Book Review: The Aquariums of Pyongyang

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

“Since your parents are counterrevolutionaries, they deserve to die, and you, their children, along with them. Fortunately for you, the Party is king and its Great Leader magnanimous. He has granted you a reprieve and the chance to redeem yourselves. You should be grateful, but instead you commit further offenses! Commit too many and you will not be forgiven!”

In his book, “The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag,” Kang Chol-hwan draws from firsthand experience life in Yodok, one of North Korea’s many labor camps. His memoir helps make North Korea’s oppressive history personal and specific. In addition to describing the repression and hardships of living in the gulags for ten years, Chol-hwan also provides background information concerning his family (particularly the story of his grandparents), his time in grammar school and his life after being detained in Yodok. This information plays a significant role in the development of Chol-hwan’s story and is well weaved throughout the book.

Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea was presented to school children as a “kind of Father Christmas” who bestowed gift packages of cakes and sweets on his birthday, April 15th. The “Great Leader” chose these gifts himself with a care and kindness that gave them a sweetness of their own. In addition to the sweets, school children were also blessed by his “generosity” every third year to receive a school uniform, camp, and a pair of shoes.

While Chol-hwan uses a slightly sarcastic tone concerning the “Great Leaders” generosity, he describes in detail the reality of ideological control in North Korean education. While only six years old, all students were trained to be “the revolution’s little soldiers” where, above all, the morals of communism and the history of the revolution of Kim Il-sung and his son the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-Il were taught to students. Yang was taught that these leaders were perfect human beings who deserve total, unadulterated respect from all people. Like all school children, he was convinced that these leaders never urinated or defecated and that they were eternally young and omniscient. He recounts, “By marrying our singular Korean genius with the immutable ideas of the Communist revolution, these two master minds, these ‘two darlings of the universe,’ were building for us the Edenic socialist state.” Children were indoctrinated with the communist ideology in every aspect of life.

Chol-hwan admits, that compared to many, he had a relatively happy childhood. His family was better off than most, living in a newly built neighborhood that was exceptionally “quiet, airy, and verdant.” His family’s relative wealth was due to his grandparents’ social status and also to the fact that they had once lived and prospered in Japan. Chol-hwan’s grandmother was the first to exile herself to Japan in the 1930’s. While it was difficult for her to find work she was ultimately employed in a textile factory and had the opportunity to attend night school. It was during her time in night school when she was first introduced to the concept of socialism. She was fascinated by communism and joined the Japanese Communist Party at the young age of twenty. Little did she know that becoming a committed communist would have an impact on her family for the rest of their lives.

It was during this time in Japan that Chol-hwan’s grandmother also met her husband-to-be. Chol-hwan’s grandfather ran away to Japan as a teenager, trying to escape an ill-begotten marriage arranged by his parents. During his time in Japan, his grandfather was successful in finding employment and immediately fell in love. Chol-hwan reminisces, “The man who wanted to make a fortune and the woman who wanted to make a revolution fell in love and married.”
After learning the trade of gold plating in a jeweler’s store he moved to the more lucrative business of rice trading. The most successful of all enterprises, however, was when he began to open “gaming rooms” or casinos in heavily populated areas throughout Japan. His grandfather was amassing a fortune while his grandmother was becoming a committed Communist.

For Kang’s grandfather, the revolutionary ideas of communism held no great interest; “it was only his love for his wife that allowed him to bear them at all.” After much debate and persuasion from his wife, they decided to move to North Korea to follow her conviction and passion for the communist revolution. They moved after the split had occurred between the North and the South when North Korea’s disaster was not even on the horizon. In economic terms, North Korea was still competitive with the South and Pyongyang, the capital of the North, was full of promise for “the Party’s” faithful. What they did not know was that fabricated statistics made North Korea’s barely passable economy look like a magnificent success. Their lives would never be the same.

At first, they lived comparatively well. There were continuous talks of triumph and progress and they were fired with idealism and hopes of building a complete communist nation under the direction of perfect leaders. It was not long however, until they realized that “nothing corresponded to their expectations.” Feelings of malaise began to set in and their apprehensions only deepened. Food shortages, ubiquitous propaganda, and “the incompetence of an ultra-hierarchical bureaucracy incapable of addressing even the most basic problems of every day life” began to convince everyone that they had “been had.” The move to North Korea was a mistake.

In order for readers to understand the continuous doubts and questions raised during the move to North Korea, the background information that Kang provides is vital. These first few chapters provide the detailed information and descriptions of what his family left while they lived in Japan. The stories of his grandparent’s early lives and the disappointment they encountered are critical for the hardships they encountered to be completely realized. Kang and his editors were able to describe in words the series of unceasing doubts and concerns of this new communist revolution – the likes of which have yet to be fully realized.

