Korean defectors tell of brutality, mind control

SEOUL, South Korea -- The first time he heard the name of North Korea's dictator without the reverential term "Dear Leader" in front of it, Lee Young-chul was stunned. He thinks he may have gone temporarily insane.

The teenage North Korean soldier had been transferred to a base near the border, within range of propaganda broadcasts from South Korean loudspeakers, and it was the first time he had heard a word of criticism about his leader, the boss of the world's last Stalinist state.

"It was unthinkable," he said. "We were outraged. We went crazy. We took our rifles, and we were ready to shoot."

From the day he was born, the young soldier had been taught that Kim Il-sung (the "Great Leader") and his son, the "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, were immortal gods from heaven.

Lee Young-chul gladly would have sacrificed his life for this monarch from heaven.

"I would have felt it was an honor to bring a nuclear weapon somewhere and blow it up," he said. "It would be an honor to die for your country. It would bring glory to your family. We were always taught that North Korea is the most powerful country in the world."

Not until a few months before his defection to South Korea this year, when he became embroiled in a dispute with his superiors and decided to cross the most heavily armed border on the planet, did the soldier finally question his blind loyalty.

While the world's attention is focused on Iraq, a much more desperate and brutal regime continues to produce a terrifying society of cult-like fanaticism and mind control. Interviews with the latest defectors from North Korea confirm that its totalitarian system of mass mobilization and thought control is as active as ever.

One told the chilling story of a relative who willingly gave up her life in a doomed bid to rescue a burning portrait of the "Dear Leader."

The relative was a 21-year-old soldier, and a fire had erupted at a propaganda center that contained portraits of the Dear Leader and Great Leader. She was one of nine people who rushed into the inferno to try to rescue the portraits. They all died. "All of them knew they would die if they went in, but they went in anyway," said the defector, who spoke on condition she not be named.

The former soldier and defector, Mr. Lee, who also did not want his real name used, said the regime is so paranoid that about half of the soldiers near the border are secret police.

Chang Mi-ryung, a 29-year-old defector who arrived in South Korea this summer, said the regime forces everyone to attend a weekly 90-minute self-criticism session.

All are expected to explain their activities of the entire week, admit their mistakes, confess how they could have done better and snitch on the errors of others. All confessions are to be introduced with long quotations from the writings of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader.

In addition, twice a week, there are "ideological sessions" and lectures on the leaders' thoughts.

To ensure the weekly brainwashing sessions worked, the government operates random patrols and spot checks to monitor thinking. Students stop people in the streets to make sure they are wearing badges of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Police officers and postal workers burst into apartments unannounced to make sure nobody is watching Chinese television instead of North Korea's state television.

The mind-control techniques are backed by arrest, prison, torture and execution. Choi Miwha, the 30-year-old daughter of another recent defector, 62-year-old Kim Myung-ju, said she still suffers dizziness, headaches and memory loss from her imprisonment and torture in 1996, when she was suspected of helping Christian missionaries distribute food.

She said she was repeatedly kicked, beaten with chairs, deprived of food and grabbed by the head and banged against a wall. When finally she was released from prison, she was so weak she collapsed.

In the worst of the famine years, millions of North Koreans survived by eating grass, leaves, bark and whatever they could scrounge. The food shortages today are not much better. Rations are supposed to last three months, but they are enough for only 10 days, Kim said.

Here's an interesting fact: At every North Korean grammar school, there is a stuffed man near the playground. He is dressed as an American soldier, and has a sign or is painted with the words 'U.S. soldier' in Korean. Whenever they enter or leave the school, they are required to strike the effigy, and curse it.

Do you have a source/s for this - I would appreciate it.

Info into NKorea is so scarce.

I've heard all kinds of stories from the South Koreans media and U.S. interrogators that debrief defectors from the North (I've worked with many of them myself). One story that I always remeber is that of an infiltrator who was being prepared to be sent South. During the course of the mission planning, he and his fellow students were given a class on South Korea and the rest of the world, what to expect, how to react, etc. The man, puzzled, naiively asked, 'I don't understand. If the South is rich, prosperous, and not poised to invade, then why have we been taught this all our lives?'

He spent the next six months in a reeducation camp, being tortured and harassed, until they felt he had been sufficiently redeemed. He survived the journey South, and later surrendered to the local authorities.

When asked about why he gave himself up, he told the debriefers that once he heard the truth, and more importantly, once he understood the truth (from their reaction to his question), prison didn't matter, the danger of his infiltration didn't matter, nothing at all did, but getting away.

Actually, my source is word of mouth from U.S. interrogators and other specialists that work in that particular area. From what they tell me, the South Korean press has printed similiar stories over the years, but very, very few have made it here. The U.S. and South Koreans have debriefed many defectors over the years, but the transcrips just tends to circulate among the spooks. Bush could build a devastating case with hundreds of witnesses, still living in the South and elsewhere.

As for where to research it these things as a civilian, I wouldn't know. An enterprising journalist working the FOIA angle could probably make a killing, though.

Chang Mi-ryung, a 29-year-old defector who arrived in South Korea this summer, said the regime forces everyone to attend a weekly 90-minute self-criticism session.
All are expected to explain their activities of the entire week, admit their mistakes, confess how they could have done better and snitch on the errors of others. All confessions are to be introduced with long quotations from the writings of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader.
In addition, twice a week, there are "ideological sessions" and lectures on the leaders' thoughts.

