Kang Chol-hwan talks about the dismal situation in his native country that is unlike anywhere else in the world. At the age of nine, Kang was sentenced to ten years in a gulag for the supposed crimes of his grandfather. He spent his childhood in Yodok--a prison the size of Washington, DC. North Korean prison camps, based on Nazi models like Auschwitz, are so common and their effects so wide-reaching that they are generally accepted by average citizens, as are public executions, which most North Koreans have witnessed.

About

Kang Chol-hwan is a journalist, author, and North Korean defector. As a nine-year-old child, he and his entire family were imprisoned in the Yodok concentration camp by the government of dictator Kim Il-sung. For ten years, he was subjected to the brutal conditions of the camp, where he and his family were in constant danger of starvation and death from exposure. In 2000, Kang published The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a description of his experiences and the very first survivor account of North Korea’s concentration camps.

In his presentation, Kang Chol-hwan explains that though an enormous supply of money and food have been supplied by the South Korean government and various international aid organizations, most of it has been confiscated to feed the People's Army -- the fourth largest standing army in the world. An exorbitant amount of money is also squandered by Kim John-Il on monuments, extravagant homes, and nuclear arms, rather than lifting his people out of abject poverty and starvation. In a shocking slideshow, Kang shows the reality of life in his country, hoping to raise awareness of the plight of the North Korean people, who are now on average several inches shorter than their South Korean brethren due to severe malnutrition. With a final night image of the Korean peninsula, revealing a bright south and a pitch black north, he demonstrates the difference between fear and freedom.