Park walked across the frozen Tumen River, the border between China and North Korea, on Dec. 25, 2009. He wore no coat. He yelled, while approaching North Korea, “South Korea and America love you.” He smashed a photo of Kim Jong Il. And then, on the shores of a North Korean village not far from a political prison camp, he was arrested.

Park says he was held in three separate places. His worst treatment came at the first. But later, Park said, he sometimes was treated by doctors who “tried to make me look as good as possible.” When pressed gently for further details about his detention, Park panics and strains to change the subject. One Seoul-based humanitarian organization interviewed 100 prison camp torture victims, who reported caning, electric torture and the kicking of genitals. Many, in months and years after, suffered from insomnia, nervous breakdowns and social phobias…

“He is wounded, of course,” one of his closest friends, Rita Vasquez, said. “He has PTSD real bad right now. The anxieties. The fears. His stuttering. When he talk on the phone, he jumps from subject to subject, back and forth. And can’t make up his mind.”