Execution And Punishment
Executions are entirely decided upon by SSD agents and can be for fairly minor infractions. As you might imagine there’s no right to reply as far as the prisoners are concerned. Executions are generally carried out by firing squad and nearly always in front of the entire camp, including the prisoner’s family and children of all ages.
Execution isn’t the only type of punishment meted out of course…
When he was 14 years old, Mr Shin Dong-hyuk was interrogated under torture for six months in the punishment block to establish whether he knew about the escape plans of his mother and brother. Among other methods, he was strung over a lit fire until his back was burned. He survived only because of the help of an older cellmate who nursed his injuries.
On another occasion, Mr Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine at the factory he was forced to work at. The middle finger of his right hand was cut off as punishment:
“The guard told the floor manager to cut off my finger, so got on my knees and I begged not to do so but that didn’t work obviously. And, I thought my whole hand was going to cut off, but it was just a finger. So, at that time I was grateful, really grateful to the guard because I was only losing a finger instead of a hand”.
Mr Ahn Myong-chol recalled an incident in Political Prison Camp No. 22, when his superior officer used a blowtorch to bludgeon a sick prisoner to death because the man had not worked fast enough. After an investigation into the incident, the officer wasn’t punished but rewarded with the right to attend university.
Mr Kang Chol-hwan indicated that the “sweatbox” was used to punish prisoners in Political Prison Camp No. 15. Located near the guard’s barracks at the main entrance, the “sweatbox” was a wooden box so small that a person could neither stand up nor lie down within it. The prisoner is forced to kneel in a crouched position. The prisoner’s rear end pressed into the heels constantly until the buttocks were solid black with bruising. This cuts off the circulation so that, if left in the sweatbox long enough, a prisoner will die. As if that wasn’t enough, prisoners in the sweatbox are given almost no food. They often survive only by eating insects that crawl into the box.
☛ Next: Inside North Korea: Unbelievable Excerpts From UN Report #2