This pattern is repeated in every paranoid totalitarian society and is slowly creeping into our country. The sad thing is how few people would care if they even knew. I have come to the conclusion that a large percentage of the population is unfit for freedom and barely suitable as slaves.

What "they" say is that you can't have a brutal absolute totalitarian regime with a modern economy.

Which is true.

Actually, it's not true. Nazi Germany had a really spiffy modern economy. Their downfall was caused by military failures, not economic problems.

Now, I'll certainly grant that North Korea's got a pretty odd setup. But they also have some significant technological capabilities.

Both Nazi Germany and North Korea did/do face the same problem, though, which is to ensure that the population remains loyal and working toward the goals of the rulers. The Nazis did it using nationalism (for most) and racial purity (for their goons). The North Koreans do it by putting Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il forth as gods.

IMHO, the latter works only as long as Kim Jong Il can remain a god -- once the shine is off, North Korea probably collapses.

Nazi Germany had a really spiffy modern economy.

Modern for 1940, not for 2003.

A competitive information economy cannot function in a totalitarian society.

Totalitarianism requires as its prime mover the control of information. A truly modern economy requires its free flow. To the extent that the state interferes with the flow of information, it hampers its economy.

Even the Chinese have figured this out. They haven't really figured out yet what to do about it. But it is obvious that they are aware of the paradox. Give up control of information and eventually lose power. Or tighten up and throttle your economy.

It's been a long time since I've read militant communist propaganda mascarading as an unbiased news source, but that site shows it is alive and well. Most of the socialists in the west are more sophisticated these days, but I guess that in Korea they still have that Stalinist fire in the belly.

"IMHO, the latter works only as long as Kim Jong Il can remain a god -- once the shine is off, North Korea probably collapses."

Ignorance what keeps the North Koreans in slavery, more so than religion. The Japanese were able to survive as a culture with the loss of Hirohito as their god, because the base of their culture was left intact. It was a shock, but they overcame it and moved on.

North Korea will disintigrate when the truth becomes known, and there is no punishment for speaking it. This is because not only is the godliness of Kim Il Sung (and Jong Il) a lie, but everything they have been taught is. Every famine they endured, every hardship, every misery of the last 50 years was for the convienience of a few.

I don't understand the S. Korean's apparent appeasement toward N. Korea besides the obvious fact that there are at least 11,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul. Do you have any insight to offer on why the South thinks the North can be somehow rehabilitated or dealt with with its current regime? I'm perplexed.

Re #18

I have to tell you that kimsoft is "patisan". He used to frequent korea-related usenet sites, propagating pro-North views. But he was let down when Kim Il-Sung died after he left his country in shambles. I remember his posting where he lamented that the high-school drop-out(Kim Il-Sung) left N. Korea in such poor shape.

If you read his web site, it is a softened version of classic commie argument. He says that N. Korea already have nukes and America keeps S. Korea from getting nukes. They could be all true. But the later part of essay on DPRK-US relation is the pro-North leftist spin.

I hope that you understand this.

Maybe the South doesnt want to "rock the boat" too much, could you imagine the hoards of pennyless people comeing down from the North looking for a better life, It would make the reunification of East and West Germany look like nothing. It will take North Korea an 100 years to catch up with the rest of civilization. How do you clean up a mess like that.

As I understand it, the appeasement has two things going for it (and against us).

First is their culture. The Koreans want very badly to be reunited. The is a strong sense of family, plus an asian tend to not deal in bad news, that makes them (naiively) think that all of the North's talk is just that. They're all Koreans, and they feel they should help out their bretheren, who, deep down, they think wouldn't really hurt them. (Plus, there is an unspoken understanding that the war devastated their lands terribly, and they wish to avoid that so badly, they'll do almost anything to keep the peace. This includes finding someone else to be at fault for the mess i.e. the U.S.) Bottom line: Serious cultural denial.

The second is our influence. We've been an accessory to the crime of appeasement in several administrations, who made short term concessions to buy off peace and quiet from the North. This was very short sighted, but in the context of the Cold War, it was argueably to fry bigger fish. (Clinton's out of luck with that excuse). Bottom line: Business as usual.

Rumsfeld was referring to the NASA composite photograph entitled "The Earth at Night." It shows the entire globe as a continuous nighttime photograph. The only way you can identify the continents is from the outline created by the cities along their coasts, with the brightest lights marking the great ports of the world.
The most telling aspect of the photograph is the identification of where the socialist (and other dictatorship) governments are located. In those parts of the globe, the lights of cities disappear. Much of Africa is dark, especially central Africa. And the entire northern half of the Korean Peninsula disappears entirely.
In that simple black and white portrait of the Earth, the failures of non-Western economies and societies are clearly demonstrated. Someone with a better technical skills than I should put up a link to that photograph. It is an eye-opening visual.

Congressman Billybob

Click for latest column, "Ignorance in America" which is not yet on UPI nor FR.

Click for latest book, "to Restore Trust in America."

Hmmmmm....where have I heard this before?????? Who is signing the martyr checks???? Anyone we know???

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