In the southkorean capital of Seoul we have made contact with a young man of 26 years, who - until two years ago - didn’t know that a world existed outside the barbed wire:
.... I didn’t know. Not at all, not until I escaped ....
He quite simply thought the whole world was a prison camp.
He didn’t know that the country Northkorea existed.
That something exists outside of that country.
He didn’t even know that the mastermind behind his miserable life was Kim Jong Il. The children from camp 14 were so worthless that they didn’t deserve knowledge of the life and thoughts of the Dear Leader.
Stand up:
... Shin Dong Hyok is not special in the sense that he has escaped the northkorean prisonsystem. Tens- if not hundreds of thousands of prisoners are locked up there and a few have managed to escape. But he is unique in the sense that he is the only one know to have escaped a so called “special control zone”. That’s a special camp system within the camp system, where prisoners are expected to spend their whole life. He is the only one who has come out alive and has been able to tell his story .....
We meet Shin at an old prison. Here the Japanese kept, tortured and murdered korean patriots before and during the second world war.
It’s an environment that he recognises immediately ...
.... I was in a cell exactly like that ....
Shin Dong Hyoks story began on the 19th of October 1982.
His parents were prisoners in camp number 14, isolated in the mountains north of the Northkorean capital of Pyongyang. The reason why is not known, but as a reward for good behaviour they were selected for marriage and put together in a cell for five days.
Nine months later Shin was born behind the fence.
One thing followed him every day:
... we were always hungry ....
The little boy was placed with his mother. But she worked every day in the mountains and mines from 5 in the morning. When she returned around midnight, she had no time for the boy. She often beat him.
He learned nothing about common humanity:
.... I had no real feelings when I was a kid ...
Two categories of people inhabited the world behind the wire
.... those who made mistakes were prisoners. Those who made no mistakes were guards ....
In the eyes of the little boy the starved and sometimes beaten woman who returned to him at night was the cause of his suffering
... my mom had made mistakes, so it was only natural that we should live like this. I didn’t even want to know why ....
At five he was sent to school in the mornings. They taught him to read and write, to add and subtract - the teachers were guards with pistols and a stick to beat the little ones.
One day he witnessed a teacher beating a little girl on the head so hard that she died the next day.
In the afternoon the five year old was sent to the mountains to do hard labour. The only positive thing about that, was that it was possible to catch mice, rats, worms and snakes for the eternally hungry stomachs.
Friendship and closeness didn’t exist. Everyone was on his own, everybody else could be an informer
... our society was constructed in a way so that my mother was suppose to inform on me and I would inform on her .....
The day arrived when Shin was taken from his mother. He was placed in a dormitory and supposed to attend Secondary School.
... from 12 years on it was nothing but work. But they called it secondary school. There was no reading or stuff like that ....
It would be two years before he was to see his mother and an unknown brother again. But before that he was suddenly dragged out from the dormitory by the guards, thrown into an isolation cell and subjected to unspeakable torture.
His mother and brother had attempted to escape, the idea was to get the 14 year old boy to reveal if he knew anything about the attempt. But he knew nothing and couldn’t tell anything.
The torture went on for seven months.
One day - it was the 29th of October 1996 - Shin was dragged out to an open square and placed in the first row of the prisoners there.
He thought he was to be executed. But then they brought out his mother and brother.
.... I think it is better we skip this part ....
The brother was shot. The mother hung. She was tied up and gagged, but just before she died she looked directly at him.
He avoided her eyes.
From then on a miserable life was transformed to daily, naked horror.
.... after the death of my mother I had and incredibly hard time. I was beaten every day. I almost died ....
The other children attacked him. Your life is lost, they yelled and laughed. They stole his food. And all time he hated his mother and brother for what they had done.
.... I blame them a lot. It’s hard to express - but it was a good thing that they died. After all they had committed a crime ...
Years went by. Shin was teamed up with a guy who had lived outside the wire. He told the boy about Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung and about the fact that a world existed out there, where there was endless amounts of food every day.
... the food made me escape. Even if it was going to cost me my life. The only thing that interested me was the food ....
One day in January 2005 he was in the mountains with a friend, hauling timber. Det was twilight and cold. The guards were away for a moment. The electric fence was only 20 meters away. This was the chance of a lifetime.
... if we don’t run now, we may never get the chance again ....
We shall return to Shins escape but before that we have another contact to meet. Shins friend Hyuk Kang.
Kang has made the drawings for this program, based on his own experience and the stories of Shin and other defectors.
We meet 23 years old Kang at a modest, private center that collects documentation about northkorean defectors.
....
Shin and Kang are small guys. Their bodies themselves document that something is awfully wrong in the North.
.... children in Northkorea are much smaller. Sixth graders in Southkorea are more than 170 centimeters in height. In Northkorea they are 150 to 160 centimeters. Their faces are always swollen because of hunger ....
Kang hasn’t been to the camps. But he knows hunger very well. It arrived in earnest in his small provincial town during the early nineties, where Northkorea was grinding to a stand still.
There was no economy. No fuel. No work.
Worst of all - the state food coupons became worthless. The shelves were empty.
The first to die were the old people and small children.
