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Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Blaine Harden (Goodreads Author)

really liked it 4.00 · Rating details · 55,739 ratings · 5,259 reviews

A New York Times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Sovie ...more

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Paperback, 252 pages

Published April 1st 2013 by Pan Books (UK) (first published 2012)

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Jul 15, 2020 Jesse (JesseTheReader) added it · review of another edition

I've been watching a lot of documentaries on North Korea recently and it had me wanting to pick up books on it. This was a very eye opening read, though I'd like to pick up books that are written directly by people who have fled North Korea, because this was more of a recount based on interviews with Shin Donghyuk. I can't even begin to imagine facing all that Shin Donghyuk faced being born and raised in one of the prison camps. From the cruel atmosphere to not really understanding what it means ...more

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May 23, 2012 Clif Hostetler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: current-events

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 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 there's no end in site of the between 150,000 and 200,000 people who live in those camps.

“Yet while Auschwitz existed for only three years, Camp 14 is a fifty-year-old Skinner box, an ongoing longitudinal experiment in repression and mind control in which guards breed prisoners whom they control, isolate, and pit against one another from birth.”

The existence of these camps can be verified by anyone with a computer and internet using Google Earth, and still there's limited awareness among the world's public of conditions in these camps. North Korea's belligerant reputation combined with nuclear weapons has prevented international pressure to be focused on their work camps.

“When North Korea deigns to enter into international diplomacy, it has always succeeded in shoving human rights off any negotiating table. Crisis management, usually focused on nuclear weapons and missiles, has dominated American dealings with the North.”

It takes a pretty strong stomach to read this book. I could write a long list of horrible things described by this book, but I've decided to refrain from going there. You can read other reviews for that. The story is not a pretty one, and frankly leaves readers such as myself feeling helpless with the knowledge conveyed. I suggest that at the least, good citizens of the world owe it to the prisoners of North Korea to at least be informed about the existance of their conditions.

Here's a link to my review of "Orphan Master's Son," a novel about life in North Korea.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Petra-X rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: korea, biography-true-story, popculture-anthropology, 2013-reviews, reviewed

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

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Apr 06, 2016 Cecily rated it liked it

Shelves: china-japan-asia, solitary-protagonist, unreliable-narrators, politics, bildungsroman, biog-and-autobiog, family-parenting

Picture from documentary Camp 14

Imagine the Unimaginable

Imagine growing up with no comprehension, let alone experience of love or friendship, where every day you struggle for scraps of food, rest, and warmth, striving to avoiding abuse, imprisonment, and maybe execution.

Where you view your own mother as “competition for survival”, rather than a source of love, security, and comfort.

Where “redemption through snitching” and hard work is essential for survival, and you are inured to the punishmen ...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Diane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: prison, north-korea, nonfiction, survival

When I hear the term "labor camps," I think of the Nazis. The Holocaust. Concentration camps -- something that happened decades ago and surely -- surely -- doesn't still exist. Right?

Wrong. Even though North Korea publicly insists that prison and work camps don't exist, evidence has been seen on satellite photos and on Google Earth. Additionally, numerous North Koreans who have witnessed the camps have defected and have testified to the hellish conditions there.

Shin was unlucky enough to be born When I hear the term "labor camps," I think of the Nazis. The Holocaust. Concentration camps -- something that happened decades ago and surely -- surely -- doesn't still exist. Right?

Wrong. Even though North Korea publicly insists that prison and work camps don't exist, evidence has been seen on satellite photos and on Google Earth. Additionally, numerous North Koreans who have witnessed the camps have defected and have testified to the hellish conditions there.

Shin was unlucky enough to be born in Camp 14. His father was a political prisoner because his brothers defected to South Korea in the 1950s. According to state law, if a family member tries to escape or defect, everyone else in that family will be punished, even if they knew nothing about it.

Because he was raised in the prison camp, Shin knew nothing of the outside world. He did not even know that China existed, because camp children were only taught basic reading and math -- nothing else of the world. Shin went through his childhood constantly hungry because there was never much food, and he was always prepared to snitch on another prisoner, usually in a ploy to get extra food or to spare a beating.

It wasn't until Shin was a teenager that he heard another prisoner talking about how good the food was out in the real world. After hearing the man's stories, Shin began to imagine what it would be like to escape the camp. After several weeks of planning, Shin was able to escape through the electrified prison fence and eventually found his way to China. After that, a journalist helped him get to South Korea, where he went through rehabilitation and counseling, and finally he moved to the United States.

