The International Refugees Convention was broken when Park Choong-il and his six companions were arrested in Russia and returned to North Korea via China. Nothing more has ever been heard of his six fellow refugees.

Our interview faced great difficulties from the beginning. Our first question to him was "Park Choong-il, are you really the same person who was arrested in Russia?"

We could hardly believe that the face we had seen on the TV screen in Russia was the same face we were seeing before us in person.

The opinions of the interviewers were split; "Yes, he must be the same person," and "No, he is not the same person."

How did the great change in his appearance happen? Nobody could confidently refute anybody else's opinion. Although we received some hints while we were interviewing him, they were not adequate.

We decided to shelve the problem of identifying him from his appearance, and to concentrate first on the analysis of our interview with him. We also decided to let the experts handle authentication and anatomical analysis. These we referred on to Japan, France, and Germany.

His answers change!?

During the interview, he could not sit still for long because of the tortures he had been subjected to in North Korea, and because of his weak health. One hour seemed to be the limit of his concentration. He became irritable and his responses turned short and blunt. In bad temper, he started to talk about things that were irrelevant to our questions. Or, he gave answers calculated merely to satisfy the inquirers in an attempt to be released. Even when we told him that his answers were inconsistent with his previous answers, he did not try to explain or protest. He did not try to demand or insist.

His answers were inconsistent. All the interviewers shared the impression that his responses and answers depended solely on his desire to be released from the interview. He also had poor temporal memory or recall regarding the passage of time.

Then, how in the world could we get "correct answers"?

We constantly modified the way we asked him questions in order to check the accuracy of his answers. For example, we asked him when he illegally entered Russia, and he first answered November 1998.

However, that event took place in November 1999, and our appeal to the international society for a solution to the problem was lodged on the 13th of November.

Hence, we changed the way we asked our questions: "How many winters since you were arrested in Russia and sent back to North Korea via China?"

That's how we verified the consistency between the facts and his testimony. The interview was carried out intermittently for about 30 days. The following describes a part of that interview.

To the detention camp in North Korea

On December 29, 1999, the seven of us were handcuffed and pushed into a Russian-made truck. We left the Russian border detection camp early in the morning. Why are we handcuffed if we were to be sent on to South Korea? I sensed that something was going wrong.

We considered the possibility that they would send us directly on to North Korea. Instead, we were handed over to the Chinese authorities in the border city of Hunchun. We grasped at the slim hope that perhaps there was a chance for us to remain in China.

We begged the Chinese officials to be merciful and let us go, saying "If we are sent back to North Korea, we will be killed. We will return to North Korea by ourselves." Finding them deaf to our pleas, we cried out in desperate fear and attempted to end our lives by slamming our heads hard against the prison walls. The Chinese officials tried to soothe us, saying "They will not kill you. You will be released after spending some time at a correctional facility. Don't worry".

The Chinese authorities treated us violently. They provided us no lunches, and one of us who asked for a cigarette was beaten. They asked, "How dare you ask such a thing, you criminal!".

The woman in the group had menstrual bleeding and her trousers were wet with fresh blood. She asked them for toilet paper to stanch the bleeding. The Chinese officials refused her request, saying "You will get something better than toilet paper when you get to North Korea."

When we were handed over to the North Korean authorities at around 13:30 p.m., we saw more than ten cars and some twenty North Korean guards with guns, including some senior officers, waiting for us. At that moment, we felt like walking dead men, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up in sheer dread at the sight of North Korean officials.

Friends, let's meet our deaths with a smile

"Friends, let's meet our death with a smile!" This is what one of our group said when we stepped into North Korea. We were released from the Chinese handcuffs, but immediately handcuffed again, separated and blindfolded by the North Korean state security officers. Since they had separated and blindfolded us, this led me to assume that we would be executed right on the spot. Instead, they took us to an unknown location.

Inside the car, I was forced to crouch down on the narrow floorboard with my head pushed down until we arrived three or four hours later at a building and my blindfold was removed.

