http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us27Jzt7jUQ Interview of Yoduk Survivor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN0xQByxwxk actual Yoduk concentration camp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrY1hYd4EQQ Video of Yoduk Story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodok_concentration_camp Info from Wikipedia
There is a one of the world most crucial and non humane concentration camp in North Korea known as YoDuk. There are some survivors from YoDuk concentration camp came to S.Korea and published book and even made Musical: YoDuk Story. Yo Duk story was even performed in Washington D.C. about 2 years ago.
People from North Korea who are sucess to escape from N.Korea and currently live in S.Korea always mentioned about this Yoduk concentration camp and they all described how brutal they were. Therefore some say N. Korea's Yoduk concentration camp is worse than German's Auschwitz concentration camp. Nothing was given to people in camp and just continuously work. Only served food were poorly made cover of grain soup that contains no nutrition to live. So most of people rely on other food like roots of trees, mice, and anything that are edible.
Since prisoners were not treated well that they only attempt to achive instinct desires like eat, sleep, and sex. It is pretty much like the first step of Maslow's pyramid. Military personnels only watch out for escaping prisoners but do not care much about what prisoners doing, even if there is fight between prisoners. Therefore there is many fights between people over food. Some survivors described as animal like pure wild nature was happening in Yoduk concentration camp.
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3 comments:
It's unreal that people are treated like this. The resorting to animal like behavior over food reminds me of a cartoon or something, except it is obviously not funny.
It might be hard to believe but if you click on my video clips and what survivor say about the Yoduk doesn't seems like unreal to me.
After reading "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," I do have a few comments regarding the post.
First, Yoduk is an awful concentration camp but probably not one of the worst in North Korea. Kang's account tells us that there are concentration camps that solely exist for the purpose of letting people die of exhaustion. Yoduk, however, was partly a redeemable camp. Though their work was in no way easy, there was hope of one day leaving the camp. Kang even wrote that he felt guilty complaining about Yoduk because he knew that there were people who had it worst than him.
Second minor point, Dong yon mentions that they were only allowed to sleep, eat, and have sex. They were never allotted enough time to sleep. They were up at 5:30am and would work into nightfall. Sometimes workers would fall asleep on the job and get beaten and assigned extra work, again reducing their time to sleep. Food was limited. They mostly hunted for their own food, which included rats and bugs, like Dong Yon pointed out. Lastly, sex was NOT permitted at Yoduk. Anyone caught was punished severely. Women who got pregnant were forced to get abortion, which was unsanitary and often resulted in her death.
I am glad that more information is becoming available about the North Korean concentration camps and I hope that future dialog will one day help these people find freedom.
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