Open Your Eyes to the 'Hermit Kingdom' of North Korea
Written: Jul 06 '06 (Updated Oct 31 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: a likeable, resourceful protagonist; a true story told with clarity and immediacy
Cons: a harrowing read; typos and syntax problems, especially in first half of book
The Bottom Line: A gripping true story that reveals the real state of affairs in the secretive 'Hermit Kingdom' of North Korea; a must-read for anyone interested in human right issues.
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| jc_hall's Full Review: Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korea... |
A term has been coined to describe the regime in North Korea-—ubuesque. The word means grotesque and bloody. If The Aquariums of Pyongyang is anything to go by, the word is well-coined. What is more grotesque and bloody than making concentration camp detainees (some as young as 15) watch and participate in frequent executions? Or young children being brutalized by ‘teachers’ in what passes for ‘school’ at the camp. Or children dying in accidental cave-ins as they’re forced to work without protective gear in underground mines. Or their counterparts forced to work on while their friends’ dead bodies lie mere yards away.
And when you realize that these children are sent to the camps with their parents and other family members, none of whom had committed any real crime, your outrage is hard to swallow. Most of these children do not survive—malnutrition, brutality and exposure to the extreme winters take their toll. Those who miraculously survive become stunted little savages, quick to steal a morsel of food from the guards to supplement their near-starvation rations or trap a rat to add some protein to their diet.
Kang Chol-Hwan was one of these children once, sent to the camp with his family when he was only nine years old. His grandparents had been Korean expats living a good life in Japan, but his grandmother was a communist who wanted to return to the motherland. Taking their children (including Kang Chol-Hwan’s father) with them, they went back to live in North Korea in a period when the communist regime was actively luring their far-flung brethren back to the motherland.
Too soon, the family realized that they had been had. Reports of a thriving economy were manufactured and calculated to deceive expats into returning. There were food shortages, incompetent bureaucracy, and most worrying of all, near constant government surveillance. Soon after Kang Chol-Hwan’s grandfather disappeared from work without any explanation, the rest of the family was trucked off to concentration camp, denounced for being related to a man who had committed a ‘crime of high treason’.
The conditions in the Yodok camp were atrocious. Thousands of people lived in filthy surroundings and constant terror, undertaking forced labour on near-starvation rations, brutalized by sadistic guards who relied on a system of snitches to relay incriminating information about fellow detainees. No-one knew their terms of sentence, and every little infraction could result in horrific punishments and add years to their sentence.
Despite all this, Kang Chol-Hwan’s family pledged to stick together and help each other out. Kang, like the other children in camp, were allowed to go to school in the morning, but the teachers, especially the ones nicknamed ‘Wild Boar’ and ‘Old Fox’ were brutal monsters who beat and kicked the kids on any pretext. Not only did they learn nothing at school, children could be killed if they spoke out of turn, like one poor child who was thrown into a septic tank by a teacher and died soon after.
Diseases thrived on a weakened population, and pellagra, in particular, was a big problem. Kang-Chol-Hwan, sick from a diet of corn, had to catch insects and bugs in order to stay alive. Rats were a valuable source of protein, and soon he was adept at making traps and had the whole family eating rat meat despite their initial reluctance.
Hard labour awaited children after school, like carrying logs for miles or working in a gold mine, or searching for herbs up in the mountain, or even burying dead detainees, though the latter was considered a good job, as they could strip the corpse of its clothes and replace their own filthy and tattered ones which prove no barrier against the harsh winters.
Classed as redeemables (as opposed to the irredeemables who had no chance of ever being released), Kang Chol-Hwan’s family was finally released after 10 years in Yodok. Their re-integration into life outside was helped by relatives, some still living in Japan. But life in the camp had marked Kang Chol-Hwan, and ultimately he decides to escape from North Korea. The events that lead up to this decision and the escape itself make for a riveting read. But as Kang Chol-Hwan reminds us, he had it easy. He escaped in 1992, with money to buy his way out. Since then, famine-ravaged North Korea has seen tens upon thousands of citizens trying to escape with nothing, including wandering orphans and women who can be sold across the Chinese border for a meagre price.
For those who would debate politics with him, Kang Chol-Hwan has a simple retort. Go to North Korea. Live there and you will understand soon enough. The regime bombards the people it claims to protect with propaganda eulogizing their great leader, the beaming Kim Jong-Il, son of Kim Il-Sung. They demand international aid and get it, while their people are imprisoned on any pretext and forced to work with no pay. It makes for a great labour force. And when they’re too weak to work, they are released on the great leader’s birthday, while a new lot of innocents, strong and able to work faster and better, are arrested and sent to replace them in the camps.
The title refers to Kang Chol-Hwan’s great love for his fish which he tried to take with him to Yodok. They did not survive, but he did, and was able to give a first-person account of what goes on in one of many labour camps in North Korea. Told to Pierre Rigoulot (who works for the International Organization for Human Rights) through an interpreter, and then translated into English by Yair Reiner, The Aquariums of Pyongyang (subtitled Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag) is the first such account to reach the West. As citizens of countries which have provided foreign aid to North Korea, it is incumbent upon us to read this book. As inhabitants of the same planet, we owe the North Koreans this much—read their story and have our eyes opened to the atrocities being committed by a one–party regime headed by an evil, smiling, and yes, ubuesque leader who has long shown a contemptuous disregard for any and all human rights.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jc_hall
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Member: JC Hall
Location: Toronto, Canada
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 54 members
About Me:
Going back to Vancouver for Christmas! Happy Holidays, everyone!!
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