The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

Title Page PREFACE FOR THE REVISED EDITION Introduction ONE - A HAPPY CHILDHOOD IN PYONGYANG TWO - MONEY AND THE REVOLUTION CAN GET ALONG THREE - NEXT YEAR IN PYONGYANG ! FOUR - IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP AT THE AGE OF NINE FIVE - WORK GROUP NUMBER 10 SIX - THE WILD BOAR : A TEACHER ARMED AND READY TO STRIKE SEVEN - DEATH OF A BLACK CHAMPION EIGHT - CORN, ROACHES, AND SNAKE BRANDY NINE - DEATH AT YODOK TEN - THE MUCH-COVETED RABBITS ELEVEN - MADNESS STALKS THE PRISONERS TWELVE - BIWEEKLY CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM THIRTEEN - PUBLIC EXECUTIONS AND POSTMORTEM STONINGS FOURTEEN - LOVE AT YODOK FIFTEEN - SOJOURN IN THE MOUNTAIN SIXTEEN - TEN YEARS IN THE CAMP: THANK YOU, KIM IL-SUNG! SEVENTEEN - THE NORTH KOREAN PARADISE EIGHTEEN - THE CAMP THREATENS AGAIN NINETEEN - ESCAPE TO CHINA TWENTY - SMALL-TIME PROSTITUTION AND BIG-TIME SMUGGLING IN DALIAN TWENTY-ONE - ARRIVAL IN SOUTH KOREA TWENTY-TWO - ADAPTING TO A CAPITALIST WORLD EPILOGUE Copyright Page After the division of North and South Korea, Kang's family returned to North Korea from Japan, where his grandparents had emigrated in the 1930s. His grandfather had amassed a fortune and his grandmother became a committed Communist. They were fired with idealism and committed to building a new Korea, only to be removed without trial to a remote concentration camp, apparently because the grandfather was suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Kang Chol-hwan was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Over the next ten years, he endured inhumane conditions and deprivations, including an inadequate diet (supplemented by frogs and rats), regular beatings, humiliations and hard labor