Shin's story is an amazing one, but I also appreciated this book for its insights into North Korea and how the state uses propaganda, fear, beatings and a caste system to try and control its citizens. I would recommend this book to everyone.

My rating: 4.5 stars rounded up to 5

Update January 2015
I read an article in The New York Times in which Shin has recanted parts of his story. It is not clear yet which parts are not true, but it sounds like he didn't spend all of his life in Camp 14, but at some point was transferred to a different labor camp that wasn't as restrictive as 14. I am of two minds on this issue. First, I am disappointed whenever I hear such a retraction. These losses of credibility hurt everyone. Second, I wonder how much it actually matters. So many people have complained about the labor camps in North Korea, and Shin was one of those voices. The fact that the timeline or certain details were manipulated doesn't change the horrible conditions for political prisoners there. It is unfortunate that the title of the book is Escape from Camp 14, but I hope this development doesn't damage human rights efforts in that country. ...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Adrienne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: informational

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

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Jun 11, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani added it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, literature, 21th-century, non-fiction, memoir, biography, united-states, korean

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, Blaine Harden
Shin Dong-hyuk (born Shin In Geun, 19 November 1982 or 1980) is a North Korean-born human rights activist. He is reputed to be the only known prisoner to have successfully escaped from a "total-control zone" grade internment camp in North Korea. He was the subject of a biography, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by former Washington Pos Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, Blaine Harden
Shin Dong-hyuk (born Shin In Geun, 19 November 1982 or 1980) is a North Korean-born human rights activist. He is reputed to be the only known prisoner to have successfully escaped from a "total-control zone" grade internment camp in North Korea. He was the subject of a biography, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by former Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden. Shin has given talks to audiences around the world about his life in Camp 14 and about the totalitarian North Korean regime to raise awareness of the situation in North Korean internment and concentration camps and North Korea. Shin has been described as the world's "single strongest voice" on the atrocities inside North Korean camps by a member of the United Nations' first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses of North Korea. In January 2015, he recanted aspects of his story, but a majority of experts continued to support his credibility as a victim of North Korean human rights abuses.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه ژانویه سال 2016 میلادی
عنوان: فرار از اردوگاه (چهارده) 14: داستان واقعی فرار اديسه‌ وار مردی از كره‌ ی شمالی به سوی آزادی؛ نویسنده: بلین هاردن؛ مترجم: مسعود یوسف حصیر چین؛ تهران، نشر چشمه، چاپ اول و دوم و سوم 1394؛ در 229 ص؛ شابک: 9786002293282؛ چاپ چهارم و پنجم 1395؛ چاپ هشتم و نهم 1396؛ چاپ دهم و یازدهم 1397؛ موضوع: کار اجباری و سرگذشت و زیستنامه شین دونگ هیوک از نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 21 م
عنوان: فرار از اردوگاه (چهارده) 14: فرار اديسه‌ وار مردی از كره‌ ی شمالی به سوی آزادی در غرب؛ نویسنده: بلین هاردن؛ مترجم: الهام افسری؛ تهران، آسو، 1398؛ در 272 ص؛ شابک: 9786008755944؛
ماجرای این کتاب، داستان واقعی شین دونگ‌ هیوک است. مردی که در اردوگاه زندانیان سیاسی به دنیا می‌آید و زندگی در فضای وحشتناک و رعب‌آور اردوگاه، از او جاسوسی خطرناک و انسانی خالی از تمام عواطف و احساسات بشری می‌سازد؛ تا جایی که برای بدست آوردن غذا مادر خود را به پای چوبه ی دار می‌فرستد. شین که هیچ آگاهی و دانشی پیرامون جهان زیست خود ندارد، به تدریج در معاشرت‌های به شدت محافظه‌ کارانه با زندانیان پیرامون خود، که گاه از رده‌ های بالای حکومتی بودند، و یا جهان بیرون را دیده بودند، آغاز به ادراک این مفهوم می‌کند، که دنیایی فراتر از قفس مخوف او وجود دارد. دنیایی به نام جهان آزاد، که در آن انسانها حق و حقوقی، و قدرت انتخاب دارند، و می‌توانند هرقدر که خواستند غذا بخورند! همین موضوع انگیزه‌ ای می‌شود برای او، تا یکی از بزرگترین، و غیرممکن‌ترین فرارها را در تاریخ زندان‌های سیاسی کره شمالی رقم بزند. نقل از متن: «آزادی در ذهن شین، کلمه ای مترادف با گوشت بریان بود. » پایان نقل. «بلین هاردن» نویسنده این کتاب که راوی داستان از زبان «شین دونگ‌هیوگ» است. در پیش گفتار، نویسنده ماجرای فرار و چند خاطره را سریع بیان می‌کند و در مقدمه به صورت مختصر به توصیف اردوگاه کره شمالی، نحوه نگارش کتاب و یک سری از مسائل حقوق بشر می‌پردازد. ا. شربیانی ...more

