The Hidden Gulag - US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

The Hidden Gulag Second EditionWITNESS AND TESTIMONY:Shin Dong-hyuk, Kwan-li-so No. 14 (1982–2005)Shin Dong-hyuk spent 23 years at Camp 14,Kaechon, located on the north side of theTaedong River in South Pyongan provinceunder very unusual circumstances. He was bornthere in 1982 to two model prisoners whom theprison guards had coupled together. Accordingto Shin, some sections of Camp 14 had anunusual reward system for young prisoners, themost exemplary of whom would be allowed tohave sex three or four times a year with anotherprisoner chosen for them by the prison staff. Theterm “you’re married” was used, though themated parents were not allowed to live togetherwith the children, like Shin Dong-hyuk. Theyoung prisoners welcomed these unions forobvious reasons, especially since women whobecame pregnant outside of these guard-chosen“marriages” were taken away and never returnedto their previous work or residence units. Shinalso believes that an additional motive for thearranged matings was a labor shortage in theprison camp owing to high prisoner death ratesfrom malnutrition and work accidents.Shin’s father’s family, his grandmother, grandfather,his father and two of his uncles were depositedin Camp 14 in 1965 following a pre-dawn raidduring which the police descended on the householdand just took the family and their furnitureaway by truck. Shin later learned that this wasbecause two of his father’s brothers had defectedto South Korea. Shin lived with his mother untilage 12, during which time he rarely saw his fatherwho was held in another part of the camp. Andhe saw little of his mother, an agricultural laborerwho worked in the fields from early morning untilthe nighttime work criticism session. Shin hadan older brother, eight years his senior, who hadalready been transferred to a “singles barrack” bythe time Shin reached primary school age. Shinmet his brother only three or four times that hecan remember. Shin had so little family life that,regrettably, he notes, he developed no bond ofaffection for his parents or brother.The section of Camp 14 where Shin grew up hadsix areas or “villages,” five for families and one“village” for singles, which could not be visitedby people from the family villages. His prisonhome, called “main village,” had forty houseswith one hundred sixty households, as each housecontained four households of women and youngchildren. For the children of these Camp 14couplings, there was an elementary school wherethe children learned reading and writing, additionand subtraction, but only that. Multiplication ordivision are not taught, he relates, having learnedof these basic mathematical tools after he escapedfrom North Korea. At school, there were two orthree classes per grade with about thirty pupils perclass up through fifth grade, making for roughlyfour hundred children in all.Camp life was harsh. Once, when he was nine,Bo-wi-bu police officers assigned as teachers,searched the children and found a small amountof wheat in the pocket of a girl. She was made tokneel and was beaten on the head for almost anhour until she fainted. Her classmates carried herhome, but were told the next day that the girl died49