Stories from a North Korean prison camp

Today is "Veteran's Day" in the United States: a day to honor those who have served in the Armed Forces. I've found that learning about people who are not free is often a good way to appreciate the value of freedom and why it's worth sacrificing for. Today's post is about a man who experienced one of the places most absent of freedom on this earth... and lived to tell about it.

Kang Chol-Hwan was born in Pyongyang, North Korea sometime around 1968. His grandparents had spent some time in Japan, where the family had made a comfortable living. Caught up in a wave of North Korean nationalism, they decided to return to their native country and serve the Communist party. Shortly after arriving, they realized they had made a mistake; but by that time it was too late to turn back.

The family, especially Kang's grandmother, remained loyal to Communism and continued working toward better times in North Korea. But one day, when Kang was 9 years old, his life was turned upside down as government police stormed his family's house. The government suspected Kang's grandfather of treasonal motives, and decided to sentence Kang and most of his family to the Yodok prison camp.

Kang endured a Communist education and hard labor duties in the Yodok camp. School was no picnic as a prison camp wasn't nearly the first choice of assignment for the teachers. The curriculum demanded that the students parrot the merits of the "Dear Leader" with a satisfactory element of fervor. Lack of enthusiasm was duly punished.

Manual labor duties after graduation were no better. Often the prisoners had to work in freezing temperatures under the watch of abusive guards, then scramble at the end of the day to find any scrap of food they could. Escape was not an option. The prisoners were forced to witness executions of those who attempted it. Other would-be escapees perished on their own due to the harsh weather and terrain.

To his surprise, Kang was released from camp after 10 years. He didn't ask any questions. He returned to civilian life in North Korea, trying to eke out some existence as a young man. Understandably hardened against Communism after his experience in Yodok, Kang began listening to South Korean radio through an illegal transmitter. Sensing some suspicion from the government, Kang decided to flee the country.

Kang found someone to sneak him across to a Chinese border town with relative ease, but he had to keep on the move. As an ally of North Korea, China could not be too kind to defectors. Kang traveled through China and finally found a long-term hiding place with some friends who operated a brothel. Eventually he was able to "escape" again on a boat to South Korea.

Kang tells his story in the book Aquariums of Pyongyang. The increasing shades of freedom Kang describes as he passed through North Korea, China, South Korea, and finally the United States brings the value of our country's freedom into clarity. It's amazing to think how the story of life in a North Korean concentration camp could make its way to the free world. This book will cause you to thank God for your freedom, and pray to God for the freedom and comfort of those who do not yet have it.

An afternoon in Tijuana

One item on my list of things to do in California never got fulfilled before I moved out of the state: visit Tijuana so that I could take a peek inside Mexico. I finally did get the chance to visit in July while on business in San Diego. For a tour guide I had my work buddy Rob who visits TJ about once a year. Finding our Thursday afternoon available, we decided to go on a brief stroll south of the border.

Getting to the border from downtown San Diego took about 15 minutes. We took the last USA exit for Camino de la Plaza and entered the maze of streets and parking lots that is San Ysidro, California. (It looks like just a slightly nicer version of Tijuana with the peace of mind of being on the familiar side of the fence.) We found a good $4 lot on the grounds of what appeared to be an abandoned motel and started working our way toward the border.

We zig-zagged through a maze of walkways up and over the highway to get into the border crossing. We passed through one tall turnstile, then right past a few officers doing occasional random checks, I guess, and through another pair of turnstiles into Mexico. Immediately the smell changed. It wasn't a heavy stench but a light pervasiveness of sewage in the air that continued the entire time we were in the country.

After following a corridor of walls we entered a plaza with some pharmacies, souvenir shops, and restaurants. Bright, tacky, bold-worded signs in English were everywhere. We strolled across the plaza pretty quick and wended our way up over a pedestrian bridge crossing the Tijuana River. This was a narrow green ribbon flowing down a broad cement channel. The river carried suds, occasional piles of garbage, and probably other stuff. A few beggars sitting along the bridge held paper cups.

One thing I had noticed at the border crossing that made me a little nervous is that we were the only Caucasian people around. Somehow I thought the border would have groups of American tourists moseying across, but I didn't see very many. Rob told me later it was the smallest number of Americans he's seen in Mexico, and that many of the stands normally housing souvenir shops were either closed or empty. The economy, plus the swine flu scare, plus some drug-related violence earlier in the year seem to have hit Tijuana tourism pretty hard. This made us prime targets for vendors hawking their wares. They could spot us coming a mile away.

