Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (114 page)

Although the responses varied, I was relieved to find that the interviews in Seoul did not bear out my worst-case theory. In particular, in the interviews with defectors, not a single person agreed with the notion that there was a conscious policy to starve political prisoners and the members of banished families more systematically than had been the case in pre-famine times. For
example, Kang Chul-ho, a former inmate in prison camp No. 19, which had been situated in the map’s white area (see his story in chapter 16), figured that inmate deaths from malnutrition would have increased as the famine worsened. But “in a state-operated prison camp, I guess the authorities try to keep the prisoners eating barely enough to sustain life,” said Kang, who had defected in 1997.

“I heard the political prison camp I had been in was moved in 1993 and that site was made into a regular prison camp. The camp I was in, No. 19 Public Security prison camp, maximum security, used to mine magnesite clinker. The result wasn’t good enough so they sent inmates elsewhere and now use the site as a general prison.”

Q. Why do you think the thirty-nine counties have been kept off limits?

A. “Basically military reasons. In the north there’s a concentration of air force bases, military matériel factories, special forces. One reason it took me eight days to escape is that I had to be so careful. There were so many guards, I had to move only at night.

“Also maybe this area has only very poor people. It’s a mountainous area.”

The response of defectors I interviewed on this question was strong if anecdotal, speculative and thus inconclusive evidence against my worst-case theory of the regime. (At the same time it was evidence that defectors and refugees during much of the decade of the 1990s did not, generally speaking, devote themselves to badmouthing the North one-sidedly, as propaganda proxies for the South Korean intelligence service, which quite a few of their predecessors had been accused of doing.
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Even the official in Seoul who suspected that the Northern regime was intentionally starving some groups to death acknowledged that prison camp inmates probably were not among the targeted groups—if only because of the prisoners’ value in continuing productive work. “At a camp, the guy in charge is in charge of everything including self-sufficiency” that official told me. “He must support the prisoners and the guards. They’ve got to keep most of them alive to do the farming.”

My effort to solve the mystery of the thirty-nine counties ended up providing additional evidence for a view of the North Korean government as being at least marginally less diabolical than might have been suggested by Kim Jong-il’s election district number and my worst imaginings. It fit into a picture that I had been developing since conducting some of my earlier defector interviews in the early and mid-1990s. In that picture, the DPRK not only
proclaimed that its citizens had rights and entitlements; furthermore, the apparatus attempted some of the time to act as if that were definitely the case. And the citizens tended to believe, until something untoward happened to make them doubt it, that they possessed some or most of the rights they ?were guaranteed and that officials were at least somewhat sympathetic to their needs.

To put it another way in this view North Korea was a country that functioned to some extent under the rule of law or regulations, and written procedures. The wheels of justice normally ground exceedingly slowly, and that afforded time for people to anticipate what was coming. They also had some opportunity for petition and appeal, and where that was the case it was not always a totally empty formality. What made the DPRK a highly repressive country, a nightmare by human-rights standards, was not so much aspects of the formal system itself as the number and severity of the lapses from the officially prescribed standards.

Consider, by-way of illustration, the story of Yoo Song-il, an army supply colonel turned university administrator who fell afoul of the authorities over a chance remark. The elfin Yoo when I met him looked—-with his big ears, big nose, high cheekbones and sleepy eyes—exactly like a cartoon hero of my teenage years, Alfred E. Neuman, the “What, me worry?” mascot of
Mad
magazine. His hair combed forward over his forehead in the style so many men were displaying in Seoul in the late 1990s, Neuman—I mean Yoo—-wore a brown, chalk-striped suit; brown, blue and white figured tie; white, starched shirt; gold, rectangular watch. His military career (-which figures in chapter 30) had taken place entirely along the DMZ in Kangwon Province’s Kimhwa County, one of the closed counties I was inquiring about.

“I was in the military for twenty-four years, until April 1992,” Yoo told me. “It was only after I became a civilian that I realized how unequal everything was and starting thinking about Kim Jong-il’s politics, which I decided were self-centered—not for the people.

“In June of 1992 I started work for O Joong-hup University as chief of general affairs, in North Hamgyong Province. It’s a teacher-training university. One day in January 1995, when I went to work, there was a
Nodong Shinmun
on my desk. One article told of students demonstrating in South Korea against imports of rice and beef from abroad. There were about thirty other employees in the office. People come to work at 7:30 A.M. and spend the first thirty minutes hearing lectures on the greatness of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. After I saw the article I said, ‘Those sons of bitches are too well fed and they’re protesting about imported beef!? I wish they’d bring it up here and let us eat it!’ After that, my colleagues started thinking South Korea must be doing much better than we were. I was jailed for ten days, accused
of inciting pro-South Korean thinking. Besides my remark, there were other, personal transgressions. I used to wager with friends, with cigarettes and alcohol. That’s prohibited.

“I was released, after those ten days, because I’d been a military career man and they said I didn’t really know civilian society well. Others would have gotten much longer sentences. I returned to my job, but in December 1995 the North Hamgyong provincial office ordered me to move to the Kilju Ilshin coal-mining area as a ‘revolutionary laborer.’ They told me that this is what they do—they send people to work with coal miners. They spend two to three years repenting, reforming their thoughts, and then return to their old jobs.’ But in reality no one ever returns to his job.”