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May 03, 2014 Doug Bradshaw rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I rate this book five stars not because it's beautiful literature or great story telling, but because it is a huge eye opener and important information. There are approximately 200,000 prisoners kept in camps or virtual prisons in North Korea. Many of the cellmates are the children and grandchildren of people who broke "the law" in Northern Korea. The theory is that it takes at least three generations of purging to get rid of the bad seed of law breakers. The description of the horrible control I rate this book five stars not because it's beautiful literature or great story telling, but because it is a huge eye opener and important information. There are approximately 200,000 prisoners kept in camps or virtual prisons in North Korea. Many of the cellmates are the children and grandchildren of people who broke "the law" in Northern Korea. The theory is that it takes at least three generations of purging to get rid of the bad seed of law breakers. The description of the horrible control and treatment of these poor people rivals or even beats the Nazi exterminations and treatment and it has gone on for over 50 years. Women are regularly beaten, raped, humiliated, they live on watery cornmeal mush, rice a rare and incredible treat, they are rewarded for snitching, they don't live with their parents, they are forbidden to have sex, many die of malnutrition, and woman getting pregnant, even from guards, are put to death, etc. etc. etc.

The main character, Shin, having seen his mother and brother hang for planning an escape, spends many years suffering ridiculous torment and miserable conditions, is one of the only known escapees. He was lucky enough to find people there who opened his eyes to the outside world. He was always so hungry and miserable, that his whole goal in life, his main fantasy, was waling into a restaurant to eat some grilled meat. I guess he was tired of living on raw rat flesh.

In the meantime, Kim Jong-un and the elite crowd live in ridiculous wealth and virtually steal everything worthwhile and extort monies from countries, charitable organizations and others trying to be helpful.

It's a mess that no one seems to know how to handle, including their well off neighbors, the South Koreans. So, what should we do about it? No good answers. This book at least starts to open our eyes about the situation, not only in the camps, but in North Korea as a whole. I wish the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the US would ban together and come up with a plan to liberate North Korea. But it's not going to happen, each government having different ideas about what life should be like. What a nightmare world. It's hard to believe and a cause I would love to somehow do something to help.

...more

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May 14, 2012 Mo Shah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

I'm split on this book.

On one hand, the subject matter is utterly compelling. Little is heard in mainstream media about these detention camps that hundreds of thousands of prisoners live in for (literally) generations. Entire Families are doomed because of the real or imagined actions of one, and apparently treason must be wiped out over three generations. So children are born in these camps between assigned parents and never learn filial love or even learn any emotional state higher than the a ...more

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Nov 04, 2016 Melanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

5 stars...not because it's a "classic" but because I learned so much about North Korea. I knew North Korea was a horrible place but I had no knowledge of the prison camps. The conditions are horrific. For example: A classmate of Shin's (the man who's story is being told) was beat to death by a teacher in front of the class for having a few kernels of corn in her possession. Shin's mother and brother were hung, while Shin watched on, for having an escape plan. Shin is the one who reported them to ...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Elizabeth B rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This was not at all what I was expecting. From the marketing material, I expected a story of survival from the North Korean camps that, until now, has been largely untold. Knowing a little about the atrocities of the camp, I expect to this to be an emotionally charged book but, unfortunately, I found it quite the opposite.

From the beginning we learn that Shin is an unreliable narrator. The author is quick to point this out and explain to us how Shin has changed his story repeatedly over the yea This was not at all what I was expecting. From the marketing material, I expected a story of survival from the North Korean camps that, until now, has been largely untold. Knowing a little about the atrocities of the camp, I expect to this to be an emotionally charged book but, unfortunately, I found it quite the opposite.

