About book The Aquariums Of Pyongyang: Ten Years In The North Korean Gulag (2005)
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag This author, Kang Chol-Hwan, was born in 1969 in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kang lived in a very large, luxurious, multi-room apartment in privileged comfort almost unheard of in communist Northern Korea. His family enjoyed the rare conveniences of a refrigerator, washing machine, colored television set and even a car. Kang’s family wealth came, not just from his grandparent’s high social status, but his grandfather’s mass fortune acquired while living and working in capitalist Japan. Kang’s grandfather was one of the most affluent Koreans in Osaka, Japan before he returned to North Korea. Kang’s early childhood in North Korea was a happy one. But slowly and methodically his very powerful and rich family had all of their material wealth stripped from them by the communist party of North Korea. Then, one day, in July 1977, Kang’s grandfather did not return home from work. He was never seen or heard from again and to this date nothing is known about his ultimate fate. He was accused of treason but it seems that it was his hyperactive, outspoken and activist wife who was the root cause of his arrest and disappearance. Kang’s grandmother had significant disagreements with some people who would go on to become top leaders in North Korea and they eventually had their revenge on the entire family.North Koreans believe that political deviance is hereditary, so extended families are routinely rounded up and incarcerated in gulags for the political crime of one family member. This is what happened to Kang’s family. State Police barged into the Kangs’ luxurious apartment, picked out all of the material goods in the home they wanted to keep for themselves, arrested the entire family, then loaded them into a truck and sent them off to Camp #15, the Yodok gulag. Nine-year old Kang, his 7-year-old sister, his grandmother, his father and his uncle were all sent together to Yodok. Only Kang’s mother, being the daughter of a successful North Korean spy, was spared this fate. Because Yodok is a relatively mild camp, most inmates are allowed to live with their families. Kang's book describes the brutal every day life in the gulag. Prisoners in the gulag are constantly kept on the verge of starvation. Inmates are so famished they eat whatever rodents, reptiles or insects they manage to catch: rats, snakes, frogs, salamanders, worms and bugs. They often eat the smaller ones raw, swallowing them whole while they are still alive and kicking. The prisoners are housed in crowded in primitive dirt huts with walls made of dried mud. The huts are not heated, even in winter when temperatures fall below -4 °F. Prisoners commonly suffer frostbite, pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra, and other diseases, with no available medical treatment. Cruel beatings and other violent punishments are routine and many prisoners become extremely sick, crippled, or permanently disabled while in the gulag. Kang witnessed 15 executions while in the camp. Kang's family was release from the gulag ten years later, as abruptly and mysteriously as the unexplained arrest itself, ten years earlier. Kang’s experiences in the camp taught him to be him highly suspicious of North Korea and it’s state censored news, so after his release, Kang began to listening to South Korean and foreign broadcasts. This is a huge crime in North Korea that can easily a sentence of a lifetime in a gulag. The state security police discovered Kang’s secret radio-listening sessions. After Kang was warned that the secret police were planning to arrest him, he escaped by crossing the Yalu River into China and then into South Korea.Kang has had no contact with any member of his beloved family that he left behind in North Korea. In 2011 though, it was learned that Kang’s shy little sister, Mi-ho, and her young, 11-year old son have been arrested and returned as prisoners to the very brutal Yodok gulag.
An easier read than I expected, the cold, hard, truth is told in this biography without sensation. Documenting the struggles of his (South) Korean family after they were lured from Japan to the magnificent ideals of the socialist kingdom of Kim Il-Sung, rare insight into the "Hermit Kindgom" is provided. I learned a lot about the timeline of history in Korea, and Korea culture. It is important to note that the author's experience is limited to his life before his escape (which took place in the 90's); things have gone from bad to worse in North Korea under the leadership of Kim Il-Jung (son of the leader during the author's time). While the cultural and ideological foundation is most likely not significantly altered, many aspects of his observations (such as about the economy and standard of living which are largely believed to be much worse by the international community and the author himself) should not be considered current.Topics include: politics, ideology, indoctrinization of children, self-policing society, snitching and denouncing, criticism and self-criticism, relationships between men and women, the concentration camp (in which he was interred for 10 years), and the pervasive control of the state over all aspects of life - except when it choses to look the other way (in the understanding it can come after you at a later time, if desired). He explains how it is that a capitalist commerce system exists (and indeed is necessary to North Korea's survival) as a stronger economic exchange than the socialist (legal) market.His insights about how the society shapes the character of individuals were interesting, and indicative of the evil active in North Korea. He communicates how the system grooms people into selfish (via the struggle for personal survival), violent (via desensitization to human rights and abuses of power), greedy (via coveteousness for positions of power that provide advantages such as money, clothing, cigarettes, etc), self-policing (via criticsm/ self-criticsm sessions required in schools, quotas, and snitches), followers of the regime.The book closes with the renegade's perspective on the role of South Koreans in recieving North Korean refugees, the challenge of the refugee's adaptation to a free society and his perspective on international aide to North Korea. I'm glad I read this book. I want to know what is going on. I cannot say I learned much beyond the background of Korean history and culture, as most of the methods employed have also been used by Hitler's Nazis and Stalin's Communists. The worship of the Kim Il's and the cult of personality they have constructed is particularly creepy (even seeming step beyond Hitler to me), and the human rights abuses horrific. I feel somewhat limited to help aside from prayer for North Korea, and possibly supporting the efforts of a ministry like Voice of the Martyrs that works directly with North Koreans and along the border region.I would recommend this book for those who want to be informed of the situation in North Korea.
