Ever wonder why the world didn't do more to end the horrors of Stalin's gulags or Hitler's work camps? Someday our children (or perhaps grandchildren or great-grandchildren) will ask the same question about our world today. Why doesn't the world do more to end the horrible inhumanity imposed on people in the work camps of North Korea? And the political prison camps in North Korea have existed twice as long as Stalins Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps, and the More...

“High School students in America debate why President Roosevelt didn't bomb the rail lines to Hitler's camps. Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps, and did nothing.”

No more brazen and poetic meaning could be found than reading this line from the book, once upon a time seems almost pertinent to this book. But once upon a time gives the semblance of fiction, and while this book eerily reminds one of a few George O More...

Ostensibly getting rid of families, rather than individuals, considered undesirable by the regime, in actuality slave labour for the State.

A mixture of 1984, Animal Farm and the Nazi Dachau concentration camp. It is the story of North Korea and worse in every single respect than every dystopian novel you've ever read. Here, one is born, lives one's whole life and dies in a vast camp where fear rules through hunger and brutality. One man, only one, escaped and this is his story.

Not an easy book t More...

4.5 stars.

This is an incredibly gripping book. While I was reading it, I was so immersed in the story that it took a while to come back to the real world.

I am glad I read Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy before reading this, because I already knew how bad the situation is for ordinary citizens in North Korea, and it was all the more powerful to realize that there are people who live even worse lives in the country's prison camps.

This is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, a young man born and raised i More...

Book of the week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

The story of Shin Dong Hyuk, who was born in a North Korean gulag and escaped to the West.

BBC blurb - Prisoners work 15 hour days mining coal, building dams, sewing military uniforms. Beatings and executions are common and they are always hungry. No one born in one of these camps has ever escaped . until Shin. This is his story.

Read by Kerry Shale

Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.

2/4/2012: More...

I am surprised to find this book at the last glance to the bookstore in Hong Kong International Airport. I know it is already in my To-Read section in Goodreads. This is the only book I finished reading within 12 hours while I’m sitting next to beautiful clouds.

Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy introduces us how ordinary North Koreans escaped from DPRK, but Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14 tells us how a criminal who was born in Camp 14 completed the mission impossible.

The world hasn't settl More...

I think Shin's story is an important one, but the way that it's presented makes it a little tough to really connect with. Shin, born and raised in a North Korean labor camp, was the first person actually born in a camp to escape. Having had no prior knowledge of the outside world, he was raised, in his own words, as an animal, taught to rat out others, to feel little more than fear, with no affection for anyone. He does some pretty horrible things as a result and while I can logically understand More...

شين دونغ-هيوك شاب وُلد وعاش، مثل مئات الأطفال، في أحد معسكرات الاعتقال الكثيرة المنتشرة في كوريا الشمالية. نال شين تربيته في المعسكر رقم 14 على أسس أخلاقية محددة، تقوم بشكل أساسي على الوشاية بمن يشاركونه حياة الاعتقال، بما فيهم والداه. المعسكر الرابع عشر هو واحد من عدة معسكرات شبيهة بمعسكرات الجولاج التي بدأها ستالين. هذا الكتاب يحكي قصة هروب شين من المعتقل إلى الصين، ثم إلى كوريا الجنوبية.

من خلال حكاية شين دونغ-هيوك، يقوم المؤلف بعملية توصيف لما يجري في كوريا الشمالية تحت ظل النظام القائم في ال More...

This was an excellent example of how severe conditions and oppression can shape a person's character. Shin, the young man who escaped from a concentration camp in North Korea, was born into the prison and has had trouble adjusting to a free life. The biggest impact that this book had on me was in showing how a single person can alter a prisoner's thinking. In this case, Shin met an old man who showed him compassion in the camp, and this was the first kindness anyone had ever taken toward him. Se More...

