Original subtitles

Being hungry all the time

is humanity's worst tragedy.

The first time I ate a mouse,

I thought, I need to eat this to survive.

We had nothing to eat and we certainly couldn't buy medicine.

So they laid me to one side, waiting for me to die.

I was hung upside down

and beaten for 14 hours.

We never knew when we'd get beaten.

There was constant fear.

We never imagined anyone

could sell and buy people.

I'm filled with hatred of North Korea

that murdered my family.

My family has believed in God for generations.

They were all arrested.

From my early years in the military,

what I remember most is robbing people

in the villages when we got hungry.

I saw my friends fighting for their breath,

and right in front of my eyes, they'd die.

If the person who created such a place isn't a criminal,

I don't know who is.

North Korea is the most isolated country in the world.

Famine and food shortages have killed millions since 1994.

Repression is total.

The government operates a system of concentration camps.

Prison Camp Locations

Escape is punishable by death.

I escaped on February 1st, 2001.

I went through China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

You had to bribe the police for a pass to travel toward the border.

I sold everything I owned. I bought the travel pass with the money.

I crossed the border at night.

If you didn't bribe,

you would get caught.

If you got caught,

you were shot to death.

These are the stories of people who fled North Korea

between 1992 and 2006.

Such events are still happening today.

MRS. KIM

She was a dancer in North Korea.

Her best friend became Kim Jong-Il's lover.

The friendship cost her everything.

You could say I was sent to prison

for knowing the private lives of powerful men.

One guy was imprisoned

for saying Kim Il-Sung had a lump in his neck.

One had spread a newspaper with Kim Il-Sung's picture on the floor.

One was in for listening to South Korean radio.

We were all deported,

my parents and my four kids,

2 years old, 4 years old, 7 years old, and 9 years old.

I was released from Yodok prison camp after 8 and 1/2 years.

One of my sons had died,

and I gave up my daughter for adoption after leaving the camp.

Otherwise, she would have been stigmatized and unable to marry.

I don't know what happened to my husband.

For the last 35 years, I've wondered if he's still alive.

I don't even know what his crime was.

One of my sons tried to escape in '89

but was caught at the border and shot.

I had such mental trauma.

My mother and father died of starvation

in Yodok prison camp.

My first son drowned in a river,

on the way back from camp school.

I'm so filled with hatred and anger.

My last son was captured twice

and tortured so much his lungs filled with blood.

He was released because he was nothing but a shell.

He's still hospitalized, handicap level-2.

He can't breathe.

How can anyone praise Kim Jong-il?

I'm filled with hatred for North Korea.

They murdered my family.

I can't live without tears.

My heart aches. He left me alone in the world.

Cursed Kim Jong-il.

The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea for 60 years.

The Great Leader Kim Il Sung

President for Life

They had us all worship him as a god.

Christians say grace before their meals.

We said grace to Kim Il Sung.

He was like a supreme being

so we thought he didn't even pee.

He was our father's father and our mother's father.

The most revered one.

On April 15th, 1912, Kim Il-Sung was born.

The Almighty Sun hath risen.

We were so lucky to worship the 21st Century's Sun.

In one generation, he defeated two great imperial powers.

In our 5000 year history, he was the first to do that.

He's our nation's hero.

That's what we were taught.

He can travel miles while sitting down.

Kim Il-Sung has superhuman powers.

He'd appear simultaneously in the east and the west.

Kim Il-Sung can fly north,

south, east and west.

He appeared like a star

and we worship him like the Sun.

So April 15th became the Day of the Sun.

In 1994, Kim Il Sung died.

His son Kim Jong Il took power.

I thought the world was ending.

What would we do?

Without him, nothing could be right.

I absolutely thought he was divine.

Just replace Kim Il-Sung with God.

That's our religion.

We were totally brainwashed.

If I were still there, I would still worship him.

I'd also worship his son, Kim Jong-il.

The Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il

The General

I thought of the Great Leader as a father,

so how could he let his people live like this?

I jumped off the train.

I had boarded the train to Hae-San. It was winter.

The train was going uphill, so it was slow.

There was a lot of snow on the ground,

so we didn't get hurt.

