Imagine that you are a Canadian citizen who
has spent the last 20 years doing charity
work in North Korea.
You’ve visited the “Hermit Kingdom”
more than 150 times without incident, which
is why it’s such a shock when one night,
out of the blue, you’re kidnapped - er,
we mean, arrested - from your hotel room and
accused of being an enemy of the state!
Have you ever wondered - what are prisons
in North Korea like?
Well, you’re about to find out…
This might seem like a far-fetched tale, but
believe it or not, this is exactly what happened
to a South Korean-Canadian pastor who spent
919 days imprisoned in North Korea.
His story is terrifying and brutal, but remarkably,
he’s one of the lucky ones - many others
who have experienced the horrors of North
Korean prison first-hand have much, much darker
tales to tell...but we’ll get to that.
First, let’s find out how a Canadian pastor
found himself on the wrong side of a tyrannical
regime, and ended up on the wrong side of
a North Korean prison fence.
Hyeon Soo Lim was born in South Korea and
moved to Canada as a young man, where he became
a Christian pastor, married and raised a family.
Pastor Lim travelled back to South Korea often
to visit his mother, and while there, began
doing charity work with the poor just over
the border in North Korea.
Over the next 20 years, Pastor Lim would travel
into North Korea more than 150 times - he
was one of the few people in the world who
had a special green Nexus-like ID card that
allowed him to cross the notoriously difficult
border dozens of times without incident.
In January 2015, while Pastor Lim was visiting
his mother in South Korea, he was contacted
by a North Korean tourism official who requested
an urgent meeting with him.
Pastor Lim was surprised, but not concerned
- and he knew that when dealing with North
Korean government officials, the safest option
was to just go along with whatever they said.
When Pastor Lim arrived at the border, a government
official informed him that his meeting had
been moved to a city 17 hours away by car.
Pastor Lim knew better than to argue, so he
threw his plans for a quick day trip out the
window and got into the waiting car, a decision
that would come back to haunt him.
Shortly after Pastor Lim checked into the
hotel room that had been so graciously arranged
for him, 6 men armed with handguns rushed
into his room, blindfolded him and hustled
him out of the hotel and into the back of
a waiting vehicle.
Pastor Lim begged the officers to tell him
what was happening, where they were taking
him, and if he was under arrest, but they
ignored his desperate pleas.
He was taken to a detention center near Pyongyang
and deposited in a prison cell with no explanation.
The dark, dank cell had no windows or furniture,
just a concrete floor and a moldy toilet and
sink.
After weeks of interrogation, Pastor Lim finally
learned what it was that had landed him in
this hell...er, cell - apparently someone
in power had caught wind of one of his sermons
on YouTube, in which he tells his flock not
to treat the ruling Kim family as gods.
Apparently, this was enough to have him labelled
an enemy of the state, and he was charged
with “harming the dignity of the supreme
leadership of the country, and trying to use
religion to destroy the government”.
As relieved as Pastor Kim was to finally understand
why he was here, he knew this was not good
news - if found guilty - which, let’s face
it, he knew he would be - he could face life
in a North Korean prison...or worse.
After more than a year imprisoned in the small,
dank cell at the detention center, Pastor
Lim realized that his only hope was to confess
and pray for mercy, otherwise he would die
in this cell.
In true North Korean form, Pastor Lim’s
trial was swift and his sentence was brutal.
He was quickly proclaimed guilty and initially
sentenced to death.
Before Pastor Lim could wrap his mind around
his impending fate, the judges conferred and,
likely swayed by the presence of some Canadian
diplomats, they downgraded his sentence to
life in a labour prison.
Unbelievably, relief washed over Pastor Lim
as he realized his life had been spared, but
that feeling wouldn’t last long.
He was about to find out what prison in North
Korea is like.
Life in North Korea is a bit of a prison sentence
in and of itself - the country is so isolated
and cut-off from the outside world that it
has earned the nickname of “The Hermit Kingdom”.
While elite members of the authoritarian ruling
class live in outrageous luxury, 40% of the
North Korean population is malnourished.
Tens of millions of North Korean citizens
are trapped in a life of hard labour and extreme
poverty, and under the tyrannical rule of
Kim Jong Un and his cronies, they have little
chance of improving their situation - they
can only hope not to get on the wrong side
of any power-hungry government officials,
lest they find themselves in a true North
Korean prison.
Kim Jong Un is the all-powerful Supreme Leader
of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea, and he has unlimited control over
all aspects of the lives of his citizens.
As dictator of the Hermit Kingdom of North
Korea, Kim Jon Un also presides over its appalling
prison system.
While North Korea officially denies the existence
of these gulag-like prison camps, numerous
reports from North Korean defectors, as well
as covert investigations into conditions in
the country have revealed that not only do
these atrocious camps exist, but they might
be worse than anyone thought.
Pastor Lim’s experience in one of these
prisons would expose some of the horrifying
conditions faced by North Korean prisoners.
After his trial, Pastor Lim was immediately
whisked from the courtroom and into yet another
waiting vehicle.
He was forced to keep his head between his
knees during the drive so he couldn’t see
where he was, until they arrived at an imposing
concrete and barbed-wire building in the middle
of nowhere - Pastor Lim’s new home, possibly
for the rest of his life.
Pastor Lim’s new cell was hardly an improvement
over his last one, but at least he now had
a bed with a thin mattress - although he soon
found that it was infested with cockroaches.
