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By Root 1011 0

and sometimes even a little oil. Since the guards didn’t dare descend into the shafts, the miners were also left in relative peace with no one around to insult and bark orders at them. The snitches were still around, however, and their presence was enough to maintain discipline and guarantee a steady output. To avoid being punished with an extra night shift, the miners had to keep moving from six in the morning until noon, and then again from one in the afternoon until seven or eight in the evening.

My tenure in the mines marked a new stage in my life at the camp; it made me realize there were others even less fortunate. At least I didn’t have to spend all of my days in the subterranean dust and darkness. I had also triumphed over the “yellow spring,” pellagra, and even my interminable diarrhea. Finally, I had gotten to know the internal workings of the camp and discovered how to pull the strings necessary for survival. I learned how the work routine functioned and how assignments were organized; I figured out the guards’ system for reshuffling work teams, changing orders and standards, and assigning team leaders. When a special campaign was launched, I was prepared for it, knowing I had nothing to fear from these punctual mobilizations that would end in a week or two, at which point I would rejoin my family.

I also understood the camp’s system of indirect supervision, which made the work team, rather than the guards, the primary means of surveillance. The official security agents only kept a close eye on the newest arrivals—to break them in, mostly. Once prisoners were established the guards tended to keep their distance during the day, reasserting themselves in the evening, when it came time to tally the day’s production. That’s when they really got tense. If our quota wasn’t filled, we were supposed to keep working until it was, but since the guards would have to stay out in the cold, too, and wait to get home to their families, they sometimes overlooked the shortfalls. Recognizing this made me feel a lot less powerless. In short, I’d made it through the adaptation period that, depending on the detainee, could last anywhere from several months to several years. I was twelve years old now, and I no longer wanted to die. I even started to develop that sixth sense all prisoners have for sniffing out informants. While I now realize they were just as much victims of the system as I was, back then I thought of them as agents of voluntary evil.

A few months after my arrival, a kid who was part of my gang was selected to be an informant. The moment he got the news he came to tell us about it, warning, in jest, that we’d better start watching what we said around him. Unfortunately, we couldn’t help but take him at his word. We grew more suspicious of him by the day. Whenever he was around, we refrained from criticizing the guards and teachers and refused to complain about work. The unhappy child became increasingly isolated from the group and was eventually pushed out altogether. His situation was truly perverse, and ultimately it provided him all the motivation he needed to become a genuine snitch.

Living under constant threat of denunciation, my friends and I came to hate these spies with a passion. We held them in contempt and always tried to get them back for their treachery, no matter what honor might be due their age or former station in life. Our classmate was only twelve years old, but Cho Byung-il was in his sixties—a ripe, almost biblical age by camp standards, and one ordinarily worthy of respect. A former cadre of the Korean Communist Party in Japan, he’d become one the camp’s most dreaded informants. Many prisoners had him to thank for extra work details; his snitching had even sent several people to the sweatbox. While he was hated by all the prisoners at Yodok, it was the children who despised him most. His bald head and round face were the targets of countless taunts and jeers. One day, as we were passing in front of the soybean-processing shop where he worked, he tried to peek out at us and eavesdrop on our