Communist Woman in North Korea Endured Prison, Found Faith in Christ After Her Release
She entered Kaechon Prison a loyal communist, but lost her faith in the godless ideology of North Korea under horrifying conditions, then found faith in Christ after her release and a daring escape to freedom in South Korea.
"I saw something so unimaginable and so terrible that I wanted to let the world know," says Soon Ok Lee, one of the rare human beings to survive and offer an eyewitness account of conditions inside North Korea's political prisons. Lee has testified before the U.S. Congress and published a book about her experiences, Eyes of the Tailless Animals, Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman (Living Sacrifice Book Co.).
She was falsely charged and sent to prison because of the wounded pride of one of her superiors at the material distribution center, where she worked. It seems a certain casual jacket style worn by Kim Jong Il caused a sensation among lower party figures, who all wanted to be seen in the stylish attire. Unfortunately, the material for the jackets was available only in China, and party officers began pressuring her for more than their share.
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"The security bureau chief asked to have two jackets made out of the fabric while everyone else received only one," she writes. "Without raising my voice, I explained to him that I could not give him more than his share. Suddenly he turned around and spit out, 'All right, Soon Ok. You will regret this,' and he left my office."
Arrested and falsely charged
On a peaceful Sunday morning a few weeks later, Lee was arrested for violating the commercial policies of the communist party and taking bribes. "It didn't make any sense to me; I was as pure as snow," she notes. "It was all the security bureau chief's cunning scheme for revenge."
Without a moment to say goodbye to her husband, who she would never see again, or her son, she was placed on a seven-hour train ride to her first cell. "For three days they did not let me close my eyes," she writes, about her first interrogation. "They kept beating me and demanding that I answer their questions. I just kept repeating, 'What do you want from me? I don't really understand."
Lee's tormentors seem demonic, by her account. She describes them having eyes "like ravenous animals, shining with an unearthly light. It scared me to look into their eyes." Their voices were "evil."
They used a variety of diabolical techniques to extract a confession from the slender young woman. Once she was placed inside a furnace where bricks were baked. When she lost consciousness due to the intense heat, they dragged her out and poured cold water on her head to revive her, while intensifying their demands for confession.
She recalls being lashed by a leather whip while chained to a chair. "Even worse than the pain of the torture was being totally naked in front of all these men," she writes in her book. "The shame of it pounds in my ears. I was so angry I fought them."
"Frozen fish torture"
As winter arrived and Lee had still not signed her confession, her interrogator commanded one of the guards to "let this woman freeze." Then she was forced to remain outdoors at night in her undergarments for extended periods until she was close to freezing to death. "For the first 20 or 30 minutes, my hands and feet were so cold that I felt kind of crazy. After that came the pain. But soon the pain disappeared and my body became numb," she writes. The prison guards referred to this as the "frozen fish torture."
Lee was shocked to discover that most of the people she met in the prison yard were arrested for refusing to give bribes to their superiors, so they were all there because of "someone's revenge." Still a loyal communist, she wondered "how the law could allow this."
Seven months after her arrest, she was transferred to a province interrogation center. "At this point I lost my right of citizenship inNorth Korea," she writes. "I was also expelled from the Party. This meant I that I lost all my rights as a human being."
Her new interrogator tortured her for days to extract a confession. "After they released me from the fetters, I could not stand or walk straight because of my weakened condition, and I lost consciousness from time to time," she writes. "Once as I regained consciousness, my back itched." As Lee reached back to scratch she caught sight of something crawling.
"Through swollen eyes, I saw maggots all over my back. Flies had landed on my deadened flesh and laid their eggs as I was unconscious for hours." Her new cell had no heat in the winter, and her interrogator insisted that her window be left open at night. "Cold wind and snowflakes blew into my cell and froze my body. It was too cold to sleep."
Lee survived on meager food rations that were typically a crust of dried corn with a few beans. "The food was supposed to have 30 percent beans and 70 percent corn, however, the jailers took most of the beans to eat themselves," she writes. The jailers warned them if they told anyone they didn't get their beans, their ribs would be broken.