From the beginning we learn that Shin is an unreliable narrator. The author is quick to point this out and explain to us how Shin has changed his story repeatedly over the years. The book goes on to prove this by repeatedly telling us Shin's lies and then correcting them. However, by this time, you already have learned not to believe what you read and we have absolutely no reason to believe the "corrected" version is the truth and that Shin won't recount it later. It's pointed out how Shin's previous publication of his story was a dismal failure and perhaps, someone should've taken note on that: it wasn't lack of interest in his story it was an unwillingness to be continually lied to. The author is quick to defend Shin's actions, even using definable psychological terms to explain away Shin's untruths. Unfortunately, most readers (including myself) aren't going to care. Lie to me once, shame on you. Lie to me twice, shame on me.

Aside from being an unreliable narrator, Shin is just not likeable. Unlike so many other stories that have come from tragic world events, Shin has learned nothing from his captivity by the end of the book. He blames the rest of the world, takes advantage of those who offer him assistance, blames his financial failings on those around him rather than taking responsibility for himself. Once in America, he expects people to do for him constantly and, honestly, he just comes off as an ungrateful brat. I don't mean to demean what he has been through - I am certain he has had a horrific life that none of us can imagine. But millions have had tragedies and what makes a story marketable is not the event itself but what the person has taken away from it or what they can teach us from it. In Shin's case by the end of the book, he has learned only to lie continually and be ungrateful...which is not at all a marketable approach to his story.

A bigger problem was the writing style. The author is a journalist by trade so I expected the dry writing of a news article and, in that, I wasn't disappointed. That's exactly what I got. Even in the most dramatic of moments I was left feeling nothing because of the writing style. Before you think this is a story all about Shin, you should know this isn't the case. For each chapter, there is a brief paragraph or two (sometimes we are treated to a whole page!) of Shin's story and then the author spends 7-8 pages telling us facts and figures about something Shin mentioned. It disengages you and reads like a history text rather than an emotional memoir of Shin's journey. Shin's story is merely a catalyst to launch us into a history lesson - not the focal point of an chapter or the book itself as we are lead to believe.

The biggest problem of all, however, is the failure of the author to disclose his own agenda at the beginning. While we are told early on about Shin's untruths, we are not told until midway through the book that the author has a goal of his own with the publication of this novel: clearing up his name. Apparently, the author published a piece on Shin years ago and, it turns out, the information was false. Mistakes happen all the time in journalism and I appreciate that dedicated journalists want to set the record straight once they know they have printed something false. It's a testament to the author's honesty that he wants to correct the misinformation once he learned of it. However, this is not disclosed in the book until midway through. We, as readers, aren't told of the author's own agenda which makes the revelation feel like a complete betrayal of our confidence. This could have been easily fixed: had the author discussed it at the beginning, he would have put the reader on the same footing as himself. We would have felt empathy for him - he put his name on the line, his reputation on the line, and was taken advantage of by the unlikeable Shin. Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead, midway through we are thrown the curve that the author messed up and is now getting the "real" story out there.

So...let's recap. We have a narrator that lies repeatedly and now an author that has his own agenda to clear up the lies he unknowingly wrote years ago. Sound like a mess? Yeah, it is. And messy doesn't equate to good, legitimate reading. This book could have made an interesting newspaper article, I suppose, but as a book it's lacking, biased, and misrepresented. Check it out from the library if you must but don't waste your money on purchase as you may find yourself a regrettable enabler to this whole sordid tale.

ARC Galley Proof
...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Melinda Worfolk rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, 2010-2014, non-fiction

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

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Jan 27, 2019 ~The Bookish Redhead~ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: inspirational, non-fiction

I've read a few books now, focusing on North Korea and about the atrocities to humans, and to their own people in fact, that are allowed to be carried out. I have to say, the North korean regime makes me feel an incredible repungence towards them, and what actually makes this worse in every sense, is that the world does not seem to care.
Everything we know about about North Korea is worse than we could possibly imagine. Sure, there's brainwashing, but this book explores the utter horror that Shi ...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Jake Miller rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

“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

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May 21, 2013 Michael Gerald rated it liked it · review of another edition

Should be taken with a grain of salt.

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Aug 29, 2017 Jason Koivu rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The story of a man escaping a prison camp would pique my interest at any time, but add the detail that it's a North Korean camp and I'm definitely interested. After all, North Korea's been in the news lately. Perhaps you've noticed.

