personnel and former members of the SSA or police were mostly
deprived of their Party memberships and were badly treated. I spent
my first 30 days in the unit of new arrivals.” (A10, former prisoner from
Taesuk-ni No. 15, 1995~1998)
The Yodok PPC and Pukchang PPC No. 18 are both high-security
camps. However, it was surveyed that there are some differences in the
process of admission to the respective PPC, in part due to differences in the
organizational management of each camp. In the case of PPC No. 18, all
prisoners surrender their citizenship cards to the camp authorities and their
cards are replaced with a new citizenship card that have a different color code
for blood type than ordinary citizen cards.
“The residents in the Control Center have their citizenship
cards replaced with a new one that shows blood type in black in the
back corner of the card. The blood type is in red for the ordinary
citizen’s card. When the prisoners are released, they receive new
citizenship cards that shows blood type in red as in the ordinary card.
(0 Myong-o, former prisoner from PPC No. 18)
7)
Process of Release and Defection
Testimonies from prisoners of PPC No. 15 have made up the bulk of those
analyzed for this report in light of the fact that prisoners are released only from
the High-security Camp of Yodok. Testimonies from former prisoners from
PPC No. 18 are also included. It is known that there have been a number of
attempts by prisoners to escape from PPC and the case of success is
extremely rare. Shin Dong-hyuk, the former prisoner from PPC No. 14, is the
only one who arrived in South Korea. As a result, the information on the
process of defection is very limited. Shin Dong-hyuk from PPC 14, Kaechon,
successfully passed through electrified barbed wire benefitting from the
sacrifice of another prisoner who perished from electrocution on the barbed
wire.
“Certainly, there were two prisoners who ran away from Camp
No. 13 in the year of 00. While the prisoners were at work in the downtown
area of Chongsong, two of them escaped.” (A08, former SSA officer at
PPC No. 12 and 13 1967~1992)
There are cases of escape attempts, if not many, and some of them
were successful as the foregoing testimony shows.
“Many prisoners have been released since 1984. There
were some changes since that time. I don’t know who made the
difference. In 1991, all prisoners were released at my camp and new
prisoners arrived from Pongchang. If a house became vacant in my
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