Later, I learned that this was the North Hamgyong Provincial State Security (political police) building in Chongam district in Chongjin city, 10 minutes' walk from the railway station. Upon arrival, a sample of my blood was taken, I was fingerprinted, and weight and height were measured. Then, I was led to stairs leading to underground cells beneath the building.

At the bottom there was an iron gate. Beyond the gate ran a corridor that was divided into cells for men on the right and cells for women on the left. There were a total of 12 cells on the men's side. There was only dim light from a single bulb in the cell, and no sunlight. It was not possible to distinguish daytime from night once inside these underground cells.

Each cell contained nine to ten prisoners being watch by a video monitor around the clock. There were about 12 guards in the entire ward whom we were instructed to always address as "Sir."

The cells were full of lice, bedbugs, fleas and other insects even though it was winter. Insect bites came to be as intolerable as the severe beatings. Prisoners received three meals a day, a very small quantity of hard-boiled corn and very thin salt soup. We were never allowed to speak and move around in the cell.

Guards were unfazed by a prisoner's death. Prisoners were taken to a prison clinic if they collapsed. However no medicine or facilities for medical treatment were available. The only medical service a seriously ill prisoner received was an intravenous injection of 5% saline solution.

Tortures in the Interrogation Office

The day following our arrival at the state security building, I was in an interrogation office for preliminary questions about my identity. When I moved my body slightly due to a pain in my abdomen, one of the interrogators shouted at me, "Death to a traitor!" and kicked my face so hard that part of my bottom left gum was smashed, one tooth was ripped out by the roots, and another tooth in the upper jaw was broken. My mouth and face were drenched in blood.

But that was just the beginning. The formal interrogation began five days after my arrival, the delay perhaps being due to the New Year holidays. The interrogation always took place at night and it was equal parts beatings, kickings, and questioning.

They repeatedly asked me "Where did you go in China?", "Whom did you meet in China?", "Why did you go to Russia?", and "Why did you have the press conference in Russia and why did you say that you wanted to go to South Korea?"

My interrogators were Lee Jong-hu, Chongjin City Security Officer, and Park Seong-il, a political officer from the State Security Ministry. The interrogation was extremely brutal and unbearable.

I was forced to admit to things that I never said and to having met individuals that I never met. If I showed signs of refusing these false declarations, I was beaten so brutally that I simply was unable to say "No" any longer. I had to confess to my crimes while tied up in a chair with an electric light right in front of me for many nights, and I also had to invent new crimes for confession. I passed out a number of times and was jolted back to consciousness by the splash of cold water on my face.

One time, I was hit severely in the back of my head with an iron chain, and blood gushed out. At first, I just felt numbness and a little pain. Then, as soon as I realized that blood was gushing over my shoulders from my head wound, an unbearable pain engulfed me. I still carry the wound in my head that was inflicted that day.

My cell was underground and interrogation rooms were on the ground floor. The torture chamber was half underground. When an interrogator was not satisfied with the prisoner's answers, he sent the prisoner to a torture chamber. The torturer chamber was a large hall about the size of a basketball court. The torture chamber was filled with all kinds of torture implements, such as leather belts, rubber belts, iron chains, and large wooden sticks.

The hall itself was dark but I witnessed the torture of other victims under spotlights. This place was filled with the painful screams of victims, the sounds of torturers' shouts and the pounding of prisoners being beaten. The very horrifying atmosphere overwhelmed prisoners as soon as they entered the torture chamber, making them feel as if they were already dead.

For the next 7 months, I was detained in this underground cell of the North Hamgyong Provincial Security Agency and was subject to all kinds of torture and degrading treatment. After many sleepless nights resulting from relentless interrogations for about a month following my arrival there, I was sent back to my cell for a short time to sleep.

Apparently, I ground my teeth in my sleep. The guard on duty awakened my cellmates and me and ordered them to beat me for grinding my teeth. They had to obey the guard and proceeded to beat and kick me vigorously for fear of punishment if their blows were not severe enough. Then, for further punishment, the guard ordered me to clean the toilet bowl.

