Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean political prisoner, and Ahn Myung-chul, one of the notoriously heavy-handed guards, collaborated to speak about North Korean human rights.

 "I had the authority to kill prisoners like him if they tried to escape," Ahn said, referring to Shin. "We couldn't have sat together like this in North Korea, but fortunately we've come to a free country where this is possible."

Shin described his first meeting with Ahn as having been fraught with tension, since Ahn brought back memories of the psychological and physical torture he suffered at camp 14.

Since the North Korean system extends punishment to three generations of a family, Shin had to live his whole life in prison camp 14 for having an uncle who escaped to South Korea in the 1950s.

He was born at the camp in 1982 and lived there until making an unlikely escape in 2005- the only person known to have been born in, and escaped from, a North Korean political prison camp.

Ahn was a guard at four different camps and he said that while working as a guard he considered the prisoners to be "vicious evil", as the government taught him. 

Ahn’s eyes were opened after his family was placed under surveillance because of his father's angry remark toward Kim Jong-il’s regime during the famine. Due to this experience, Ahn was led to question the regime and developed sympathy with prisoners.

In 1994, Ahn fled North Korea into China, went on to found NK Watch, and has spoken widely about the abuses he witnessed.

During the question and answer session at Saturday's talk, South Korean high school students asked several questions about how and what North Korean children in prison camps are taught.

Shin said, "In the camps we used to say that we were treated like dogs or mice. But I realized we were actually treated worse than that, because at least dogs and mice have the freedom to go where they want, and eat what they can find.”

Source: The guardian