What were conditions inside the prison like?
There was the dirty water, the lack of heat — Korea has harsh winters, with Siberian frosts blowing down from the north — the beginnings of frostbite on our hands, feet and ears. I got parasites, amoeba and paramecium while I was there. That was intensely painful. For about the first half of my sentence there was the enormous disorientation of not speaking the language and feeling helpless because of it. [I was] really at the mercy, to a large extent, of the guards and Korean inmates. And among the Korean inmates, with whom I spent a lot of time around, working as I did in Taejon Prison’s shoe factory, were a lot of ornery, mentally ill, difficult men, gangsters who demanded our respect. Dealing with them, learning how to speak to these convicted murderers and longtime convicts was a massive challenge. There was no escape from it. We had no choice but to be broken and made to fit the Korean way, to live, think and speak as they did. In some ways, you describe your experience as a spiri
There was the dirty water, the lack of heat — Korea has harsh winters, with Siberian frosts blowing down from the north — the beginnings of frostbite on our hands, feet and ears. I got parasites, amoeba and paramecium while I was there. That was intensely painful. For about the first half of my sentence there was the enormous disorientation of not speaking the language and feeling helpless because of it. [I was] really at the mercy, to a large extent, of the guards and Korean inmates. And among the Korean inmates, with whom I spent a lot of time around, working as I did in Taejon Prison’s shoe factory, were a lot of ornery, mentally ill, difficult men, gangsters who demanded our respect. Dealing with them, learning how to speak to these convicted murderers and longtime convicts was a massive challenge. There was no escape from it. We had no choice but to be broken and made to fit the Korean way, to live, think and speak as they did. In some ways, you describe your experience as a spiri
