Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (13 page)

Arrest and Torture

“Tell me how your father passed on his espionage mission to you. What instructions did he give?”

“I have not the slightest idea.”

“Tell me how your father passed on his espionage mission to you. What instructions did he give?”

“I have not the slightest idea.”

“Tell me how your father passed on his espionage mission to you. What instructions did he give?”

“I have not … the … slight … est …”

A bare light bulb was hanging from the ceiling like the face of a phantom. At times, the phantom looked like it had bleak eyes that kept staring at me. At other times the face seemed to have nothing but thin lips that showed a cold, derogatory smile. I was fading away in a dark interrogation room. I was sleep deprived and tormented by a series of events like a prolonged nightmare. The interrogators wouldn’t let me sleep for days. But when I occasionally passed into nauseated slumber, I saw the face of the young officer who had traveled all the way to my hometown to collect my record. I saw my uncle’s face as his eyes had welled up with tears when I first visited him unexpectedly. And then appeared the faces of my family the day I was arrested. It was an ordinary day—peaceful and quiet. For some reason, my wife hand-washed the Nissan bright and shiny, early that morning. I remember thanking her for it. My son had already gone to school, but my wife and daughter were still at home and saw me off in front of the house. Our white dog was wagging his tail as I drove the car past the alley. That day I drove to the port of Nampo to dispatch an anchovy fishing crew to the sea and supervise the shipping of export items—fresh flatfish and fluke—to Japan, a lucrative business for the North Korean government. As usual, I met my business partners out on the ship, signed a couple of documents of the business transaction, and exchanged the delivery certificate for payment. When I returned to the parking lot by the dock to load my trunk with the briefcases of foreign currency just received from the Japanese business partner, I could not find my car. Instead I saw a group of Social Safety agents looking for me. They presented an arrest order, which bore an endorsement signature of Kim Jong-il himself. My heart froze. Would Kim Jong-il ever have seriously contemplated the connection between the suspected spy and the ambitious young officer who had once presented him with loyalty funds when he signed this order? I have no idea, but I knew that only Kim Jong-il himself could reverse his orders. I immediately knew what was going on. The agents ordered me to get in the backseat of their car, and two of them sat on either side of me. I was silent, but I noticed that at every checkpoint, there were two policemen on motorcycles ready to act if I attempted to escape. This was an espionage case, which required close attention to security. I felt that something I’d feared but unconsciously anticipated had finally happened. The decision to arrest me came from the highest level, and I was a mere victim of the state machinery. But I felt adamant that I personally had done nothing wrong. I tried to assure myself that the National Security Agency would have a better understanding of my case once they knew how, up to this point, I had been living solely for my country, despite my unfortunate family background. The Great Leader would clarify my case. But then I thought of the young officer who had amended my birth record. Was he safe? Was he also arrested? What about my family? What about my mother and uncle? An incident that had happened a long time ago frightfully entered my thoughts: thirty-two family members of a prominent political wrongdoer were all executed. This recollection drove me crazy, and I was burning with anxiety to know what had happened to my family and the officer. If only I had a weapon, I thought, I would free myself, dash into the facilities where they were detained, and rescue them. Much later I learned that my mother and uncle were promptly arrested and sent to a labor camp (
kwanliso
). I am not exactly sure what happened to my wife and children, but knowing the North Korean practice well, I would be greatly surprised if they weren’t also sent to a camp. Later I also learned that the officer who had amended my birth record was sent to a coal mine for forced labor. And immediately after my arrest, the entire National Security Agency had to launch a fifteen-day revolutionary struggle to cleanse their workplace of bad influences I, the American spy, might have left. My immediate superior, D, was demoted to a lower rank.

My eyes saw bursting flashes of light and my ear felt unbearable sensations as the interrogator slapped my face with his large fist.

“Tell me how your father passed on his espionage mission to you. What instructions did he give?”

I had nothing to say. They could not have seriously believed that I’d ever had a chance to see my father and inherit his espionage mission, since I was only an infant when he was executed. But they kept going with the same question.