The building’s tap water was undrinkable,
and the food was terrible - rice full of dirt
and thin white bread, day after day after
day, with a weekly boiled egg as a prized
treat.
The meager rations were not nearly enough
to sustain him through the days of hard labour
- Pastor Lim spent hours each day digging
holes for apple trees in an orchard.
Pastor Lim quickly began to fade away, losing
50 pounds, or more than a third of his body
weight and developing painful arthritis in
his hands from digging in the sometimes frozen
dirt.
At one point, Pastor Lim was even hospitalized
for 2 months, before being shipped directly
back to prison as soon as he recovered the
tiniest bit of strength.
Still, Pastor Lim focused on his faith and
kept his spirits up as best as he could.
Over time, he was allowed more privileges,
including a Bible and his much-needed blood
pressure medication.
He was allowed some limited contact with his
wife, connected with some Canadian officials
and even gave a carefully-controlled and government-approved
TV interview.
Pastor Lim even developed relationships with
some of the guards, even helping one of them
learn to connect with his teenage son.
August 9th, 2017 began like any other day.
Pastor Lim was digging holes in the orchard
when a guard came and told him to return to
his cells and pack his things.
He hardly dared to believe his dreams were
coming true as he was ushered to a hotel conference
room full of Canadian and North Korean officials,
signed his release papers, and boarded a plane
headed for home.
After 919 days in a North Korean prison, Pastor
Lim was free.
As horrifying as his ordeal was, Pastor Lim
knows that he was one of the lucky ones.
He didn’t see a single other prisoner during
his time in North Korean prison, and he suspects
that his Canadian citizenship spared him the
worst of the harsh treatment experienced by
North Korean prisoners.
He even says he would consider going back
to North Korea if allowed.
That seems insane to us, but to each his own,
we guess.
Even foregin citizenship isn’t always enough
to protect someone who finds themselves in
a North Korean prison.
In June 2017, an American student named Otto
Warmbier died after he was found unresponsive
in his cell in a North Korean prison.
He had been serving a 15 year hard-labour
sentence for allegedly attempting to leave
the country with a propaganda poster.
Many others who’ve witnessed the horrors
of a North Korean prison first-hand have much
darker stories to tell.
A former guard at one of these infamous prisons
who defected to South Korea has exposed some
of the most horrifying details of what goes
on behind the barbed wire gates of a North
Korean prison.
She explains how the guards were manipulated
and brainwashed to look at the prisoners as
less than human.
They were told that the prisoners were horrible
monsters who had committed terrible crimes
- though she was later devastated to learn
that in many cases, their “crimes” were
no worse than foraging for food to feed their
starving family or simply just being a Christian.
In many cases, multiple generations of entire
families were imprisoned together for the
crimes of one family member, in an effort
to weed out the “bad seeds”.
Once the guards could dehumanize the prisoners,
they were able to treat them with a new level
of brutality.
On top of severe starvation and extreme physical
labour to the point of collapse, guards would
often brutally beat prisoners for the slightest
indiscretion.
Once, the former guard recalled an entire
family, including children, being brutally
beaten in retaliation for 2 of their family
members escaping.
The escapees were later caught, and paraded
through a crowd of prisoners who were forced
to throw stones at the pair, before they were
publicly executed by beheading.
In case you’re trying to convince yourself
that North Korean prisons couldn’t possibly
be as bad as the rumours and stories make
them sound, you can rest assured that the
reality is actually much worse than we could
have imagined.
In 2017, the International Bar Association
- that’s the global professional association
of the world’s lawyers, so, pretty legit
- released the findings of their extensive
investigation into the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea’s kwanliso prison system,
and the report is sickening.
Seriously...if you’re squeamish, you might
want to skip ahead about a minute or so.
We’re not kidding.
Okay, here goes.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
According to the IAB’s report, these are
just a few of the worst atrocities committed
at North Korean prisons:
The report cites numerous incidents of prisoners
being beaten and even executed for hiding
food or digging for edible roots in the forests
near the camp.
There were countless reports of routine public
executions of prisoners by hanging, beheading
or firing squad, designed to subdue and demoralize
the prison population.
In one camp alone, a reported 1,500 to 2,000
prisoners - many just children - are starved
and overworked to death each and every year.
The report goes on to list many, many more
accounts of similar atrocities at North Korean
prisons.
If you skipped that last bit, we don’t blame
you.
The truth about what prison is like in North
Korea is not for the faint of heart.
Thomas Burgenthal, one of three judges on
the IBA’s panel, has a half a century of
experience working on human rights cases,
and he himself is a childhood survivor of
the Auschwitz concentration camp.
He has witnessed first-hand some of the worst
human rights violations in recent history,
and even he was shocked by the brutality of
North Korea’s prisons.
He said, “Conditions in the [North] Korean
prison camps are as terrible, or even worse,
than those I saw and experienced in my youth
in these Nazi camps and in my long professional
career in the human rights field.”
That’s pretty damning, to say the least.
As long as Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un maintains
absolute control over North Korea and the
lives of its people and prisoners, daily life
in North Korea will continue to resemble a
prison sentence, and those unlucky enough
to find themselves behind bars in North Korea
will likely face the most inhumane conditions
imaginable.
Now that you know what prison in North Korea
is like, perhaps you’ll rethink that summer
vacation to Pyongyang.
If you thought this video was chilling, then
you have to check out “How Cruel is North
Korean Leader Kim Jong Un?”, or maybe you’ll
like this other video instead.
As always, thanks for watching, and don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe!
See you next time!
