Alí Lameda

Alí Lameda ( — ) was a Venezuelan poet and translator who was once imprisoned in a North Korean concentration camp for seven years.

Biography He was born in Carora in the state of Lara. His youth was influenced (politically and intellectually) by his teacher and friend Cheo Zubillaga. After graduating, Lameda traveled to Colombia to study medicine. He returned to Venezuela a few years later and joined the Venezuelan Communist Party. He then went to Czechoslovakia, where he lived five years. There he studied the Czech language and translated works by Czech and French writers.

In 1965, while in East Berlin, he came into contact with North Koreans and became fascinated with the stories about their country. In the middle of the following year, he arrived in Pyongyang to work as an interpreter in the Spanish section of the Foreign Publications Department, within the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He personally met Kim Il-sung and Foreign Minister Pak Song-chol.

In prison, he was subjected to torture: he was interrogated for 12 hours without interruption, he was beaten and left without food for long periods. He spent a year in prison.

In 1973, North Korea sought allies in order to join the United Nations. Venezuela agreed to the proposal with the condition that Lameda be released. He was finally freed on September 27, 1974, seven years after the verdict. Ali was allowed to leave North Korea through an alliance between Pyongyang and Bucharest.

Back in Berlin, he had surgery on the tumor and his leg. and that women were sent to prison for smoking. He also stated that North Korean television allocated roughly half of the broadcasting time to films about Kim Il Sung. Taylor wrote: "In the end, the most salient explanation as to why North Korea remained in high esteem within the Latin American Left in the 1960s and throughout the Cold War is the fact that the experiences of Lameda, Murillo, and others were rare exceptions. Thousands of foreigners visited North Korea in the same period, and many testified to a remarkable model of socialism for the global South."

At the end of December 1974, he left Venezuela and lived in London with his Venezuelan family. After his release, he worked as a cultural attaché in the Venezuelan embassies in Prague, Asunción and Athens.

In later years, Lameda stated that he was targeted by North Korean security because he did not conceal his criticism of the Kim personality cult, as he "grew irritated by the constant fanatical praise of Kim, and the superhuman feats attributed to him". Lameda stated that he had to routinely returgigate unbelievable claims about Kim Il Sung during his work as a translator, such as that Kim marched 80,000 kilometres or founded the Union to Overthrow Imperialism at the age of twelve. Given that the North Korean director of the Department of Foreign Publications was also arrested and imprisoned, Lameda believed that his case was not isolated but was a part of a larger alleged conspiracy that North Koreans believed to exist amongst their foreign translators. Taylor connected the fate of Lameda and his colleagues to geopolitical tensions:

Lameda died on November 30, 1995, in the city of Caracas.