A Grain of Rice Is Greater Than the Earth

On May 20, three months after being placed in Pyongyang
Prison, I was moved to Heungnam Prison. I felt indignation
and also shamed before Heaven. I was tied to a thief so I could
not escape. We were taken by vehicle on a route that took seventeen
hours. As I looked out the window a powerful feeling of grief welled up
inside me. It seemed incredible to me that I would have to travel this
winding road along rivers and through valleys as a prisoner.
Heungnam Prison was a concentration camp for special laborers working
in the Heungnam Nitrogen Fertilizer Factory. During the next two
years and five months I underwent hard compulsory labor. Compulsory
labor was a practice that North Korea learned from the Soviet Union. The
Soviet government could not simply kill members of the bourgeoisie and
other people who were not communists, because the world was watching
and they needed to be mindful of world opinion. So it came up with the
punishment of compulsory labor. People who were exploited in this way
were forced to continue working until they died of exhaustion. North Korean
communists copied the Soviet system and sentenced all prisoners to
three years of compulsory labor. In reality, the prisoners would usually die
from the labor before their terms were up.
Our days began at 4:30 in the morning. We were made to line up
in formation on the field, and our bodies and clothing were inspected
for contraband items. We took off all our clothing, and each item was
thoroughly inspected. Each piece of clothing would be beaten for so
long that even the last speck of dust would not remain. The entire process
took at least two hours. Heungnam was on the seacoast, and in the
winter the wind was as painful as a knife as it cut into our naked bodies.
When the inspection was over we would be fed an awful meal. Then
we would walk two and a half miles to the fertilizer factory. We were
marched four abreast, were made to hold the hand of the person next
to us, and could not even hold our heads up. Guards armed with rifles
and pistols surrounded us. Anyone who caused his row to start falling
behind, or failed to hold on to the hand of the person next to him, was
beaten severely for trying to escape.
In winter the snow would be deeper than a person’s height. On cold
winter mornings when we were marched through snow as deep as
we were tall, my head would start feeling as though it was spinning.
The frozen road was extremely slippery, and the cold wind blew so
ferociously it made the hair on our heads stand up straight. We had
no energy, even after eating breakfast, and our knees kept collapsing
beneath us. Still we had to make our way to the job site, even if it meant
dragging our exhausted legs along the way. As I made my way along this
road that took us to the edge of consciousness, I kept reminding myself
that I belonged to Heaven.
At the factory there was a mound of a substance that we referred to
in a shorthand way as “ammonia.” In reality, it probably was ammonium
sulfate, a common form of fertilizer. It would come in by conveyor belt
and looked like a white waterfall as it fell off the belt onto the mound
below. It was quite hot when it first came off the belt, and fumes rose
from it even in the middle of winter. Quickly it would cool and become
as solid as ice. Our job was to dig the fertilizer out of the mound with
shovels and put it into straw bags. We referred to this mound that was
over sixty-five feet high as “the fertilizer mountain.” Eight to nine hundred
people were digging away at the fertilizer in a large space, making
it appear as though we were trying to cut the mountain in half.
We were organized in teams of ten, and each team was responsible
to fill and load 1,300 bags a day. So each person had to fill 130 bags. If a
team failed to meet its quota, its meal rations were cut in half. Everyone
worked as if his life depended on making the quota. To help us carry the
bags of fertilizer as efficiently as possible we made needles out of steel
wire and used these to help us tie the bags after they had been filled.
We would put a piece of wire on a rail track that ran along the floor of
the factory. The wire was flattened by having one of the small rail cars
used for hauling materials run over it, and then it could be used as a
needle. To open holes in the bags we used shards of glass that we got by
breaking factory windows. The guards must have felt sorry to see their
prisoners working under harsh conditions because they never stopped
us from breaking windows in the factory. Once I broke a tooth while
trying to cut a piece of wire. Even now you can see that one of my front
teeth is broken. This remains with me as an unforgettable memento
from Heungnam Prison.
Everyone grew thin under the pressure of hard labor. I was the exception.
I was able to maintain my weight at 159 pounds, making me
an object of envy for the other prisoners. I always excelled in physical
strength. On one occasion, though, I became extremely ill with symptoms
similar to tuberculosis. I had these symptoms for nearly a month.
However, I did not miss even a day of work at the factory. I knew that
if I were absent other prisoners would be held responsible for my share
of the work. People called me “the man like a steel rod” because of
my strength. I could endure even the most difficult work. Prison and
compulsory labor were not such a big problem for me. No matter how
fierce the beating or terrible the environment, a person can endure if he
carries a definite purpose in his heart.
Prisoners were also exposed to sulfuric acid, which was used in the
manufacture of ammonium sulfate. When I worked at the Kawasaki steel
mill in Japan I witnessed several instances in which a person cleaning vats
used to store sulfuric acid had died from the effects of acid poisoning. The
situation in Heungnam was far worse. Exposure to sulfuric acid was so
harmful that it would cause hair loss and sores on our skin that oozed liquid.
Most people who worked in the factory would begin vomiting blood and
die after about six months. We would wear rubber pieces on our fingers for
protection, but the acid would quickly wear through these. The acid fumes
would also eat through our clothing, making them useless, and our skin
would break and bleed. In some cases, the bone would become visible. We
had to continue working without so much as a day’s rest, even when our
sores were bleeding and oozing pus.
Our meal rations consisted of less rice than it took to fill two small bowls.
There were no side dishes, but we were given a soup that was radish greens
in saltwater. The soup was so salty it made our throats burn, but the rice was
so hard we couldn’t eat it without washing it down with the soup. No one
ever left even a single drop of the soup. When we received our bowl of rice,
prisoners would put all the rice into their mouths at once. Having eaten
their own rice, they would look around, stretching their necks sometimes
to watch how the others ate. Sometimes someone would put his spoon in
someone else’s soup bowl, and there would be a fight. One minister who was
with me in Heungnam once said to me, “Let me have just one bean, and I
will give you two cows after we get out of here.” People were so desperate
that if a prisoner died at mealtime, the others would dig out any rice still in
his mouth and eat it themselves.
The pain of hunger can only be known by those who have experienced it.
When a person is hungry, a mere grain of rice becomes very precious. Even
now, it makes me tense just to think of Heungnam. It’s hard to believe that
a single grain of rice can give such stimulation to the body, but when you
are hungry you have such a longing for food that it makes you cry. When
a person has a full stomach the world seems big, but to a hungry person
a grain of rice is bigger than the earth. A grain of rice takes on enormous
value to someone who is hungry.
Beginning with my first day in prison I made it a habit to take half of
my ration of rice and give it to my fellow prisoners, keeping only half for
myself. I trained myself this way for three weeks and then ate the whole
ration. This made me think that I was eating enough rice for two people,
which made it easier to endure the hunger.
Prison life is so terrible that it cannot even be imagined by someone who
has not experienced it. Half the prisoners would die within a year, so every
day we had to watch as dead bodies were carried out the back gate in a
wooden box. We would work so hard, and our only hope for leaving was as
a dead body in that wooden casket. Even for a merciless and cruel regime,
what they did to us clearly went beyond all boundaries of humanity. All
those bags of fertilizer filled with the tears and grief of the prisoners were
loaded onto ships and taken to Russia.