I didn't know where we were, but everyone was jumping off,

so I jumped with the others.

My childhood was happy.

I had five or six aquariums with all kinds of fish.

We kids all competed to see

who had the best fish.

One fish had bulging eyes.

That was the most prized,

and I looked all over for it.

KANG CHOL-HWAN

His grandfather was arrested for an unnamed crime.

North Korean practice is to purge three generations.

Kang, his grandmother, father, uncle,

and little sister were taken to Yodok prison camp.

The soldiers' tone was so harsh.

I was getting frightened.

Kang screamed so much,

the soldiers let him take one of his beloved aquariums.

He was 9 years old.

The iron gates opened.

The soldiers were armed.

I began to feel real fear.

Everyone was so skinny.

The children were so weak and fragile.

They were in rags.

At first, I dried bugs for my fish.

That's how I fed them.

But when I started forced labour,

I didn't have time for them.

I had no time to cry.

Every day was so tiring.

We worked so hard. I was so cold.

You don't care about your pet fish

when you're dying.

I was bitter.

Everything I treasured was gone.

The worst job was mining.

In my ten years in the gulag,

the best job I ever had was taking care

of the beehives for the high officials.

The only bad part was that we were isolated.

At night we were lonely, but we found some books.

There were smuggled books circulating in the camp.

"The Count of Monte Cristo".

"Anna Karenina", "Resurrection".

I think "The Count of Monte Cristo" touched me the most.

- He looks dead. - He is dead.

We'll get the undertakers.

Reading "Monte Cristo" gave me the idea

to escape North Korea.

If I ever got out, I'd take revenge like him.

Holding to his duty to be loyal to the leader,

Kim Jong-Il said,

"Nobody in the world has ever dedicated all his life

to the people's cause for so many years

and undergone so many hardships as our leader has done.

Whenever I think of the leader working restlessly

for the People's happiness, I feel my eyes moisten.

I wrack my brains to take the load from his mind and make him happy.

SHIN DONG-HYUK

He was born in Total Control Prison Camp 14.

He never knew why his parents were there.

They had fenced off a large area

with barbed wire and built housing and factories.

You don't live behind bars in cells.

Within a confined area, you'd do the work you were assigned.

There were coal mines and farmlands,

and jobs where you cut down trees.

Or we were assigned to sweat shops and other factories.

Camp school was simple.

They taught us how to dig for coal

and how to transport it.

During Korean class,

we learned how to read and write.

In math, we only learned to add and subtract.

After roll call,

you'd recite the rules of the sector.

RULES OF THE SECTOR

Any prisoner who does not do his best to complete the assigned work,

will be presumed to have an attitude...

and will be executed by firing squad immediately.

Any prisoner who steals or hides food will be executed

by firing squad immediately.

Any prisoner who disobeys...

or does not obey diligently...

will be executed by firing squad immediately.

Any prisoner who tries to run away,

or fails to report someone else's attempted escape...

will be executed immediately.

On November 29th, 1996,

after my mother and brother died,

only me and my father were left.

SHIN was forced to watch

his mother and brother publicly executed.

Older people or intellectuals

committed suicide.

But almost none of the kids did.

We never knew when we'd get beaten.

There was constant fear.

If you didn't work hard enough,

you got punished by the guards.

They cut your food ration.

Sometimes they'd cut it in half.

Sometimes they'd make you completely starve.

North Korean Film

North Korea's economy depends partly on forced labor.

Some products made in prison camps:

army uniforms

bricks

leather shoes

snake liquor.

Some forced-labor products have been exported:

doilies to Poland

paper flowers to France

bras to Russia.

A guy from Pyongyang came to the camp.

Usually, we didn't talk to outsiders.

He was afraid too. But we worked together.

We started trusting each other.

He told me what his life had been like.

His life in Pyongyang.

The best stories were about eating.

After I heard his stories,

the camp became totally unbearable.

I asked him to tell me the stories over and over.

I came up with the idea of escaping.

"Let's try to escape."

So we planned it together.

On January 2nd, 2005,

we said we were going to collect firewood.

I knew we could get shot or electrocuted,

but right then, I was full of confidence.

When January 2nd came, we climbed the mountains.