The guard ordered me to clean the toilet bowl with my tongue. I had to continue licking the toilet bowl for 30 minutes, and he did not allow me to spit anything out and forced me to swallow. I literally swallowed human feces. I received this type of punishment three times during my seven months of detention there.

About a month after my detection, an elderly man of about 50 arrived. He had been a senior party propaganda officer of the Hwasong district, North Hamgyong, and he also was forced to clean the toilet hole with his tongue for five days. Once, my back slightly moved when I coughed. The guard noticed it and ordered me to stick out my hands, then he severely beat my hands with the stock of his gun. My right hand stayed swollen like a ball for more than one month. My right hand is still scarred from that beating.

The most commonly practiced punishments there included: Pigeon rope tightening: Tightly binding a prisoner with his/her arms drawn up behind them by rope in such a manner that the victim is unable to move his/her body.

Clock torture: Standing on one leg with both arms stretched out to mirror the hands of a clock and the other leg swinging like the pendulum of a clock. Each time the prisoner lost his balance and fell, he/she received a severe beating.

Beating with large wooden sticks, an electric torture club or prod, "motorcycle torture" (forcing a prisoner to imitate for hours on end the physical motions of riding a motorcycle), endlessly repeating the process of sitting down and standing up".

In the underground cell, no prisoner had a name. I was in cell No. 4 and was identified as Prisoner No. 12. There were only 4 blankets for the nine prisoners in my cell. The leader in my cell was a man of about 45. His name was Yun Dae-Il, and he was the former intelligence chief of the North Korean State Security Agency in Musan district. He treated me like I was his own son and was kind to me. All my cellmates were political prisoners and none of them knew what the outcome of their detention would be. They had all lost their families already. They didn't know whether they would be executed or sent to a political concentration camp.

There was a camera in a corner of each cell to monitor prisoners' movements. Prisoners were not allowed to move or speak to each other without permission. Prisoners were always tremendously relieved when the lights were turned out because temporary darkness allowed them to move their fingers and toes and to stretch their backs.

If detected, however, the prisoner was tied to the bars and forced to read the rules and regulations out loud for hours. If he made a mistake in reading or read too slowly, the guards beat him with a rubber belt mercilessly. The regulations were so strict that it was very difficult to observe all the rules. Furthermore, one prisoner's mistake could lead to collective punishment. We were ordered to stand in two rows, face to face, and to slap each other hard or exercise a "stand and sit" repetition (pumping punishment) 500 times.

One night, after about three months in detention, I was being returned to my cell after an interrogation when I saw Yong-chol, one of the seven persons with whom I had been caught in Russia, coming from the opposite direction. He was accompanied by two guards, and it appeared that he was being taken to the interrogation room. He looked so wretched and miserable that he was almost a different man already. I considered myself to be in such a hopeless situation that I was delighted at the mere sight of him, handcuffed and in rubber shoes, even though we could say nothing to each other.

He was still alive! Seeing him made me miss the other five arrested in Russia. What had happened to them? Were they dead now or had they managed to stay alive? Because I was still a child, any torture I had undergone was mild by comparison, and I believe the other members were treated with much greater harshness and ferocity.

When victims died under torture, they were buried in the mountains nearby, leaving no signs of their prior existence whatsoever. Life in the cell was so miserable, and I fell into such hopelessness that I finally became sick. I was unable to eat even the little food they gave us. The pain was great and I could no longer hold my body upright. I was caught urinating in my trousers one day and was beaten until I passed out.

When I woke up, I found myself in the prison clinic. My arms and legs were tied to the four corners of the bed and there was an intravenous drip in my arm. A security officer kept watch over me and when I woke up, he shouted at me, "You reactionary bastard! I know that you are faking illness to fool us. Get up!"

I was immediately taken back to the cell in handcuffs. When I returned to my cell, everybody was surprised to see me alive. I slowly regained some strength and soon found that Yun Dae-Il was missing. Nobody knew what had happened to him after he was removed from the cell by the guards.

