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NKorean Prison Camp Survivor: Starving Women Cooked & Ate Their Own Children

Oct. 21, 2011 12:15pm Billy Hallowell

Kim Hye Sook Discusses Her Detention in North Korean Prison Camp Kim Hye Sook suffered unbearable pain and emotional suffering when she was detained for 28 years in a secretive North Korean concentration camp. Brutal executions, starvation — even mothers killing and eating their children to ensure their own survival — were regular occurrences.

Kim — who miraculously escaped from the Bukchang prison camp back in 2003 – granted CBN News with the first American television news interview to discuss these horrendous conditions. She now lives in South Korea, with the details of her escape remaining classified for security reasons. This summer, she released a memoir entitled, “A Concentration Camp Retold in Tears.”

When she was 13-year-old, her tragic tale began. The year was 1975 and in the blink of an eye the young girl was captured alongside her entire family. After years of suffering, she didn’t taste freedom until she was 41-years-old. Kim explains:

“My entire family went to prison. Some were taken to the mountains; others were put in different labor camps all because of my grandfather’s one mistake: he escaped to South Korea during the Korean War.”

Kim Hye Sook Discusses Her Detention in North Korean Prison Camp

Two women are watched by a North Korean guard (Photo Credit: AP)

Today, Kim wears dark glasses to ensure that her identity remains concealed. While she lost seven family members in the re-education camp, she currently has two sisters and a brother who are still imprisoned. She described a typical day at the camp:

“I attended indoctrination classes in the morning. In the afternoon the children were sent to push trolleys in the coal mines, often without any safety gear.

People were dying in the mines. There were numerous mine collapses, so many injuries, people who lost their legs, many who were buried alive. It was horrible.

I was treated like a slave and worse. I hardly slept. It was inhuman. But I never complained. I just followed all the rules. I had to find a way to survive.”

Kim claims that the conditions were so terrible that she thought about committing suicide “hundreds of thousands of times” during her 28-year detention. But because there was always someone watching her, this simply wasn’t an option:

“Each prisoner is assigned to watch four or five other prisoners. So if anything happens, the other prisoners would alert the guards because they didn’t want to get into trouble themselves.”

While her descriptions of executions are absolutely horrendous, nothing is more disturbing than her memories about those individuals who she saw kill their children in an effort to stave off hunger. In one instance, she recalls a mother boiling her 9-year-old daughter. In another fit of desperation, a woman killed her 16-year-old son, chopped him up and took him to a butcher to obtain some corn in exchange.

Kim admits that these details are difficult to share, but she bravely proclaims, “I want the world to see these images and to hear my testimony.” In describing the conditions in the isolated and volatile nation, she says, “I am living proof that there are no human rights in North Korea.” In September, she was invited to Washington, D.C., where she testified before a congressional panel about the conditions she faced.

Watch her story, below:

(H/T: CBN News)

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Comments (188)

ThomasNast
Posted on October 24, 2011 at 10:33am
@Cesium – sorry.. got cut off

John 15:18-19
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Christians have enemies Cesium – and we will suffer, but He that is in us is GREATER than he which is in the world.

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hud
Posted on October 23, 2011 at 8:49pm
Leave it to the North Koreans to lend real meaning to the term eating your own.

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hillarie
Posted on October 23, 2011 at 3:41pm
I question this. A mother killing and cooking and eating her children just goes against nature, I don’t care how hungry she are. Unless there are other survivors who come forward to back up her stories, don’t be surprised if she is revealed as a personality disordered fabulist at some future point.

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Bernard
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 6:35pm
Cuts down on the grocery bill.

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Bernard
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 6:34pm
Koreans eat anything that moves. They eat cats and dogs during good times so it is no surprise that they would eat their own young during hard times. A new form of birth control?

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tbarr4
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 6:30pm
THis is Communism that OWS Wasserman, Nobama, Soros, Numb Nuts Biden, Pelosi , Reed, PMSNBC, GE, ant for all of us!!

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Netsurfer2
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 2:33pm
The horror and affliction continues under the rule of this dictator! If history repeats it self, then we will see people in China starving once again as their industries slowly shut down! They have seen it before and I’m sure they will see it again! America is the only hope left outside of Israel. Put the people in charge as a whole and the people will show great promise! Put the government in charge and all you will show is less value in making the children useless!

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mrsmileyface
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 2:27pm
Prove me wrong on our diplomatic stance on North Korea. Were technically still at war. The USA and South Korea are only in a ceasefire situation with the North. War can break out at anytime if the NKoreans think were making an agressive stance toward them. Thats why we walk on eggshells. We are weak as a nation and do not have the resolve to push back at the bully on the playground “the North Koreans” If we did things like this wouldnt happen. Do you actually think sanctions actually work. Its a joke. The North Korean government has survived on less for over 50 years. Get with reality.

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mikee1
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 11:41am
This is what the DUMMYCRAPS and THEIR RINO ENABLERS want to bring to you here in the United States too. YOU MUST FIGHT THEM. You must force the repukes not to run RINOROMNEY. We must get a CONSERVATIVE PREZ AND CONGRESS NOW, OR OUR CIVIL WAR II IS OVER. And you, the FREE, have lost.

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kedward
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 11:09am
North Koera represents what will happen under Marxism, while South Korea represents what can happen using capitalism. Some people are corrupt, that’s human nature. A closed door policy will insure corruption thrives. “You have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”. ” Timmy is qualified because my mommy worked for his daddy”. The authors of our Constitution understood the negative side of human nature and so, charged the press to report truth. Karl Marx didn’t believe that human nature exists, which is the reason any political system based on his ideas will fail.

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ellietoo
Posted on October 22, 2011 at 10:02am
This is what our far left is suggesting be done to the right. Put us in labor camps or murder us. Anyone who gets in the way of what they consider to be a better way of life should be gotten rid of. This is why Obama was trying to be buddies with North Korea and Iran. They identify with repression of those who decent. They have no value of human life and would have no problem getting rid of those who disagree with them. We can plainly see how Obama resents those who oppose him. If given free authority I hate to think what would happen to the people of this country. The far left felt they had finally been enabled to take over when Obama was elected and are frustrated that more has not been done to silence the opposition.

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