I saw the guards and the barbed wire gates.

All of a sudden I was afraid.

I was shaking, losing my nerve.

And then my friend said,

"I don't think we can do it. You're scared and I'm scared."

But I couldn't give up. I had to escape.

We were about 20 meters

from the gates.

It had been 15 minutes since the guard passed.

We had to run.

I practically dragged him.

I was one step ahead of him

as we approached the gates.

He was following,

and then I slipped in the snow,

so he ran ahead of me.

When I saw the wired gates,

I figured he was squeezing

through the electric wires.

So I followed his lead

and squeezed through too.

When I got up and looked behind me,

I realized I was on the other side of the gates.

Then I saw my friend was stuck

and didn't move.

He was still stuck in the wires.

Right then,

all I could think was I had to run.

Run down the mountain away from the gates.

I was all the way down when I realized

maybe he was electrocuted.

If I hadn't fallen,

I would have been the first to squeeze through the electric wire.

I would have been the one electrocuted.

SHIN DONG-HYUK

Born in Total Control Camp 14

Escaped in 2005 at age 24

The whole nation is run by Kim Jong-il

and his gang.

The camps, the starvation, everything.

And the North Korean people

continue to suffer.

There will be more and more victims

until you change the system.

KANG CHOL-HWAN

10 years in Yodok, released in 1987

fled North Korea in 1992

first to expose the existence of camps

1910

Japan colonized Korea

1913

Kim Il Sung is born to a Christian Family.

His grandfather is a Protestant minister.

1919-1940

Korean freedom fighters, aided by the Church,

resist the Japanese.

1932

Kim Il Sung joins the resistance and adopts communism.

1935

The Japanese put a price on Kim Il Sung's head.

1941 He flees to the Soviet Union.

1945

The Allies defeat Japan in World War II.

The Soviets and Allies divide Korea along the 38th parallel.

1948

Kim Il Sung founds the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

as a Marxist state.

1950

North Korea attacks South Korea.

1950-1953

The Korean War brings widespread destruction and death.

Kim Il Sung blames Americans.

1953

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) established along the 38th parallel.

No peace treaty is signed.

1950's-1970's

Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers Party rebuild

North Korea and establish a Worker's Paradise.

Free from Oppression and Hunger.

In North Korea, an artist is an instrument of the Party.

He's a mouthpiece for the system.

KIM CHEOL-WOONG CONCERT PIANIST

If your head's not Red, you can't proclaim the Red.

The children of the upper class, those loyal to Kim Jong-il

are the only ones admitted to the music conservatory.

Your family background is everything.

As a kid, I didn't know my class background was bad.

If there's a political prisoner in your family

and you make even a tiny mistake,

it gets blown way out of proportion.

LEE SHIN SINGER

In North Korea, no matter how talented you are,

if your class background is bad, you're stuck.

They said my voice

was like a South Korean pop singer's.

My voice was unacceptable

in North Korea,

because it sounded capitalist.

We thought ours was the only kind of music in the world.

When I was sent to Russia to study,

I was stunned to find out

how restricted we were.

Everything I thought I knew was a lie.

It was a rude awakening.

Our country knowingly taught us lies.

The turning point was when I played

a piece by Richard Clayderman.

Someone heard and reported me.

Even if you just listened to music

from capitalist countries,

you'd get arrested.

My whole life

was dedicated to the piano,

but I couldn't play what I wanted.

I decided to escape.

I was starving

and tightening my belt around my belly.

We pretended we were pretty and our stomachs were full.

We sang, "How shall we spread this bountiful rice?"

We sang a lot of songs like that, with a smile.

I don't understand even now.

Early on, the government dictated agricultural policies.

Food shortages began in the 1980's.

1989: demise of the Soviet Union

1994: famine declared

1995: devastating floods

By the mid-90's, starvation was widespread.

Nevertheless, the Party ordered farmers to grow opium.

Because of The Great Famine in 1994,

we were having a very hard time.

We'd go to the mountains

to pick roots.

We ate grass from the fields and bark from the trees.

BYEON OK-SUN

She lived with her parents, 3 brothers,

and sister in a northern town.

The only source of food was the state-run distribution system.

By the time she was 17, that system had collapsed.

