I recently read the book, and found it very enlightening as to what life is really like in the North. Here’s the short version:
His grandparents moved from Jeju-do to Japan during the war to find work; his grandmother joined the Communist party there, while his grandfather became rich from trading rice and operating gaming sites around the Kyoto train stations (probably pachinko). Later his grandfather joined the party, too.
When Kim Il-sung called for Party members to return to Korea and help build the country, they moved to the North with their (by then) adult children and lived in Pyongyang. That’s where Kang was born. They were successful by NK standards, but Grandfather was too outspoken about his peers and got arrested.
Those who were living with him (Grandmother, Father, Third Uncle, Kang, and Little Sister) were sent to the Yodok prison camp – as family members, they were also subject to collective punishment. His mother was exempted because she came from a “patriotic family” – her father had died spying against the Japanese.
From age 9 to age 19, Kang grew up in prison. Its school was more often than not run by cruel teachers who were more interested in punishment than instruction. In the afternoon, they would haul down logs from the logs nearby. Among other facilities, there was also a distillery, a couple of mines, and a sweatshop.
Kang learned to supplement the meager food rations by eating anything he could get his hands on: frog eggs, salamanders, rats, and rabbit innards left over from what the guards would eat. He had to endure malnutrition, dysentery, and minor frostbite.
He also witnessed horrible acts of cruelty – a teacher once beat a student and kicked him into a cesspool. The combination of his injuries, the exposure to bacteria, and the lack of good medical treatment resulted in the kid’s death three days later. After turning 15, Kang had to attend public executions.
For some reason (he suspects because his grandfather had died) he and his family were released in 1987. His father ironically died of a stomach ulcer shortly afterward, and his grandmother a few years after that. Through the grapevine, he found out where his mother was and reunited with her. He found that she never divorced Father – the state simply did it. She didn’t even know he’d gotten out of prison.
As a young man, he found work in the distribution system allocating goods, and thereby learned about the railway system. When a friend ratted him out for listening to foreign radio, he got wind of it and decided to escape to China with a different guy. He didn’t tell anybody – not his mother, his sister, or his girlfriend.
The two first went to newly established South Korean embassy in Beijing, but the embassy was more concerned about securing diplomatic recognition with China than helping defectors. Instead, they went to Dalian, made some friends, and were hidden waist-deept in a heating oil tank on a freighter. Once at sea, the captain radioed the South Korean navy. In fall 1992, they finally arrived in the South.
Defectors are de-briefed before and accompanied during their assimilation into South Korean society, and this process lasted two years. Afterward Kang later got financial assistance from “a CEO with connections to the North” (presumably the chairman of Hyundai) and went to university.
Today Kang is a reporter for the Dong-Ah Ilbo (동아일보, 東亞日報) newspaper. His story, written by Pierre Rigoulot, originally appeared in French in 2000 followed in 2001 by the English version. Kang Chol-Hwan met with George W. Bush on June 15, 2005.
[Another story about defectors, Crossing (크로싱), came out last week after premiering at Cannes. Though Megabox has an English-subtitled version, I think I’ll wait for the DVD.]
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