Yodok: The Concentration Camps of North Korea

(Trigger Warning for those of sensitive disposition - 

but please read it if you can and spread the word to raise awareness)

I do not want to read any more.

But I will not do them the disservice of denial.

So I carry on – as they somehow do -

Carrying my heartbreak with me.

Here we have freedom of expression;

There to roll a cigarette from a scrap of newspaper

Which may have once contained a portrait of their leader

Lands you and three generations of your family

In living hell.

Here we can watch and laugh

At celebrities on tv eating grubs

For points in pointless gameshows.

There, their hunger gnaws at their insides,

Turns beautiful humans into living shells;

Where children, yes children,

Given no food,

Are forced to eat rats and insects,

The bark from trees;

Where a man is so desperate

He tries to eat a whip

Because it's made of oxtail.

But a guard catches him;

Forces him to eat intestinal worms from the latrine.

Unsurprisingly he dies.

Here we have healthcare, contraception, family planning, ivf, midwives;

Choice.

There, your child is born a slave

Or an unauthorised pregnancy

Means giving birth then being made

To drown your baby in a bucket of water.

Here we have freedom of movement;

There, no-one escapes.

Here we have the opportunity to live to our full potential;

There, indignity and suffering

Is all life has to offer.

There, they are raped,

Shackled in chains,

Forced to work 16 hour days of hard labour

Where at times they choose to do something

They know will result in being beaten

Simply so they get a chance to rest.

Where they live in rags in their own filth mixed with lice

In cages with no heat in -20degrees;

Where they are made to dig their own graves,

See their families executed in front of them.

Here, our officers and guards

Are prosecuted for misconduct;

There they are rewarded with college

If they kill people trying to flee:

They do it,disguising their own terror,

Their 'thank God it's not me'

With the fiercest brutality.

And the ones with conscious hearts

Who try to smuggle food to prisoners

Are demoted;

Moved away.

The horror is relentless.

I could feel guilt at my own aliveness.

Instead I use it to

Read on, to write, to speak

In hope

I carry for those with none,

That if enough people wake up

To the truth

Then we can, together,

Light a candle in the darkness.

For once, we said

'Never again';

Yet for the people of Yodok,

It still is.

You can donate to Amnesty by clicking here to help bring light to those with none