Escape from Camp 14: Preface–Chapter 4

At dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a supervising guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered “redemption” through hard labor, but had rejected the generosity of the North Korean government.

He was educated under an assumed name in Switzerland and returned to North Korea to study in an elite university named after his grandfather.

Security forces steal the protagonist away from a loving family and a comfortable home.

Two of them, numbers 15 and 18, have reeducation zones where some fortunate detainees receive remedial instruction in the teachings of Kim Jong II and Kim II Sung.

By reputation it is the toughest of them all because of its particularly brutal working conditions, the vigilance of its guards, and the state’s unforgiving view of the seriousness of the crimes committed by its inmates, many of whom are purged officials from the ruling party, the government, and the military, along with their families.

They include at least fifteen North Koreans who were imprisoned in Camp 15’s edification district, won their release, and later turned up in South Korea.

Twelve- to fifteen-hour workdays are mandatory until prisoners die, usually of malnutrition-related illnesses, before they turn fifty.

The Washington Post ran an editorial saying that the brutality Shin endured was horrifying, but just as horrifying was the world’s indifference to the existence of North Korea’s labor camps.

It struck me that a deeper account would unveil the secret machinery that enforces totalitarian rule in North Korea.

It would also show—through the details of Shin’s improbable flight—how some of that oppressive machinery is breaking down, allowing an unworldly young escapee to wander undetected across a police state and cross into China.

Although satellite images have greatly added to outside understanding of the camps, defectors remain the primary sources of information, and their motives and credibility are not spotless.

“Everything Shin has said is consistent with what I have heard about the camps,” said David Hawk, a human rights specialist who has interviewed Shin and about sixty other former labor camp prisoners for “The Hidden Gulag,” a report that links survivor accounts with annotated satellite images.

By exploding nuclear bombs, attacking South Korea, and cultivating a reputation for hair-trigger belligerence, the government of North Korea has stirred up a semipermanent security emergency on the Korean Peninsula.

When North Korea deigns to enter into international diplomacy, it has always succeeded in shoving human rights off any negotiating table.

If Shin’s mother met her daily work quota, she could bring home food for that night and the following day.

Shin discovered her birth date—October 1,1950—from a document he saw during his interrogation in the underground prison.

Guards announced marriages three or four times a year, usually on propitious dates, such as New Year’s or Kim Jong Il’s birthday.

Jang was also given a coveted job on a nearby farm, where there were opportunities to steal corn, rice, and green vegetables.

That evening, Shin went with his mother to an “ideological struggle” meeting, a compulsory gathering for self-criticism.

Shin’s mother again fell to her knees at the meeting, as forty of her fellow farm workers followed the bowijidowori's lead and berated her for failing to fill her work quota.

Their flesh could help prevent pellagra, a sometimes fatal disease that was rampant in the camp, especially in the winter.

Prisoners with pellagra, the result of a lack of protein and niacin in their diets, suffered weakness, skin lesions, diarrhea, and dementia.

They also tried to refrain from defecating, believing that this would make them feel full and less obsessed with food.

Mental retardation caused by early childhood malnutrition disqualifies about a quarter of potential military conscripts in North Korea, according to the National Intelligence Council, a research institution that is part of the U.S. intelligence community.

With long winters and high mountains, the country lacks arable land, denies incentives to farmers, and cannot afford fuel or modern farm equipment.

The boy carried on as before, hunting rats, filching his mother’s food, and always enduring her beatings.

If they found food in a student’s pocket, they would sometimes deliver a couple of desultory whacks with a stick.

Then they carried her to the camp hospital, where her mangled toe was amputated without anesthetics and treated with salt water.

His blood, as that of the offspring of irredeemable sinners, was tainted in the worst conceivable way.

As a result, An said, guards were free to indulge their appetites and eccentricities, often preying on attractive young women prisoners, who would usually consent to sex for better treatment.

Foreign-based executives of the Korean National Insurance Corporation, the state monopoly that orchestrated the fraud, prepared a special birthday gift.

Many of them thought they were dealing with a firm from South Korea, the expert said, while others were unaware that North Korea is a closed totalitarian state with sham courts and no international accountability.

But for residents of Pyongyang, electricity is intermittent at best, hot water is rarely available, and travel outside the country is difficult except for diplomats and state-sponsored businessmen.

It left the Dear Leader with a noticeable limp and signaled the emergence of Kim Jong Eun from obscurity.

That uncanny resemblance, as Kim Jong Eun moved to consolidate power after the death of his father, seemed orchestrated.

But the wife of Kim Jong Eun became a state-approved showpiece, playing a Dior-accessorized Kate Middleton to his porcine Prince William.

A year after his father died, Kim Jong Eun solidified his legitimacy and his hold on power with the successful launch of a three-stage rocket that put a satellite into orbit.

It put the world on notice that North Korea was moving ever closer to having the ability to strike the continental United States with a nuclear-armed ballistic missile.

He also invited Hannah Song, his then-boss and de facto guardian, to listen in.

I was terrified of a backlash, of people asking me, ‘Are you even human?’