Hyok Kang, who escaped from his oppressive homeland in 1998, provides a unique and harrowing insight into Kim Jong-il's dictatorship, which can build nuclear weapons - but not feed its people
By Hyok Kang
I was nine when I saw my first execution. The man had been condemned to death for stealing copper wire to sell in China, crossing the border under the cover of darkness. He was dragged to the foot of the mountain near a railway track. A train that happened to pass stopped to let passengers watch the scene.
Executions were a frequent occurrence in our small city, but the inhabitants never tired of them. Primary and secondary school pupils skipped classes to join the audience, which always consisted of hundreds, even thousands, of people. Posters went up in the city several days before. When the time came, the condemned man was displayed in the streets before being led to the place of execution, where he was made to sit on the ground, head bowed, so everyone could get a good look at him. He was dressed in a garment designed by army scientists for public executions, a greyish one-piece suit made of very thick, fleece-lined cotton. That way, when the bullets are fired, the blood doesn't spurt out but is absorbed by this fabric, which turns red. The body is thrown on a cart and then abandoned in the mountains for the dogs to eat.
I was born on April 20 1986 in a village not far from Onsong, a city of 300,000 inhabitants in the north-east of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, close to the Chinese border and Siberia. The city is divided into ku (districts) and ban (classifications) of 20 families. My parents lived in ban number three, in a semi-rural zone. The house was like dozens of others built on the same model and lined up in rows. There was a door, a single window, and a roof of curved orange tiles. The walls were white, but they had been painted blue to a height that I must have passed about the age of eight or nine. Each time the district officials came to check the hygiene of the houses, as they regularly did, they ordered us to change the colour of this lower part: to green, now blue, now light brown, but all the houses in our ban had to be the same colour; perhaps because dwellings, like everything else in North Korea, are the property of the people. That means that nothing belongs to anyone.
Inside were two rooms separated by a sliding door. The floors were covered with pale brown varnished floor-paper, and in the main room hung portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. That was compulsory. You had to call the father: "Dear respected comrade head of state Great Leader Kim Il-sung", or, more simply, "Comrade Great Leader". For his son, the formula was "Dear Leader Kim Jong-il", until Kim Il-sung's death in 1994; then we had to call him "Great Leader Kim Jong-il".
Our district stood at the foot of some mountains, which were riddled with coal mines. Everyone lived off the mines. The good side was that you didn't die of cold in winter, as you might have done elsewhere, because our fuel supplies were always guaranteed. My father was a miner. It was a dangerous place: there were hundreds of galleries underground, and collapses were frequent because the wooden struts propping them up were often stolen by people who sold them for food. The mine was plunged into mourning around once a month.
My grandparents' house, five rows away, was at least three times as big. The land was at least ten times as big as everyone else's, and they grew cucumbers, melons, cabbages, aubergines, courgettes, maize, beans, turnips.
The reason the authorities treated my grandparents so benevolently was simple. Previously they had lived in Japan, like many Koreans. When the Korean peninsula was a Japanese colony between 1910 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of Koreans had been deported to Japan as forced labourers. Later, thousands more Koreans, fleeing the Korean War, joined them. Then, in the late 1950s, following the example of tens of thousands of other pro-Communist Koreans, my family chose to return, and handed their goods over to the regime. Life was hard and everyone expressed their regrets about leaving Japan almost immediately. From a very young age, my father heard his parents complaining about the wretched conditions. "When we lived so well in Japan..." grandfather would say.
To thank "patriotic families" like ours Kim Il-Sung had, none the less granted them certain privileges. For my grandparents that came in the form of a fine house. The Great Leader also sent gifts from time to time: bottles of taepyeung sul, a very expensive rice spirit that most people can't afford, or sweets.
In our house, as in all the others, there was a loudspeaker that delivered broadcasts from the capital, Pyongyang. They told you the news, always devoted to the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, alternated with songs composed in his honour or to the glory of his father. We also had a radio that received these broadcasts, which was fixed by the authorities to that single station. A radio imported from abroad had to be taken to a security office where it was switched to the official station so that we wouldn't hear any other programmes.
We were fortunate as we also had a TV. As we were close to the Chinese border, we were able to pick up the Beijing channels. That was forbidden, so we did it at night, with the curtains drawn. Chinese television gave us an incredible view of the world. There were cars everywhere, rich people who ate all the time, lovely homes piled with household appliances. That said, we were suspicious of these pictures, because North Korean television also produced pseudo-documentaries that showed us as prosperous and happy, which we certainly weren't.
Motorised vehicles were rare. The richest travelled by bicycle, but most people went on foot. People often walk for 40 kilometres without grumbling. And they had many reasons for travelling, chief among them being the black market. You bought merchandise that was cheaper in one place to sell at a higher price elsewhere.