After crossing the bridge, we took the main pedestrian route heading toward Avenida Revolucion. Before reaching the Ave. however and its giant archway, Rob abruptly stopped at a fish taco restaurant and declared it was time for dinner. He had been to this place at 125 Madero (marked by yellow signs and Tecate advertisements) several times and told me it was his favorite. The restaurant had an open front and picnic tables, but we had a roof over our heads. The menu was printed on a cardboard sign in black marker. In the upper-right corner was listed "Viagra Soup - $4.99. It works!"



View Great fish tacos in Tijuana - 125 Madero in a larger map

I ordered a supreme taco and, when prodded by the owner, assented to ordering two. I also ordered a Coke, following Rob's Guatemala mission trick of washing down dinner with a Coke in order to "kill the bad stuff". While the kindly owner and his wife were grilling up the tacos, we were treated to chips out of a plastic basket and a bowl of green salsa that had been sitting on the counter. The salsa was excellent and very hot!! The tacos had everything on them as well, and, while small, they were extraordinary. I asked the owner what the meat was and he replied "Marlin". All that for $5. Only bummer was the small bug crawling across my plate when I was done but I just pretended (and prayed) that it had wandered on there from somewhere else as I was finishing up my meal.

Our stomachs full, we proceeded under Tijuana's landmark arch toward Avenida Revolucion where we walked south for probably five or six blocks. Merchants at every store approached us with greetings in English, promising wonderful wares if we would only step inside. Some of them yelled out endearing statements about Seattle, since I wearing a Mariners t-shirt. One guy asked if we would like to pay some money to take a picture next to the "Tijuana tiger", a burro that I guess had been painted to look like a zebra. The burro was cool but sadly we had not brought a camera. Other men on the street asked if we liked women, and tried to entice us to enter adult clubs or allow them to lead us to other related activities.

After crossing what seemed like a fairly busy east-west thoroughfare, we walked one more block and turned around for the return down Ave. Constitucion, one block west. We had not yet reached the landmark big Mexican flag flying over downtown Tijuana. Rob said he walked to it once but by the time he reached it the neighborhood had gotten pretty sketchy.

The plan was to poke around in some shops on the way back, but Constitucion didn't have as many touristy shops and was a busier street. After a few blocks we jogged back over to Revolucion, where I started taking a look at some children's sized fake soccer jerseys out on the sidewalk. The owner pounced on me and let me inside to look at others that were on display. He quoted me around $40 the first time and when I started looking at something else he immediately dropped it to $25. I started looking at an adult-sized "I (Heart) Tijuana" t-shirt instead, which he quoted at $15. Rob later said his younger lady assistant was quoting him how low he could go in an Indian language while I bartered. Rob served a mission in Guatemala and is familiar with this kind of language.

We went back and forth for a while on the shirt. I got it for $11 but I think I was had. The owner showed no gratitude and yelled at me as I left the shop, angry that I had not taken a package deal for the kids soccer jersey, which he had dropped to $10.

We continued toward the bridge, but first Rob had to stop to get a peeled mango on a stick from a fruit stand. While we were waiting, some little kids came up with boxes of trinkets. One had a bunch of cool little bobblehead turtles, so I bought one for a dollar. It's held up pretty well through abuse from my kids since I've been home.

After crossing back over the river we wandered around the plaza looking at some more kids soccer jerseys. We asked some shopkeepers just lounging around if Tijuana had a futbol team. They said that yes, they were called Xoloitzcuintles (never would have been able to spell that without Google) and that they were okay. They played in the A division, and they had just beaten Chivas 2-1 the other night. Unlike the other storekeeper they were nice and told us to have a nice day, even when we didn't buy something.

I also looked at some stained glass art that had a Seahawks logo. I felt it would be too tacky despite the fairly reasonable $8 I was quoted. The shopkeeper must have been disappointed. He was already polishing it up for me once I showed the slightest interest.

The return to the USA border was not well-signed and I was glad I was going with a Tijuana veteran in order to not take a wrong turn. You have to walk down a longer corridor to get back, past some street merchants. I bought a few pieces of Bubbaloo gum from some kids right by the border complex. Good memories from Argentina...

We entered the hallway and room of the return walk-across border complex, and the place was apparently relatively deserted. We picked one of the four or five lines and sped through in about 5 minutes. After showing my passport, answering a few token questions, and passing my shopping bag through an x-ray machine, I was back on blessed American soil.

The drive home was crazy. It was about 6:00 PM and everyone was trying to return from work to their homes in Mexico. The main border crossing is on I-5 but folks were taking side-streets to get there and San Ysidro had been reduced to gridlock. We started back over the freeway on Camino de la Plaza but that was mistake because the road intersected the final freeway onramp to I-5 South that everyone was trying to use to shortcut the line. We flipped a U and headed north on San Ysidro boulevard. We had to wait through some more gridlock but it was a fairly easy drive to get onto the next onramp leading north. From there, smooth sailing on the freeway.

