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

by Blaine Harden

his mother was later hanged.

What happens to his mother.

beat her son with a hoe, a shovel, anything close at hand.

Shin had an abusive mother. Didn't grow up with a healthy relationship.

stealing her food, enduring her beatings—he saw her as competition for survival.

did not care if Shin and his friends ate rats, frogs, snakes, and insects.

Treated them less than human.

most contented childhood moments were when his belly was full.

Even the most basic necessities that we take for granted, is very important to Shin. He does not receive those necessities.

unaware

Although it was against the rules, they often stuffed bracken, osmunda,

Shin entered his first coal mine at the age of ten.

Hard working conditions.

“We were taught not to think of them as human beings,”

VERSION TWO

Shin is finally aware of modern morality in the present day. He was afraid of telling the truth, because he was ashamed and disgusted with his past actions. This shows that Shin has successfully grown into the normal ideals of a human being. I think that is great.

night guard at the school had claimed all the credit for discovering the escape plan.

False trust between the guards and prisoners.

Shin’s father had committed was being the brother of two young men who had fled south during a fratricidal war that razed much of the Korean Peninsula and divided hundreds of thousands of families.

Shin’s unforgivable crime was being his father’s son.

There is a lot of importance on family relations.

nearly impossible to move.

Shin would never see the school’s night guard again.

Uncle went to work as Shin’s full-time nurse.

He was a kind man

The old man’s medical skills and his caring words kept the boy alive.

Shin did not want to leave the cell. He had never trusted—never loved—anyone before.

he never saw Uncle again.

I feel sorry for Shin. Uncle was the only person who Shin trusted and loved, but that was taken away from him.

He had not seen the sun for more than half a year.

They snatched away his food, punched him in the stomach, and called him names.

No one trusted each other.

the appeal of suicide was “overwhelming.”

It is clear that to many of the prisoners, that was the only escape.

Why the new teacher made the effort, Shin never had a clue. But Shin is certain that without his help, he would have died.

Within this camp, it seems the only real source of redemption is from those of authority. Not by one's own hand.

For the first time in his life, Shin ate well for an entire year.

The supervising guard did not halt work after the accident. At the end of the shift, he simply ordered Shin and other workers to dispose of the bodies.

In a frenzy of hard labor, thousands have been built.

None of this, of course, is even remotely possible in a country as ill governed as North Korea.

help

“Let’s Eat Two Meals Per Day.”

Another way that the government uses propaganda against its own people.

competed

Nowhere else in Camp 14 was there so much food to steal.

Shin had been uninterested in anything beyond his next meal.

government elites ended up stealing about thirty percent of the aid,

Another example of selfish acts by the government

“The children looked very sad, very emaciated, very pathetic,”

The capitalism that bloomed in the cities and small towns of North Korea weakened the government’s iron grip on everyday life

Shin heard nothing

He was to tell Shin about what he was missing.

In the months and years ahead, Shin would discover all things modern: streaming video, blogs, and international air travel. Therapists and career counselors would advise him. Preachers would show him how to pray to Jesus Christ. Friends would teach him how to brush his teeth, use a debit card, and fool around with a smartphone. From obsessive reading online, the politics, history, and geography of the two Koreas, China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States would all become familiar.

Shin had first learned about the existence of money from Park. Before the market lady yelled at him, he had watched in wonder as people used small pieces of paper—he guessed it was money—to buy food and other goods.

Shin struggled, though, to make sense of most of what he heard on the radio.

his loneliness on the cattle ranch became greater than it had been in the labor camp.

Shin seemed to be adjusting better than most.

He did not take driver’s ed. He stopped eating. He struggled to sleep. He was all but paralyzed by guilt.

“There is no winner if war breaks out, hot or cold,” Lim Seung-youl, 27, a Seoul clothing distributor, told me. “Our nation is richer and smarter than North Korea. We have to use reason over confrontation.”

In that speech, if not yet in his life, Shin had seized control of his past.