In North Korea, nursery school is followed by four years of primary and six years of secondary school. After that, everyone joins the army for 13 years. You leave at the age of 30, and it's only then that you can start thinking about girls and marriage.
In each classroom there hung a photograph of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, side by side. These pictures were very large, and placed just above the blackboard so that we could always see them, which gave us the impression that the rulers' eyes were on us at all times. Our uniforms were navy blue and cut in a military style. We put our fountain pens in our breast pockets, from which they had to show slightly.
School was from Monday to Saturday afternoon. After class, every day, we had to do agricultural work for two or three hours. On Sunday we laboured all day, with a picnic at lunchtime. There were hardly any adults around when we were working, and at times I got the impression that we children did most of the work in the fields.
As we hoed, sowed or harvested, we were subjected to a continuous flood of revolutionary songs, always very cheerful, broadcast by a propaganda lorry equipped with enormous loudspeakers. Although there are very few vehicles in Onsong, there were at least three propaganda lorries, which travelled the city and the surrounding villages. On top of that, in every district pylons fitted with loudspeakers broadcast party orders and martial music that woke us every morning. On holidays, the loudspeakers in the village broadcast uninterruptedly throughout the day.
Food was scarce, even before the famine. Every two weeks, the national system of food distribution allowed us a food ration made up of crushed maize and rice. There were often delays in supply. They had begun as early as 1985. But shortly before the death of Kim Il-Sung, in 1994, the system began to break down.
The landscape changed a lot as the famine increased from 1995. There was no more rice, no more potatoes, even in small quantities. We moved on to noodles made of maize flour, boiled them up in lots of water and served them in soup. Later, our village started eating weeds like wormwood and dandelion, which were boiled up into a form of soup. It was so bitter that we could barely keep it down. As the soup wasn't very nourishing, we ate it in large quantities and ended up with hugely distended stomachs.
At school, as time passed, there were fewer and fewer of us at our desks. The teachers sat shapelessly in their chairs, cane in hand, while we repeated by heart lessons we had already learned about the childhoods of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Yet work in the fields was still compulsory despite the fact that the remaining pupils and teachers were extremely weak. We actually went there not to work, but to glean anything we could find to keep from starving to death.
In the end, just before I escaped to China with my family in 1998, there were only eight or nine of us in class. The rest were too weak even to walk.
Party cadres said that floods had caused the famine, wreaking havoc through the whole country. In Onsong, this wasn't the case, but I thought that elsewhere nature must have been less kind. Since it was practically impossible to travel across the country, no one could verify this.
The authorities also told us that the United States and South Korea bore some responsibility for the shortages, because it was they who had started the Korean War. It was only many years later, once I had reached South Korea, that I discovered to my great confusion that the Korean War had been started not by the "Southern puppets" but by Kim Il-sung himself.
This Is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood by Hyok Kang, is available from Telegraph Books
Posted by: john frum ||
05/31/2009 08:55 ||
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#1
Like the copper thief executed in this article, at my last duty station, we actually had a fairly high ranking Sergeant less than 2 years from a full military 20 year retirement get busted for selling about 6 thousand dollars worth of copper wire spools off-post. He was court martialed and found guilty. His excuse he gave was that he didn't think anyone would mind because the wire was sitting around bound to oxidize. This laughable excuse actually got him enough traction that last we'd heard he'd gotten reduced in rank and had to pay back the money, but retained his retirement. Its unimaginable to many provincial Americans who have never traveled outside the US how much kinder and compassionate we are here than compared to 95% of the rest of the world. Some people have no concept how much better we have it.
#3
I can understand this, at least a little, they're desperately trying to reduce population, by preventing marrage and children before the age of 30, it doesn;t stop population growth, but it does slow it down, at least a little.
I've changed my mind, there's nothing we can do that won't be a relief on population, no nukeing them, no need.
Like wise no feeding them, there's already too many mouths to possibly feed, the only possible outcome that I ser is either mass starvation, or revolt from within, and revolt is pretty well quashed before it starts.
Starvation is all that's in store for them.
Pity.
Read Tuff voyaging if you can find it, seems the only way out.
Posted by: Gentleman Jim ||
05/31/2009 22:01 Comments ||
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#1
Europe has just enough traditional recognition in China to be able to speak about "face". This means there will be considerable, discreet seething about this remark.
#2
The Chinese armed the N.Koreans quite methodically and deliberately. There is no loss of face here, except perhaps by those targeted by the Chinese proxy state.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/31/2009 13:11 Comments ||
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#3
They either (a) are obviously provoking the west or (b) have no control over North Korea. In either case it 'appears' as if they have no control over North Korea, thus loss of face to the world.
