Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 82

Tears of Blood: A Korean POW’s Fight for Freedom, Family, and Justice
By Young-Bok Yoo and Translated by Paul T. Kim
Grades 8 and beyond
Publisher: Korean War POW Affairs – USA, 2012 (Available Amazon.com for $12, 167 pages
Tears of Blood: A Korean POW’s Fight for Freedom, Family, and Justice by Young-Bok Yoo is
a riveting, highly readable and concise account of a survivor of the Korean War, who suffered
harsh imprisonment, and forty-seven years of extreme hardship in North Korea until he escaped
to freedom in South Korea at age seventy. Young-Bok Yoo’s narrative brings to life not only the
chaos and suffering experienced by Koreans during the Korean War, but also informs the reader
about an aspect of the war that is virtually unknown outside of Korea - 60,000 prisoners of the
war were held captive against their will by the North Korean government and were never
repatriated. His autobiography also vividly describes the difficulties of life in North Korea and
includes key historical developments over a period of fifty years along with useful explanatory
notes.
When North Korean forces invaded the south in 1950, Young-Bok Yoo was forced to join the
North Korean army. After the U.N. forces landed in Incheon, he was captured by the South
Korean army and imprisoned for two years with 170,000 other soldiers at Koje Island on the
southern coast. Upon release, he was conscripted into the South Korean army and sent to the
front lines. Yoo managed to survive, but just before the armistice he was captured by the Chinese
communists and sent to a prisoner of war camp outside of Pyongyang.
In addition to providing an account of his imprisonment and other difficulties during the war,
Yoo presents a vivid account of the intolerable conditions he and others experienced in North
Korea. From the time he was twenty-three years old until he was seventy, he wrote that his
“entire life revolved around hunger and oppression. I was always put down and never able to
speak my mind freely.” He was, as were other South Korean prisoners, exploited as a laborer in
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