In the late 1990s Jeong Kwang-il was accused of spying and sent to the brutal jail for political prisoners. Having fled the country in 2003, he describes his ordeal as part of a series of escapees’ memoirs

I was suspected of being a spy and arrested by [North Korea’s] ministry of state security on 22 July 1999, because I had contacted a South Korean when I went to China.

I had been working in Chongjin as the regional manager of a trading company. I was dragged to a prison camp in Hoeryong. I was beaten with a balk about 5cm thick. I was beaten so severely that the back of my head was terribly injured. I still have a scar there. All my teeth were broken. I had to live without teeth for about four years.

Life in the prison camp was repetitive. It was a life of being investigated and beaten. My weight dropped drastically, falling from 75kg to 35kg.

I was tortured using the so-called pigeon torture, which means my two hands were tied behind my back and I was handcuffed so I could not stand or sit. I could not sleep at all.

Political offenders were confined underground. They were not allowed to go to the toilet so they had to urinate in their cells. My voice was not heard above ground. Sometimes the guards would say, “you had better die.” Actually, two other prisoners died there. Only I survived.

I could not help but admit my crime just to survive. A prosecutor came and began to investigate. I appealed to him but it did not work at all since they had already created the scenario for my guilt.

I was tortured from my arrest until March 2000. At that point, I admitted that I was a spy, which was not true. Without a trial, I was sent to Yodok political prison camp.

When I arrived in Yodok, there were hundreds of prisoners there. They were treated like beasts. Most prisoners were political offenders, including students who had studied in foreign countries such as Germany or China. They were put into this prison camp because they had criticised the political system in North Korea.

I could not help but admit my crime just to survive

I was sent to Seorimcheon, which is a special district for single people. Seorimchoen had been built in November 1998. At first, it was not for single people, but it changed to that after [the North Korean defectors] Kang Chol-hwan and An Hyuk disclosed this place [Yodok] to the international community.

In Seorimcheon, it took me one month to learn how to live in the camp. Usually, political offenders were physically very weak because of the torture they endured, so they could not move properly.

We had to get up at five in the morning. We started to work around six. We usually got to eat one bowl of rice with beans and corn, and vegetable soup only.

We had to work from six to noon then had one hour for lunch. We then worked from one to seven in the evening. We had dinner from eight to nine. After dinner, we took a class for political re-education, mainly focusing on the Ten Principles. We could not sleep until we had memorised everything we had learned that day.

There are two legal ways to kill prisoners. The first is to beat them until they die and the other is to get them to starve to death. Too much work was expected of prisoners, so prisoners could not get food because they failed to meet their quota. Thus, prisoners always get weaker and weaker. They eventually die because of starvation. It took about 15 days for prisoners to die when they started to get weaker.

Life in the camp was so miserable that sometimes a father would steal his own son’s food.

The normal work was pulling weeds on the farm. Each person had to cover about 1400 square yards in a day. If they managed that, then we could get 600g of food. If we made half of it, then we would only get 300g.

We used to grow corn from April. The seeds were mixed with stool to prevent prisoners from stealing them. However, lots of prisoners attempted to steal, wash and eat the seeds.

Life in the camp was so miserable that sometimes a father would steal his own son’s food

In winter season, we were forced to cut and carry logs, and it was tough work. We had to carry logs four times in a day. We carried them for approximately four kilometres. The diameter of the logs was usually 30cm and the length was more than 4m, so it was quite tough to carry them. The road was bumpy so we had lots of accidents. Thus, lots of people died from accidents. Those who got injured starved to death since they could not work.

Song Keun-il [male, 60 years old, former military commander] starved to death because he injured his legs so could not work. Cha Kwang-ho [male, 59 years-old, former reporter] also starved to death after he injured his back. Kim Kyung-chun [male, 58 years old, former camera engineer] followed the same path after injuring his legs.

The guards in the camp did not care about the deaths of prisoners. Some of them even enjoyed watching prisoners die.

In winter, we could not bury dead people since the land was frozen so we could not dig. Thus, all corpses were stored in a warehouse for winter and we buried them at the end of March. When we got into the warehouse to remove the corpses, it was really horrible since the bodies were rotten and eaten by rats. We buried corpses as if they were trash. No one knows or remembers who they were.

I entered Yodok prison in April 2000. I was released on 12 April, 2003. I escaped North Korea on the 30th of that month. A year later, on 22nd April, 2004, I arrived in South Korea.

I still suffer from insomnia because of nightmares from the memories of the prison camp.

Jeong Kwang-il is now director of No Chain for North Korea and director of human rights investigations for NK Watch.

A version of this account first appeared on the website for the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. Translation by Jang Ik-hyun.