The results will be war, or a militarized Japan, neither of which China wants, so I suspect they have lost control over North Korea.
#4
All of this assumes that North Korea has been under the "control" of China. In order to have "lost" something, one must have had it to begin with. So when did China gain "control" of North Korea? Was it sometime before the first nuclear test? Was the first test done under Chinese "control"?
China has never had "control" over North Korea and so has lost nothing. But what appears to be the case is China's loss of influence. North Korea now seems to be a "loose cannon" on the world stage that is a danger to everyone.
The article states that a unified Korea allies with America is not a favorable outcome for China. Well, there is a third alternative that is not mentioned. China could play a supportive role in that reunification and the result would be a Korea that is allied with both China and the US. And since China is the local partner, it would be natural for that alliance over time to favor China in an economic sense.
So it seems that the natural course would be for a joint Chinese/American response of regime change and re-unification of the Korean peninsula. Korea could then become a powerful economic asset to China, rather than the economic and social burden that it is today.
It just depends now on how long it takes the Chinese to realize this and have a Korean neighbor that is eternally grateful to China for help, or a Korea that will always see China as a potential enemy.
#5
Actually if the world believes North Korea is subservient to China it doesn't matter if they actually are or not, China loses face when North Korea acts up. The world isn't fair.
#6
The notion that just because a lot of people believe something to be true makes it true is the kind of mush headed "thinking" that we see so much these days. It makes about as much sense as public opinion polls of "global warming" or the autism link to MMR vaccinations. Public opinion doesn't reflect reality and what "people believe" makes little sense when 50% of the population, by definition, is below the median intelligence level. There are a lot of morons out there, I am not prepared to surrender my future to them.
Reality isn't run by marketing campaign and those who believe it is are a big part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
#7
Compare wid WORLD MILITARY FORUM > IIUC JAPANESE MEDIAS: IN JAPAN AND SINGAPORE, THE "NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR/MISSLE CRISIS" HAS NOW BECOME THE "CHINA THREAT THEORY". Any successful Missle, Underground Nuclear Tests by NOKOR = KIMMIE will ultimately be CHINA'S FAILURE AT ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE REGIONAL DENUCL + CHINA'S THREAT to its own Geopol Security.
* SAME >CHINA-NORTH KOREAN BORDER: UNPECTED DEPLOYMENT OF DF-21 STARTEGIC MISSLES BY PLA SECOND ARTILLERY CORPS TARGETS OKINAWA AND JAPAN [ US, Japanese MilBases]. CHINA's STRATEGIC MISSLE INVENTORY IS BELIEVED AT THIS TIME TO INCLUDE 55 LR MIRVed BALLISTIC MISSLES OF 1700-5000 SQM RANGE [ including DF21's], + 55 MIRV MISSLES OF MORE POWERFUL 7000-13000 SQM RANGE.
#8
OOOPSIES, AM Coffee hasn't entered the bloodstream yet:
* SAME > JAPANESE MEDIAS: IIUC JAPAN, USA EXPRESS MUTUAL SUPPORT IFF THE OTHER CHOSE TO UNILATER PREEMPTIVELY ATTACK NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR FACILITIES.
ALso, CONFUSING GOOGLE CHINGLISH TRANSLATION > IMO ARTIC indics that (1)SOKOR GOVT IS EITHER WARNING IT MAY DEV ITS OWN INDEPENDENT NUCLEAR ARSENAL TO COUNTER NORTH KOREA, as due to the SERIOUS CONTEMPORARY NUCLEAR SITUATION IN NORTH KOREA WROUGHT BY "CHINA'S ARMY + PEOPLE";
OR
(2) NORTH KOREA TRUE AIM IS TO COVERTLY MIL THREATEN ITS BOSS-STATE CHINA IN ORDER TO INTIMIDATE/BULLY CHINA INTO GIVING IT MORE ECON GOODY GOODIES = NATIONAL ECON ASSISTANCE [NEC, read FOOD].
** LASTLY, SAME > CHINA MUST FIND FAST-ATTACK INDIA'S "STRATEGIC CORRIDOR" . 1939 FALL OF BELGIUM, andor 1940 FALL OF FRANCE = Bypass of INDIA's "MAGINOT LINE", vee SIKKIM, BHUTAN. WW2 GERMAN BLITFRIEG = PLA 21st CENTURY STRATEGIC ATTACK AGZ INDIA. INDIA's ILLEGAL ANNEXATION AND MIL OCCUPATION OF CHIN ANCIENT SIKKIM [Tibetan]TERRITORY.
Call me when they lose their asses over the NorKs.
