps weren’t unknown during the Second World War. Inspectors arrived and wrote reports about what was going on there. The scope of the extermination wasn’t known, but the existence of the camps was. The North Korean work camps, however, don’t officially exist according to North Korea. But thanks to Google Earth, anyone with access to the Internet can measure the distance on a satellite image between the village we’re staying in and what looks like a gigantic camp facility that is assumed to be “Camp No. 16” — Hwasong concentration camp, the largest in size if not in numbers. Ten thousand prisoners are said to be interned there, forced into slave labour in the underground tunnels where the nuclear testing was carried out. According to a guard who defected from another camp, Hwasong is the most feared of its kind. Those who are considered the most dangerous political opponents are kept there with their families.
On December 20, 2007, 120 prisoners fled from Camp No. 16, according to the Korean evening paper Daily NK. By February, twenty-one had been recaptured. None of the remaining escapees managed to get out of the country. We wonder if any of them are still alive, if they are hiding somewhere out there in the night listening to the same cicadas singing in concert.
MORE IS KNOWN about Kwan-li-so 15, the Yoduk concentration camp, than about Hwasong 16. People have managed to escape from Yoduk into neighbouring countries. It is mainly a camp for political prisoners, though calling these inmates “political prisoners” isn’t quite accurate. You can land in Yoduk for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, because you’ve seen too much and know too much. Knowing secrets about the ruling dynasty is especially dangerous. Kim Young-soon, a choreographer who managed to flee the camp and reach South Korea in 2003, gave an account of her experiences to the U.S. Congress in 2011. She had ended up in the Yoduk camp because she knew about Kim Jong-il’s relationship with her friend, the actress Song Hye-rim. In 1971 Song, who was North Korea’s biggest film star at the time, gave birth to Kim Jong-il’s first son, Kim Jong-nam. As long as Kim Il-sung was alive, this out-of-wedlock son was to be kept a secret at all costs. The mere knowledge of his existence led to internment; even the doctor who oversaw the baby’s birth was sent to Yoduk. Her whole family was forced to join her.
In her account, Kim Young-soon listed some of the reasons for a person to end up in Yoduk, cases that she learned of from her fellow inmates: breaking a statuette of Kim Jong-il, reproducing a portrait of Kim Il-sung without permission, putting a newspaper featuring Kim Il-sung’s picture on the floor, listening to South Korean radio, watching a South Korean film, saying something in casual conversation that could be interpreted as a criticism of the system. Those who report “disloyal citizens” — citizens who have sighed because there is nothing to buy in the store — are considered good and patriotic, and this informant culture depletes social life at the same rate that the political camps are being filled with inmates.
Most of the prisoners aren’t told why they have been interned. Allegations aren’t read aloud and no trials are held. Many have been sent there because someone in their family is considered untrustworthy. As a relative, you’re infected through the bloodline. The family debt isn’t arbitrary — it’s systematic, and it mirrors the social traditions across Korea, both North and South. One person’s actions either honour or dishonour both the immediate family and their relatives, all in accordance with Confucian tradition. In South Korea, petty crimes and corruption aren’t particularly dishonourable. The more serious crimes are against one’s own family, against the rules of the bloodline: filial piety, duty to your children, securing a family’s status, and the children’s suitable choice of spouse. In North Korea, the most serious crime one can commit is disloyalty to what you might call the “big family” — that is, the leaders, the party, the state apparatus, and, by extension, the nation. Three generations of a family will be sent to a work camp for disloyalty.
Kim Young-soon was arrested at the central railway station in Pyongyang and taken to a cell that was disguised as a regular apartment in a residential area. She was made to put on a hospital gown and left alone. A mother of four with a newborn, she fainted from the ordeal. She was cared for like a patient by two guards but was given no explanation as to why she was there; the guards didn’t ask or answer any questions. Eventually they informed
her that she had been sentenced according to a ruling by the party. It was suggested she’d said something that had leaked to South Korea, and shouldn’t she take responsibility for that?
Kim wasn’t told anything else. She had spent two months under constant supervision, dressed in the hospital gown. Along with her parents and her four children, she was sent to Yoduk. She was told that if she worked hard she would eventually be allowed to leave the camp. If she didn’t, she’d be there for the rest of her life.
