DAUGHTER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
“MAY THE GROANS OF THE prisoners come before you; by the strength of your arm preserve those condemned to die.” Psalm 79:11
“Guess what I heard?” my friend Mee-Kyong whispered in my ear. “Officer Yeong sent his office maid away yesterday.”
“Prisoners!” shouted Matron Sung, the guard in charge of our fifty-woman unit in the garment factory. When I first started working in the cutting line, I was terrified by her whip, but I quickly learned that Matron Sung was more interested in keeping her hair free from lice than she was in punishing us prisoners. Matron Sung rarely left her scent-proof box. She supervised our work from behind glass and spent her shift barking orders through a megaphone.
It was no secret that a position in the garment factory was the most len