Shin Dong-hyuk was born into a prison labor camp. It's totalitarian rules and draconian punishment was life to him. He barely knew his father and viewed his mother as competition for food. He was raised to snitch out his fellow prisoners to the guards. This included The story of a man escaping a prison camp would pique my interest at any time, but add the detail that it's a North Korean camp and I'm definitely interested. After all, North Korea's been in the news lately. Perhaps you've noticed.

Shin Dong-hyuk was born into a prison labor camp. It's totalitarian rules and draconian punishment was life to him. He barely knew his father and viewed his mother as competition for food. He was raised to snitch out his fellow prisoners to the guards. This included family. Spying and reporting on others was the only way to receive kind treatment at the prison. Working hard and never screwing up merely kept one from being beaten.

Thousands have fled the destitute country, but few have escaped from one of these prisons and successfully navigated their way into China and then South Korea, an especially difficult undertaking for a young man who knew next to nothing about the world beyond his prison walls. This is what made me hesitant to read Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14. How could this seemingly impossible tale be true? Then I heard that Shin had lied about certain details regarding his story and I thought, oh boy, here we go...

However, Harden did a good job in allaying my fears. It turns out Shin's lies did not change the details of his escape or the horror stories of his confinement. No, his lies were for self-preservation. He lied out of shame for the deaths he had caused as a boy who knew nothing of compassion.

This is a truly remarkable story and a nicely constructed book. It is compact and sticks mostly to the prison camp aspect of the situation in North Korea. Some pertinent recent history and political information is relayed in order to frame Shin's story, but this is not the book you are looking for if you seek out a well-rounded and deeply detailed account of...well...how the hell North Korea got so fucked up. I did come away with a better understanding, however, and it made me want to find out more.

One last thing before I finish up. This is a tough read. It's brutal. "Heart-wrenching" ain't the half of it. To put it into perspective, these camps are akin to the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulags, and they have been in operation since the 1950s. The prisoners within them are now mostly the children and grandchildren of those who fought for the South during the Korean War, because political prisoners of this nature are doomed to this life for three generations before the family is deemed to have paid the price of their transgressions. Only humans could create such a Hell. ...more

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Oct 10, 2013 Ash Wednesday rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: aspiring dystopian writers

Recommended to Ash Wednesday by: Petra-X

Shelves: heartbreaking, review, foreign-setting, young-adult, disturbing-good, dystopian, non-fiction

4 STARS
”Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, (the) Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, (the) Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney. North Koreans have no one like that.

Actually North Koreans have imgur, Dennis Rodman and Ken Jeong in Stevie Wonder glasses.

A couple of months back, Petra recommended this book to me after posting this link in Booklikes. I’m the least literate person I know when it comes to world politics but human depravity is always fascinating even within the har ...more

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Apr 05, 2012 LeeAnne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, survivor, fav-non-fic, memoirs-bios

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Background
Camp 14 is a North Korean labor camp (gulag) with a security level of “Total Control Zone”.

Camp 14 is as large as a city with 40,000 prisoners.

Camp 14 has the highest security level (Total Control Zone) which means whoever lives in this camp will never leave it alive. Inmates remain imprisoned until they die. There is no parole. There are no release dates. Most inmates will never make it to their ...more

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Aug 20, 2019 Cody rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: north-korea

“I escaped physically,' he said. 'I haven't escaped psychologically.”

“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.”

What makes Escape from Camp 14 an exceptionally important story to tell is it gives voice to the atrocities of a North Korean prison camp through the eyes of Shin Dong-hyuk, the r “I escaped physically,' he said. 'I haven't escaped psychologically.”

“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.”

What makes Escape from Camp 14 an exceptionally important story to tell is it gives voice to the atrocities of a North Korean prison camp through the eyes of Shin Dong-hyuk, the rare subject who managed to flee and survive to tell the tale. The Orwellian country of North Korea is such a bizarre curiosity to those who live outside it's rigid system. Shin, being born inside the camp, knows nothing of the outside world. He wasn't like most North Koreans who are forced to worship the Kim dynasty. The outside world didn't exist. He knew nothing of world, that it was round, or even the capital city of Pyongyang was only a short distance south of Camp 14. Shin only knew survival by any means necessary, even by ratting out his own family to the guards running the camp. He was beaten by other students and participated in the very same beatings, used to dish out on prisoners children deemed taunted by the actions of their elders and extended family. His remarkable circumstances barely kept him alive, and eventually his escape to the border with China, South Korea, and eventually the United States is at the same time heartfelt and heartbreaking, giving all he went through (even if his story has come under question).