The poverty in Tijuana is a contrast to our comfortable way of life in the United States, but it is what I expected to see. I didn't find it much more disturbing than the excessive displays of wealth alongside homelessness that I've seen in downtown San Diego this week. The exploitation of women and children that occurs in Tijuana is definitely a problem and hard to see or understand. One other thing I had a hard time getting used to were people shouting greetings and other things to each other in the streets in very loud voices (not common in the USA to raise your voice above a certain level). I guess I always thought they were shouting at me.

Next time I go to Tijuana I'd like to get on a city bus that does a loop route and take the loop around the city, not getting off. I would do this in the morning, if possible. It might also be fun to walk a similar route near the border, just one or two blocks off the tourist circuit. Although I can now say I've been across the border, I still feel like I've yet to see the real Mexico.

Summer without a television

Well, this blog has obviously been on summer break. We've had plenty to do, and we've done it without a television for three months now. Sometime in mid-June, the television signals in the United States switched from analog to digital, and all of the sudden our TV just started replaying a program of a man explaining how to hook up a converter box. A converter box we didn't have and didn't want to pay for.

Perhaps we were secretly anticipating an excuse to get rid of TV. "Just give me an excuse..." is a threat I occasionally toss at my children. The TV itself has provided plenty of excuses for us to turn the thing off, including rude and mindless sitcoms, unrealistic and predictable dramas, and raunchy commercials. What would I miss by not upgrading my TV?

Before the great signal switch, the only programs I watched were sports events (mainly college football), the final 12 rounds of American Idol, and occasionally, the news. Let's address these concerns in order:

• I now have plenty of sports to watch, including dozens of college football games, on ESPN360.com, a streaming online sports site that comes free with certain Internet providers. Instead of paying for cable to get ESPN (which was not even included with the basic package), we just upgraded our Internet to high-speed Comcast and, voila, many good games to watch each Saturday, with the option to replay any of them. All the ads are for ESPN, Honda, and Gatorade. It's nice.
• Last season's judge juggling, poor production, mediocre contestants, and crazy rule changes were all pretty good evidence that American Idol is headed out the door, and I'm not afraid of missing much next year. My wife and I had gotten in the habit of taping the episode and fast-forwarding (now I really sound like a dinosaur) through the commercials and, sometimes, the judges comments. In this way we could make it through a two hour episode in about 40 minutes, but by the end of last season, we didn't even watch the final round.
• The news is available online and I can get it from the website of my choice with much less spin and no interruptions for commercials. Admittedly, it's interesting to watch live breaking news coverage, such as when we were among the wildfires in Southern California and it was incredibly smokey outside, or when the Iraq invasion occurred. However, I can also follow this type of news on the Internet, and with Twitter, there are plenty of eyewitness reporters that can give me the news before the TV crews even get there.

So why don't I just upgrade to cable TV to get some shows that I really want to watch? Well, suppose I plunked down between $30 - $40 a month for a nice cable package. Now suppose that between two jobs, church responsibilities, raising two children, taking care of the yard, spending one-on-one time with my wife, and other critical stuff like eating and sleeping, I was blessed enough to sit down twice a week to see a program I really wanted to watch. That's like plunking down $4 every time I want to watch TV and I still have to watch advertisements for that privilege.

Anyone have a good book recommendation?

LDS Church leaders present President Obama with his family history

LDS Church president Thomas S. Monson met with U.S. president Barack Obama this week and presented him with five volumes of Obama's family history. The histories were compiled for Obama as a gift from the Church. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is a member of the church, attended the meeting, along with Elder Dallin H. Oaks from the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

President Obama on the meeting: "I enjoyed my meeting with President Monson and Elder Oaks. I'm grateful for the genealogical records that they brought with them and am looking forward to reading through the materials with my daughters. It's something our family will treasure for years to come."

President Monson on the meeting: "President Obama’s heritage is rich with examples of leadership, sacrifice and service. We were very pleased to research his family history and are honored to present it to him today."

Cape Flattery hike and the Makah Nation

Three months after our 1,000+ mile move to Washington state, I finally started to get the desire to take another car trip. Over two days last week we completed a circuit of the Olympic Peninsula that included stops at Ruby Beach, La Push, and Forks (no, we are not huge Twilight fans, but we were amused at how the local economy has capitalized on the opportunity). Our ultimate destination, however, was Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost tip of the Olympic Peninsula, and home of the Makah Nation.

I gained an interest in this area as a Boy Scout when we made several 50-mile backpacking trips on the Olympic Coast. I remember seeing a former archaelogical dig site at Cape Alava, where the Makah village of Ozette was covered by a mudslide in the early 17th century. The slide preserved thousands of Makah artifacts, which, when excavated, provided clear views into the tribe's past and reaffirmed oral traditions passed on by tribal elders.

