A Step Inside North Korea

Like I told you before, I just finished reading the memoir, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang." Pyongyang is the capital of present day North Korea. The book details the life of a boy who, at the age of nine, is sentenced to ten years in a North Korean labor camp with the rest of his family for a "crime" his grandfather committed. Granted, all his grandfather really did was give his entire life and all of his money to the Party. The book, without sparing one single tragedy, accounts for the author's disgusting excuse for an adolescence. He and his family were prisoners at Yodok, which is a camp for "redeemables." Redeemables are those who didn't actually commit a crime against the Party, but have the blood of a criminal and are punished as well. The punishment is to purge them of wrong blood that caused their relative to commit a crime.

The camps in North Korea are very similar to the stories we've heard from those of the Hitler regime. Prisoners work long, laborious hours with little food and even less clothing. The treatment of the prisoners by the guards is simply de-humanizing. I remember a story from when the author was around 12. A boy around his age was beaten by a guard and then fell into a septic tank. It took him a couple hours to regain strength enough to get out, and 3 days later, he died from infection. Also, the only food that prisoners were rationed was corn, so in order to ward off disease from lack of protein and too much corn, they would eat insects and rats.

The author is released from camp at the age of 19. His family is assigned farm work in a small, rural town that is barely surviving. He eventually finds out the whereabouts of his mother, who wasn't part of the bloodline so was not sent to Yodok and was forced to divorce her husband. She still lives in Pyongyang. He goes to visit her a few times, but with great difficulty as you have to attain permission to travel about the country. A few years later, he catches word that the police are secretly investigating him for listening to South Korean radio. He knows if they catch him he'll die, or worse, go back to camp. So he and a friend decide to escape. The travel up to the Chinese border, cross the river in the middle of the night, and carefully make their way to a Chinese port. They stay in this port time for half a year before an opportunity to take a ship over to South Korea arrives.

The author now lives in Seoul and has no idea what happened to the rest of his family. It is assumed they were punished for his escape. He began writing this book as soon as he arrived in South Korea. He hopes that his story will bring about awareness and save more people from future hardship.

When I read books such as this, it makes me think that this place, this wretched place, that the author is in is somewhere long ago and far away. Well, a few months ago it would've been far away. Now, though, it is neither long ago nor far away. The author was released from the camp in 1987. He made it to South Korea in 1992. I WAS ALIVE while this was going on. It's still going on ... an HOUR's bus ride from where I am right now. I want to throw up.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of traveling to the North / South Korean border, and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that surrounds it. It was a phenomenal trip, one that won't easily be forgotten.

A brief history: After the end of World War II, Korea was occupied by the Japanese. Since we dropped a nuc on Hiroshima and killed millions of innocents, they lost. So, we took Korea. The Communist Soviets were in charge of everything north of the 38th parallel, America was in charge of everything below the 38th parallel. The whole point was to hold elections and get Korea back on its feat as a unified nation. Naturally, the Communist influence in the north versus the Democratic influence in the south made this unification impossible. The Soviets postponed election after election until the South had no choice but to just hold an election of their own. Pretty soon after, the North appointed Kim Il Sung as its first leader. The country was now in two.

It didn't take long for the North to attack the South. The South was busy being a democracy and didn't have much of a chance to develop an army, after all. In 1950, the North pushed the south all the way back to Pusan, a very southeastern port town. An influx of UN troops, however, made a comeback possible, and the South pushed the North back above the 38th parallel. Three years after the 1950 invasion, an armistice was signed to "cease fire" in the Korean War. The border was set, and there was to be a neutral territory 2 kilometers north of it and 2 kilometers south of it. This area is know as the Demilitarized Zone. It is the most heavily militarized place in the world, but there is no fighting... just mines, lots of mines.

We had three stops on the tour. The first was the Joint Security Area. We traveled by military bus into the DMZ and on to the border. We were guided by military personell (Sgt. Walker, to be exact - he was from Alabama!) through the Freedom Building and into this:

The guards dressed in green are South Korean military personnel. The blue buildings are UN buildings, and the big gray building in the background is a North Korean Army building, complete with a KPA guard staring us down with binoculars. The concrete slab in the middle of the photo, that goes straight down the middle of the two blue buildings, yeah, that's the border. Here, I'll point them out to you.

Zoom in of the North Korean guard staring us down:

Then we went into one of the blue UN buildings.

This guard is standing on the border. The table is bisected by the bored. To the guard's left, is North Korea. To his right, is South Korea. I WENT INTO NORTH KOREA!

My feet in the North, Dustin's in the South:

After the JSA, we got some lunch and then made our way to Dora Observatory. It's a military post built into a hill that can see far into the north side of the DMZ. Unfortunately, there was a "photo line" behind which was the only place to take photos from. This is the best I got. The HUGE North Korean flag you see in the middle is 31 meters long, 25 meters high and weighs 600 pounds. It is flown amidst an uninhabited propaganda village that via loudspeaker boasts North Korea as the promised land, welcoming anyone who would like to come. Sign. Me. Up.

After Dora, we went to the 3rd (of four) infiltration tunnels that have been found by South Korea. These tunnels were built by the North after the DMZ was established in an attempt to attack the South in secret. They've found 4 of them, they think their may be between 25-30 of them. We weren't allowed to take cameras, had to wear hard hats, and made our way down to the dark and damp tunnel. It's pretty museum-y by now, but amazing nonetheless. It boggles my mind that these tunnels were built without anyone knowing! They better find the rest soon...

So, yes, for all of those who were worried... I made it back safely. I strongly recommend you read the memoir; it will make you very grateful... And just in time for Thanksgiving!