4.5. Oh man, this book is really, really good. North Korea is such a strange country. Some of the things that you hear about it sound like they'd have to be fiction. This country is still mostly a mystery to most outsiders. The government keeps a very tight rein on what information gets out about the country. This book tells the true (true being the operative word, as this story is so unbelievable) story of Shin, a young man, who has lived his entire life in Camp 14, one of the infamous work cam More...

One of the hardest books I've read in a long time. Not because of the language; because of the subject matter. Escape from Camp 14 tells the story of a boy born in a slave camp for political prisoners due to the transgressions of his uncle, never able to be loved by his family (slao prisoners), routinely tortured, and taught that the only way to survive was to be a snitch and bully. It tells his story as the only prisoner to ever escape and trek to China, then South Korea, and finally America, w More...

My Thoughts: This was not an easy story to read; it was almost surreal but then so are stories of the torture, death and devastation of concentration camps in WWII. It is truly amazing that Shin was able to escape and even more mind boggling that this type of torture still exists in the 21st century. I'm glad I wasn't this aware of these atrocities of North Korea during the two years I lived in Seoul; I don't think I could have lived that close knowing of what was happening just over the border. More...

Twenty-six years ago, Shin Dong-hyuk was born inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. Located about 55 miles north of Pyongyang, the labor camp is a 'complete control district,' a no-exit prison where the only sentence is life. Inmates work 12 to 15-hour days in the camp – mining coal, building dams, sewing military uniforms – until they are executed, killed in work-related accidents or die of illness that is usually triggered by hunger. No one bo

More...

I find it distracting that this book is written by a western journalist, rather than at least being an as told to account by Shin Dong-hyuk. At least he got half of the proceeds of the book, I think. I suppose I should look for Shin's own memoir, which was translated into English and did not have a very wide readership. It is useful because it tells about life inside a work camp, and shows how being born in one affects Shin at all levels of his life. His story of his escape is riveting and suspe More...

Do you want to know how horribly deranged, sick, and twisted the North Korean government is? Read this book. This is the true story of Shin Dong-Hyuk, who was born in Camp 14 in 1982, and lived there until he escaped to China in 2005. His uncle had apparently irritated some North Korean official in some unknown way, and thus his father at an early age was put into the labor camp, eventually given a bride, with whom he spent about 5 nights a year. This union produced Shin and his brother.

During More...

Bought this on the Kindle Daily Deal and read it very quickly. It's evidently intended for people who know nothing about North Korea beforehand (that aim is mentioned a couple of times in the book). I am absolutely not an expert but having already read a few excerpts in newspapers and online, and with a basic knowledge of North Korean human rights issues, this book didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. The most interesting part was the last few chapters and epilogue, detailing Shin's di More...

Inspiring and horrifying. This book is a suitable companion for 'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick, another recent and excellent study of life in North Korea. That book told the stories of several ordinary North Korean citizens who ultimately risked their lives to escape from that country.

This book is the biography of a young man who was born in a North Korean labor/concentration camp, grew up there surrounded by misery and murder, and hadn't heard about the rest of the world until he was a yo More...

Where do I begin? You MUST READ this book! No ifs, ands, or buts because why in the world are we not talking about this situation going on in North Korea? Why are we not teaching about this? Why are we not doing something about it?

I think about what I know about North Korea and realize it is very little. I know the leader scares me a bit, but I had no idea how bad it really is. As an educator and parent why do we not raise the awareness? We teach about the Holocaust and other terrible moments in More...

For the past two hours I have been held captive by a book that has shaken me from my state of ignorance about North Korea into an informed state of rage! Escape From Camp 14 tells the graphic story of life in a concentration camp in North Korea. These camps exist at the moment you are reading this and were started by the current leader’s grandfather. They can be spotted using Google Earth and yet North Korea says they do not exist.

The individuals residing within them may have done nothing agains More...

An important and necessary read. Blaine Harden does an amazing job taking a very complicated brutal story and making it understandably and digestible to the masses. He also provides key resources and background data for people that want to learn more.

