- Harden, Blaine.
Escape from Camp 14.
New York: Viking Penguin, 2012.
ISBN 978-0-14-312291-3.
-
Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a North Korean prison camp. The
doctrine of that collectivist Hell-state, as enunciated by
tyrant Kim Il Sung, is that “[E]nemies of class,
whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three
generations.” Shin (I refer to him by his family name,
as he prefers) committed no crime, but was born into slavery
in a labour camp because his parents had been condemned to
servitude there due to supposed offences. Shin grew up in an
environment so anti-human it would send shivers of envy down the spines
of Western environmentalists. In school, he saw a teacher beat
a six-year-old classmate to death with a blackboard pointer
because she had stolen and hidden five kernels of maize. He
witnessed the hanging of his mother and the execution by firing
squad of his brother because they were caught contemplating
escape from the camp, and he felt only detestation of them because
their actions would harm him.
Shin was imprisoned and tortured due to association with his mother
and brother, and assigned to work details where accidents which
killed workers were routine. Shin accepted this as simply the way
life was—he knew nothing of life outside the camp or in the
world beyond his slave state. This changed when he made the
acquaintance of Park Yong Chul, sent to the camp for some reason
after a career which had allowed him to travel abroad and meet
senior people in the North Korean ruling class. While working
together in the camp's garment factory, Park introduced Shin to a
wider world and set him to thinking about escaping the camp. The fact
that Shin, who had been recruited to observe Park and inform upon
any disloyalty he observed, instead began to conspire with him to
escape the camp was the signal act of defiance against tyranny
which changed Shin's life.
Shin pulled off a harrowing escape from the camp which left him
severely injured, lived by his wits crossing the barren countryside
of North Korea, and made it across the border to China, where he worked
as a menial farm hand and yet lived in luxury unheard of in North
Korea. Raised in the camp, his expectations for human behaviour
had nothing to do with the reality outside. As the author observes,
“Freedom, in Shin's mind, was just another word for
grilled meat.”
Freedom, beyond grilled meat, was something Shin found difficult
to cope with. After making his way to South Korea (where the state
has programs to integrate North Korean escapees into the society)
and then the United States (where, as the only person born in a
North Korean prison camp to ever escape, he was a celebrity among
groups advocating for human rights in North Korea). But growing up
in an intensely anti-human environment, cut off from all information
about the outside world, makes it difficult to cope with normal
human interactions and the flood of information those born into
liberty consider normal.
Much as with Nothing to Envy (September 2011),
this book made my blood boil. It is not just the injustice visited
upon Shin and all the prisoners of the regime who did not manage to escape,
but those in our own societies who would condemn us to comparable
servitude in the interest of a “higher good” as they define it.
May 2013 