Interviews with Kang Chol-hwan

I was born in the city of Pyongyang, North Korea. When I was 9 years old, my grandfather was purged for political reasons. I was sent to the Yodok concentration camp where I spent 10 years.

After my release, I attempted to escape to South Korea. I did and I studied at Han Yang university in South Korea and also worked as a North Korean expert reporter for Cho-sun Ilbo, Chol-sun Daily newspaper for 10 years.

To this day, I am working also as an activist for democratizing North Korea and improving its human rights situations.

1977 is around the time, when Kim Jong Il was designated the official successor of his father [Kim Il Sung]. Those people who were opposed to this new leader [Kim Jong Il] became political victims.

I believe my grandfather was politically purged for one of two reasons. Either he was implicated in this opposition towards the newly named successor, Kim Jong Il or it could have been because while my grandfather lived in Japan, he opposed Han Duk Su of Chongryon. Chongyron is the pro North Korean group of Koreans living in Japan.

[Kim Il Sung (1912 – 1994) was the founder and leader of the North Korean state from 1948 until his death in 1994. Kim Jong Il (1941 – 2011) succeeded his father and led North Korea from 1994 until his death in 2011. Chongryon, or the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, is an organization with close ties to the North Korean government. Han Duk Su was the organization’s founder and president.]

I’m not quite sure which of these two reasons was to blame but I think it is probably because he was part of the leadership that opposed Kim Jong Il’s succession to power.

My grandfather was a member of the Workers’ Party and he was the Vice President of the Commercial Management Office of Pyongyang.

[The Workers’ Party of Korea is the communist party that has run North Korea since the state was established in 1948.]

What this meant was that he had to look after all the commercial stores and department stores in the city of Pyongyang. We were definitely part of the upper class, so to speak, also because my grandmother was a member of the Supreme People’s Assembly, which is like the legislature of North Korea.

She was also the deputy head of the Workers’ Party organization of female members. The wife of Kim Il Sung was the president and my grandmother was her deputy.

So yes, we were part of the upper class.

Kang Chol-Hwan escaped from North Korea in 1992 and has dedicated his life to bringing attention to the horrifying conditions in North Korea.

When Kang was 9 years old, the North Korean government accused his grandfather of treason and sent the family to one of its most notorious concentration camps, Yodok. Kang lived in the camp for 10 years, surviving on meager corn rations along with rats and earthworms. He and his family were forced to work in fields and mines and to witness public executions of their fellow prisoners.

Following his release from the camp, Kang bought an illegal radio receiver and began listening secretly to broadcasts from South Korea. These broadcasts allowed Kang to understand the differences between totalitarian societies, like North Korea, and free societies. Kang and a friend escaped North Korea by sneaking across the border to China and went from there to South Korea, where he lives today.

Kang described his experiences in his powerful memoir, “The Aquariums of Pyongyang.” President Bush welcomed Kang to the White House in 2005 .

North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a country of 23 million people in northeast Asia, ruled by Communist dictator Kim Jong-Un. His deceased predecessors—father, Kim Jong-Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-Sung – respectively retain the titles of “Eternal President” and “The Great Leader.”

The Korean War began in 1950, when Kim Il-Sung, backed by the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea. The conflict ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, and the border between the two Koreas remains tense and heavily militarized.

Kim Il-Sung employed harsh tactics to consolidate his power and propagated an extreme personality cult that has been continued by his successors. A blend of communist doctrine, state terror, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism has given North Korea its unique ideology. Despite some recent openings, North Korea remains largely isolated from the rest of the world.

With the end of Soviet communism and withdrawal of economic support, North Korea’s economy collapsed in the 1990s. A massive famine, aggravated by the regime’s indifference, killed as many as 2 million people between 1994 and 1998. While conditions have improved, even today, North Korea faces problems of malnutrition and insufficient access to food.

Tensions between North and South Korea remain high. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors and attacked a South Korean island, killing four civilians. North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons in contravention of several international agreements. The country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 in order to test ballistic missiles and eventually a nuclear device. Multilateral negotiations have so far failed to constrain North Korea’s arms buildup and nuclear program.

North Korea is among the world’s most repressive states, engaging in widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and denial of the rights of expression, association, assembly, and religion. The government pervasively regulates all aspects of the lives of its citizens, each of whom is categorized as “core,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” according to the history of his or her family’s relationship with the regime. Access to housing, employment, education, and other social and economic goods depend heavily on these security classifications. The government determines where each citizen will live, and travel within the country is strictly limited.

Emigration is prohibited. Refugees who have escaped to China have frequently been forcibly returned to North Korea where they are imprisoned, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and sometimes executed. The government operates a network of forced labor camps for an estimated 120,000 political prisoners. While persons convicted of ordinary crimes serve fixed sentences, those convicted of political crimes are confined indefinitely. Punishment is extended to three generations – the offender’s parents, siblings, and children are also incarcerated, as a way to pressure North Koreans to conform. Political offenders are often denied food, clothing, and medical care, and many die in prison.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report classifies North Korea as “not free” and as one of nine nations whose lack of political rights and civil liberties are considered the “worst of the worst.”