Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman

I've read over a dozen books about North Korea and some were written by people who wound up in the prison camps that the DPRK denies exist. Treatment of the prisoners is horrific, but I've never read anything that compares to the torture and punishments that were handed out when Soon Ok Lee, a supervisor of material distribution in the North Korean government, was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison. A government officer, out of greed, asked for more material for a new suit and Soon Ok was not allowed to give it to him. Each military and government person was allotted so much fabric every year and nothing above that allottment was allowed. She told the officer that she was not allowed to give him more.

With no warning, Soon Ok was picked up at her office and dragged off to what she calls "the den of death" where she refused to confess that she had done anything wrong against the country and Kim Jong-il mainly because she hadn't. She was beaten unconscious and tortured and it was a long time before she finally confessed to what they wanted to hear. Soon Ok was married and had one son. After she went to prison she never saw her husband again. It seems to be a common practice in the DPRK when married people go to prison, the spouse left behind is forced into divorce, which is what happened to Soon Ok.

Her experiences in the prison were so awful that I wondered as I read how she came out of there alive. She wondered the same thing herself. Religious beliefs are banned in NK, and Soon Ok had always believed that and thought nothing of religion. She met some Christians who were in the prison and she began to think about what they secretly told her. After her release and her eventual defection she and her son became Christians. One of the guards in the foundry became so angry one day at five Christian prisoners who never backed down or away from any punishment, that he became enraged and made them lie down and he poured molten iron at 1200 degrees F on them. I cannot imagine what kind of person it takes to do something like that and the suffering those people went through.

When people enter the prison system they are told they are no longer human but are tailless animals. Soon Ok recovered from so many injuries due to torture and illnesses, also, and no medical treatment is given. However, she is very correct when she figured out that the reason that so many people are in the prisons on false charges is for free labor for North Korea. So many products that North Korea exports are made by the prisoners, and if they are worked to death and die at their job, too bad. They just fall over and die. Many times Soon Ok got a food ration that amounted to a spoon of rice.

This lady tells her story and spares no words or horrible stories while telling it. Like most devotees of the Communist Party in North Korea and also the Kim dynasty, she was at first blind to what really went on in her country. When she learned the truth and after being released from prison she and her son defected to South Korea where they are now free.

This is an honest look at the prison system in North Korea through the eyes of one who lived through it. It is well worth reading.

One of the most stark and profoundly moving books I've ever read. In a way similar to Primo Levi (author of <i>Survival in Auschwitz</i>), Soon Ok Lee somehow takes a tale of egregious suffering and human degradation, and turns it into a story about the power and strength of the human spirit. As in Levi's book, a major theme of <i>Eyes of the Tailless Animals</i> (and indeed, the source of the book's title) is how a labor camp actively erodes a person's humanity, and how survivors of such an experience fought this erosion every single day of their lives in the camp. Soon Ok Lee came into the camp with enormous personal strength and integrity to begin with (as she had just survived months of brutal torture whilst refusing to sign a false confession). It is especially inspiring how she found additional strength in Christianity, which is outlawed in North Korea. Christian prisoners in the work camps are subjected to torture and death (see the molten metal incident) in a way incomprehensible to most people, and yet they refuse to renounce their religion. I'm not a Christian myself, but I was amazed to read about the courage and strength of these new Christian martyrs. Above all, I wish I could meet Soon Ok Lee, or at least write her, and tell her how important and right it was of her to expose to the world what is going on every day in North Korea. Reading this book leaves you stunned, almost breathless. A must-read for any adult.

Outstanding first-hand account of the atrocities occurring today -- right now -- under the oppressive dictatorship of one of the most greedy, selfish, self-serving @ hole in the World. Not only is North Korea a country that holds its citizens as prisoners in mental, physical and spiritual slavery today, where it's shrinking citizenry repeat scripts of personality worship like mindless robots -- check this out -- they have even a more repressive, brutal system of prisons within that sewer. This book should be required reading for all across America to see directly into North Korea and why it is important to remain forever vigilant against the tyranny that our Founding Fathers fought to defeat, the Freedoms our WW II and others Veterans throughout the history of our Country fought to preserve, and the paramount importance of advancing the Blessings of Liberties today. May Kim Ill Sung, Kim Jong Ill and Kim Jon Un, alongside Hitler and all the rest of the pukes, all burn in hell together --- forever. F.U. Kim Jong Un.

Amazing read, it shows the reality of a hidden world that we don't know about when it comes to human rights. And the ruthelessness of how humans can be. The book takes place in North Korea it is the back story Soon ok Lee how she was a communist and very proactive member of her country. And just one day out of no where she was forced into a scandal and blackmailed, used as a scape goat and was placed in a prison for 13 years with extreme details on brutality of interigation and food rations. How they basically don't take care of their prisoners they are treated as less than human.

Really a terrifying portrayal of what life in a North Korean gulag is like. Also awful to know that products from the gulags are shipped to Russia, and even made it to France at one point in time.