http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3071468/ns/us_news-only/t/former-guard-ahn-myong-chol/#.Ui5xRcaTj0F

Former guard: Ahn Myong Chol

North Korean prison guard remembers atrocities

NBC News

Jan. 15, 2003 — Ahn
Myong Chol is a former prison guard at Hoeryong-Area prison in North Korea.
He worked at four different camps and discussed with NBC News what he saw —
and committed — at those camps. Below is an edited account of that time, in
his own words. (Editor’s note: Ahn’s descriptions are graphic and may not be
suitable reading for all.)

I was a driver at the Hoeryong Prison No. 22 national security defense
division for eight years.

The name of the prison: No. 22 Hoeryong prison. Official name No. 2 district
company prison, called National Security Defense Division No. 22 Hoeryong
Prison.

I worked at four places. Three of them have closed. One still exists. I
worked No. 22 Hoeryong Prison starting from May ’87 until September ’94. I
started to work the age of 19. I was late two years because I engaged in the
army service after college. Normally we join the army at the age of 17.

Officially it’s not a soldier, not military, it’s national guard. But the
training is the same as the military.

At first, for three years, I was in charge of watching the barbed wire
fences, often at nighttime. Sometimes like an ambush, to keep the prisoners
from escaping. After that I became a driver, and I delivered foodstuffs to
the guard post.

At first I felt it was a movie film studio for the propaganda of North
Korea, speaking ill of South Korean government. But actually the officer who
brought me to the prison instructed me not to speak and not to smile. I was
instructed if there is a prisoner who tries to escape or fight me, then I
was allowed to kill him.

They call prisoners “re-settlers.” They called the prison the managing
office for the “re-settlers,” and they call the prisoners non-guilty
persons.

At first, in 1959, this camp was inaugurated by the doctrine of Kim Jong Il
and Kim Il Sung, and expulsion, escaping and riot happened in this camp.
Once someone is imprisoned here, it is so horrible that might think he is
already dead if he is not loyal to Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung.

They trained me not to treat the prisoners as human beings. If someone is
against socialism, if someone tries to escape from prison, then kill him. If
there’s a record of killing any escapee, then the guard will be entitled to
study in the college. Because of that, some guards kill innocent people.
Beating and killing is an everyday affair.

They are not treated as human beings; they are just like dogs or pigs.

There is no instruction how to beat them, but the officers tell us to beat
or kill the re-settlers without responsibility. Therefore, when someone is
working in the field, the guard tells the prisoner to come over here, if the
prisoner comes slowly, then it can be a cause of beating.

In the training, such as tae kwan do, and when someone is working in the
field, we call the prisoner under the pretext of actual war training. And I
have beaten one humpback person. This is usual to beat prisoners.

The guard system is so strict there are few escapees, and sometimes we need
to find out a way to be, get away from our guard’s life in the prison. And
we try to find a pretext in order to go to college. One of my colleagues
tried to make a prisoner escape by climbing the barbed wire fence, and then
he shot him, and he went to college.

There is detention center inside the prison camp. That is for the people who
cannot fulfill his job during the day. At first stage, they don’t give him
food. If he repeats it three times, he’ll be punished, to go to the
detention center. In three months he will of course die. The work is divided
into morning job and afternoon job.

There’s wooden poles, square pole, and they twist the legs under the knee
with the squared wooden pole, and then if this continues for three months,
the blood doesn’t circulate. And if someone destroys fixtures or furniture,
then he’ll be punished.

Or another — one team is composed of five persons, and they go to the coal
mine or field to work, and if any one person of them is late or escapes from
the group, they’ll all be punished. There are two watchmen/supervisors, and
if watchman fears someone would like to escape or if there’s anything
abnormal, then the prisoner will be punished.