“Tell me how your father passed on his espionage mission to you. What instructions did he give?”

I no longer had the strength to even open my mouth. The pain in my ear brought tears to my eyes.

“You bastard, you dirty son of a bitch, you fucking son of an American spy, how did you receive your espionage mission from your damned father?”

I was completely sleep deprived and could not react any longer. I had lost track of how many hours or days had passed. But I knew that if I told them what they wanted to hear, there would be no other punishment but a death sentence waiting for me. At moments, the sleep deprivation became so severe that I simply wanted to surrender, but I bit my lips to remain silent. As time went by, the interrogator became more and more infuriated by my stubbornness.

I soon learned that I was being held at Maram detention facility, which was located in the Yongseong district of Pyongyang. For the first three days, they treated me well. They put me in solitary confinement. Although it was small, it was clean and had wooden floors. Decent meals with boiled eggs were served. At the same time, they wanted me to write a confession letter explaining my activities as a spy, how I’d inherited my father’s defamed profession. They also requested that I clarify my mission at the National Security Agency and confess how I managed to get away with such a huge, deceptive plot for so long. I wrote the letter about my life exactly the way I knew it and explained that I never had any intentions other than serving the Great Leader and the Dear Leader.

I was kept at the detention center for three and half months. During that period I lost about thirty pounds due to daily torture. When I refused to write a letter confessing my treasonous crimes, they started to deprive me of sleep. When that did not work, they stuck sharp bamboo pieces under my fingernails until the nails fell off. The pain was sharp and nerve wracking. When that method did not work, they increased the level of pain and shock. They handcuffed me and hung me by the wrists for hours until the flesh around the wrists was torn. I still carry the scars from that torture to this day. One of the worst tortures I endured was to have my body, waist down, submerged in water in a tiny cell that prohibited me from moving. The cell was so tiny that I had to bend slightly in order to fit my body in. They kept me in that excruciating position for forty-eight hours. When I couldn’t stand it any longer and collapsed, they came and dragged me out. When I was not being tortured, they put me in solitary confinement in a tiny cell about two feet wide and five feet long and ordered me not to move an inch. When I couldn’t bear the pain any longer, they brought me blank paper and made me write confessions.

Physical torture at Maram detention facility was unbearable, but what was more tormenting was the feeling of betrayal. I had been completely loyal to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il since I’d learned how to walk and talk. It was obvious that everything I did leading up to my arrest was for the greater good of our country. I worked harder than anyone else I knew, presented business plans that turned out to be more lucrative than others’, ran organizations more efficiently than conventional bureaucrats, and worshiped Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il as feverishly as those revolutionary heroes in movies. It was incomprehensible to me that I would be suspected of this treasonous crime. The great purpose that had defined my life was gone. Guilt by association was injustice itself, and the feeling of betrayal became the worst possible torture that broke me into a thousand pieces.

I could hear numerous voices of other detainees suffering from physical torture, solitary confinement, and nervous breakdown, but I never had a chance to talk to them. The guards were watching us all the time. At some moments when I was not being tortured, I thought of committing suicide, but there was simply no way. Guards were watching detainees everywhere around the clock, so there was hardly any moment of privacy. At other times, I still kept wondering how the party could suspect me of treason; even if my biological parents were criminals, I had grown up in the state-run orphanage under the care of our Great Leader, been adopted by highly regarded party members, and served the country all my life. At still other times, when I was suffering in delirium during torture, I saw the floating images of public executions I’d either witnessed or heard about. The macabre final moments had a powerful effect on all witnesses, as the condemned person gasped for his final breath in this world. At that time, I certainly believed that the executed deserved their punishments and our homeland would be a better place without them. Could I have been wrong? Now that the possibility of my own execution loomed large, I started to wonder if there were others like me on death row who couldn’t make any sense of what was happening to them. Sitting on the hard cement floor of my cell, I heard jailors talk among themselves about the various reasons the prisoners had ended up at the Maram detention center. I soon learned that most of them were held on charges of espionage. In retrospect, it was the time when Kim Jong-il was launching a massive revolutionary struggle to consolidate his position as the rightful heir to his father, Kim Il-sung. The campaign aimed at creating fear and subsequent obedience among the people who doubted Kim Jong-il’s leadership. The regime probably saw my case as serving their purpose—to create terror and disperse any challenges to Kim Jong-il’s rise. Whether I really was a spy or not would not have mattered that much. But all I could see then was the single fact that the charges brought against me were unjust, and I still hoped for clemency once I had a chance to explain myself to the authorities. I completely underestimated the regime’s emphasis on blood lines and family background, according to which I was only an imposter trying to disguise my true identity and pass as the loyal guard of Kim Jong-il. But I wanted to yell out to them that I had been living a flawless life marked by selfless dedication, and that I deserved a chance to prove it to my beloved country.

