By Button Poetry
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Hong Guangpyo, performing at the Bowery in New York, NY.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
my scars our roadmap of torture that the
00:05
North Korean government claims does not
00:07
exist I was born a slave on November 19
00:11
1982 my mother and father were two
00:14
strings picked from a broken guitar see
00:16
their melody was attuned my Master’s
00:18
played for their own entertainment I
00:20
called them my breeders I’ve never known
00:23
love or mercy only obedience as a
00:25
prisoner of sin I was sentenced to three
00:27
generations of punishment found guilty
00:29
by a devil I never even knew existed the
00:31
menu was always the same a spoonful of
00:34
corn porridge and salted cabbage but
00:36
during the summer rats and field mice
00:38
were plentiful and the only time I felt
00:40
happy was when I was full see their
00:42
bones are soft and brittle like the
00:45
spines they built in our backs when I
00:47
was 13 I overheard the sound of
00:49
whispering it sounded like rats and I
00:51
was always hungry my mother my brother
00:54
whispered of escape each word was the
00:57
whiff of betrayal in here where the
00:59
choices food or family you find a guard
01:01
to bargain with when you’re insane
01:02
enough from hunger wear anything solid
01:03
from your own vomit it’s considered
01:05
leftovers
01:05
I was not fed by my readers when I
01:07
presented this news I was beaten and
01:09
tortured roasted over fire like a knife
01:12
that needed sterilizing the word escape
01:14
is a gaping wound and I needed to be
01:16
cauterized I told them everything I knew
01:18
but the fires the fires were hungry too
01:21
I would have died if not for the old man
01:23
he told stories of roasted meat as he
01:26
cleaned my wounds each piece of skin
01:28
sizzled off my body as the blood and pus
01:30
gushed out of me draining whatever hope
01:32
I had left but he told me I needed to
01:34
survive I survived for seven months and
01:37
when they finally took off the blindfold
01:39
there stood my brother
01:41
tied to a post that was soaked in the
01:43
blood of other rats just like him and my
01:45
mother our eyes mirror the same
01:46
acceptance of fate as they tied the
01:48
noose around her neck lucky them at
01:50
least the old man had spirit his stories
01:52
have roasted me made me hungry again I
01:54
picked and scabbed at the thought of
01:56
escape until I couldn’t take it anymore
01:57
when I was 23 my insanity began to lose
01:59
its mind hunger is a greedy devil that
02:01
takes no prisoners and never remembers
02:03
the past and always wants more tomorrow
02:05
the smell of burnt meat was just enough
02:07
to make me climb over the old man’s
02:09
corpse through the electric fence and
02:11
not look back there was no need to say
02:13
air-sea eating is a twisted form of
02:16
justice that knows no end and I have
02:18
always found starvation to taste like
02:20
silence I escaped on the 2nd of January
02:23
2005 and to this day I still think of
02:26
freedom as roasted meat yodel in dota I
02:29
knew her so saurons hesitation donghyuk
02:31
need on my name is shin dong-hyuk today
02:34
I’m 33 years old I’m the only known
02:37
North Korean escape be born and raised
02:39
out of an internment camp only known as
02:40
camp 14 and even as I watch my mother
02:43
being hung and my brother being shot I
02:46
can remember being so hungry that day I
02:49
couldn’t help but wonder what they would
02:51
do with the meat
02:52
[Applause]
02:55
[Music]
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