Q. What actual work did you do at the mines?

A. “I never went. I was only dispatched there. Once that happens, politically and otherwise you are finished in society. When I was given the assignment I went and argued at the provincial office: ‘I’ve dedicated my life to Kim Jong-il, spent twenty-four years in the military, didn’t do anything wrong. I refuse to go.’ I knew I’d be watched all the time. I didn’t want to live like a dog. Suddenly I wasn’t part of the society any more. I had always thought Kim Jong-il’s policies were for the people. I was extremely disappointed. I wanted to live like a human being so I decided to leave. It took three months or so of back and forth but finally they told me I had to go to the mines. I refused, but they said, ‘If you refuse, we’ll give you a worse assignment.’ I said, ‘Go ahead and do it, then. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ This all went on for about three months.”

Q. Is North Korea in any way a society of laws?

A. “People in North Korea do have certain rights. You can buy time because of the layers of bureaucracy. Sometimes you have time to write to Kim Jong-il and argue with the authorities.”

Q. Did you write to Kim Jong-il?

A. “To the Central Party, twice: once in August 1995, the second time in January 1996. I said that citizens’ rights were part of the constitution. ‘This is not what I was taught. How could they be doing this?’ Writing made me seem more of a troublemaker.”

Q. The top-down structure of the regime, with very little horizontal communication—is that a-weakness of the system?

A. “I see it that way. Once the command comes down from the top, that’s it.”

Q. Your order came all the way from the top?

A. “Every province and other subdivision has a top authority who usually belongs to the central party. My decision came down from the provincial party. I got no answer to my letters to the central party. If the central party wrote to the provincial party, I never saw it.”

I told Yoo the story of the woman who said she had been framed, Lee Soon-ok. She quoted central party people as telling her they had determined that her accusations against influential people in her office and community who had gotten her punished were true—but nevertheless she mustn’t rock the boat.

“Yes, that happens a lot,” Yoo said. “Everybody knows of a case like that: Many people are involved, and if the authorities wield the axe it will bring them all down. So they ignore cases like that. North Korea does have an organized system and they do check things out.”

Q. Did they tell you, too, that you shouldn’t rock the boat?

A. “Because I was in my hometown, Chongjin, I knew the provincial officials. Throughout the argument process they were saying, ‘Let’s see if we can try to give you a post in Chongjin as a laborer.’ That gave me a little more time to plan my escape. I finally crossed the border on March 4, 1996.”

Q. Was your whole family supposed to go to the coal district?

A. “Of course.”

Q. Did you bring them out?

A. “Yes. My mother, my six-year-old son, two daughters and my wife all went to China with me. Mother died while we were in hiding there. We lived around the Beijing train station about a month. I thought once we got to Beijing we could go to South Korea through the embassy. But I found that was impossible. My wife and I argued a lot during that time. She was resentful that my prediction hadn’t worked out. It was pretty bad. I think the North Korean embassy people found out we were there and started following us. My wife said she was going to keep trying to come to South Korea through the embassy. But I took the children and left. I don’t know if she’s still there or back in North Korea.

“When we were in China I started listening to KBS. That’s when I learned that the route to South Korea was to go to Guangzhou, then Hong Kong, and thence to South Korea. I didn’t have money and needed to earn some to do that. Some Chinese-Korean people helped me. With their help I got on a ship January 22, 1997, with the children. We landed on a deserted island and got help from the South Korean Marine Police. From there we took a helicopter to Inchon.”

Q. Tell me about hunger and starvation in Chongjin.

A. “People were dying of starvation. I saw them. I heard my friend’s father was sick. I visited him and the doctors told me he was just malnourished. He was skin and bones. They said if he ate he’d get better. But there wasn’t any way to feed him. He died three days later. I didn’t see people dying on the streets, though.”

Q. What about conditions in the coal mines?

A. “I don’t know much about it. I don’t think their rations were better than others.”

Q. What about the estimates of two to three million dead?

A. “That’s probably very true. By the time I left in 1996 we were getting only two days’ worth of food per month. People who didn’t have money or anything to sell could only starve.”

Q. Who were they?

A. “Laborers, people without power. Usually the officials and party members have food.”

Q. How about prisoners?

A. “Usually prisoners are treated like dogs. When I was jailed for ten days I got a corn ball with three beans in it, this big [shows six finger joints] three times a day with a small bowl of salt soup, just enough to sustain life. I lost eight kilograms during the ten days. I didn’t eat the first four days, the food was so disgusting.”

Stories like Yoo’s made more plausible the claim of First Lieutenant Lim Young-sun (chapter 31) that the regime’s increasingly careful and deliberate system of investigation and punishment had enabled him to have months of warning that he was likely to be arrested for distributing anti-regime leaflets and must make plans to defect. In April 1993, Lim wrote in his second book, “I went to check the Onchon underground run-way construction site, and the political committee member instructed me to stay overnight. The next day some officers arriving from my corps informed me that the security guard had gone through my things. I realized that I was in for it. But, fortunately for me, they couldn’t find definitive evidence of my guilt, so they just increased surveillance of me.

“Why did State Security waste all that time trying to find incriminating evidence, when past practice had been to arrest and execute anyone considered even slightly suspect? In the past, many innocent people had been killed that way—because once a person was taken to a secret place it didn’t matter whether he or she was guilty or not; even an innocent person would have seen the inner workings of State Security by then and would have to be executed to preserve security. But from the mid-1980s, to end such abuses, concrete evidence was required for an arrest.