Kang’s family was beginning to run afoul of paranoid political repression and ultimately become one of the many victims of the “ideological shackles foisted on every North Korean.” One day in July of 1977, Kang’s grandfather did not return home from work. While the police said they knew nothing, his family knew something drastic must have occurred. Several weeks passed before four uniformed soldiers arrived at their apartment in North Korea and relentlessly searched for any incriminating evidence against the Chol-hwan family. According to these men, Kang’s grandfather had committed “a crime of high treason,” the consequence of which was that his family was “immediately” to present itself at the secure zone in Yodok. The stated purpose of sending them away as a family was to “reeducate… through work and study.”

Kang, who was only nine years of age, was honestly not overly upset over the departure. Not realizing that he and his family were being sent to a concentration camp for an unknown amount of time, he was more worried about bringing along his pet fish to the camp. He knew his parents were distraught over the news, but did not think much of it. This honesty and raw emotion provide readers a glimpse of Kang’s prospective as a child. One can only imagine the dismay a young person must have faced leaving everything behind and not realizing the life-threatening dangers ahead.

Nearing the end of the long emotional ride to Yodok in a military truck, Kang saw an open gate with a sign that read, “Border Patrol of the Korean People, Unit 2915.” While at the time, the sign did not impress Kang, he later realized that it was yet “another link in the interminable chain of lies, a way of camouflaging the camp to look like an army barracks, distracting the attention of the outside world.” It was inside these gates, however, where the harsh reality of the forced labor camp resonated.

Surrounded by beautiful mountains, Yodok was surprisingly not necessarily an ugly place. Yang wrote that he was shocked at the beauty of the camps surroundings. Barbed wire could only be seen in a few places but the truth was, it was only needed in a few places. The natural obstacles are enough to keep everyone in the camp. Steep slopes, armed units on every mountaintop, metal wire strung all around the periphery that sets off alarms, electric wire, and traps (much like those set for wild animals) were among the first-line of protective measures in place. Additionally, three roll calls took place every day and if a detainee missed two consecutive roll calls, drastic measures to find the tardy prisoner were taken.

Kang and his family were even more stunned when they saw the hut designated for them to live in during their time of “reeducation” at Yodok. Under a roof of bare wooden planks, with dried earth for walls, and packed dirt for a floor, the family was silenced as they noted to vast differences from their pervious residences. “It was painful to look at these furnishings, infused still with the memory of our luxurious Pyongyang apartment.” Every hut was surrounded by a patch of fenced-off dirt where the prisoners could grow whatever they wanted which seems ironic considering the collectivization of agriculture occurring throughout North Korea on the outside of the camp gates.

What may have been most shocking in Yang’s account of life in Yodok was the lack of food and starvation rampant throughout the camp. In the many years spent at Yodok, the “greatest difficulty… had to do with nourishment.” Chol-hwan recounts always being hungry and the continuous trouble in digesting the food he did get. Corn was always on the menu. Whether it was plain, mixed with herbs found during the hard labor in the fields, mixed with acorn paste, or, if lucky, combined with a few grains of rice. Yang learned to eat whatever he could get his hands on. Insects and earthworms sometimes had to suffice. If lucky, the family would catch one of the many rats in the camp or a frog near the river and devour the pieces of the much needed and sought after meat.

Malnutrition inside the camp was of epic proportions and Yang makes these experiences incredibly personal. He says, “I almost died during my first months in the camp.” The absence of sustenance was, worse than any mistreatment by the guards. Having to work long days on the energy that a few spoonfuls of corn provided was torture and killed many detainees. In describing the malnutrition and food in Yodok, Yang recounts one of his favorite dishes during his internment, a type of corn chowder, and how he tried it several times since Yodok, but has never been able to rediscover the taste it had in the camp. These insights and afterthoughts are what make “Aquariums of Pyongyang” an interesting read.

After waking-up before sunrise and swallowing another little helping of corn, children were required to go to school. After marching into the classroom singing the “Song of Kim Il-Sung” every morning (sometimes twice if it was not sung with enough vigor the first time), students got into groups and reviewed the previous day’s lesson. This review session was followed by lessons in Korean, mathematics, biology, and the teacher’s “clear favorite,” the politics of the Party, where the values of communism and the heroic feats of their leaders were impressed upon students.

The primary concern of teachers was to crush “counterrevolutionary vermin.” Yang had been made to believe – and truly wanted to believe – that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was the greatest and only perfect nation in the universe. Yang’s experience in school at Yodok, however, was confusing, “I looked up to Kim Il-sung as a god. Yet here were armed teachers beating and insulting their student charges.” Yang was continually confused about the numerous disconnects and paradoxical beliefs of communism but never said a word in dissent for fear of punishment.

