Yodok 15
Men and women in the snowy fields
picking cabbage with your naked hands,
faces stricken riding your colourless uniforms
your naked souls gone a long time ago
nothing to eat today or tomorrow –
who are you then?
You know the warm-coated guards
shoot prisoners with their rifles
in the absolute controlled area
surrounded by electrified wire
minefields snare pits inside:
1. factionalist elements
2. reactionaries
3. anti-revolutionaries
4. capitalists
5. landowners
6. pro-Japanese
7. pro-American
8. pro-Chinese
9. religionists
10. traitors to the nation –
they will never leave once
they have set foot inside
the walls of Yodok 15
or Onsong 13
or Hoeyong-ri 22
and the world does nothing.
Yodok 15, Onsong 13 and Hoeyong-ri 22 are names of concentration camps in North Korea.
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