SEOUL, South Korea — “I am fool.”
That self-assessment comes from Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean economist who moved to North Korea a quarter-century ago, dragging along his unhappy wife and two teenage daughters. He then defected to the West, leaving his family stranded in a country that his wife called “a living hell.”
Oh lives alone now in a fusty, computer-filled apartment in the capital of South Korea. At 68, he is retired, drinks too much rice wine and dwells on what might have been.
His wife and daughters — if alive — are believed to be prisoners in Camp No. 15, one of several political prisons in the mountains of North Korea.
Nineteen years ago, North Korean authorities sent Oh letters written in his wife’s hand, saying that she and the girls were in the camp. There also were pictures of them.
Oh is the only person known to have received this kind of evidence about Camp No. 15 inmates, according to Lee Jee-hae, legal adviser to Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag, a human-rights group based in Seoul. About 154,000 people are being held in six large camps, according to the latest estimate by the South Korean government. North Korea officially denies the camps’ existence.
Defectors who have been released from Camp 15 say public executions are common, along with beatings, rapes, starvation and the disappearance of female prisoners impregnated by guards. They say prisoners have no access to soap, underwear, socks, tampons or toilet paper and that most inmates die by age 50, usually of illnesses exacerbated by overwork and hunger.
Oh’s foolishness began in Germany in 1985. He was studying for a doctorate in economics at the University of Tuebingen. He also was an outspoken opponent of the authoritarian government then running South Korea. Pyong yang agents approached Oh and offered him a job and free medical care for his wife, Shin Sook-ja, who had hepatitis.
“My wife did not want to go,” Oh said. “I ignored her objections.”
The family arrived in the North Korean capital Dec. 3, 1985, Oh said, and was taken to nearby mountains for indoctrination at a military camp. “The moment we stepped into that camp, I knew my wife was right,” Oh said.
His wife received no medical treatment. Instead, she and her husband spent several months studying the teachings of Kim Il-sung, the “Great Leader” and founding dictator of North Korea, then were given jobs working in a radio station broadcasting propaganda to South Korea.
Soon, though, authorities ordered Oh to return to Germany and recruit more South Korean students. His wife and daughters would have to stay behind. Oh recalls that he and his wife argued bitterly about what he should do.
“She hit me in the face when I said I would come back with some South Koreans,” Oh said. “She said I could not have that on my conscience. She told me to leave North Korea and never come back. She told me to think of her and our daughters as being dead.”
En route to Germany, Oh turned himself over to authorities in Copenhagen and was granted political asylum. Shortly afterward, his wife and daughters were taken to Camp 15, former prisoners said. There, they were placed in a “complete control district,” where prisoners work until they die.
