CINA

본문

...you can read here(3.2, K. Times):

Foreign Prisoners Cherish Freedom

Coming to Korea with baskets of aspiring dreams has turned into barrels of dreaded nightmares for some. For many foreigners, Korea is a place to experience a different culture and also a destination to earn a decent living. Mostly this is true, but for others these innocent expectations have been met with difficult despair. Guilty of illegal behavior or victims of injustice, there are foreigners who have been sent to Taejon Prison.

A total of about 4,000 inmates are serving time, including roughly 300 foreign prisoners from 45 different countries. The alleged crime in question is usually divided along national lines: Malaysians, credit card fraud; Vietnamese, theft; Mongolians, manslaughter; and Westerners, drugs. Compared to Koreans, foreigners typically receive harsher sentences for identical crimes, but of the foreigners Westerners usually get lighter sentences than those from elsewhere.

According to extensive correspondence and interesting interviews with a vast array of foreign prisoners, their experience is a sobering reminder for everyone to cherish freedom. Assigned to cells aligned like the cramped quarters of the slave ships of the 17th century, two inmates share a cell with living quarters measuring no more than 4’ by 7’.

These circumstances are just the beginning of their punishing ordeal. A typical day begins with the theme song from “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” piped into cells at 6:30 a.m. Without pillows, they awake with stiff necks and rise from their unheated wooden floor. A few minutes later all the prisoners must be fully dressed for their “in cell” inspection.

At 7 a.m. they are served breakfast that more than one prisoner says “they just manage to eat.” The menu stays the same everyday ㅡ a glass of juice, one fried egg, and four slices of bread with jam. Lunch and dinner consists of rice served with some type of dish, like chicken curry or boiled zucchini.

To receive their three daily meals, each one is served through a hole in the concrete. With the end of breakfast, Korean radio is blared into cells until 9 p.m. to entertain the prisoners with basically the same halfdozen Korean folk songs everyday.

After breakfast the prisoners wait for their 30-minute exercise period, which they receive five days per week. During this time outside, they get one cold shower a day from Monday to Friday in the summer. Throughout the winter, they get one hot shower per week in a large communal shower room. Inmates must purchase towels, soap and toothpaste. However, once every few months they get a free bar of soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste and one roll of toilet paper.

For those inmates not working in textile factories, the rest of the days are mostly spent reading, writing or sleeping. This solitude is done to encourage them to “volunteer” to work in prison factories. If one is working in the factories, then more privileges are extended. For example, the workers receive “perks” such as activities on the weekend, one hour of exercise, a small wage and some snacks.

Faced with the choice of being isolated in a cell or to work in exchange for receiving bonuses, most people might wonder why a prisoner would choose not to work. According to one self-confessed murderer, the work is not difficult but foreign factory workers complain of discrimination at the hands of Korean workers. Moreover, the ones running the factories prefer not to have foreigners because of the language barrier when issuing work orders. In addition, based on prison regulations, convicted individuals sentenced for less than two years are not eligible for such labor.

If a prisoner is assigned to factories run by the prison, then they receive 20,000 won per month. If run by outsiders, the management gives 400,000 won for the monthly work . the prison keeps 50 percent and gives the remaining half to the inmate. Even though most foreigners ply their efforts in the lower-paying factory scenario, the prison has a 95 percent employment rate.

The inmates also get out of their cells for two hours twice a week to watch a Korean film one time and a foreign film the other. Periodically they will also get two hours out of the cell on Monday mornings when volunteers from KAIST go to teach Korean.

Although this training might make their life more bearable on the inside as the guards speak Korean, most foreigners consider this a senseless exercise since they will be deported and will probably never use the language again. English and Chinese courses are offered, but not to foreigners because a prison worker claims that “there are not enough resources.” Therefore, unless an inmate works at a factory, he will spend an average of 23.5 hours a day in what prisoners have referred to as “shoebox cells like a coffin.”

With these types of limitations and many prisoners “pleading that the Korean government give them more opportunities,” inmates look forward to contact with the outside world. They are allowed to make three-minute monitored phone calls after completing most of their sentence.

They also get four seven-minute visits a month with a guard present and through Plexiglas.

After all of this, the foreign prisoners are released to immigration officials upon the completion of their sentence. If they cannot afford to pay for a plane ticket home they can then spend up to six months in an immigration detention center before being banned from Korea for five years*.

This restriction likely does not influence their future plans as at last they are free. Free to never look back. Free to enjoy the cherished freedoms they lost.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200603/kt2006030118162368040.htm

* hey mark: spaetestens mo. abend werden wir ja sehen, ob da was dran ist!!??..^^