Blaine Harden's biography of Shin is good, although it feels somewhat rushed and lacking in spots. Given the controversy over Shin's reported story here (what is true and what is fictional) has hampered his overall story and made him an unreliable narrator. It's nearly impossible to data mine what is true and what isn't given how closed of North Korea is. There are other books about subjects that survived the North Korean regime that offer better insight into the psychological, sociological, and economic aspects of living under such hardships, but for what it's worth, Camp 14 is an essential read in terms of further understanding the country, its human rights violations, and young men and women in North Korea like Shin. ...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it liked it · review of another edition

A picture is worth a thousand words, even when that picture is an amateurish drawing. The drawing in question shows a fourteen-year-old boy, stripped naked and suspended above a charcoal fire. He is secured to the ceiling by a rope tied around his wrists and a chain around his ankles. As he writhed in agony away from the flames, he was secured in place by one of his tormentors by means of a steel hook through his abdomen.

The boy’s name is Shin Dong-hyuk. The time is 1996. The place is North Ko A picture is worth a thousand words, even when that picture is an amateurish drawing. The drawing in question shows a fourteen-year-old boy, stripped naked and suspended above a charcoal fire. He is secured to the ceiling by a rope tied around his wrists and a chain around his ankles. As he writhed in agony away from the flames, he was secured in place by one of his tormentors by means of a steel hook through his abdomen.

The boy’s name is Shin Dong-hyuk. The time is 1996. The place is North Korea, a concentration camp, to be more exact. Shin was born there, the product of a casual liason orchestrated by the camp guard to provide more slave labour. His mother and brother were planning to escape. Debased and dehumanised, he informed the guards of their plans. No matter; he is being tortured to find out how much more he knew; he is being tortured for the pleasure of the torturers. Later, with all of the other inmates, he was forced to watch his mother hanged and his brother shot.

We know all of this because Shin is the only person ever to have escaped from a ‘no exit’ camp. His particular story is now the subject of Escape From Camp 14:One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea To Freedom In The West, written up on the basis of numerous interviews with the subject by Blaine Harden, a journalist who works for the Washington Post. It invites comparison with Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea, which I reviewed here last year. I’m going to hold off on this for a bit, though.

For over twenty years Shin knew nothing but hunger, cruelty, torture and callous brutality. This was a kwan-li, a camp for political prisoners from which death was the only mode of egress. When I say ‘political prisoners’ I should make it clear that we are not dealing with forms of ‘dissidence’ that any normal person might understand. This is not the world of Kafka; this is not the world of Orwell; they are far too sane to describe real life in North Korea

In 1972 Kim Ill Sung issued an edict, ordering that the sins of the fathers be visited upon the sons and the sons and the sons. In other words, three generations of the same family had to be punished to wipe out the “seed of class enemies.” Whole families, including tiny children, were sent to concentration camps for the most minor of offences. Crimes included not wiping the dust off the portrait of the ‘Great Leader’. Wrong doing, wrong thinking, wrong knowledge, wrong background; it all went in to the metaphysical stew.

The conditions Shin and the others had to face are almost beyond comprehension. The Nazis in their lexicon of death had a particularly sinister phrase – extermination through labour. The North Korean Nazis show commendable zeal in the same process. Inmates in the various camps work fifteen hour days. Inadequately fed, they die of starvation or simple exhaustion.

That is when they are not murdered by the guards. In Shin’s camp there were eight rules which, if infringed, resulted in immediate shooting. Any woman falling pregnant was ‘shot immediately’. This included those who were raped by the guards. I say rape, but there was no crime here; for the guards were at liberty to have sex with any woman they chose, just as they were not at liberty to resist. This is a world without love, without comfort of any kind. Hell could not be so cruel.

It’s a world where Shin saw his first execution at the age of four. The victim had his mouth stuffed with pebbles just in case he tried to say anything ‘unpatriotic’ prior to death. When he was six years old Shin saw a girl of the same age being beaten to death by a prison teacher for having a few grains of corn in her pocket. This is a world where people had so little food that they would pick through cow dung for corn.