Do You like book The Aquariums Of Pyongyang: Ten Years In The North Korean Gulag (2005)?
The Aquariums of Pyongyang is a first-hand account of a survivor of the North Korean labor camps. This is the story of a wealthy Korean family who, lured by the promises of the Kim Il-sung's party, found themselves trapped in the North's visible and invisible prisons (the aquariums). In tone and writing focus, Kang Chol-Hwan sets himself as a North Korean Solzhenitsyn (author of the Gulag Archipelago account of the Russian labor camps). Kang Chol-hwan covers in his account his life as a child ("it would be bad grace to deny I had a happy childhood, but my family was better off than most"), the sudden fall from grace, the life of his entire in the Yodok labor camp (only few made it through the first year, but those who did were likely to survive the full sentence), the release and decoupling from the family, the escape to China and then South Korea, and the return to Japan. Many of the things described are plausible, including the hardships in the labor camp (the hunger, the vicious guards, the incompetent professors, the by-heart learning of the Juche doctrine); others are perhaps less believable (the work quotas seem absurdly at odds with the physical capabilities of humans); yet others are seemingly introduced for the Western sensibility (for example, the details about eating snake, salamander, and rat.) The important material is, perhaps, just the account of the life in the labor camp, not far from the description of the Gulag by Solzhenitsyn. The book is well written and easy to read (not counting the subject). Parts of the writing tell short, funny stories of "beating" the guards, which lightens the overall story to a palatable level for everyone. I would skip over the parts describing the run from China, dithered probably to protect the identity of the real helpers. Overall, this is a good, solid account of an atrocity that should be stopped as soon as possible. Must-read for the interested in the evolution and downfall of real-world Communism.
—Michael Scott
If George Orwell's 1984 was real, it would be North Korea. After reading Blaine Harden's account of Shin Dong-hyuk's life (being born and "raised" in Camp 14 because his parents were sent there as enemies of the state), I turned to the Aquariums of Pyongyang. Which gives a rather different perspective on these camps. Kang grew up in Pyongyang as a young child, raised in an environment of propaganda, whorshipping Kim Il-sung and King Yong-il. Kang's grandmother had persuaded the family to move from Japan to North Korea out of zeal for the communist idea. She realized the horrible mistake too late. Kang and his family were suddenly sent to Camp 15, called Yodok, in 1977. There, ten years of hard labour followed - five hours sleep at night, not nearly enough or adequate food, thin rags to wear and no shoes in winter weather well below freezing point, and guards who randomly beat them. Work accidents and malnutrition and punishments killed prisoners, adults and children alike, every day. They ate rats and worms to survive.Kang was only nine years old, his sister Mi-ho just seven, their grandmother an old woman, when they arrived. Their "crime"? Being the relatives of his grandfather, who one day disappeared from work and was sent to a hard labour camp for being an enemy of the state. Astonishingly in this day and age, the Kim dynasty practices kin liability or "guilt-by association", so the relatives of "traitors" are punished for having the same blood. Even more astonishingly, they were regarded as "redeemables" and their conditions were actually better than that of "irredemables", who are sent to even worse camps for life. They were not told when, or if, they would be released, however.They were finally set free, in a manner of speaking in 1987. Kang and his sister had grown up ina concentration camp and survived. The whole family had miraculously survived. They were still under close surveillance though and Kang's father and grandmother died within a few years of their release. Kang himself, after being denounced for listening to South Korean radio, fled North Korea for China and today lives in South Korea. His family is still in North Korea.Most shockingly of all, after finishing this book, I found out that his sister Mi-ho is believed to be back at Yodok - along with her 11 year old son, Kim Jeong-nam. In May 2011 they suddenly disappeared, probably because they had received money from Kang via a broker, who is believed to have denounced them.
—Stefanie
A friend happened to be reading this while I was reading Nothing to Envy, and recommended Aquariums of Pyongyang to me.As with one of the people whose story is told in Nothing to Envy, Kang's family is part of the Chosen Soren -- Korean residents of Japan who are sympathetic with North Korea. As a relatively well-off member of North Korean society, his childhood seems rather idyllic until the arrest of his grandfather and the internment of many of his family members in the Yodok camp system.From the age of 9 to 19, Kang manages to survive the horrors of living in this system, surviving hunger, disease, brutality, cold through shear will. It's an amazing story. I found the part of the book that dealt with his internment more compelling than the story of his life after release and after his escape to the south.It was interesting to compare his story with those of the interviewees in Nothing to Envy. Kang got out in the early 90s, before the famine in North Korea was at its worst. Yet as a camp resident, it's almost as if he went through the horror that the rest of the country experienced, only ten years earlier.
—Steven
