Book Review: The Aquariums of Pyongyang

by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
Translated by Yair Reiner
Originally published in France as Les Aquariums de Pyongyang by Éditions

The BBC ran an article detailing escapes from North Korea: Escaping North Korea

This is a compelling first-person account of a North Korean man who came of age in one of that country's feared concentration camps after his family was imprisoned there for ten years, beginning in the late 1970s. At that time, Kang was only nine years old.

Kang's grandmother had worked tirelessly as an ardent supporter of communism while living in Japan and had raised untold thousands of dollars while organizing the Chosen Soren, a pro-North Korean group operating there. She persuaded the family to return to the motherland, a near fatal decision that would eventually destroy the family. The sick irony of the world's last Stalinist country is that it was precisely the family's political and financial support that spelled doom for the family after they had moved to Pyongyang.

In Japan, Kang remembers intellectual and entrepreneurial vitality that we associate with "normal society." All of this vanished once the family stepped off the boat in North Korea. Just as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the party in North Korea neatly pruned any person of their possessions or their very lives if they were naive enough to do anything other than mindlessly praise the party on an empty stomach.

Even with the harsh political realities, Kang recalls a happy childhood. His descriptions of Kim-Il-Song and his son Kim-Jong-Il, however, are chilling. The father and son are practically worshiped as gods. Kang was convinced, as were his classmates, that they neither ate nor defecated. On a side note, a biography I read on Kim-Jong-Il commented that this man not only ate and shat, he routinely has his way with thousands of young Korean girls. As a twisted parody on Christmas, the leader's birthday was celebrated through the distribution of gifts to the loyal followers. Other books have detailed the extensive distortion of history the regime employed to reinforce their legitimacy as the country's leaders, but this book cannot avoid the self-mythology and brainwashing that are the norm there.

The descriptions of the Yoduk camp where Kang was incarcerated are every bit as vile as those of camps in Nazi Germany. Children and adults alike toiled away to their deaths with alarming frequency. Disease was rampant and treatment unheard of. Kang says that he quickly figured out the strings he needed to pull in order to survive; this included eating any crawling thing that crossed his path. His diet included frogs, salamanders, rats, and rabbits, stolen, trapped, or bred with the sole goal of helping him survive.

Kang points out that his was a relatively mild camp. Time was spent in lessons numbly absorbing the teachings of the two Kims. This was because the leaders had decided that he was "able to be saved" and thus was permitted the glorious privilege of studying the writings of the Kims.

The most important thing that I got out of this book was the painful condition of the North Korean people and how starkly it compared with the environment in China. When Kang first arrived there, he was shocked at the openness and freedom with which he could operate. He was speechless after a young woman asked him to dance in a club, possibly fearing that prying eyes would report this devious act that qualified, in his mind, as some sort of sexual travesty. China's regime is oppressive to be sure, but this book served as a good reminder of how all things are relative; many people are able to enjoy a good and happy life there.

As for the North Korean regime, may God have mercy on their souls. If half the things documented in this book are true, and there is no reason to doubt that they are, the punishment that might one day be dished out against the perpetrators for these crimes against humanity will be severe.