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

by Blaine Harden

a “model village” next to an orchard and just across from the field where his mother was later hanged.

Questions were not allowed in school. They angered teachers and triggered beatings.

“There is nothing in my life to compare with this burden,” Shin told me on the day in California when he explained how and why he had misrepresented his past.

As he watched his mother struggle, Shin thought she deserved to die.

A perverse benefit of birth in the camp was a complete absence of expectations. And so Shin’s misery never skidded into complete hopelessness. He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend.

Freedom, in Shin’s mind, was just another word for grilled meat.