When I left you, I showed you a small sample of the various prison cells at the abandoned prison. Unfortunately, the execution room is all locked up. A place where hundreds (perhaps thousands) of deaths took place gets my exploration motivation going. Let me give you a tour of what else I saw during my two visits.
Work Spaces
There were two or three substantial workspaces around the prison, one in which I found the skeleton of a stray dog. Our guide also told us that there is very much alive, living stray residing on the second floor of one of these work areas. I’m guessing that less violent offenders worked here, those who didn’t start shit with others and had more freedom and responsibilities.
We couldn’t determine what labor they exactly did, but we found a room where inmates did silk screening. It was pretty strange seeing discarded boxes of mortar bombs lying around. Could it be that the ROK army contracted out prison labor?
The inmates’ lockers were perhaps the most exciting aspect of the workspaces. Not all, but many still had remnants of the former users. Our guide found numerous letters written to/from concerned family members. The most common personal touch to the locker were pictures of scantily clad women from magazines like Maxim or Details. I thought the Bodhidharma drawings were my favorite. I don’t know what it says about the artist; perhaps they were Buddhist or inspired by shamanism.
Auditorium
This space seemed to be a multi-purpose special events room, but I could just as easily see this as a place for Sunday services for the Christians. Adjacent to the auditorium were counseling rooms for Buddhists and Christians.
Oh, and upstairs was the broadcast room. It’s weird to think inmates in their prison blues worked with the media equipment that was once in this room.
Randoms
Finally, here is an assortment of photos taken from around the prison. Of course, we came across other dead animals.