I saw numerous prisoners killed, especially by beating. I saw one person age
between 40 and 50 — he’s old enough because the average age of prisoner is
between 40-50 — he was working in brick factory. And as he was older he was
moving slowly, he was not working well. And the team master tramped on his
loin, and the bone was broken. He was hit by an iron rod that is used to
start vehicle engines, and I heard the next day he died.

Sometimes I used to drink alcohol together and chat together with the people
in the division of torture, and when the officer in the division is in a
good mood, the prisoners will be treated mildly. And when he had an argument
with his wife at home, then the torture will be severe. And I heard many
times that eyeballs were taken out by beating. And I saw that by beating the
person, the muscle was damaged and the bone was exposed, outside, and they
put salt on the wounded part. At the beginning I was frightened when I
witnessed it, but it was repeated again and again, so my feelings were
paralyzed.

As a human it was really heartbreaking. After the Gulf War, there were
tunnels digging nationwide. This prison was engaged in tunnel digging. And I
was in charge of the pig farm.

At that time the tunnel was passing near the pig pen of the camp, and about
500 political prisoners were participating and there was one female named
Han Jin Duk, 26 years old. I was in charge of giving food to the pigs. And
my supervisor, when he saw the woman, she was beautiful. And he raped her,
and he was found by the watchman officer. And he was investigated. My
superior, his rank was reduced and the woman was sent to the detention
center And then I didn’t see her for one year.

One day I was going to the place to load the coal, I met her. And I noticed
she was exactly that woman, and I asked her, how you could survive. And she
told me, that yes, I survived. But she showed me her body, and it was all
burned by fire.

After six months I met her at the corn storage in Kusan district and found
her putting on a used tire on her knees because her legs were cut off.
Because of a coal mine wagon ran over her knees. And all she could do now
was separate the corn grains from the cob.

The reason why she was forced to go to the prison is her father’s elder
brother was purged at the Anbyon, Kanwhan Do province. She went when she was
5 years old. All of the family members were imprisoned. Her mother starved
to death, and her brother also starved to death in the prison. I met her at
age 26. So it means she was in the prison for 21 years. I think she no
longer is in the world.

A food factory produced soy sauce and cookies and bean paste. And here the
women worked between 20 and 30 years old. The women are the sexual slaves of
the security officers, they are forced to wear only white thin gowns and no
underwear, they are not given underwear. They make all the beautiful women
work here.

The prisoners go to the coal mine along this road, in carts pulled by cows.
And while they are passing through here, I was instructed to beat a disabled
person by my superior, and I had no choice but to obey.

Even in the small village there is an officers headquarters, and if any
prisoner disobeys, then he can be beaten here, and the officers were armed,
and they would kill prisoners here.

Not only here but all other places, even in the small hills they bury
bodies. And when we cut the trees down, sometimes we find a buried body. Not
only here, but all around here are buried bodies.

In the hills here, if there is some flat area, it is covered with graves.
And if people start to farm there, they find bodies or bones.

This area is where there are the most densely buried bodies. There are
graves all over here, and we can see the graves where there are no woods.
There is no particular area to bury dead bodies, but they put them all in
this general vicinity, and no one can cry. It is forbidden to cry, and there
is no funeral ceremony, and the officers say, “The anti-revolutionary person
has died, so there is no reason to cry.”

I don’t have any unforgettable image or memory because I was not a victim. I
was on the side of the attacker. So I don’t have any nightmares. However,
before I came to the south, I thought it is not a humane thing, although I
was used to seeing such crimes.

One unforgettable image, there were two girls and they were trying to take
out a piece of noodle from one polluted water pond where they put the
garbage. And one guard kicked the kids into the small pond, and they
drowned. The pond was very deep, and I felt really sad about that.

I thought it is natural to punish or beat a guilty person. Because I was a
driver, and I was a guard. But in the course of time, I had the opportunity
to talk to the prisoners and found they are not guilty. And when I see the
senior citizen kneel down in front of young guard, and he was treated badly,
then my heart was breaking. And I thought this is not a humane thing.