One day, I was with my father in the mountains.

I got soaked with rain

while we were foraging.

After we finished, I went home.

My body started to burn and I fainted.

We had nothing to eat

and we certainly couldn't buy medicine.

So they laid me to one side, waiting for me to die.

I had typhoid fever

and was in a coma.

When the food rations stopped in the late 1980's,

people's lives completely changed.

People started selling household items,

like TVs, electronics, and furniture.

People would sell anything to buy food.

When everything was gone,

they'd sell their homes.

They didn't think of stealing.

There was nothing to steal.

They were the first to die.

They say man is selfish by nature. Do you think so, too, Si Nae?

No, that's a lie. Babies are not.

My brother-in-law's written from abroad

about the sad state there.

How ugly things are turning there!

What would the revolutionary martyrs say if they were alive?

NORTH KOREAN FILM GIRLS IN MY HOMETOWN

My home is in Anbyon,

Kangwon Province.

A nice place to live in

with its abundant fruit.

Rich crops sway in breeze.

Persimmon trees bear plentiful fruits in every house.

Come to see our village.

You can meet pretty girls here.

1991: "Let's Eat Two Meals a Day" campaign

1995: North Korea asks for international aid

$2.5 billion sent - North Korea demands control

30% to 70% diverted to the elite

Humanitarian organizations withdraw in frustration

Estimated number of dead: 600,000 to 3,500,000

Taking care of corpses was the biggest problem

towards the end of '95.

This problem was even reported to Kim Jong-il,

so he stationed military units

in each town.

They weren't armed.

The soldiers loaded corpses into their military trucks

around the clock.

The bodies were rotting.

We didn't escape because we wanted to.

We had to.

I crossed over to get medical treatment.

My brother carried me on his back.

I'd been in China for a month when I came out of the coma.

I woke up in an empty room, alone except for an old woman.

I was scared.

She said, "You're in China."

"How did I get here?"

She told me my brothers carried me on their backs.

My brothers had gone to find work

to pay for the treatment.

They left me with her.

Most Chinese were afraid. Very few were willing to hide defectors.

The woman said she'd protect the weakest of us four,

so I stayed.

My older sister and 2 brothers scattered to make their own ways.

It was my oldest brother's duty

to take care of his parents and siblings.

His sense of duty toward our parents was very strong.

No matter where he was,

in North Korea or China,

he felt that responsibility.

He took me on his back to save me.

After he saved me in China,

with our parents back in North Korea, he felt very tortured.

He'd get food and take it back to our parents.

He was constantly sneaking back and forth.

Then somehow,

the National Intelligence Service,

caught him making trips to China.

When he realized they were on to him,

he decided to give himself up.

If you give yourself up,

you expect to receive a lighter sentence.

That's what he thought.

Instead, he was taken

and publicly executed.

The fact that they killed a person like him, it's hard to deal with.

Even now. He's my brother...

I feel so guilty. My big brother's death was...

I feel he died because of me.

I live with a guilty conscience

all the time.

They kill people without mercy.

They don't even feel any guilt.

I know it's the country of my birth,

but I really hate it.

I don't want to live there ever again.

Those feelings are strong.

The kimjongilia, or flower of Kim Jong Il,

was created for the Dear Leader's 46th birthday.

They say it represents love, peace, wisdom, and justice.

LOVE PEACE WISDOM JUSTICE

The military suffered too.

The state only supplied us with rice and salt.

We had to get everything else ourselves.

We started to grow beans on our basketball courts

and soccer fields.

The soldiers learned to survive without eating fat.

On Kim Jong-il's birthday,

they'd give the ghastly-looking skinny soldiers a piece of pork.

They'd eat it and get diarrhea.

They said soldiers died of uncontrollable diarrhoea.

That's nonsense. It was malnutrition.

When I was serving in the military,

the malnourished soldiers

were admitted to the infirmaries.

The infirmaries

held 200 to 300 patients.

They'd shave everyone's heads with razors.

You couldn't distinguish men from women.

Women's periods stopped due to malnutrition.

These days, many officers desert.

Even if you want to work, there are always supplies missing.

Making it impossible to do the job.

