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SALT LAKE CITY — A United Nations' reports of brutal concentration camps in North Korea come as no surprise to two Utahns who have spent portions of their lives in the country next door.
Justine Brent of Eagle Mountain spent 1998 as an E4 specialist in the U.S. Army in Yongsan, South Korea, near the capitol of Seoul.
“I loved the people, I loved the food and I loved the culture. If I had a little more money, I would take my family back there to see what it was about and where I was stationed,” she said.
Robin Touchard of Syracuse recalled one of the best months of her life in South Korea. She visited her U.S. Army brother-in-law and sister in April 2013 in Pyeongtaek with her husband and two young daughters.
“People would be taking our pictures, and they’d want to hold my babies and touch them because they just don’t see blonde people very often,” she laughed.
But both women felt the agony of South Koreans. Their relatives have been trapped in the North for decades, starving for food, information and humanity. They had little or no contact with each other, as the U.N. reports had indicated. The reports can be read here: www.ohchr.org.
The 400-page report included information from interviews with about 320 North Korean expatriates and South Korean witnesses. Some of them sketched drawings of the tortures they endured, which included tiny cages, standing in painful positions until they collapsed, their arms bound high behind their backs, or worse.
Some depicted prisoners wheeling the corpses of others whom the U.N. said were killed at random.
When she visited the demilitarized zone, Brent signed a waiver in case she’d be abducted or killed. She recalled that North’s guards there were big, but starving.
Touchard recalls a big “city” across the border.
“The buildings are just empty shells. There aren’t even floors in between and they have a light at the top. They try to make it look like they’re doing OK, but most of the country doesn’t even have power," she said.
Brent said the North knows where to bomb American interests.
“They were the same American barracks used in the Korean War. Our hospital was a huge target because it’s where all the soldiers’ wives or civilian employees delivered babies, or had surgeries there,” she explained.
She often wondered if the North would ever strike, and with what kind of force.
Both women empathize with ordinary North Koreans who are brutally imprisoned and tortured into submission. They said people in both countries just want peace and to be reunited with loved ones.
