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!