North Korean Athletes Reportedly Want to Avoid Punishment for Losses
While most athletes at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang are doing their best to win the gold medal, the North Korean delegation is doing so for their lives. For the athletes of North Korea, failure at the big stage may carry a punishment according to Fox News.
Having failed to secure even a single medal, the team could face the same fate as previous underperforming athletes – imprisonment in one of the country's sick gulags. The most infamous case of this incident happened when the North Korean football team which made history for reaching the second round of the 1966 World Cup.
In the report, after they lost to 5-3 to Portugal, then leader Kim Il-Sung allegedly arrested the entire team after they were seen drinking with local women in public days prior to the match. Instead of being received with a proud welcome by their countrymen, they were sent to the Kim regime's notorious gulags where prisoners are subject to horrific treatments.
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North Korean defector Kang Chol-Hwan claims he had met some of the 1966 team while they were being held in Yodok prison, or Camp 15. The camp, usually reserved for political prisoners, is just one of many where prisoners are often tortured or summarily executed for disobeying its strict rules.
In his tell-all book "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," Kang states that footballer Pak Seung-Zin became infamous for his ability to endure torture. Another inmate at the camp, dubbed "Cockroach," is known for gorge himself on any insect he could find to fight off hunger pains.
The most harrowing part of Kang's book is that they are not the only one. Over the years, failure to bring glory to the North Korean was often met with similar harsh treatments. Being selected as the regime's delegates can be a blessing and a curse depending on whether their performance was satisfactory for the regime.
