Eyes of the Tailless Animals by Soon Ok Lee, October 1999, Living Sacrifice Book Co edition, Paperback in English. Eyes of the Tailless Animals Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman by Soon Ok Lee ISBN 13: 359 ISBN 10: Paperback; Bartlesville, Oklahoma, U.s.a.: Living Sacrifice Book Co, October 1999; ISBN-13: 9359. Eyes of the Tailless Animals book. Read 26 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. On October 26, 1986, Soon Ok Lee was enjoying a peacef. The personal experience of Soon Ok Lee in a North Korean prison camp. Art by Samantha Vilfort, Narration by Haely Ryu & Ji Yong Lee For CNTV 101.
Naturally Tailless Dogs
I have been scourging everywhere around the world. MPH, Kinokuniya, Bookdepository, Amazon, Abebooks, wtv book stores both on and offline that you can think of, for this book entitled “Eyes of the tailless animals“.
It was written in 1999 by Lee Soon Ok, a North Korean defector, and the book is no longer in print. Hence it is super crazy omfg hard to find. And even if I do manage to find it, the company does not send it to Malaysia. Interestingly though, it can be sent to the isolated land all the way down under, Australia.
NEVERTHELESS! I was fortunate to have a good buddy there that was willing to help me with it. Only problem is, I have to wait until January for her to return before I can get it. Sigh…But what the hell…better late than never. I only hope the world does not end in 2012 because if I miss reading this book, I am sooooooooooooo gonna tell God….
Could you tell me a bedtime story papa almighty? =D
Ok, jokes aside, this would be my 5th North Korean book collection. Though I enjoyed reading all the other 4, this is the one that I truly cannot wait to read. The excitement is greater than a mom’s feeling after delivering her baby and holding him/her for the first time. It is even larger than when Lee Chong Wei won the Olympics gold medal in 2012! Ok, he did not win Gold. But heck, if he had won, this feeling is going to be bigger than that. Why?
All the North Korea stories I have are usually from male defectors. Their stories are usually tied to about the same outcome, which is still very interesting, but not as interesting as when I first started reading it. Eyes of the tailless animals is a story of a female North Korean defector that has gone through numerous torture. It is a story told through the eyes of a female, witnessing the death of her immediately family. How she herself and everyone around was treated. How everyone was taught to behave – like animals. Hence the title.
The Eyes Of The Tailless Animals
The story will bring the reader to a new world on how cruel abortion methods can be. Stories of endless rape and there is nothing you can do but stay still and obey. Experience the hunger to the extent of actual cannibalism, all for the sake of survival.
Though I have yet to read it, but my friend who is now taking care of my book read it, stopped half way, and almost tore my book into pieces because of the anger that spread through. It was too painful to continue reading – at least that was what she told me.
ARGH…My hand is itching so badly to grab hold of it right now and start reading.
| Lee Soon-ok | |
| Hangul | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization | I Sunok |
| McCune–Reischauer | Ri Sunok |
Lee Soon-ok (born 1947 in Chongjin, North Korea) is a former prisoner of a North Korean political prison and the author of Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, an account of her ordeal of being falsely accused, tortured, and imprisoned under poor conditions for crimes against the state and her subsequent release from prison and defection from the country. Since leaving North Korea, she has resided in South Korea.
Imprisonment[edit]
Lee was a manager in a North Korean government office that distributed goods and materials to the country's people when she was falsely accused of dishonesty in her job. She believes she was one of the victims of a power struggle between the Workers' Party and the public security bureau police.
Following her arrest, she was severely tortured and threatened for months but maintained her innocence. However, a promise made by an interrogator to not take any punitive action against her husband and son if she confessed—a promise that she would find out to have been false—finally convinced her to plead guilty to the charges.[1][2][3]
For six years, Lee was imprisoned in Kaechon concentration camp where she reported witnessing forced abortions, infanticide, instances of rape, public executions, testing of biological weapons on prisoners (see human experimentation in North Korea), extreme malnutrition, and other forms of inhumane conditions and depravity.[3]
It is not clear why she was released, although Lee suspects that the officials responsible for jailing her were the subjects of investigations by higher-ranking members of North Korea's government.[1]
Defection[edit]
Following her release, Lee wrote several letters of protest to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il[4] about her cruel treatment in the camp but never received a response and was eventually threatened with unspecified consequences if she wrote any more letters. She managed to reunite with her son and escape from North Korea soon afterward, converting to Christianity along the way. Her husband disappeared during her imprisonment and she has not heard from him since.
Since escaping with her son via China to South Korea in 1995, Lee has written Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, a memoir of her six-year imprisonment on false charges in Kaechon concentration camp. She has testified before the US Congress and spoken at churches worldwide; she estimated that in her camp alone there were at least 6,000 political prisoners. Ms. Lee has been partially disabled due to the physical torture she was subjected to for well over a year, including but not limited to water torture.
Along with fellow North Korean prison camp internees Kang Chol-Hwan and An Hyuk (both were in Yodok concentration camp), she received the Democracy Award from the American non-profit organization National Endowment for Democracy in July 2003.[5]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abHawk, David. 'The Hidden Gulag'(PDF). The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
- ^'A Survivor: Soon Ok Lee'. NBC News. 15 January 2003. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
- ^ abLee Soon Ok (June 2002). 'Testimony before the United States Congress'.
- ^Martin, Bradley K. (2004). Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York, New York: Thomas Dunne Books. p. 613. ISBN0-312-32322-0.
- ^'Three N. Koreans Named Winner of NED's Democracy Award', Yonhap News, 2003-07-16, retrieved 2010-02-26
Further reading[edit]
- United States Senate Hearings: Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee – Lee Soon-oks testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee June 21, 2002
- Lee, Soon Ok. Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman. Living Sacrifice Book Co, 1999. ISBN978-0-88264-335-9 꼬리 없는 짐승들의 눈빛
- 'Made in North Korea', Harper's Magazine Vol. 305 Issue 1830, November 2002, pp. 20–22.
External links[edit]
| Wikiquote has quotations related to: Lee Soon-ok |
- 'A survivor: Soon Ok Lee', Crisis in the Koreas, MSNBC, 2003
- 'Soon Ok Lee', World Christian Ministries
- 'Interview: Soon Ok Lee', AsiaLink, 2003
- Martin, Bradley K. 'Under the loving care of the fatherly leader', 2004; p. 611
- 'The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps', Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
- 'Praying for a Revolution in North Korea'[permanent dead link], Persecution.tv; pp. 6–7