Released from the Underground Cell

The state security office's investigation into my family history revealed that my grandfather had been an anti-Japanese guerrilla hero and my father's sister was a senior staff member in the anti-South Korea intelligence operation.

They asked me, "You have such a good family background. Why and how could you possibly entertain the vicious reactionary idea of going to South Korea?" They relentlessly interrogated me. I repeated my lies that I had no intention of going to South Korea, and went to China to make money and found that it was very difficult to make money there and therefore had attempted to cross into Russia to make money.

Then, they would ask me about the press interview in Russia during which, they claimed, I had said I wanted to go to South Korea. I replied that I never said those words during the press conference. In fact, the reporters never asked me that specific question. I repeated the same lines all the time. The interrogation continued in the cell, and I was mercilessly beaten.

I could not sleep at night. I was constantly being bitten by all kinds of insects, including fleas, lice, and mites. We were not allowed to even look for lice. If we should move our bodies even the slightest, merciless punishment was administered. The best I could do was to stretch my hand and reach unbearably itching parts to scratch them. My skin broke and bled. I became very ill and weak from both the beatings and the insect bites. I was in an advanced stage of malnutrition. My anus was wide open and I had no control over my bowels. I could not even feel when feces were passing from my body.

One day in August, 2000, I was carried up to an office where senior security officers were in a meeting. They said they had decided to spare my life in consideration of my young age and my family background. They gave me a paper to read and sign. It was to the effect that I would not disclose my experience and knowledge acquired during detention there. Breaking the oath of secrecy would be in violation of the North Korean Constitution, Article 10, Item 1 and the officers warned me that I would be punished accordingly if I were to disobey.

Thus, I was released under a kind of sick bail for medical treatment for six months. I had been reduced to skin and bones by malnutrition and beatings. I was unable to get up and walk by myself so they had to carry me by car to my uncle's house. When I arrived at my uncle's, they had to carry me inside the house.

I was in such a weakened state that everyone believed my days were numbered.

I was under my uncle's surveillance. He was an ardent party supporter and a naïve believer in North Korean socialism. He went to the state security office every morning to report on my condition.

My uncle gave me a glass of soybean juice, three times a day, saying that any more food at this stage would kill me. He had to carry me every time I went to the toilet.

Attempts to Commit Suicide

After a few days, I did not seem to be recovering. One day when I was alone at home, I crawled to the kitchen, picked up a few pieces of pickled vegetable, salty and spicy, and ate it. For the next day or so, my whole body began to swell as a result and I could hardly open my eyes because of the swelling. My thin legs were more than twice their usual thickness due to the swelling. I could push my finger half its length into my swollen legs.

When the swelling subsided and I returned to my former size, my face had taken quite a different shape and aspect. I looked like I do now and quite unlike the way I had looked on Russian TV about nine months earlier.

I was in bed all the time and nearly beside myself with the thought of the other six defectors, life in China and the appalling conditions of the North Korean detention camp. I was in such despair and full of fear of being re-arrested on some days that I decided to commit suicide. My uncle often killed birds with poison. I found the poison in his drawer and drank half a spoonful of it with water, enough to kill myself. I felt my throat and intestines burning and I fainted.

I awoke to find myself on a hospital bed, surrounded by security officers and my uncle. I was hospitalized for three days. I could not give up the idea of killing myself.

About a week later, I picked up a safety pin, removed the flat part, bent the sharp end of the pin and wrapped it with paper to enable me to swallow it. The paper gradually dissolved inside me, and the sharp needle began to prick the interior of my stomach. The pain was something terrible. My uncle guessed what I had done. He pushed a large quantity of boiled wild herb into my throat. They did that twice until I vomited. They had to tie me down in the bed. The next day, an x-ray showed that the pin was no longer in my body. I left the hospital five days later.