Classes ended at noon. Students were given an hour to rest and eat the cornmeal brought from the hut and then directly started manual labor. At Yodok, there was no such thing as individual responsibility, “ones work only counted as part of the collective output.” Labor ranged from hauling tree trunks down mountains to carrying the deceased up the mountain to be prepared for their mass burials or entailed mining coal from tunnels throughout the camps hills. If the work quotas were not being met, detainees were physically abused and beaten or given extra work shifts and sometimes both! Inhumane conditions, unrealistic standards, and brutal punishments were the norms when laboring within the confines of Yodok.

Yang provides readers an unprecedented view of life in the North Korean gulags. He is able to provide details about school, work, and daily that only survivors can testify to. In addition to those details, Yang is also able to provide details concerning the impacts that imprisonment had on his family and on him personally. His family would never be the same – they grew further apart daily while in Yodok. They barely spoke to each other during meals and never spoke at night because of shear exhaustion. The “sibling bond” he had once had with his sister was “stolen” and never given back. “Yodok is not place for human beings,” Yang said. Once an outgoing extrovert, Yang’s personality was slowly transformed to having introverted tendencies as he became overtly shy. He continually goes beyond the normal, predictable memoir by discussing both the immediate and gradual effects his time at Yodok had on him psychologically.

February 16, 1987 is a day that Kang Chol-hwan will never forget. This was the day when the Chol-hwan family was notified that they were going to be released from the gates of Yodok. As the family counted down the days until they were released from the camp, they were filled with excitement but also disappointment. They realized that while they were being released, it would be impossible to ever rediscover a satisfactory life like that had once had.

Yang finishes “Aquariums of Pyonyang” with several chapters about North Korea as he found it after ten years of isolation and also describing his escape from North Korea. Yang expected to find the “workers paradise” of North Korea when he was released. North Korea, however, was far from paradise. Economic crisis had struck the country and people resorted to eating tree bark to survive the famine. All citizens were under constant surveillance and the repression of the communist leaders was almost as bad as inside the camp. To get away from this, Yang had to attempt escape without his family to China. From China, he gained a miraculous entry into his final destination of South Korea.

These ending chapters truly illustrated the adventure and risks Yang took as he made his own great escape. He was amazed at what the outside world had to offer. Whether it was night clubs, restaurants where people threw away uneaten food, or the freedom of movement citizens enjoyed, Yang was overfilled with emotions. Through many trials and tribulations, he made it to South Korea. His goal was to go to South Korea to spread the truth of North Korea to people around the world. He wanted people to know the realities of being detained in a North Korean concentration camp and wanted to explain the real economic state of the country. He has more than accomplished this goal by writing “The Aquariums of Pyongyang.”

The book’s organization was well structured for the most part. The first chapters started off with more of a strict chronological structure. This allowed for the family’s history and the events leading up to the detention to be thoroughly explained and consequently easy to follow. The chapters describing Yang’s time in the concentration camp was a mixture between a chronological and topical structure. The chapters did follow a general timetable of when he was detained at the camp but the added stories and extra details were often times intertwined and did not exactly follow the perfect chronological series of events. This mix between organizational structures was needed, though, for Yang to be extensive in his descriptions.

While much of Yang’s story took place during the Korean War. Chol-hwan barely addresses the impact that the war had on his family or at his time at Yodok. It is only mentioned a few times throughout the book and is usually associated with the false propaganda being spread by the North. While this may not be a focal point, Chol-hwan could have included more about what people were saying about the war efforts and how the war had been viewed after his time spent in Yodok.

Also, more could have been written about the root causes of the many effects Kang personally experienced. For example, Yang often made references to the Great and Dear Leaders but failed to mention why the glorification of these leaders was so important for communism to be successful. He could have also gone into more detail about how these leaders came to power and the impression they directly and indirectly had on his life. While that was not the focus of this book, that background information could have been helpful to readers who may not know much about the history of North Korea and its leadership.

Kang co-authored the book with Pierre Rigoulot who was a contributor to “The Black Book of Communism.” While “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” will not be remembered for its literary qualities, it will for the immediacy and drama of Kang Chol-Hwan’s personal testimony. The writing, as translated by Rigoulot, is unembellished and straight to the point. This style suits itself well as Kang masterfully presents his personal account of a brutalized childhood and the perils of a communist regime. “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” adds volumes to the tales of horror that have come out of North Korea in recent years and Kang has been successful in his ultimate goal of sharing his experiences in hopes of more world-wide recognition of the atrocities occurring today in North Korea.