Hell on Earth

As time went by at the detention center, I came to believe that I would certainly be shot to death. This conviction increased as the vice-director of the center came to my cell on a regular basis and yelled at me:

“You filthy son of a bitch, you bastard from a cursed line of American spies. Whether you tell us or not, it’s clear to everyone that you’ve betrayed us. So you’d better tell us the whole story to end this stupid game of silence.”

I was on the verge of giving up hope that I would be released alive from the center when the door of my cell opened in the middle of the night.

“Come out, you filthy animal.”

The vice-director was standing in front of me with a guard on each side. Having been confined in a tiny cell for what seemed like eternity, I could not stand on my feet. Two guards dragged me to a courtyard where a Soviet-made minitruck was parked. They put chains around my wrists and ankles and dragged me into the back of the truck, of which all four sides were covered. Two armed guards sat next to me. They made me lower my head to the floor and I could not see a thing. I was the only detainee riding in the back of the truck. The engine started and the truck moved. I had traveled all over North Korea on business trips, so I could have figured out where the car was headed had I been able to see out the window. But it was completely dark. I felt that we were moving northeast, but I wasn’t quite sure. I thought that they were dragging me to the execution ground, where I would disappear without a trace under their gunfire. As I saw this scene evolve in my mind, my heart dropped: my death would be not only my personal end but also an end to the Kim family line. I was the only surviving child of my parents and I did not know what would happen to my son. As the moment of death neared, anger began to overcome fear. I felt like an idiot for having given my life for the Great Leader everyone was brainwashed to believe was a living god. I painfully regretted that I had neglected my family while working so hard for the Great Leader. I was even ready to sacrifice my life for him at any moment, without hesitation. But what for? It meant nothing in the face of injustice. I was hoping that there would be divine intervention to correct this gross mistake, but the Great Leader himself was the one who’d inflicted this great injustice on his most loyal subject. Why this ordeal when I had done everything I could for him? Why?

I thought of my chatterbox daughter who always nagged, wanting to get various things out of me. Where was she now? Was she able to chatter in her merry little voice like she used to? Then my thoughts drifted toward my son, and the image of his pensive face came vividly back to me. He was a taciturn boy, but thoroughly mature inside. He always thought of his parents’ well-being before he thought of himself. As the quiet profile of this little man captured my heart, warm tears streamed out of my eyes and quenched furious anger. My throat swelled from the most intense love and regret.

My beloved child.

My life.

The car drove for two or three hours—first along the well-paved as phalt road of the city, then along bumpy unpaved roads. When it finally pulled over, the guards dragged me out. It felt like about 4:00 a.m.; dawn was still a couple of hours away. Not having been outdoors for more than three months, I felt dizzy. My legs shook. The guards ordered me to kneel down on the ground. At first I wasn’t sure where I was, but soon I could see gloomy barracks under searchlights hanging from the barbed-wired walls around the large yard. I was in the reception area of a penal labor camp, not far from the main gate, now tightly locked. There was nobody else but some guards and officers. They dragged me into a nearby compound and removed the chains from my hands and feet. Trying to figure out where I was, I started looking around. As soon as one of the officers noticed my eyes were searching, he shouted: “Damned motherfucker, how dare you gaze around like an idiot? Get on your knees and put your head on the ground!”