Several days after that, I obtained strong rope from stored winter clothes and tied it to my neck, hooked the other end to a nail on the wall and jumped from the window to hang myself. My uncle broke into the room just in time and stopped me.

Finally, I was declared mentally ill and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. After twenty days there, I returned to a more stable condition and slipped away from the hospital and returned to my uncle's home. I found rat poison in the house and kept it in my pocket for the purpose of killing myself if I were ever arrested again. This gave me a measure of relief and I became somewhat bolder and began to walk outside and meet people because I now knew that I had the power to kill myself if trouble were to befall me.

For the first time, I heard people talking in hushed voices about Yun Dae-Il, the former intelligence chief of the North Korean state security agency in my hometown. This was the same man who had been my cellmate in the state security cell. According to the village whispers, he had gone to South Korea and held a press conference there. His family disappeared and no one knows what happened to them.

I wondered if he had defected to South Korea and, if so, how had he done it? I wanted to go to China again and meet South Koreans to tell them all about what had happened to me. I was looking for an opportunity to escape to China. I also realized that there were other people who were also keeping their eyes on me.

Back to China Again

One day in September, 2000, I lied to my uncle, saying I wanted to go see his sister in another province of North Korea. Of course, he would not let me go. I sneaked out of his house at 2 o'clock in the morning and swam across the Tuman River, where I reached China on the other side. I walked to Nampyong where I met a kind Korean-Chinese man who was very sympathetic at hearing my story, and gave me clothing and a little money for travel. I took a taxi to Helong, then took bus to Yanji.

I tried to find South Koreans that I knew, but it turned out to be impossible because I had to hide continually and I was too scared to move around within the city. I went to a Church there and received 200 Yuan (about US$ 25.00). I took a train for Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, since I was more familiar with that city due to my previous visits there.

I was terrified but assured myself that I had the means to kill myself with the rat poison at any time if arrested. I preferred death to going back to the North Korean prison again. I was fed up with North Korean systems and I jumped with fright at the mere sight of anyone in uniform.

When I reached Shenyang, I felt great, as though I were back home again. I found a close friend of mine repairing a bicycle on the street of Korean Town in the city. When I approached him, he did not recognize me at first because my appearance had changed so drastically. He was surprised when he finally realized that it was I, and we shook hands with joy.

Soon, however, I realized that Shenyang was not a safe place. So I returned to North Korea after 8 days in China.

When I returned to North Korea, my uncle was, as usual, very angry with me and asked me where I had been. I lied to him saying I had rambled around as a child beggar here and there in North Korea.

I was exhausted and went to bed, but I was again terrified by the thought of the security officers coming to pick me up any day. I couldn't take my mind off my plight and asked myself many times how I would be able to survive. Surely, I would be safe in South Korea, but how could I get there?

I concluded that I should try China once more and, if arrested, kill myself there with the rat poison I always carried with me. I decided to entrust my fate to God.

Betrayed - A Wanted Criminal with a Price on My Head

On April 9, 2001, I crossed the river on the border and entered China again. I arrived in Shenyang on April 20, and met my old North Korean friend. He was very delighted to see me back. One of my friends showed me a picture of myself that he said he had received from a North Korean agent trying to hunt me down.

My friends told me that North Korean terrorist groups and the Chinese police were looking for me and had posted a US $10,000 bounty on my head. Another friend of mine told me that there was a "wanted" picture of me on the wall of a North Korean restaurant in the city. An underground South Korean worker also confirmed this.

Finally, one of my North Korean friends (Kwangjin) tipped off the Chinese police about my location. When the Chinese policemen knocked on the door of my room, I narrowly escaped out the window. I was barely able to squeeze myself through the gap between two buildings, and sneaked through a small gate. At night, I moved from Korean Town to another district.

By luck, I met international volunteers who restored my hope for life. Under their protection and support, I was finally able to move to a safe place.

I have heard nothing of the remaining six persons forcibly repatriated with me. I have revealed my own experiences and what I have learned, because I want the international community to know the incredibly inhuman, brutal acts that are going on in North Korea.