The bigger kids and adults were out in the mountains digging for moles, rats, mice, frogs and even rainworms.
The landscape changed from green to brown.
... the mountains were cleaned of anything green. Eventually they didn’t look like mountains, just bare soil .....
The town sank into deep apathy. Many homeless people settled in the icecold railway stations, but trains rarely arrived.
The orphans, who were too small, withered away and died.
.... people had nowhere to sleep. In Wonsong where I lived there is a trainstation which is always open. When people had nowhere else to sleep, that’s where they went. Some small children actually lived there ....
The streets were empty now. Once in a while a car passed. People from the party or the state.
... the ones in high positions live well. They don’t help anybody .....
Society had come to a full stop. Only the forces of oppression worked on.
... when somebody squealed to the police, people would suddenly disappear at night. I’ve heard they ended up in prison camps ...
But what about all the food that Southkorea, Japan and other countries sent?
... I’ve never seen that or heard about it ....
Like the forces of oppression, propaganda still worked on. While little children died before their eyes, people were told that they lived in paradise and that people in Southkorea and elsewhere were much worse off.
.... I thought that we in Northkorea were best off in the whole world ...
Kang didn’t know better so when his father - who had been in a camp - decided that the family should escape abroad he was crestfallen.
.... at first I said no, I wanted to protect the Fatherland. My father said “Fatherland”, what country is that? What a shit country ....
After the interview Kangs friend Shin comes around.
We have decided to go and have lunch before continuing the talk.
There is an abundance of food in Southkorea and that is the only thing that the two friends really appreciate in the south.
They feel rootless and helpless in this society that operates under a totally different version of the law of the jungle than they are used to.
They wre taught total obedience to higher powers. Here they are expected to make their own decisions every hour of the day.
... I’ve got a new cell phone. The newest model ....
Time for food. Shin and Kang spent their whole childhood and youth in a state of permanent hunger. Until he escaped two years ago Shin had never tasted meat, except raw fish, rats, mice, frogs and the like.
No more of that.
.... delicious ....
We need to finish the story of Shin and his escape from the camp. We find a park in the center of Seoul.
Shin rewinds the film back to the second of January 2005. That is when he as the only one ever escaped Northkoreas “special control zone”.
... can I sit like this?
Yes, that’s fine!
Or does it look a little arrogant? ...
He and his friend were 20 meters from the fence. Then they ran.
Shin went first but stumbled, so that the friend was the first to throw himself at the fence.
Shin remembers that there were sparks and a horrible stench. But he climbed over his friend, burned his legs terribly in the high voltage-fence and continued to another world.
He thought his friend was close behind him and found refuge in an empty shed in the forest but his friend never turned up. Shin still doesn’t know if he died in the fence or later.
... when I think back that’s the biggest sin I have committed. I still fell guilty ....
But on the third of January he woke up to a completely different world than the one he knew. It was Northkorea all right, but to him the degree of freedom he found in this prison community impressed him much more than the glittery and modern China and Southkorea that he was going to see later on.
... here people went around freely. They were wearing nice clothes. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. It was a free society ....
He joined up with a band of rag-merchants, vagabonding the deepfrozen land. A few weeks later he was at the river that separates Northkorea from China.
Shin crossed the ice - he was out of Northkorea.
In China and Southkorea there were skyscrapers, TV, radio, computers, cars and cellphones. That didn’t impress Shin. It was just something that glittered.
... I didn’t fell anything special when I saw cellphones and television in China for the first time. I didn’t think that I want that. They were just new and exciting things, nothing else.
I repeat: My only wish had already come through. I had eaten and didn’t care about anything else. I still feel that way ....
Before we say goodbye to Kang and Shin we are going to meet another victim of Kim Jong Ils regime - the writer Kang Chol-Hwan.
Together with his father, sister and grandmother Chol-Hwan was torn out of their home in Pyongyang and carried off to a prison camp in the mountains.
In a few days he was reduced from a happy nine-years old boy to hungry, filthy little animal in a daily struggle for survival.
... does this really take place in the year 2008?
... it’s a fact. Many have experienced it. It can’t be denied ....
One theory about Northkorea is that the topleader may live in his own isolated bubble. Maybe nobody dares tell Kim Jong Ill about realities out in the real Northkorea?
... he cuts his own population off from al information, but he himself has got TV from all over the world. It’s not that he doesn’t know what goes on in Northkorea. The brutality of his system has just grown and grown to the point where he know fears that everything will collapse and that he will suffer the same fate as Cheauchescu of Romania. That’s why he does everything to stay in power and kills all opponents ....
Kang Chol-Wang is critical towards Southkoreas so called “sunshine-policy” towards the north - a sort of “let’s all talk nicely to each other”-policy.
He thinks that it may be the actual reason why Kim Jong Il is still in power. That and the food-relief from abroad.
... food and money is sent for humanitarian reasons. But humanity doesn’t exist in Northkorea .....
But humanity does exist among common, northkorean people.
That becomes evident as we say goodbye to Shin and Kang one afternoon in Seoul.
.... this is to celebrate that we have met. When you return to Denmark, you must never forget him and me. We have been to the Namsan Tower together, that too calls for celebration ....
.... don’t forget us .....