In The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag (2001), Kang Chol-hwan recounts his experiences in the same camp, having arrived there as a nine-year-old with his family. They were freed after ten years, and in 1991 Kang managed to get to South Korea, where, with the help of French historian Pierre Rigoulot, he shared his experiences.
His family had chosen to go to North Korea after the Korean War. Kang’s grandmother and grandfather grew up on Jeju, a subtropical South Korean island that is now a vacation paradise. Like so many other Koreans, they had sought happiness in Japan during the interwar period. Korea was a Japanese colony that was strictly monitored, but before the Second World War Koreans were not used as slaves in Japan. In the best cases, as with Kang’s grandfather, they found success in Japan — some of them even grew wealthy. Kang’s grandfather had been made rich by a jewellery business in Kyoto and then found success in the rice trade. But Kang’s grandmother was a committed Communist.
During the Korean War, the Korean population in Japan was divided into two political camps: Chongryon, who stood with the Communists in the North, and Mindan, who who allied themselves with the American-supported government in the South. Shortly after the war, North Korea seemed like the better option. With massive Soviet support, manufacturing gained momentum and the people were fed. In the South, on the other hand, poverty was rampant. Furthermore, South Korea granted asylum to those who co-operated with the Japanese colonial power. For Koreans in exile, this was seen as deeply unpatriotic. In contrast, the North seemed like the true Korea, the nation where resistance against the colonizers was pure and uncorrupted.
Kang’s grandmother convinced her husband to take the boat to Pyongyang with the rest of their family. Kang’s grandfather took his Volvo on the boat, where they were given special treatment because of his wealth.
But North Korea wasn’t the paradise that the Chongryon organization had depicted. People monitored each other, all information was restricted, and dejection hung over Pyongyang. When they tried to take a road trip to explore the areas outside the city, they were immediately stopped by the military. Free travel in the country was unheard of.
It wasn’t many years until the Volvo was handed over as a gift to the party. First it was suggested, then it was recommended, and then came a final order. Still, these were happy years compared to their time in the camp. Kang’s grandparents held administrative posts within the bureaucracy and the union, and they lived in one of the better areas of Pyongyang.
Kang was born in 1967 and he had a rather happy, carefree childhood in the city. He liked to fight and to wind up the children of the Soviet diplomat living in the neighbourhood. Aquarium fish were his great passion.
One day, in 1977, Kang’s grandfather didn’t come home from work. He was never seen again. Shortly after, the police came to pick up the rest of the family, except Kang’s mother. They were taken to Yoduk. Apparently, their crime was Kang’s grandfather’s inability to fit in.
FOR TEN YEARS the family toiled in the camp. Prisoners worked in agriculture, mining, and industrial manufacturing. Kang’s uncle, a trained chemist, was allowed to work in a distillery. The children went to school. All the guards, teachers, and functionaries also lived in the area with their families.
Corporal punishment and humiliation are part of daily life and are dealt out both methodically and arbitrarily. Escape attempts have only one punishment: public execution. All the prisoners are forced to watch the hangings. Two to three thousand prisoners are made to chant “Death to the people’s enemies” in unison while throwing stones at the bodies. Kang wrote that many of the newly arrived shut their eyes during the stoning.
Sex and love between prisoners is almost as serious a crime as an escape attempt. Women who get pregnant are publicly humiliated by being forced to describe in detail how the act of love unfolded. (For Kang these situations served the dual purpose of a punishment and a kind of sex education.) Pregnant women are forced to have abortions. If that doesn’t work and the child is born anyway, the newborn is taken away from the mother at birth, never to be seen again. The children are considered carriers of their parents’ disloyalty. The bloodline has to be severed.
One form of punishment for men is the so-called “sweat box,” a windowless isolation cell in which the occupant can barely move. Food rations are reduced, and so the prisoner is forced to eat insects in order to survive. After enduring this treatment, the captive crawls out on all fours looking like a living skeleton. That is, Kang recounts, if he survives his time in the box.
