North Korea: Life in the Prison Camp - Open Doors

life inside the
labour camps
A Google earth satellite picture of a
prison camp in North Korea
This illustration drawn by a former
prisoner shows a prisoner using
food to catch a mouse
“When I was in the camp, there was
so much death all around me. When
people died, we stripped them from their
clothes and had to bring the corpses to
the mountains. Others were burned in
crematoria and their ashes were scattered
over the road. We had to walk that road
every day. I thought, ‘One day the other
prisoners will walk over me.’ We didn’t
mean anything to the guards.”
Hea-Woo*, a North Korean Christian
refugee who spent several years in a
prison camp
High in the mountains in the
North Korean province of South
Hamkyung is Camp No. 15: the
Yodok labour camp.
Its tall, barbed wire fences are
surrounded by minefields and other traps.
From the top of a seven-metre watchtower,
sentries keep guard. Escape is almost
impossible.
Kim Tae-Jin was put in Yodok because
he was a defector. He’d actually made it
to China, but was then recaptured, and
returned to North Korea. He spent eight
months in prison before being moved to the
vast Yodok labour camp. Prison had been
terrible. Yodok was far worse.
“In the camp I saw people dying of
hunger and sickness,” he says, “and I
watched executions. In Yodok, too, it
regularly happens that prisoners are beaten.
One prisoner was brutally beaten because he
planted some
maize slightly
“I was amazed the
Christians chose to
suffer and did not
betray their God”
differently
than what Kim
Il-Sung had
ordered.’
In Yodok,
starvation
is a way of
life. Given a
handful of
maize to eat three times a day, prisoners are
reduced to making a salty, almost inedible
soup from plants found in the mountains.
Sometimes Kim managed to catch and
eat some rats, mice, snakes or frogs. Even
frogspawn is highly sought after among the
prisoners in Yodok.
But, amazingly, Kim’s internment in
Yodok was a crucial step towards him finding
true freedom.
“One day, ‘by chance’ I met
a Christian inside the camp,” he
said. “I had never expected that
there would be any Christians in
Yodok. He was the leader of a
group of seven Christians. They
called themselves the Community
of Love, and occasionally met in
secret. I knew that it was forbidden
to be a Christian in the camp. Still
I was not afraid to talk to him.
Sometimes he told me stories from
the Bible, and I enjoyed that.”
The end was inevitable. The
Community of Love was betrayed.
“They were all horribly tortured,”
said Kim. “My friend and the
others were sent to another camp,
with an even stricter regime. You
do not get out of a camp like that
alive. After that, I did sometimes
try to find some Christians in
Yodok, but with no luck.”
Total control
Astonishingly, there are places
even worse than Yodok. The
Christians were taken into what
is known as a ‘total control zone’.
Most of the estimated 50,000 to
70,000 Christians in the North
Korean labour camps are held in
the total control zones.
There, Christians are kept in
isolation from other prisoners. Lee
Soon-Ok, who was imprisoned
in prison facility No. 1 Kaechon,
wrote about several hundred
Christians who were kept there.
“They received less food and
were punished harder than others.
Once or twice a month all the
6,000 prisoners needed to gather
on a Saturday or Sunday and one
or two Christians were publicly
asked to denounce their faith. If
not, they were beaten or stabbed
with a sharp bamboo stick. I was
amazed the Christians chose to
suffer and did not betray their God.
Often they just sang songs or said
‘Amen’. The guards became furious
and frequently killed Christians.”
What struck Lee most was that
the Christians were not allowed to
look up to the heavens. Those who
did were punished heavily. Many
were sent to the electrical torture
room. “I never saw a Christian
return from this room,” she wrote.
As far as we know, no
Christians have ever escaped from
these total control zones. All we
can do for them is pray that, one
day, things will change.
Waiting for change
Change, though, is a scarce
commodity in North Korea.
Apart from allowing women
to wear trousers in public and
experimenting with minor
agricultural reforms, the new ruler,
Kim Jong-Un, has done nothing to
indicate that the situation might
be easing. Just the opposite, in
fact. Open Doors sources suggest
that there has been an increase
in the number of North Korean
spies in China, searching for
Christian organisations that help
North Korean refugees. Since he
came to power, one South Korean
missionary was killed in China and
two others died in suspicious car
accidents.
Change, it is clear, is not
coming from the new leader. But
despite Kim Jong-Un, despite
Yodok and Kaechon, despite the
relentlessly dehumanising North
Korean regime, God is still at work.
*Name changed for security reasons
8 OPEN DOORS magazine January 2013 | www.opendoorsuk.org
9