Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor by Suk-Young Kim

Author:Suk-Young Kim [Kim, Suk-Young]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biography and Autobiography/Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

A close-up satellite image of Camp No. 14. It features the National Security Agency headquarters where Kim Yong was brought upon his arrival in 1993. Also featured is an entrance to the coal mine where Kim Yong labored more than 12 hours a day.

“Fucking traitor, it’s you again, you delay everyone’s work! A filthy bastard plotting sabotage, huh?” As soon as he was done with verbal abuse, he smacked my head with the butt of a gun and I lost consciousness immediately. When I woke up, the head of our work unit was putting bandages on my head. As punishment, the guards reduced the portion of my meal by half for two days. A normal portion was not even a handful of boiled corn kernels and wheat, which was already so insufficient that prisoners who ate only the rationed food died of hunger. So when it was reduced to half, I could easily count the grains of boiled wheat and corn kernels. The head of our work unit, a kind elderly man, voluntarily shared his portion with me for two days and kept telling me, “Please eat and don’t die, you have to eat to survive.”

I was simply speechless. Despite his kind words, I spent the next month and a half contemplating how to end this miserable existence. I decided to commit suicide. It had been two and a half months since I had arrived at No. 14. The thought of dying was overwhelming, but I hoped everything would end like a bad dream and finally I wouldn’t have to start another day like this, worried about mine collapse and sudden kicks in the head. The following day, all I could think of was how to carry out my plan. Coming up with a way to do it wasn’t as easy as making up my mind to commit suicide. But by the end of the day, I had an idea. After work, when the miners ascended to the surface in the metal containers, I carried out my plan. Each container was pulled up by sets of wires that were connected by safety pins. As I reached about 2,000 feet above the mining ground, I pulled out a pin from a wire. I only heard a sharp breeze cutting my ears and then lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was lying in a pool of blood in the stream that flowed at the very bottom of the shaft. The head of our work unit had once again wrapped my head with a piece of cloth. His arms were supporting my head. The kind man was looking down at me with teary eyes.

“It’s a miracle that you even opened your eyes. I thought you were surely not with us anymore.” Endless tears kept rolling over his bony cheeks and fell onto my face. My vision was blurry.

Even in my delirious state, I felt utter disappointment more than deadly pain. How was I still alive to continue on in this hellish place

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