Once I beat one person while training in tae kwan do. I kicked him with my
foot, but fortunately he didn’t die.

I wished to get out of this guard job. In this prison, even if you die, you
cannot get out of the prison. The prisoners are imprisoned not because of
their own guilt but by distant relatives, other family members imprisoned as
well.

This is the type of horrible politics of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. If the
people are not loyal to these father and son Kims, they have to die there.

In a brainwashing prison or police prison, people can be set free when the
prison term is finished, but in the political prison, there is no prison
term. Such a system shouldn’t exist in the world. Yes, there are still such
prisons. How many exist in North Korea, I don’t know. But prisons belong to
national security defense division. Once it was criticized by Amnesty
International; they criticized Pyonyang Songwori prison in 1990 or 1991.

And they merged a couple of prison camps. The first is Kaechon 14 and Hannam
15. And Hoeryong 22 and Hasung 16 and Chongjin 25. In order to merge the
prisons, the expenses are tremendous. For example, to take out barbed wire
fences and carrying prisoners it took six months in order to close one
prison. The expenses for moving materials and fixtures and furnitures and
exploding the facilities are tremendous. However, in the future no more
merging will happen. Now five prisons are left, and there is no way to close
any more prisons. Because the government authority is now (closing)
returning the prisoners to society.

The number 12, 13 and 25 — those prisons were side by side. In the vicinity,
the land was very fertile. Because the prisoners cultivated it, farmed it.
But after the closing of 12 and 13, those areas became devastated.

The economic portion of the contribution Hambuk province is about 40 percent
of foodstuffs, such as corn. And they produce coal as well for the
coal-burning electricity power plant in Chongjin, and therefore if they
close more prisons the people will starve.

Most North Koreans know there are prisons like this, that’s why they are
loyal to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

We had to be very careful in expressing even one word. We shouldn’t be
critical, and we have the system of self-criticism or self-judgment hour.
First we read Kim Il Sung doctrine, then we criticize ourselves for the work
we’ve done in the past week. In this case, I have to say the “great leader
Kim Il Song” or “great leader Kim Jong Il.” And if I don’t say “great
leader,” then I’ll be punished. So I have to behave. Otherwise all of my
family numbers will be put in prison.

My way of thinking was changed. While I was starting as a driver, before I
took it as natural, and after a while I thought this is not the right way.
So I was already changed before coming to the south. I didn’t change my way
of thinking here in South Korea, in order to buy people’s hearts.

Because of Kim Jong Il and his subordinates and a small portion of citizens,
the total nation of 20 million people are suffering such hardships. And the
people are now changing to think that this regime is not right one. But they
cannot speak out, because of Kim Jong Il’s atrocities.

 

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/north-korea%E2%80%99s-overlooked-atrocities

 

North Korea’s
Overlooked Atrocities

Pyongyang’s
decision to move forward with its December 12th ballistic missile test—last
year’s second—was made in defiance of multiple UN Security Council
resolutions and repeated warnings from the United States and the
international community. More than two decades of engaging and negotiating
with North Korea on security issues while relegating mass-atrocity crimes
occurring within the country to a low-grade status, has borne no fruit and,
for the millions who suffer from a state-induced famine and the hundreds of
thousands of innocents languishing in hellish concentration camps, this
approach has proven to be not only unethical but harmful. In the wake of UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay’s January 14th call
for an international inquiry into
what “may amount to crimes against humanity,” and with reports of North
Korea’s plan to conduct a third nuclear test in the very near future now
surfacing, it is high time for the world community
to fundamentally reassess policy on North Korea to focus on the unparalleled
humanitarian and human rights emergency unfolding in the country today.

