The Aquariums of Pyongyang_ Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-hwan Kang [61]
“At the famous conference of March 28, 1949, our Great Leader stated that our youth must always be the most energetic in the world, in terms both of work and study. But instead of heeding the wise reflections of our respected comrade Kim Il-sung, I twice arrived late at role call. I alone was responsible for this tardiness, which demonstrated neglect for the luminous reflection of our Great Leader. From now on, I will wake up a half hour earlier and make myself equal to the task of fulfilling his orders. I will renew myself and become a faithful warrior in the revolution of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.”
Then it was up to the presiding security agent to decide whether the self-criticism had been satisfactory. If it had been, the prisoner could proceed to the next step: criticizing someone else. If his criticism was found wanting, the agent would ask a member of the audience to expand on the criticism proffered. If the accused tried to defend himself, a third prisoner, and, if necessary, a fourth, was selected to take up the assault. Self-defense was never wise, because the review couldn’t end until the prisoner admitted his faults. Once a prisoner relented, we moved on to the next preselected case. The session lasted from an hour and a half to two hours, running from 9:00 P.M. until about 11:00 P.M., which wasn’t always enough time to get through all ten cases. If time ran short, the agents consolidated the wrongdoing of an entire team, or several of its members, into a single presentation. A member of the guilty team would then present the self-criticism on behalf of everyone involved.
The sessions were so conventional and formalized that it was hard to take them seriously—despite the perfect silence imposed by the hard gaze of the guards. We were like bored kids in a class they find meaningless. The smallest distraction would set us off. It happened several times that audience members let out an audible fart in the middle of a self-criticism. A little nothing like that was all it took to shatter the ceremony’s contrived solemnity and send the guards into a fit of rage. Sometimes they pretended not to hear, but other times they demanded to know who the culprit was. “Who farted?” they screamed. “The person who farted stand up!” If no one confessed, the guards kept us seated there until the criminal was identified, which eventually he always was. The prisoner would then be pushed toward the self-criticism table to expiate his fart with a mea culpa, at the end of which he usually received a week’s worth of supplementary work details.
We dreaded these long meetings that shortened our nights needlessly. They were too much of a sham to ever take seriously, but that’s not the way camp authorities saw it. They were always reminding us that “work alone can’t root out your rotten ideology. You need control.” What they meant was ideological control, and maintaining it was in part our responsibility. Hence, on arriving at adulthood, we were given three notebooks in which to trace the development of our ideological healing: “The Politics of the Party Notebook,” “The Revolutionary History of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il Notebook,” and the “Life Assessment Notebook.” All three accompanied us to the criticism sessions, so we could jot down all the lessons we learned.
To help advance our edification and reeducation, we also attended two classes a week to learn revolutionary songs and deepen our understanding of the life and thoughts