Many of the artifacts from the dig are on display at the Makah Cultural and Research Center. After hours of winding along the Strait of Juan de Fuca on state highway 112, we reached the town of Neah Bay and made our first stop at this museum. Here we saw baskets, clothing, blankets, weapons, toys, and other artifacts unearthed at the Ozette site. We went inside a replica of a Makah longhouse and viewed a dugout canoe like the kind used by the tribe for whaling. (See this page for information on how the Makah have struggled to retain the traditional whaling rights granted them in their 1855 treaty with the United States).

The museum was well worth the $5 price of admission, especially if you like Pacific Northwest Native American artwork. The displays contain various pieces of old and new art from the Makah, and you can get many art prints and postcards with designs like this from the museum gift shop.

After the museum, we took a beautiful 7-mile drive to the Cape Flattery trailhead. From what I understand, the Cape Flattery experienced has changed somewhat in recent years. Contrary to what I read in one Internet report, the road to the trailhead is completely paved. The Makah tribe recently rebuilt the 1/2 mile trail, with generous use of stairs and boardwalk that allow even my two toddlers, to see the beauty of Cape Flattery. You do need a $10 Makah recreation permit to park at the trailhead, which is good for the calendar year and is available at the museum.

The trail keeps a mostly straight course through the forest, mostly downhill. As you approach the cape, various spurs head off to viewpoints at the left, then the right. These look out over storm-battered cliffs and deep blue coves. Although the viewpoints contain railing, you'll still want to keep ahold of children and pets as they are right on the edge of high cliffs and can be circumnavigated.

Continuing past the spurs, you reach the final viewpoint where the Makah have constructed an observation deck. At this lookout you feel like you are clearly at the "tip" of the cape, and can observe amazing quantities of water in the Pacific Ocean to your left and the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the right. The expansive Vancouver Island looms across the strait.

Although the trail was packed to almost California-like proportions on the sunny 4th of July weekend, we enjoyed staring in awe with many others at this wonderful area of God's creation. We feel grateful to Him and also the Makah tribe for providing us the opportunity to see it.

A scripture from Dad, about Dad

This past Sunday, Father's Day, I was thinking about a scripture that my Dad sent me when I was on a mission for the Church in Argentina. It's Jacob 3:1-2 in the Book of Mormon:

"But behold, I, Jacob, would speak unto you that are pure in heart. Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead your cause, and send down justice upon those who seek your destruction.

"O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever. "

My Dad said this scripture had given him comfort at various times throughout his life, and I can say it's done the same for me. I feel blessed to have a father on this earth that worked hard for me and consoled me as a child when I needed it. At the same time, I know that if I did not have a father, or if my father were not available (as happened on the mission), I have a Heavenly Father who can plead my cause and send me comfort when I "pray unto him with exceeding faith".

A teaching of Mormonism that I feel very strongly to be true is that God is literally our father. When Jesus addressed "Our Father, who art in heaven," it wasn't just a figurative expression. He was representing all of us and talking to a real being. I think many people believe this deep inside, regardless of whether they subscribe to organized Christianity.

Our own patch of mud (Does the Honey Bucket stay?)

In the past few weeks my wife and I have forayed into the complex new world of home shopping. There's a lot to learn and decide. Although we hit the market at a good time, we want to make sure we don't get duped. We're also looking for a home that will fit our family after a few more children (heaven willing), while still being affordable in the not-so-cheap Puget Sound home market.

Interestingly, we found our best prospect for square footage on the dollar was to buy new. It seemed like the only other way to get a house meeting our size and price requirements was to purchase a fixer-upper. That may be the right decision for some folks, but we currently don't have the skill set or time to invest in a home that has fallen apart, especially when new ones are available at the same price.

So yesterday we found ourselves trekking out past the row of model homes (the interior of which will look nothing like our house) to affix the "SOLD" sticker on our own lot sign. You'll notice that this lot has already been partially developed, but I think we would get charged for an upgrade to keep the Honey Bucket.



The same afternoon we hit the showroom to start choosing the interior and exterior details. Our builder boasted that we could make over 700 free choices to customize our home. I didn't exactly think that was a selling point with two young children who barely kept it together during the paper-signing process (and are currently howling downstairs as I write this). How could we make 700 choices with them clinging on us? Luckily we learned that the showroom has a kids area with surround-sound, big screen Curious George. This gives me confidence that my wife will be able to peacefully make all our selections as I lounge in a beanbag chair with the little ones and watch that naughty little monkey fly, fly away with his bundle of balloons.

I think this process has brought our family closer together.