Memoirs of Former Prisoners
On March 29, 2008, a shocking memoir was published.
“Born in a Prison, I Don't Know What Love Is" (Japanese translation)
(Translated by YangSoo Yi (李洋秀), published by KK Best Sellers)
A shocking account of Mr. Dong-hyok Shin who was born in a North Korean prison camp and fled there at the age of 23.
"In the prison camps, they are taken to various workplaces from the age when they are just beginning to write, and no matter how old they are, they are force to work until they are about to die.
Even right at this moment, there are people who are suffering from the labor, exhausted, collapsing, whipped and throwing up blood in the camps. They must be given the right to live like humans as the same humans as we are. Children must be raised as children and adults must be treated as adults. In the prison camps, however, all prisoners are given the same amount of work regardless of whether or not they are healthy and whether they are children or elderly. They are accused of not being able to complete their duties and whipped by the guards. The elderly are whipped for not being able to work and children are whipped while leaning how to work properly. This is a common reality in the camps.
Although my body has escaped from the prisons, my heart is still with the prisoners there, and it will always stay with them. Until they are treated as humans and live like humans do."
Mr. Dong-hyok Shin was 24 years old when he wrote this account. Now, he is 25 years old.
School Life in the Prison Camps
There are schools even in the prison camps under absolute control. There were one People’s School (primary school) and one senior middle school (secondary school) in the 14th camp. The People’s School had 30 to 40 children in each class and three to four classes in each grade. All grades from the first to fifth had 500 to 600 children in total.
Combining all students in the People’s School and senior middle school, a total of more than 1000 students were in the prison camp. While some people estimate that up to 100,000 people may be imprisoned in the camp based on the number of students, I think there are about 50,000 prisoners in all.
< Teachers in the Prison Camp Schools >
People’s Schools have one teacher assigned to each class; however, senior middle schools have only one teacher for each grade. In senior middle schools, therefore, there are only six teachers in charge even when all grades are combined.
Because the students in senior middle schools go out to work instead of attending classes, there is not a need for a large number of teachers. Only one teacher responsible for each grade is, in fact, enough. The role of middle school teachers is not to teach classes but to accompany the students to the workplace and supervise their work.
In addition to the teachers in charge of classes, each school has a principal who administers the school. There is no one else in the school staff.
The principal occasionally assembles the students and preaches.
“Hey! You must work really hard. You must pay for the crimes that your parents committed. So, work really hard!”
The class teachers are officers of the National Security Agency (NSA), who teach classes in their (police) uniforms with a pistol on their hip just like any other NSA officers. The class teachers were wearing NSA uniforms, and they were all males. The teachers would not tell us their names.
We would go to NSA’s staff village in the winter and be forced to clean up outdoor toilets We were taken there every winter while I was in school. There was a time when all students from the school were taken to the NSA village to clean up the outdoor toilets.
We would go to the toilet in every house and carry human feces on our backs to fields in farms. We would break up frozen feces with pickaxes and shovels, remove it with bare hands and carry it on a pole. The frozen feces would melt while we carry it and slowly run down our clothes.
The students are not allowed to ask questions to the teacher during classes.
< Subjects Taught and Homework Assigned in People’s Schools >
Although the class hours are longer in prison camp schools than in general schools, we are not at all taught about Kim Il Sung, the Party’s history of revolution and the geography, science, music and art of North Korea.
Only the teachers have textbooks, and the students take only notebooks and pencils without textbooks to school. There is not one book that we could read in the camps.
In math classes, we leaned only addition and subtraction and we were not taught multiplication and division. Because of this, I never learned the multiplication table and even now when I need to multiply, I repeat addition the number of times corresponding to the multiplier to get the solution.
We would not play ball in physical education classes, but I only run races and hang from a horizontal bar.
So the subjects taught in prison camp schools include only the Korean language, mathematics and physical education.
Because we learn nothing about countries other than our own, I never heard about China or the U.S. in the camps. (P. 84–98 Born in a Prison, I Don’t Know What Love Is (Japanese) written by Dong-hyok Shin and translated into Japanese by YangSoo Yi)
Harsh Slave Labor and the Victims
< Coal Mining >
It was my first year in the middle school. In mid-June of 1993, our class went to work in a coal mine. I was 10 or 11 years old at the time.
We had go directly into the mine. We walked down the incline (a sloping tunnel) to the fifth adit. The depth was 2,500 meters.
Adits are horizontal passages placed every 500 meters on the incline where we dig coal. They are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from the top.
We had to go into the end of the fifth adit along a horizontal tunnel. The depth of the end point was about eight kilometers, and I began to have heartburn and feel short of breath. The fire in the lantern that I was holding went out many times because the air was thin. I could no longer breathe normally when we reached the end point.
Our duty was to load the coal dug out by adults onto a tram (a two-ton vehicle for transporting coal) and push it to the fifth adit station where loaded trams were gathered and pulled up to the outside.
A group of six children pushed each tram, and my group consisted of three girls and three boys. When a tram was fully loaded with coal, we would start pushing it. This was harsh and dangerous work even for adults, but we, the children, had to do it.
It was very hard to push the tram even with six of us together, and it would be disastrous if a tram derailed. Yet, we pushed the tram with all our might. When our group moved about four kilometers from the end point, the group that was following behind us encountered a problem. Their tram came off the rails.
The weight of the tram was two tons. I could never express in words how distressed we felt when that happened. We put our heads together and discussed how we could return the tram onto the rails. We concluded that we had no choice but to ask the grown-ups working at the end of the tunnel to help us, and I went back the end point.
“Over there, the tram came off the rails. Can you help us a bit?”
When I reached the end of the tunnel, I told the supervisor who was my uncle.
“Hey, kids, what the heck are you doing? Are you willing to work or not?”
He yelled and gave me a blow on the head.
I told him that it was not my group’s tram, but he would not stop scolding me.
Two of the tram’s wheels had derailed, and the leader, my uncle, told us to go to the other side of the tram that was still on the rail and hang from there. We hung from the tram as he told us.
Then, my uncle and other grown-ups brought two levers, inserted them into the derailed side and lifted the tram with all their might. They managed to place the wheels back on the rail.
We shouted for joy.
It was fortunate that the problem impossible for children to overcome was successfully managed with the help of grown-ups. If the tram could not have been recovered, we would not have been able to avoid the corporal punishment given by our teacher.
It took us almost two hours to recover the tram. We carefully pushed the trams again and went out to the station. How relieved we were at that moment under a light shining on us.
The little children aged ten wore an adult-size miner’s hat, holding a lit lantern in one hand, and their faces were covered with coal dust and their entire bodies were black except the white of their eyes and teeth looking white.
Our duty was not finished until each group pushed the trams four times. But how could such small children alone push a tram a distance of eight kilometers one way and make four round trips in a day?
We were not allowed to go out of the coal mine until we completed our assignments. We dragged our feet and retuned to the end of the tunnel. We had to push one more tram before we were allowed to have lunch.
It took us another three hours until we finally pushed the second tram out to the station. (P. 128 – 131 of the same book)