There truly is nothing as brutal and horrific as the gulag / camp system of nK. Modeled after Stalin's prison camps in Russia - the 3 generations of 'Great Leaders' in nK have taken the oppression of people to a new level. With the guiding principle More...

This is a well written account of Shin Don-Hyuk, a young N Korean, and his harrowing existence in a political prisoner camp for the first 20- something years of his life; he was born IN the camp and knew nothing other than his miserable camp life. The journalist who interviewed him comes into his life story details intermittently to give historical context. Most of the time this helpful because- like so many others- I am not as knowledgeable on North Korean life / it's true economic state etc. H More...

This book definitely isn't going to win any awards for "Feel Good Book of the Year". There's nothing good to be found here, it is only despair and misery. Even when Shin finally escapes and finds life in South Korea and later, the United States, his difficulty adapting to a normal modern life means that there is no happy ending.

So why four stars?

Quite frankly, because it's a book people need to read. People need to understand just what is going on in North Korea today. One day we will have to More...

after finishing i'm at a bit of a loss of even how to describe this story to someone considering reading it.

by chance it caught my eye in a bookstore and i decided to buy it, hoping it would give me more insight into the economic, social and political atmosphere of the country that's been making headlines every day for the last few months. this was a decision that i did not regret. i couldn't put this book down and finished in less than 24 hours.

using a mix of first hand accounts by labor camp s More...

This story shows how the world is still corrupt and how ill-minded people can control humans brutally in an unacceptable way. People being born to work till they die and waste as little resources as possible and produce as much work as physically possible. The book shows what a lot of people do not know about North Korea. Beside going through the story of Shing Dong the writer brings up a lot of the problems that North Korea face as a country. Lacking video footage and images because of the circ More...

This is the story of the life of the only person to ever have escaped from a North Korean prison camp. The actual story of his life in the camp is almost 100% sad and depressing, even worse than most stories of war and concentration camps. The unique thing about the North Korean camps was that the guards rewarded snitching making all of your friends and family members potential enemies or even murderers. All of them were also competitors for food. I never new about the caste system in North Kore More...

A telling reality of the incredible injustice that exists in our world today...
Escape From Camp 14 is the true story of a survivor who escaped one of the most mind numbingly atrocious existences I have ever heard of. The book's themes harken to the familiar dystopian fictional worlds of George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, as well as the true horrors we learned in history class of Auschwitz and the gulag labor camps. Escape From Camp 14 is strikingly similar to these, but this story is a very real wo More...

Escape From Camp 14
Title: Escape From Camp 14
Author: Blaine Harden
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Place: New York City, NY
Binding: Kindle Edition
Number of Pages: 230
Price: $12.99
ISBN: 0670023329
Translation: English
My first impression of this book was somewhere along the lines of “This is going to be the most painful thing I have ever read in my life.” That thought would soon change after reading the first few chapters of the book.
Escape From Camp 14 tells the story of Shing Dong Hyuk. Shing More...

If you need a book to remind you how amazing and resilient the human spirit is, then read Shin's story. In addition to breathing life into Shin's dark past to bring it into the present, the author does a remarkable job providing context with what was going on in the North Korean government and political climate at various phases of Shin's life. Born into a prison camp and essentially raised by guards who repeatedly abused him, any concept of love or compassion was completely foreign. For most of More...

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a political prison camp in North Korea where approximately 175,000 people are being held. While I cringed at many of the details, I found Shin's story compelling and easy to understand. I will not repeat the horrors prisoners experience, but you should read this book to understand the evils that exist today.

It is somewhat ironic to me that this is the same week that Dennis Rodman (a one time NBA star) traveled to North Korea and made excuses for dictator Kim Jong Un. More...

This book is deeply disconcerting. I was bothered by the things I read in this book for several weeks after I read it. It describes one man's escape from a North Korean concentration camp. The torture and the trauma of the camp are horrifying enough alone, but this true story combines the fact that the teller was conceived and born in that concentration camp! It is disturbing to read his lack of emotional response to his fellow prisoners and family members being punished with death for trivial i More...