The North Korean government spent an estimated $1.34 billion on its rocket
program last year, according
to South Korea’s
Ministry of Unification. An official with the ministry stated these
resources could have taken care of food shortages within the country for
“four to five years.” Recent missile tests have taken place at a time
when North Korea’s famine is reportedly at one of the worst points in the
nation’s history. An October report (pdf)
from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) indicates that North
Korea’s hunger situation is
at the “serious level,” with its Global Hunger Index (GHI) at 19
points, substantially higher than that of 15.7 in 1990. This is
very alarming news, especially since the famine in the 1990s claimed
the lives of between 2 to 3.5 million people. According to the IFPRI, North
Korea had the highest GHI growth rate since 1990 (21 percent) of any country
in the world, in spite of significant international humanitarian assistance.

Those who cite poverty or natural disasters as the antecedents for North
Korea’s perpetual famine are gravely misguided. The UN’s former special
rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, stated
categorically in his sixth and final report (pdf)
to the General Assembly in 2010 that the DPRK, which has the largest per
capita army and the highest military expenditures in the world according to
GDP, was not by any measure poor. Muntarbhorn noted that North Korea has
very large mineral resources and generates billions in export and trade, but
that the profits from this activity are being used entirely on the party
elite and for militarization. He concluded, and has since reiterated in
interviews, that the DPRK has the means at its disposal to feed its people
and that the real issue is not a lack of resources but the military-first
policy, blatant discrimination, and misappropriation of provisions
(including the mass diversion of international humanitarian aid) by the
authorities in Pyongyang. One must never forget the fact that the North
Korean state has brutally and systematically starved masses of people within
its prison camps for over six decades. 

 Among
several important reports analyzing North Korea’s human rights crimes issued
over the past 20 years, the law firm DLA Piper published Failure
to Protect: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea (pdf)
in 2006, which found that North Korea’s discriminatory and exploitative food
policy, resulting in famine, and its inhuman treatment of political
prisoners constituted crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court. The report recommended the UN Security
Council adopt a resolution urging open access to North Korea for
humanitarian relief and for the release of political prisoners. In an op-ed for
theNew York Times the
same year, the late Czech President Vaclav Havel, Nobel Laureate Elie
Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik (who
commissioned the aforementioned report) called on UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon to “make his first official action a briefing of the Security
Council on this dire situation.” Again, in 2009 (pdf)
and 2010 (pdf),
the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea urged for the
“totality of the United Nations system, especially the Security Council,” to
be mobilized “to take measures to prevent egregious violations and protect
people from victimization,” and for an “end to impunity.” These
recommendations have yet to be implemented.

North Korea’s mass atrocity situation continues annually to be the subject
of a vast and growing body of documentation. In recent years, the North
Korean state has been found to be comprehensively violating the UN genocide
convention by targeting for destruction every group protected by the
international treaty while also employing every method defined as genocidal
in Article 2. Genocide Watch, a nonpartisan NGO that exists “to
predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide” and whose board of
advisers includes respected anti-genocide activists such as the retired
Canadian general Roméo Dallaire and Samantha Power (current senior director
for multilateral affairs and human rights for the US National
Security Council), published a report (pdf)
on December 19, 2011, that determined conclusively that North Korea has
committed genocide as defined by Raphael Lemkin’s 1948 convention, stating
that there is “ample proof that genocide has been committed and mass killing
is still under way in North Korea.” Genocide is taking place through the DPRK’s
decades-long, racially based policy of killing the half-Chinese babies of
North Korean women forcibly repatriated by China (constituting genocide on
national, ethnic, and racial grounds) and through its targeted and
systematic extermination of its indigenous, religious (predominately
Christian) population and their families (genocide on religious grounds).

Ignoring mass atrocities in North Korea is no longer a viable option. Mass
human rights violations within the country amount to the most egregious of
international crimes and a clear obligation to act has been flouted for too
long, and at an inconceivable cost. What is long overdue is for the United
States and other members of the world community to bring the matter of
crimes against humanity and genocide in North Korea before the UN Security
Council and, in all bilateral or multilateral discussions and initiatives on
North Korea, to now prioritize the fundamental freedoms, rights, and lives
of the North Korean people.