Somebody sure needs to....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/31/2009 23:33 Comments ||
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#10
"Face" is about what the world believes, not the actual truth. Whether China never had control over North Korea or whether North Korea has now slipped the leash, or even if things are going exactly as China intended, nonetheless China is engaged in the Six Party talks because they are supposed to have influence in Pyong Yang. This shows they do not, so why bother to include them in the talks? Face has been lost.
#11
It's not in China's interest that NK actually has WORKING nukes and missiles. Beijing would be in their range, too. And sooner or later this means Japan will have nukes.
It is (maybe) in China's interest to use NK to demonstrate how powerless the West is. And since the Chinese are not dumb I'm still not convinced whether NK as successfully orchestrated a nuclear test or whether this just was a big boom with some radioactive material strewn around.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/31/2009 23:59 Comments ||
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#3
"CLOSING GITMO" DEMAND > Again, Fed Courts are basically demanidng that the USA = USDOD, etc, BEGIN FORMAL LITIGATION OF ANY AND ALL DETAINEES HELD AT GITMO, aka ... aka ... "SOVEREIGN" US TERRITORY ON THE ISLAND OF COMMUNIST CUBA. Iff not, the USA may be placing itself of unilateral vilations of various UNO Treatises-Mandates on HUMAN RIGHTS, hence making the USofA also subject under auspice the International Criminal Court. Any prolonged, unwarranted delays in litigating, imprisoning or releasing, etc. these detainees via "due process" tolls the bell for their Lawyers to judicially argue that the detainees as a class ADVERSELY QUALIFY FOR DE FACTO US-SPECIFIC RESIDENCY IFF NOT FORMAL CITIZENSHIP + NATIONAL/PUBLIC BENEFITS.
THINK POTUS BAMMER + the ongoing controvers oer his "KENYAN" BIRTH CERTIFICATE, I.E. AN ALLEGED CONSTITUTIONALLY INELIGIBLE AMER or NON-AMER BEING DULY ELECTED POTUS.
Ditto for the GITMO BOYZ, I.e. US GOVT-AGENCIES WILFULLY PROTRACTIVELY AND WIDOUT DUE PROCESS HOLDING ADVERSELY QUALIFIED, NOW "LAWFUL" "US NATIONALS/CITIZENS", AKA "AMERICANS", AGZ THEIR WILL CONTRARY TO THE LAWS OF THE LAND???
Also weirdly and mysteriously, but of course only coincidnetally and PCorrectly, ALLUDES TO THE OTHER RB ARTIC THIS AM.
STEVE MARTIN AS INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU > D *** NG IT, MORIARITY, ARE YOU CRAZE-E-E - CAN'T YOU SEE SHE'S SEXY [Beyonce]!
To understand the current conflict in Swat, one has to look back to 1897.
"A year hath passed since Aurangzeb is encamped against us,
Disordered and perplexed in appearance, and wounded in the heart.
It is now year after year, that his nobles fall in battle;
Continued on Page 49
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that killing former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was the biggest mistake of the Tamil tigers which cost them the sympathy of India.
"To kill Rajiv Gandhi. They antagonised the whole sympathy of India. That was the biggest mistake I think they did in 30 years," Rajapaksa told NDTV. He said that when ethnic Tamil issue took root in Sri Lanka, India was sympathetic to their cause. "...And finally they killed an Indian leader who was loved by all," Rajapaksa said when asked about the biggest mistake committed by the LTTE.
The Sri Lankan President said that another mistake of the Tamil Tigers was to underestimate the powers of the state. "They didn't gauge the powers of this soft country," he said. Asked whether Indian government put pressure on him during the final stages of the fight against the Tigers, Rajapaksa replied in the negative. "No. I dont think so," he said when asked whether there was pressure from India. "Among friends there cannot be pressure or persuasion," Rajapaksa said when pressed further on the issue.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/31/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
So, killing the American economy might not go so well for obambi and the dems?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/31/2009 1:02 Comments ||
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#2
I sorta like how folks are using the past tense when referring to the LTTE.
Even as Pakistan plans for its second nuke strike, reports suggested that Jihads backed by the al-Qaeda are preparing to take over the Pak's nuclear arsenal.
Senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi has released a book called 'Sharpening blades against Pakistan', in which al-Libi has said that its only a matter of time before the Taliban takes full control of Pakistan. Libi adds that the Mujahideen should prepare countermeasures against US' plans to prevent the fall of Pakistan's 24-48 nuclear warheads to the US by seizing, dismantling and smuggling Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
Libi is confident the Mujahideen would not only control Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction, but would also gain control of copies of all the secret Pakistan-India agreements designed to prevent the targeting of nuclear facilities in any confrontation between the two countries. According to Libi preplanning for nuclear arsenal control is a lot better than planning for 30 years of Jihad.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
To understand the current conflict in Swat, one has to look back to 1897.
