Young-Kuk, a 19-year-old refugee who spent a year in prison after being repatriated, recounted:

"We had to work extra hard, especially when they were watching us, and we put some bounce in our step hoping that we would receive food at the end of the day. But for three days, they didn't give us anything to eat, and I didn't even feel the hunger pains at that point... Sometimes they would give us pieces of Chinese bread, but we didn't have appetites, so we gave away our bread and only wanted to drink the water. I lost a lot of weight. The soldiers hit me severely and starved me for three days while I was detained. They worked us really hard in the freezing cold and didn't feed us... We were bound together by the wrists in pairs, and it was very difficult to maneuver around. We were in a place where there was flowing water from a river, and because it was winter and we were so fatigued, we drank from the stream. But at night, I would suddenly start shaking and feel my insides going crazy from hunger and fatigue."

Out of all the North Korean prisoner survivors I have interviewed, only one person has ever said that they were fed sufficiently while in prison... she said,

"In the beginning there wasn't enough food. There weren't enough spoons either, so they would place only a certain number of spoons per group. I sat at the very front. All the newcomers had to. The front was the coldest, because the guards left the windows open for ventilation. Those who sat near the windows felt the freezing wind blowing on them. Only small spoons were given because the guards feared the prisoners might commit suicide by eating a spoon. We had to use small spoons like that. Others had to use their fingers to eat..."