Robert Park is a minister, human rights activist, and founding member of the
nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, a nonprofit
working to provide life-saving resources to victims and their families in
North Korea.

---

From:
DON HANK <zoilandon@msn.com>
To:

zoilandon@msn.com
Sent: Monday, September 9, 2013 7:57 PM
Subject: ANDY STRIKES BACK!: Blogger Andy Benjamin says Israel does
not want to interfere in Syria

 

Sent:
Monday, September 09, 2013 6:53 PM

Subject:
Re: Blogger Andy Benjamin says Israel does not want to interfere in Syria

 

I think the ones demanding that we interfere should get their butts on an
airplane and go right now and fight shoulder to shoulder with the people
they think are innocent. Lacking that, they should send their sons and
daughters or their wives to fight. Those of us who are not sure who is
innocent and who is guilty will continue to investigate.

—– Original Message —–

From:
Andy

To:

DON HANK

Sent:
Monday, September 09, 2013 6:49 PM

Subject:
Re: Blogger Andy Benjamin says Israel does not want to interfere in Syria

 

What you are saying then is that the US should not interfere while genocide
is ongoing. Do I have it right?

 

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 6:32 PM, DON HANK <zoilandon@msn.com>
wrote:

I was talking about people who are not at war with the US.

—– Original Message —–

From:
Andy

To:

DON HANK

Sent:
Monday, September 09, 2013 5:20 PM

Subject:
Re: Blogger Andy Benjamin says Israel does not want to interfere in Syria

 

Of
course not. It was immoral for FDR to have bombed the railroads and those
building rails that were transporting Jews to the crematoria. It was immoral
to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was immoral to bomb the Nazi
fortifications on Omaha beach. It was immoral to bomb Saddam who murdered a
million Iranians and 300,000 or his own. It was immoral to bomb Saddam in
1991 when he invaded Kuwait. It was immoral for the Israelis to bomb the
advancing Egyptian Third Army in Sinai, or the advancing Syrians, courtesy
of Assad’s dad; or to bomb the HAMAS “martyrs” launching rockets at Israeli
kindergarteners. It’s immoral to bomb people. It is moral to let them bomb
you.

 

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:53 PM, DON HANK <zoilandon@msn.com>
wrote:

I don’t accept the view that bombing people is morality.

—– Original Message —–

From:

To:

DON HANK

Sent:
Monday, September 09, 2013 3:20 PM

Subject:
Re: Blogger Andy Benjamin says Israel does not want to interfere in Syria

 

The opinion is split in Israel. Most of the government have other things to
do with the nation’s resources. Some of those who didn’t think this through
may think that it’s the right thing to do – I think it’s that “right thing
to do” even though those of us who do, understand that it is not the
practical thing to do – nor the wise thing to do. It is morality waging
battle on practicality. It is likely that the Israelis’ sentiment matches
that of Americans. We want no part of it. A

 

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 2:14 PM, DON HANK <zoilandon@msn.com>
wrote:

This guy gets it right (see below), I think. The Israeli government seems to
want the Obamastrike, but a lot of Israelis oppose it.

Agree, Andy?

Don

 

Don Hank, you’re half right —
because Israel is half-opposed to “Obamastrike”
Opinion is split there, as it is here.
Some believe that Assad, with his support for Hezbollah, is so dangerous
that he must be removed at all costs.
Many others believe that the worst outcome would be a quick, decisive end to
the Syrian civil war, which keeps Arab fanatics busy killing one another
rather than turning their attention to the hated Jewish population just
across the border.
The main reason that many Israelis and American friends of Israel support
Congressional authorization for a military strike is that they believe that
the most negative of all possible developments would be an erosion of US
credibility and authority around the world. A world with an enfeebled US is
a more dangerous world for Israelis, and everyone else.
____________________________________________________________