North Korean defector reaveals harsh reality of life inside brutal labour camps
07.02.2015 11:50
A woman sentenced to a North Korean labour camp has revealed she was forced to clean out filthy toilets with her bare hands as people ate rats in a desperate attempt to survive.
Ji-hyun Park spent a year inside one of the country's notorious detention camps after being deported from China where she had fled to escape starving to death.
Now, she has revealed the truth about life inside the secretive state and said: 'Really it was unspeakably bad. You could say the whole of North Korea is one big prison.
'The people are all hungry. And now, there aren't even rats, snakes or wild plants left for them to eat.'
Brave Ji-hyun has now spoken out about her ordeal to Amnesty International in a short film called 'The Other Interview'.
The name refers to the recent controversial Sony Pictures comedy 'The Interview', where two TV producers are recruited by the CIA in an attempt to assassinate current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Outraged North Korea authorities initially called for the film to be banned and said releasing it would be 'act of war'.
In December, Sony's email database was then hacked and several thousand embarrassing emails were released.
Ji-hyun first left North Korea during the the famine that ravaged the country in the late 1990s. Estimates on the number of people who died have been as high as four million.
She said: 'A lot of people died between 1996 and 1998. The train station platforms were full of dead bodies.'
The country was then being run by Kim Jong-il, the totalitarian ruler whose son Kim Jong-un is now in power.
Heartbroken, Ji-hyun had to leave her dying father behind as she paid to be trafficked into China along with her sister to escape the famine.
But authorities soon discovered her origins and sent her back to North Korea, where she was sentenced to hard labour as punishment for her attempt to escape.
As she was arrested in China, Ji-hyun was classified as an 'economic defector' and sent to the brutal Chongjin labour camp in the Songpyong district.
Revealing the truth about life inside the camp, where prisoners are forced to call the guards 'teachers', she said: 'We were worked harder than animals.
'Our working day began at 4.30am, before we could have anything to eat. In the summer when the days are longer, we would work until 8pm or 9pm in the evening.
'We would only stop working when it got pitch dark. And the day doesn't end there.
'After eating we had to reflect on our day's performance, recite the Worker's Party's principles and learn songs. By that time, it'd be close to midnight.'
(dailymail.co.uk)
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