Posted on 10/22/2011 12:24:44 AM PDT by Watchdog85
Kim Hye Sook suffered unbearable pain and emotional suffering when she was detained for 28 years in a secretive North Korean concentration camp. Brutal executions, starvation even mothers killing and eating their children to ensure their own survival were regular occurrences.
Kim who miraculously escaped from the Bukchang prison camp back in 2003 granted CBN News with the first American television news interview to discuss these horrendous conditions. She now lives in South Korea, with the details of her escape remaining classified for security reasons. This summer, she released a memoir entitled, A Concentration Camp Retold in Tears.
When she was 13-year-old, her tragic tale began. The year was 1975 and in the blink of an eye the young girl was captured alongside her entire family. After years of suffering, she didnt taste freedom until she was 41-years-old. Kim explains:
My entire family went to prison. Some were taken to the mountains; others were put in different labor camps all because of my grandfathers one mistake: he escaped to South Korea during the Korean War.
Today, Kim wears dark glasses to ensure that her identity remains concealed. While she lost seven family members in the re-education camp, she currently has two sisters and a brother who are still imprisoned. She described a typical day at the camp:
I attended indoctrination classes in the morning. In the afternoon the children were sent to push trolleys in the coal mines, often without any safety gear.
People were dying in the mines. There were numerous mine collapses, so many injuries, people who lost their legs, many who were buried alive. It was horrible.
I was treated like a slave and worse. I hardly slept. It was inhuman. But I never complained. I just followed all the rules. I had to find a way to survive.
Kim claims that the conditions were so terrible that she thought about committing suicide hundreds of thousands of times during her 28-year detention. But because there was always someone watching her, this simply wasnt an option:
Each prisoner is assigned to watch four or five other prisoners. So if anything happens, the other prisoners would alert the guards because they didnt want to get into trouble themselves.
While her descriptions of executions are absolutely horrendous, nothing is more disturbing than her memories about those individuals who she saw kill their children in an effort to stave off hunger. In one instance, she recalls a mother boiling her 9-year-old daughter. In another fit of desperation, a woman killed her 16-year-old son, chopped him up and took him to a butcher to obtain some corn in exchange.
Kim admits that these details are difficult to share, but she bravely proclaims, I want the world to see these images and to hear my testimony. In describing the conditions in the isolated and volatile nation, she says, I am living proof that there are no human rights in North Korea. In September, she was invited to Washington, D.C., where she testified before a congressional panel about the conditions she faced.
bflr
Norks send entire families to the camps, not just the “criminals” who might have been guilty of reading a SK leaflet. Earlier this year 2 people were executed in front of the of their extended families for that crime and the extended families were sent to the camps, children included.
That is how the Norks operate. ANother survivor said the only real punishment is death. He said he personally saw an 11-year old girl executed for “stealing” 3 grains of rice.
How else does a 23 year old girl who survived on grass die of starvation? COMMUNISM
It would not matter to them for the same reason that there is poverty in Cuba. Its our fault.
The capitalist policies of the US cause the poverty in the rest of the world.
The imperialist policies of the US cause the poverty in the world.
US hegemony causes poverty.
NO matter what good the US does in the world all of the evil done in the world has its roots in US capitalism.
Unless of course it has its roots in US Zionist/racism. /S
This is sad....
Kim’s North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, China during the Great Leap Forward, the Soviet gulag... all examples of where this socialism can (and often does) lead.
And all are lessons of history being ignored by OWS (and the current President of the United States and his acolytes and apologists).
she looks like one of the occupy wallstreet protestors.
She was homeless and died of starvation in a Communist Utopia. OWS would like to bring that kind of thing here.
Don’t forget about the millions the Soviets deliberately starved in the Ukraine.
“In one instance, she recalls a mother boiling her 9-year-old daughter. In another fit of desperation, a woman killed her 16-year-old son, chopped him up and took him to a butcher to obtain some corn in exchange.”
er, uh, really?
I don’t believe this.
I’m thinking this is another false memoir, like Frey’s “a million little pieces” and the other book by/about the fellow who “survived” the holocaust.
Just not buying it.
The 9 year old, maybe. The 16 year old boy vs. his presumably emaciated mother, no.
And why would you trade his chopped up body for corn?
And, who brings meat to a butcher to get corn?
You see what I’m saying.
Just don’t tell the butcher what kind of meat it is. If things are really that bad, I doubt anyone is asking questions.
“er, uh, really?”
Yeah, really.
Mass cannabilism that occured in all the major Marxist countries is well documented, especially in Russia and China.
“And why would you trade his chopped up body for corn?”
Did you think maybe she didn’t want to eat her son, but someone else sure would?
Instead of scoffing incredulously you might want to take some time and do a little online research on the subject, then decide whether her account is plausable.
ping to article of possible interest...NK cannabalism claim
Government imposed economic equality is awesome isn’t it?
OWS protesters and supporter please pay attention. It doesn’t get more equal than what North Korea has in place for their citizens.
It brings to mind the end of one of Chesterton's short stories:
"And all because you are afraid of four little words: 'He was made Man.'"
I want to say "Damn Them" and undoubtedly they deserve it. But I am compelled to pray for them instead.
I had grandparents that survived and told of of Stalin's gulags and holodomor campaigns. Those did not go on for nearly as long as NKs atrocities already have. They had no reason to lie since there was no such thing as book deals for this in the USSR. Officially, those things never happened and even speaking of them decades later could have resulted in a “visit”.
Cannibalism was widespread because there simply wasn't anything to eat in the dead of winter after all the dogs, cats, squirrels, etc were eaten. After the live animals were all eaten, people would boil old leather hides, belts, shoes, etc to extract whatever little nutrients they could. They would harvest the dead for meat only whenever someone died “on their own”. It was a daily occurrence. I suspect that is the majority of cases in NK too.
They never told me of killings for meat but I suspect some very desperate people did do it.
One of my survivor grandmothers is still alive and to this day she refuses to tell me everything until “I get older”. She's the most incredible woman I know and doesn't let her brutal past nor any comparatively tiny problems today dictate her attitude on life.
What on earth would make someone eat their own children? I can barely write about it. I’d rather just lay down and die.
“NKorean Prison Camp Survivor: Starving Women Cooked & Ate Their Own Children”
Judgement begins at the house of God. Old Testament Israel ended up eating their children in a siege on Jerusalem.
Post/thread BUMP!
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