But commanders go on

issuing orders every day.

You have to steal the supplies you need.

This is the current situation in North Korea.

If you care at all, it is impossible

not to express your frustration.

Consequently, many are arrested.

PARK MYUNG-HO

He was a captain in the Korean People's Army.

He served for 20 years.

His father was a soldier too.

Ever since I became an officer,

I have felt this so-called "country"

has been made so tragic and horrific.

I held so much resentment toward the government.

Really. For about 10 years, I brooded.

That's what drove me to escape.

If we went through China,

the whole family would have had to separate,

so we decided to cross

the 38th parallel by boat.

On the evening of May 23rd, 2006, I saw a thick fog rolling in.

I could tell it would last two or three days.

At around 10 that night,

we sailed for the 38th parallel.

We evaded Navy ships twice.

Because our boat was small and theirs were big,

we could see them first

and get away.

Actually, the North Korean ships had no fuel.

They couldn't start their engines and were under sail.

I covered all the metal on our boat

with blankets to block their radar.

We landed in Incheon City, Ong-jin province.

When I saw all the trees on the mountains,

I knew we were in South Korea.

PARK MYUNG-HO

TOOK HIS FAMILY OVER 200 MILES THROUGH DANGEROUS WATERS

REACHED SOUTH KOREA IN 2006

Tumen River border between North Korea and China

300,000 people have fled North Korea in the last 10 years.

Because the DMZ is impassable, most go to China.

There are approximately 2,000,000 ethnic Koreans living in China.

I heard rumours

that people escaped to China.

I went with money

I brought from home.

I had about $2000 that I...

I guess you'd have to say I stole it. I stole it and took off.

I used the money to bribe the National Border Control.

They guided me across the river to China.

I just recklessly went to the first ethnic Korean village

across the border.

I proudly announced I was a concert pianist from Pyongyang.

They didn't care about my piano playing,

they wanted my physical strength.

From that day on,

I became their servant.

I went to find my older sister.

She had escaped to China, so it was too dangerous for me

to continue appearing on stage.

We found out

she had been sold to traffickers.

So we went to find her but couldn't,

and wound up stuck there.

We had a "guide"

who claimed he was looking for her.

In fact, he was selling us

to traffickers too.

We didn't know

we were being sold.

They said the police were after us and we had to flee.

But it was a lie to trap us.

They were going to sell us.

In the taxi, I cried and pleaded,

but no one saved us.

In China, I gave up being human.

Because we were North Koreans, we were defenceless.

All kinds of women

from 16 to 40 years old

were sold.

We were beaten for no reason

and couldn't defend ourselves.

The men would get drunk

and violent.

The girls

would try to escape

and get caught.

I was desperate.

I decided to risk crashing

the South Korean Embassy in Beijing.

I faced down the police.

My mom, my sisters and I

made it inside safely.

I don't know where I got the strength.

LEE SHIN

5 YEARS IN SEXUAL SLAVERY

REACHED SOUTH KOREA IN 2003

We were constantly in danger in China.

You can't walk around openly.

If you're caught, you're sent back.

I slept in a storage room like this one.

The police even patrolled there.

They were uniformly brutal,

demanding ID or family papers.

Ethnic Koreans who protected us

were fined

if they were caught by the police.

There's a detention centre in China

for defectors.

I was held there for about four months.

They torture you until you admit you're a defector.

I was hung upside down

and beaten for 14 hours.

I was so worried about my hands

I tucked them tightly in my armpits.

I thought, I can't ruin my hands.

Small groups of South Korean Christian activists

attempt to spirit defectors out of China.

Shenyang, China 500 miles from North Korean border

an actual mission

rescue mission office - February, 2008

going to meet NK defectors

Back. Back

Over there.

Defector pick-up point

Can you see us? We're here.

Look at that guy over there.

Suspected Chinese agent

Not there. Turn around.

Turn around.

They were supposed to be at the glass door.

Get out of there.

Mission aborted

CHOI YOUNG-HUN

A SOUTH KOREAN ACTIVIST WHO TRIED TO RESCUE NORTH KOREANS,

HE SPENT FOUR YEARS JAILED IN CHINA

Come here quick. I need to hold your hands.