WHEN THE GERMAN Friendship Association filed out of the restaurant, each and every one of them was glowing with ire — dark-eyed, teeth grinding, mumbling curses as they disappeared into the darkness. The Hwasong concentration camp is forty-five kilometres away. If the Germans had their way, it might have been a short ride for Trond and the Värmlanders.
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* In November 2012, the hotel was taken over by the Germany luxury hotel chain Kempinski, which announced that in 2013 the renovations would be completed and the hotel would be ready to be inaugurated. But in March 2013, Kempinski’s now-retired president and CEO, Reto Wittwer, stated that the firm had pulled out of the project.
DAY 3
Strong Water
MADAME CHOI’S TIME in captivity was luxurious compared to life in a work camp. In the villa there were no locks on the doors, but she felt as if she were always being watched. She had long been accustomed to a hectic working life; now she didn’t have much to do. The days stretched out aimlessly. During the first six months, she could only manage to eat one bowl of jook (rice porridge) each day.
Kim Jong-il’s Friday-night movie screenings and the parties that followed were the only activities that interrupted her ennui. At these events, a selection of films from the leader’s private archives was shown to a circle of dignitaries. As soon as the guests arrived, they had to partake in a ritual: knocking back a large glass of cognac. Madame had to wear a joseonot, the traditional dress, at these parties. That was all. She simply had to be there, appearing as if she’d stepped right out of the silver screen.
Each screening was followed by games of backgammon and mah-jong, punctuated by more large snifters of cognac, which were downed while standing. Kim Jong-il thought the true nature of proselytizers emerged when they were drunk. Then there was dancing to an all-female band that played jazz and disco. In the wee hours of the morning, Kim Jong-il took the stage to conduct this lady orchestra.
ON MAY 10, Madame Choi was invited to Kim Jong-il’s firstborn son’s birthday. This was the child born out of wedlock who had earned the obstetrician and the lover’s friend places in the work camp. He was turning seven.
The leader had six televisions in his office. One of them was tuned to a South Korean channel. At the birthday dinner, Madame met Kim Jong-il’s wife, who differed from other women she had seen in North Korea. The wife had permed hair and dressed with a Western sensibility. Apparently, she’d accepted Kim Jong-il’s illegitimate son.
Kim Jong-il talked about film throughout the meal. He harped on about how “the evil North Korean leaders” were portrayed in South Korean TV series. After dinner, Madame’s domestic was beside herself about the invitation to the birthday party. It was unreal, an unbelievable gesture, the domestic said.
In September, after having been at the villa for half a year, Madame was woken in the middle of the night. She shook wit
h fear, thinking that she was going to be executed. But then it was explained to her that she was simply being moved to another house, because the villa was needed for a number of foreign guests who had arrived to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of the nation. They packed up quickly, drove through the night, and finally arrived at a more modest house in the country.
After a few weeks, she was asked to write her life story. Only important people were asked to write their memoirs, it was explained, so she should consider the task an honour. After hesitating, she agreed and decided to be honest. When her account was read, it was cause for concern: her mind was thoroughly corrupted by imperialist dogma.
That was the end of the invitations to parties with Pyongyang’s elite. Madame’s mind needed to be cleansed with lessons on revolutionary history and Juche, the North Korean ideology. For five hours a day, three days a week, she studied Juche. On Fridays there was a test.
THE YEARS PASSED and Choi Eun-hee filled her days with gardening. She sculpted small clay cranes, which she placed in the garden with their beaks pointing south. In her autobiography Gobaek, she recounts how she was forced to write to Kim Il-sung, sending her congratulations on his birthday. She was shown how the letter should begin, how a decent address should look:
In the history of humanity, you most superior, radiant, honourable, creator of the eternal, indestructible Juche Thought. Great Leader, powerful ideological theorist who led two victorious revolutionary wars against Japan and America, who gloriously established independence and achieved racial honour. Initiator, eternally victorious, brilliant Iron-Willed Commander, in revolution and in enforcement, founder of an international example, liberator from colonialism and liberator in the history of the world, you eternally brilliant, invaluable, and highest, who laid out our ingenious revolutionary strategies, Beloved Leader, comrade Kim Il-sung . . .
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