Escape from Camp 14 is an important testimony and a harrowing read. Shin’s story is one that needs to be told. There are clearly many other such stories among the estimated 200,000 people who have disappeared into night and fog. If you enjoyed Nothing to Envy you will be moved by this account of blighted lives. I’m reluctant to say anything that might put people off reading. However, as a work of reportage I thought it far less assured than Demick. Stylistically it’s not that engaging. It’s repetitive and heavy-handed at points. Above all it is far too self-conscious, the story of Harden as much as Shin.

Still, it’s a timely reminder of the terrible injustices in the world. It’s also an indictment of hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of governments that seem alert to human rights in some places (mostly those with oil) and blind to them in others. It’s an indictment of those who repeatedly condemn the alleged human rights abuses of the Israelis and remain silent about North Korea. It’s an indictment of all those who see virtue in any ‘anti-imperialist’ cause no matter how wicked and perverse. It’s an indictment of stupidity in all of its manifold forms.
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Apr 12, 2017 Ana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, of-self, about-murders, law-abiding-citizen, somehow-societal, author-biographical, economy, history, of-life-and-death

I'm not sure how one should rate a journalistic account of some of the worst attrocities happening at this very second in our world, but I'll give it three stars... a sort of neutral ground. The writing is definitely not groundbreaking - it is the story that matters. Shin was born and raised in Camp 14, one of the worst of the 18 that NK has. He, obviously, suffered from brainwashing, but it was not the kind of it where your head is filled with mush about the ideology of the ruling party, but ra ...more

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Sep 27, 2019 Connie G rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, biography, book-club, north-korea

"Escape from Camp 14" is a disturbing account of the life of Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean who was born in a political prison camp and knew nothing about the outside world. Every day brought hours of constant labor with the hope that he managed to find enough food to survive and avoided beatings by the guards. The children had no idea that love or morality existed, and were taught by the guards to snitch on everyone, including their families. People had been imprisoned for three generations for ...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Zöe Zöe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: korean

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

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Dec 19, 2011 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: politics-history, non-fiction, 2012

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

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Mar 20, 2020 Sleepless Dreamer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Long story short, does anyone want to recommend me positive and happy books because wow, this book was not happy at all.

This book tells the story of Shin, the only known defector who was born into a labor camp and managed to escape. This book is pretty short but it's an incredibly hard book to read. A lot of very terrible things happen. Harden's writing style is very matter of fact which only makes it more challenging to read as he simply describes these horrible situations.

And I can't stop th ...more

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Dec 29, 2015 Leah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I feel so awkward giving this a star rating that I almost didn't.

I just don't know how to accurately review someone's life. Sure, I've read some biographies and nonfiction, and last year around this time, I read The Complete Maus. And it pretty much broke my heart.

This story did the same. It was such an informative and necessary read. I would recommend it to anyone. Harden did a good job at showing the reader Shin's story, while also showing the atrocities that are continuing to go on in North ...more

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Aug 14, 2018 Diabolica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: no-fic

If this was not a biography, the rating would have been a little lower.

But it's not. And for the non-fiction book it is, it's a pretty good read. A short one.

Shin's story is an interesting one, and really sounds a lot like 1984 except written in the perspective of a child born into that society. But I don't want to comment on his life, but rather the style that this book was written in.

A chapter or so into the story, the author makes a reference to themselves. And for me that's big don't do it ...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was another book, that while fascinating because I didn't have much knowledge of North Korea, but horrific as well. The subject matter was at times hard to read, to think that so many people are actually living like this is heartbreaking. Even those considered higher up in the hierarchy are not well off in comparison to the rest of the world, but they do have access to rice and blankets. The only family in any way profiting is the Kim dynasty, they of course have beautiful houses and yachts ...more

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Nov 14, 2015 Hillary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: korea, non-fiction

First of all I feel an extreme and complete disgust towards the North Korean regime, but after having read this memoir I'm even more ashamed because the world doesn't care.
Money? Yes, it is involved once again, and it's put in the first place ahead of human rights.
Surely I will continue to read books about this topic. It's good to have information since normally everyone ignores what is still happening in the 2000s in North Korea.
Maybe the news should stop talking and blabbing about the same da ...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Valarie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir, asia

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

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About Blaine Harden

Blaine Harden

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Harden is an author and journalist who worked for The Washington Post for 28 years as a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine. He has contributed to The Economist and PBS Frontline.

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