Chapter two: Kwan-li-so
Some of you may have heard of the Kwan-li-so or concentration camps in North Korea. Well the only two reasons our home was different to these were, nobody here had ever committed a crime and nobody outside the camp apart from the prime minister knew it even existed. The camp name was quite simply camp 29 or as the guards sometimes called it “Facility 34”.
It is about 400 by 700 meters big and surrounded by a big fence. It is about 10 meters tall and runs with electricity. Inside the fence there are 3 blocks and a factory. The first block is the bigger of the two. 100 by 100 meters at the base and 4 floors high. It held all 3000 prisoners and had a small school for all of the children under 10 years of age. There they will learn about the island we are on, basic maths and English skills. The rooms we lived in were small and cramped; they consisted of a toilet in the form of a bucket and two mattresses on the floor with no blanket or pillow to make up our bed. To make sure that we weren’t able to do anything “funny” We the front wall of our cell are made from bars. Because of this we have no privacy and can see into the opposite cells and talk to the people there. Each room had two people in and many people ended up hating their roommate but some lucky ones, like me, became good friends with mine.
The Second block was smaller. I’m not sure exactly how big. After the riot when I was small they made us build a wall around it. They killed half of us, most of them in public executions. More died while putting up the wall. They made us do it for their safety but they never cared for ours. All I know is that there were a lot of guards some of them had wives but none of them had children, if they did we would have heard them playing. We never did.
The third was only 50 by 50 meters and one floor but it was the centre of our darkest nightmares. The concrete building with bits flaking off the walls, just thinking of it makes me shiver. The walls were too thick to hear the screams that were surely coming from within but that didn’t stop us from hearing them in our head every time we looked at us. It was a manifestation of all our darkest fears, the sole reason we stood in line for the guards. Inside was the detention centre. This is where we would go if we broke camp rules or tried to escape. Here they would torture us till so much that many people came out mad or maimed in some way, if they came out at all.
In the factory we sewed and made dolls which looked like different animals, the hours were long; we were on 12 hour shifts with only 30 minutes brake. Then we had another 6 hours till we got to stop working. It was hard and tiring work with no safety precautions for us. Many people were badly hurt but if you refused or complained you were put in the detention centre, and you didn’t want that. They dish out punishment there for anything you do. I once dropped a sewing machine and as a punishment they cut off part of my finger. It’s the things like that which make you look down and get on with your work silently, concentrating on every little move you make.
Life in the prison was hard. We were always hungry. We had two meals a day which were always the same, 180 grams of corn. It was never enough to keep us going, the only way we could get by was to catch and eat mice and other animals we cooked. This wasn’t allowed and could end with you getting a good beating with the guards, if you were lucky. Because of this we were forced to eat these animals raw.
The constant hunger plagues us and we are always looking for a way to escape it. But we never have enough food and we never will.
