Teh One Who Knocks
06-08-2015, 10:59 AM
By Christopher Brennan For Dailymail.com
http://i.imgur.com/xJnEe1X.jpg
A refugee from North Korea has revealed what life is like in the isolated dictatorship, including how the population is conditioned to fear the outside world.
Joseph Kim, 24, grew up in Hoeryong, a town near the country's border with China most well known for holding a concentration camp.
The beginning of his life was stable, though food began to run out during a famine in the mid 1990s and the young man was forced to escape from starvation and violence after losing his family.
Kim, who has been accepted to study at Bard College and American University, has detailed his journey in a new memoir, Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America.
The young man said that the beginning of his life was filled with honoring then-Great Leader Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994.
Along with claims that trying to escape into China would see them shocked by a 33,000-volt electric river, Kim heard about the brutalities of the West.
'The teachers explained that Americans had come to our country to massacre Koreans for no other reason than they liked to,' he wrote, the New York Post reported.
Books apparently included pictures of US soldiers marching women to gas chambers and spearing them with bayonets.
'The only people who stopped the Americans from coming to my country, our teachers said, were Kim Il-sung and the soldiers of North Korea'.
However the facade of the authoritarian utopia soon came crashing down when North Koreans suffered from a flood 1995 were confronted by a lack of food that killed millions.
Kim's father died of starvation after being unable to feed his family, and his mother ended up in prison after trying to escape to China and selling his sister.
From 12 years old to 15 Kim lived on his own and at detention camps for young people reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, according to Mental Floss.
Fellow young boys were particularly fond of hitting others as hard as possible in the head, he said.
He heard the shrieks of young women detainees being raped in adjacent rooms.
He eventually decided to flee to China across the supposedly electric river, finding shelter with a group of underground Christians.
'The distance was not that long, maybe like 100 yards, but I feel like that was the fastest I ran in my life,' he told NPR about his sprint over the frozen Tumen.
An charity offered him the chance to go to America, though he initially refused.
'My immediate response was ''NO.'' I was so brainwashed that it came out of my mouth immediately,' he said.
Kim later moved to Virginia after watching an unknown Sylvester Stallone movie changed his mind.
'Stallone…opens the refrigerator and takes out bread and a bottle of wine. He eats the bread and drinks the wine and gets up and leaves. This was astonishing.'
Kim graduated from high school and moved to New York City, where he says he likes to use smartphone dating apps.
Now in college, he hopes to stay in New York and work for an NGO that helps his fellow North Koreans.
After coming from starvation, Kim now says he loves red meat and whiskey.
http://i.imgur.com/xJnEe1X.jpg
A refugee from North Korea has revealed what life is like in the isolated dictatorship, including how the population is conditioned to fear the outside world.
Joseph Kim, 24, grew up in Hoeryong, a town near the country's border with China most well known for holding a concentration camp.
The beginning of his life was stable, though food began to run out during a famine in the mid 1990s and the young man was forced to escape from starvation and violence after losing his family.
Kim, who has been accepted to study at Bard College and American University, has detailed his journey in a new memoir, Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America.
The young man said that the beginning of his life was filled with honoring then-Great Leader Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994.
Along with claims that trying to escape into China would see them shocked by a 33,000-volt electric river, Kim heard about the brutalities of the West.
'The teachers explained that Americans had come to our country to massacre Koreans for no other reason than they liked to,' he wrote, the New York Post reported.
Books apparently included pictures of US soldiers marching women to gas chambers and spearing them with bayonets.
'The only people who stopped the Americans from coming to my country, our teachers said, were Kim Il-sung and the soldiers of North Korea'.
However the facade of the authoritarian utopia soon came crashing down when North Koreans suffered from a flood 1995 were confronted by a lack of food that killed millions.
Kim's father died of starvation after being unable to feed his family, and his mother ended up in prison after trying to escape to China and selling his sister.
From 12 years old to 15 Kim lived on his own and at detention camps for young people reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, according to Mental Floss.
Fellow young boys were particularly fond of hitting others as hard as possible in the head, he said.
He heard the shrieks of young women detainees being raped in adjacent rooms.
He eventually decided to flee to China across the supposedly electric river, finding shelter with a group of underground Christians.
'The distance was not that long, maybe like 100 yards, but I feel like that was the fastest I ran in my life,' he told NPR about his sprint over the frozen Tumen.
An charity offered him the chance to go to America, though he initially refused.
'My immediate response was ''NO.'' I was so brainwashed that it came out of my mouth immediately,' he said.
Kim later moved to Virginia after watching an unknown Sylvester Stallone movie changed his mind.
'Stallone…opens the refrigerator and takes out bread and a bottle of wine. He eats the bread and drinks the wine and gets up and leaves. This was astonishing.'
Kim graduated from high school and moved to New York City, where he says he likes to use smartphone dating apps.
Now in college, he hopes to stay in New York and work for an NGO that helps his fellow North Koreans.
After coming from starvation, Kim now says he loves red meat and whiskey.