Why they weep

This video ostensibly depicts North Koreans hysterically mourning a monster who terrorized, starved, and murdered millions of his subjects. This particular clip has accumulated more than seven million YouTube views.

Videos like it have produced reels of bemused speculation in America. The near-universal reaction found this in roughly equal parts disturbing and amusing. I’m certain that I have, at times, found amusement in some aspects of North Korea that were, on closer examination, much more horrid than they were funny. But if I know anything about how North Koreans really think, is that they think. If there is one thing that I believe foreigners fundamentally misunderstand about North Koreans, it is that they are unthinking automatons. I’ve lived in South Korea long enough to know that there are profound cultural differences between Americans and Koreans, but I’ve spoken with and read the accounts of too many North Koreans to believe that what we see in these videos is real grief for Kim Jong Il. There are probably some exceptions, of course, but my guess is that most of the genuine grief was that of children whose parents know how mortally dangerous it disabuse a child of the official mythology.

The regime wants us to believe the North Koreans are automatons who lack the same innate human reason, logic, and emotion as the rest of us.  More importantly, it wants North Koreans to believe this about each other, so that everyone who dissents in the privacy of his own mind feels alone, strange, and abnormal. Of course, the real emotions of these people are hidden from us, from each other, and from the state. The most common question I’ve seen asked on the internet about these scenes is whether the people are faking. Look at the faces and judge for yourself, but most of them are pretty obviously faking to me, even more obviously than the professional mourners seen on video here. These are traditional paid mourners in India. They were paid to weep hysterically for trees that were illegally logged.

There was of course widespread speculation, informed by the statements of North Korean defectors, that people were terrorized into these hysterical displays, and now we have additional reports that this is indeed the case:

Daily NK learned from a source from North Hamkyung Province on January 10th, “The authorities are handing down at least six months in a labor-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organized gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine.

Furthermore, the source added that people who are accused of circulating rumors criticizing the country’s 3rd generation dynastic system are also being sent to re-education camps or being banished with their families to remote rural areas.

Daily NK earlier reported news that criticism sessions were being held at all levels of industry, in enterprises and by local people’s units starting on December 29th, the last day of the mourning period. A source said at the time that the central authorities had ordered the sessions to be completed by January 8th.

The North Hamkyung source commented of the sessions that they “created a vicious atmosphere of fear, causing people to accuse “˜that young upstart’ (Kim Jong Eun) of preying on the people now that he has taken power.” [Daily NK]

The Daily NK reports have received wide circulation in the American press and blogs.

The term “reeducation camp” probably refers to the smaller camps known in Korean as kyo-hwa-so, as opposed to the larger kwan-li-so camps, which are (with a few exceptions) life imprisonment zones for political prisoners.  Prisoners in both types of camp are routinely tortured, underfed, overworked, and exposed to contagious diseases, and a six-month stint in a kyo-hwa-so is likely to be a death sentence.  In fact, the annual mortality rates in some reeducation camps, especially in camps where prisoners must work in mines, can be higher than in the big political prison camps.

All of the prisoners at Kyo-hwa-so No. 4 were men, most of them sentenced to any- where from five to twenty years. The prisoners considered their sentences a cruel hoax, as they did not expect to live long enough to serve their time. Some prisoners mined limestone in the adjacent mountain. Others crushed the rocks. Still others fired the lime in large kilns. Work started at seven in the morning and lasted until five in the evening, except in the crushing and heating units, where work often continued until ten at night. All aspects of the work were hard labor in dangerous conditions with prisoners frequently suffering chest ailments and lung diseases from limestone dust.

Once a week there was an evening criticism session in groups of up to 500 men where the prison officials would criticize the prisoner called to stand in front of the group of prisoners. There were also lectures on Kim Jong Il and his policies.

Infractions were punished with reduced rations, nominally extended sentences, and detainment in miniature punishment cells. During the eight months that Former Prisoner #19 was held at Kyo-hwa-so No. 4, there were eight public executions in the prison. He did not recall the particular offenses of these eight executed persons, though he did cite the four types of persons who would be executed at the prison camp: prisoners caught trying to escape; prisoners caught after they escaped; persons who committed crimes while on “sick leave”; and prisoners who had committed capital crimes elsewhere and were brought to Kyo-hwa-so No. 4 for execution.

Food rations consisted of a mere 50 grams (under 2 ounces) per meal of mixed corn and wheat, plus cabbage-leaf soup. Former Prisoner #19 weighed 76 kilograms (168 pounds) upon his entry into the kyo-hwa-so. After three months, his weight had plummeted to somewhere around 45 kilograms (99 pounds). He was sure that most prisoners weighed less than 50 kilograms (110 pounds).

Prisoners slept head to toe on wooden floors in groups of 50 to 100. The unsanitary living conditions — there was no bathing or changing of clothes, and Former Prisoner #19 says he was able to wash only his face two to three times a month — led to Kyo-hwa-so No. 4’s particular idiosyncrasy: the cement dust in the prisoners clothing, commingled with dirt and sweat, would cause the tattered fabric to harden, resulting in skin abrasions and infections.

The most salient prison characteristic, however, was more common: exorbitantly high death rates. In Former Prisoner #19’s eight months there, of the eighty persons in his work unit, three prisoners died in work accidents, ten died of malnutrition and disease, and twenty were sent home on “sick leave” in order to reduce the high numbers of deaths in detention. [Committee for Human Rights in North Korea]

But then, as I said before, there are always plenty of good reasons to cry real tears in North Korea. For those who can’t find one, the state will provide.