The State We're In, 29 May 2010: The world’s attention has once again focused on North Korea over allegations that it sank a South Korean ship. Its actions on the world stage are mirrored by the harshness of its secret prison camps: the rogue nation has 154,000 political prisoners in six camps across the country, and its human rights record is atrocious. We speak to a former prisoner, and to a former prison guard about what they went through.
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A prison survivor’s tale
Jung Gwang Il spent three years in a North Korean labor camp. While the country is notoriously closed to outsiders, the camps themselves are barely known within the country. And not many people live to talk about their time in one. Jung Gwang Il tells Jonathan how he survived the camp and escaped to South Korea.
Marcus Noland from the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC listens to Jung Gwang Il’s story, and draws parallels between North Korea’s belligerence towards neighbouring countries and its treatment of its own citizens.
A prison guard’s escape
An Myeong Chul was a prison guard for eight years in North Korea. He saw prisoners starved, executed and he even beat them himself - believing that they were all enemies of the state. But when he learned that he could wind up in prison himself, he stole a truck and escaped to China. Now all he wants is for the two Koreas to unite, and forgiveness for what he did.
Marcus Noland responds to An Myeong Chul’s story and assesses North Korea’s place in the world community.
Kwanju massacre remembered
Thirty years ago, South Korea’s military regime massacred at least 200 of its own citizens (some sources place the figure as high as 2,000) during a political uprising. Ahn Sung-ryea was a nurse supervisor at a hospital in Gwangju, and tells Jonathan why she will never forget the day fighting broke out.
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There were some facts that woke up in me suspicions about the veracity of the stories told by both the ex-prisoner and the ex-guard.
The prisoner escaped from North Korea after having been a prisoner for 3 years.As he said,"his friend helped him to escape".I guess,it's extremely difficult to escape from a completely closed,police-ruled and militarized totalitarian country of total sneaking like North Korea,where all moving through the country requires a special authorisation.As a former prisoner accused of being a spy,he must have been under a special surveillance,which would have made his escape absolutely impossible.All his former friends would have been scared to have any contact with him,not to mention help him to escape.
The story about how his former torturer got in the same prison with him also looked improbable.It's rather a story for a novel.
The story told by the former guard looked not verisimilar enough too.As he said,"his father was a high-ranking official".The offspring of a high-ranking communist official would not have had to work as a guard in a prison camp.In all communist countries,including USSR,the offsprings of communist party,secret services,military etc. officials enjoyed privileges over ordinary citizens and had not to be engaged in "dirty" occupations.
It was a bit ridiculous as well to hear how the chinese "magnanimously" helped the refugees from North Korea.Those chinese are all spies and informants of their ministry of public security and police themselves.They would have informed the mentioned organizations about the korean fugitives immediately.
Mr.Marcus Noland,an American expert in North Korea,as he confessed,has spoken to 1 500 refugees from North Korea.He listened to all what the partecipants of the program said but he didn't notice any incongruities in their stories.It's a pity that american experts have got so little perspicacy.
I was totally bemused by Ahn Sung-ryea--the initiator of the Mother May House, where feeling and politics are shared by attending women. She conflated the Gwangju massacre and the North Korean government's Stalinist regime and I am irritated that the documentary makers couldn't be bothered to check facts. She dissolves into a teary implication that the Gwangju citizenry revolted in the 80's because of some vague relationship between the struggle for democracy in South Korea and a struggle against the Stalinist regime to the North. This is garbage.
I lived in Gwangju for seven years. The dictatorship that SOuth Koreans sought to rid themselves of had nothing to do with North Korea and everything to do with its being propped up by the American government which was still holding to and based on the stupid "domino theory" of politics. This South Korean regime did not allow free elections, it jailed and tortured and murdered its citizens but was staunchly anti Kim Il-sung. The Gwangju massacre was sanctioned by the then American General in charge and tacitly by the American government. Next time you decide to trade in sentimentality, GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.
Hi Suzanne: I appreciate the strength of your feelings and the seven years you've spent in Gawngju, but I think you may have misheard Ahn Sung-Ryea's story. She's bitterly critical of the ruling government of the day, but it's that of South Korea. And inside her interview -- it wasn't a documentary -- she nowhere implicates North Korea in the struggle she and others undertook for democratic reforms thirty years ago. In fact, at one point she acknowledges the antipathy felt by the South Korean regime for the North; and at another point, she argues that foreign powers, including the U.S., have acted against Korean interests. So as it turns out, her point of view seems to share much with your own. Greg Kelly, Editor, TSWI
Amazing story of great courage. Heard it today on ABC Newsradio in Australia. Just amazing that such a rogue regime continues to exist today, but as expressed elsewhere, the days must be numbered. Let's hope it's not a bloody transition to democracy when it happens. Excellent reporting.
I marvel at the journalistic objectivity you exhibit during these traumatic interviews and I wonder what can be done to support the citizens of North Korea to experience validation of the basic human rights they have been forced to suppress. I know from history that it is a matter of time before the oppressive regime is ousted, but it is hard to bear witness to such severe suffering of innocents in the interim.
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