Long Road Home: Testimony Of A North Korean Camp Survivor - Plot & Excerpts
As a rare survivor of a North Korean penal labor camp, Kim Yong appeared on stage, frail but dignified, and began to speak of his experience, mostly unknown to the outside world. Kim Yong calmly narrated the rise and fall of his fortune in North Korea and the unspeakable sufferings he and many other North Koreans had to endure. But his story was also about having hope in places where death seemed more desirable than life. Kim Yong’s face, still carrying the scars of torture and pain, first remained calm but soon was deluged as the throbbing memories turned into two rivulets of tears that kept flowing endlessly back to the sea of memories.This book started to write itself from that moment. Following the conference, I maintained close contact with Kim Yong, which soon developed into friendship with occasional phone calls and face-to-face conversations. We started to have more frequent conversations after I moved from New Hampshire to California in the summer of 2005. In the fall of the same year, I had a chance to invite him to Santa Barbara for an extended series of interviews, which yielded approximately twenty hours of recordings.
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