I'm shaking.

You were more distressed.

She's the hero. It's my wife who's the hero.

Chinese prison is simply hell.

10 days after his release

Chinese prisoners

work 18 hours a day.

You know the Korean wedding bouquets?

You make the flowers

out of paper,

tie them with wires.

You make

the flower shapes like this,

then cover them with asbestos powder,

which causes lung disease.

Asbestos,

it's very irritating.

So we make these artificial flowers,

and the irony is that they are exported

to South Korea.

I thought everything would be back to normal

once he came back.

But he is broken,

mentally unstable.

I don't know what the future holds for our family.

It's nerve-wracking.

In North Korea they say there is no God,

but my family has been religious for generations.

They were all arrested.

I just thought, that's how life is.

I had to hide my faith.

There was a Korean-Chinese pastor

who urged us

to come to China.

I stayed with a missionary for a year who taught me the Bible.

Then he wanted me to go back to North Korea

and spread the gospel.

I said no.

I left because life there was too hard.

I was determined to go to South Korea.

With the missionary's help,

I made it there safely.

In China, a fellow defector told me

there was a piano in the church.

So I went to the church at the foot of the mountain.

And that's how I got to play the piano.

They liked my playing.

They asked me to stay and play the piano.

From then on, I lived in the church.

Through them,

I met South Korean missionaries who helped me get to South Korea.

Unlike China, Mongolia does not repatriate North Korean refugees.

So for North Koreans, it is one of the few routes

out of China, to freedom.

The guide was leading

a group of defectors.

My sister and I had to meet them at the border of China and Mongolia.

Someone suddenly appeared in front on us. Everyone scattered.

It all happened so suddenly

Our guide ran away.

I didn't know what to do.

I wanted to go back

but I couldn't speak Chinese.

I couldn't think at all. And the future seemed pitch black.

Only me and a teenage boy

made it into Mongolia.

Everyone else was arrested.

They've all been released.

Except my sister. I have no news.

I think I won't see her again

in this life.

Don't worry about us, sister. Our father is still with us.

We open our hearts.

Without reserve full of hope.

We live relying on General as our god.

Only on our General forever.

The future?

Well, I don't know.

Kim Jong-il only talks about reunification.

It won't happen while he's alive.

For over 20 years,

the entire North Korean population

has stopped working.

If that turns into 30 years,

I think it will be over.

We refugees don't actively go out and fight

because of the danger to ourselves and our families still in the North.

We still fear North Korea.

If outside countries stop helping Kim Jong-il,

North Koreans will end this tyranny with their bare hands.

I am certain.

If they fight for democracy,

no matter how many laws there are against "political" crimes,

there won't be enough prisons for a million political prisoners.

They can't execute a million people.

We know when Kim Jong-il dies,

there will be chaos.

But whatever chaos comes

couldn't be worse

than the chaos under Kim Jong-il.

When the leader changes

and I can go back,

I want to do all I can to change it as fast as possible.

I want to make that land prosperous.

In North Korea,

it's the dictatorship that's evil.

If you look at the individual,

many are so good and innocent and kind.

If Kim Jong-il's dictatorship collapsed now,

I'd be in North Korea tomorrow.

Camps existed in the past,

like in the Hitler,

Mao and Stalin eras,

but I think it's a disgrace to the human race

that such camps exist today.

I want Kim Jong-il to fear.

I want to make him stand in the International Court.

He killed and imprisoned

tens of thousands of people.

He forces young children to watch public executions

and terrorizes the population.

That in itself is a crime.

We have no freedom of speech.

We have no freedom of movement.

If the person who created such a place

isn't a criminal, I don't know who is.

I'm grateful for South Korea

and the world

and peace.

I love the people who love peace and liberty.

Since I've tasted freedom,

I need to share it with my people.

We have to free the North Koreans.

I wonder if anyone's listening

to our pleas.

North Koreans can't speak,

can't see, can't listen,

can't eat, can't smell, can't speak.

They're bound by wires, like plants.

I feel such compassion for them.

The world has to save North Korea.

We have to speak of it.

We wish to thank all of the people who participated in this film.

We hope their courageous testimony will help save the millions of people

still at risk in North Korea.