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Defector's story of ordeal in NKorea camp to be filmed
2008-05-08
A defector's book about his decade-long ordeal in a North Korean prison camp is to be made into a film, producers said Thursday. Cinema and I, a South Korean film maker, said it would co-produce with its US partner a movie based on "The Aquariums of Pyongyang." The book, co-authored by Kang Chol-Hwan and Frenchman Pierre Rigoulot, is Kang's account of his 10 years in the prison camp system in the 1970s and 1980s before he escaped to South Korea. "Shooting is expected to begin in October this year with preparations for casting underway," Bae Jin-Su, a Cinema and I executive, told AFP. "We aim to put it on the screen in July next year." He estimated the total filming cost at around 18 million dollars, of which Cinema and I will cover 10 million dollars. Kang told Daily NK, an Internet newspaper run by defectors, that the movie would be "a significant opportunity to unveil the true nature" of North Korean prison camps. "I hope that the movie producers put the testimonies of other former prisoners into the movie, so the unimaginable things that happen in North Korea's political prison camps can be seen throughout the world," he was quoted as saying. Kang and his family were sent to a camp for political prisoners at Yodok in South Hamkyung province in 1977. He and other defectors have testified that beatings, forced labour, torture and other gross human rights abuses were rampant in the camps. After 10 years' imprisonment, he was released from the camp and in 1992 fled to South Korea.
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