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The aquariums of Pyongyang : ten years in the North Korean gulag / Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot ; translated by Yair Reiner ; [with a new preface by the author].

by Kang, Chʻŏr-hwan, 1968- author.

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New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2005.

Kang, Chʻŏr-hwan, 1968-

Political prisoners -- Korea (North) -- Biography.

Internment camps -- Korea (North)

Forced labor -- Korea (North)

Korea (North) -- Social conditions.

0465011047 (paperback)

9780465011049 (paperback) :

xxiv, 238 pages : 1 portrait ; 21 cm

Revised edition.

Preface for the revised edition -- Introduction: North Korea--the world's last Stalinist regime -- A happy childhood in Pyongyang -- Money and the revolution can get along -- Next year in Pyongyang! -- In a concentration camp at the age of nine -- Work group number 10 -- The wild boar : a teacher armed and ready to strike -- Death of a black champion -- Corn, roaches, and snake brandy -- Death at Yodok -- The much-coveted rabbits -- Madness stalks the prisoners -- Biweekly criticism and self-criticism -- Public executions and postmortem stonings -- Love at Yodok -- Sojourn in the mountain -- Ten years in the camp : thank you, Kim Il-sung! -- The North Korean paradise -- The camp threatens again -- Escape to China -- Small-time prostitution and big-time smuggling in Dalian -- Arrival in South Korea -- Adapting to a capitalist world -- Epilogue: Pursuing aid for North Korea.

After the division of North and South Korea, Kang's family returned to North Korea from Japan, where his grandparents had emigrated in the 1930s. His grandfather had amassed a fortune and his grandmother became a committed Communist. They were fired with idealism and committed to building a new Korea, only to be removed without trial to a remote concentration camp, apparently because the grandfather was suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Kang Chol-hwan was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Over the next ten years, he endured inhumane conditions and deprivations, including an inadequate diet (supplemented by frogs and rats), regular beatings, humiliations, and hard labor.

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