EPICANTHUS

TOKYO.—As the world awaited a North Korean Central Court decision in the June 4 trial of two American journalists in Pyongyang, North Korea, a former Japanese journalist has recounted his experience while he was imprisoned in the country for about two years.

Takashi Sugishima

“When I was first arrested, I thought my life had ended. I was wondering how I would be killed, by public execution, by poisoning?” Takashi Sugishima told CNN in a recent interview.

International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says the two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, are the first foreign journalists since Sugishima to be held for any length of time in North Korea.

While on his fifth visit to North Korea, Sugishima—an economic researcher and a retired reporter for Japan’s financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, according to the Los Angeles Times—was seized and imprisoned in December 1999. He had been part of a delegation visiting Pyongyang.

Authorities accused him of spying for Japan and South Korea, charges both nations denied.

Sugishima also denies the allegation, and said he never faced trial for the charge.

He said he was fearful while in prison. “They [prison guards] would smile at me, but they could change their attitude the next second without any guilt. I tried to be as friendly as possible, but I never knew when they might decide to kill me,” Sugishima said.

Thinking he would be forced to spy for Pyongyang, he said he tried to hang himself, but an old sink broke his fall, saving him.

Sugishima related his harrowing two years in prison to what Ling and Lee are possibly experiencing.

“They’re likely being asked why they were there, what they filmed, what kind of report they’re trying to make,” he said.

Sugishima was released in February 2002.

Authorities told him it was because of pleading from Japan and his family, but at least one North Korea analyst, Shigemura Toshimitsu, said Sugishima was used as a bargaining chip to influence relations with Japan.

He said he believes Pyongyang is using the same tactic with Ling and Lee to try and negotiate with Washington.

Three years later, the North Koreans detained retired Japanese journalist Takashi Sugishima, who was accused of using a hand-held tape recorder and camera to collect intelligence for Japan and South Korea — an allegation he denied.

Sugishima said he was held for two years in a warm, comfortable cell in a mountain detention facility. He was given three hot meals a day and never tortured.

Similarly, American reporters Lee and Ling were reported as being held in a hotel-like state guest house outside of  Pyongyang.

“The treatment I received was more humane than I expected,” Sugishima said. Still, he added, the experience was “extremely trying,” and he worried constantly that he might not survive.

Ali Lameda

Some of the harshest conditions were endured by Ali Lameda, a poet and member of Venezuela‘s Communist Party. He said he was invited to North Korea in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator but quickly became disillusioned with the propaganda.

The next year, Lameda said, he was accused of spying, sabotage and infiltration. He was detained in a damp, filthy cell for a year without trial and survived on dirty scraps of bread and watery vegetable soup. He was often interrogated from noon to midnight. Once, the guards beat his swollen bare feet.

“Whilst in my cell, I could hear the cries of other prisoners,” Lameda wrote in an account provided to Amnesty International. “You can soon learn to distinguish whether a man is crying from fear or pain or from madness in such a place.”

During the day, detainees were kept awake because the guards said prisoners could not ponder their guilt while asleep, he said.

Shortly after his release, Lameda was tried again. There were no formal charges or specific allegations against him in the one-day hearing, he said. Court officials kept demanding that he confess his guilt.

He was sentenced to 20 years in a freezing labor camp near the town of Sariwon, about 40 miles south of Pyongyang. The camp had 6,000 prisoners who worked 12 hours a day making vehicles and mattresses.

“The cell that I was taken to had no heating except for a pipe running through it which became warm for approximately five minutes each night,” he said. “The windows were iced-up and my feet froze.”

Lameda served six years before being released again in 1974 without explanation.

Jacques Sedillot

He was luckier than his colleague, French translator Jacques Sedillot, who was arrested at the same time and suffered the same treatment. Sedillot was released with the Venezuelan poet but died before he could leave North Korea.