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BLAINE HARDEN

FROM THE DEATH CAMP

North Korean citizens remaining in the camps

There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.

PREFACE. Educational moment............XVII

INTRODUCTION He has never heard the word "love".....1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2. His school years...............................35

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6 .........74

CHAPTER 7 ..............82

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12. Sewing machines and denunciations .............. 121

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19. China............................................... 189

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21. Credit Cards....................................211

CHAPTER 22 South Koreans all this is not very interesting .............................................. .222

CHAPTER 23

EPILOGUE. You can't run away from the past .................... 249

AFTERWORD............................................... 256

APPLICATION. The Ten Rules of Camp 14 ................262

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................. 268

NOTES................................................... 272

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EDUCATIONAL MOMENT

The first memory in his life was the execution. His mother took him to a wheat field near the Taedong River, where the guards had already rounded up several thousand prisoners. Excited by so many people, the boy crawled under the feet of the adults into the very first row and saw the guards tying a man to a wooden pole.

Shin In Geun was only four years old, and he, of course, still could not understand the meaning of the speech delivered before the execution. But, being present at dozens of other executions in next years, he will hear more than once the head of the firing squad, addressed to the crowd, that the wise and just government of North Korea gave the condemned to death the opportunity to "atone his fault" through hard work, but he rejected this generous offer and refused to embark on the path of correction. To prevent the prisoner from shouting the last curses at the state, which was about to take his life, the guards stuffed a handful of river pebbles into his mouth, and then covered his head with a bag.

That - the very first - time, Shin watched with all his eyes as three guards took the condemned man at gunpoint. Each of them fired three shots. The roar of shots frightened the boy so much that he recoiled and fell backward on the ground, but hurriedly got to his feet and managed to see how the guards untied the limp, blood-stained body from the post, wrapped him in a blanket and threw him onto the cart.

In Camp 14, a special prison for political enemies of socialist Korea, more than two prisoners were allowed to gather only during executions. Everyone had to come to them without exception. Demonstrative executions (and the fear they instilled in people) were used in the camp as an educational moment.

Shin's teachers (and tutors) at the camp were guards. They chose his mother and father. They taught him to always remember that any violator of the camp order deserves death. On the hillside near his school was inscribed the motto: ALL LIFE ACCORDING TO RULES AND REGULATIONS. The boy learned well the ten rules of behavior in the camp, "Ten Commandments", as he later called them, and still remembers them by heart. The first rule was: "those who are detained while trying to escape are shot immediately."

Ten years after that execution, the guards again gathered a huge crowd on the field, only next to the wooden pole they also built a gallows.

This time he arrived there in the back seat of a car driven by one of the guards. Shin's hands were handcuffed, and his eyes were covered with a rag. His father was sitting next to him. Also in handcuffs and also with a bandage over his eyes.

They have just been released from the underground prison located inside Camp 14, where they spent eight months. Before their release, they were given a condition: to give a non-disclosure agreement on everything that happened to them underground.

In this prison, inside the prison, Shin and his father were tortured to force a confession. The guards wanted to know about the failed escape attempt by Shin's mother and his only brother. The soldiers undressed Shin, hung him over the fire and slowly lowered him. He passed out as his flesh began to fry.

However, he did not confess to anything. He simply had nothing to confess. He did not plan to run away with his mother and brother. He sincerely believed in what he was taught from birth in the camp: firstly, it was impossible to escape, and secondly, having heard any talk about escaping, it was necessary to report them to the guards. Shin had no fantasies about life outside the camp even in his sleep.

The guards at the camp school never taught Shin what any North Korean schoolboy knows by heart: that the American "imperialist degenerates" are plotting to attack his socialist homeland, ruin and humiliate it, that the "puppet regime" of South Korea dutifully serves its American overlord, that North Korea is a great country, the courage and wisdom of its leaders is envied by the whole world ... He simply did not even know about the fact of the existence of South Korea, China or the United States.

Unlike his compatriots, little Shin was not surrounded by the ubiquitous portraits of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Moreover, he never saw any photographs or statues of his father, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, who remains the Eternal President of the DPRK despite his death in 1994.

Although Shin was not so important for the regime, to spend time and effort on his indoctrination, he was taught to inform on relatives and classmates from an early age. As a reward for squealing, he was given food, and also allowed, along with the guards, to beat the children devoted to them. Classmates, in turn, pawned and beat him. when the guard removed the bandage from his eyes, Shin saw the crowd, the wooden pole, the gallows and thought that he was about to be executed. However, no one began to put a handful of stones in his mouth. The handcuffs were removed from him. The soldier led him to the front row of the waiting crowd. He and his father were assigned the role of observers.

The guards dragged a middle-aged woman to the gallows, and tied her to a post young man. They were Shin's mother and older brother.

The soldier tightened the noose around his mother's neck. The mother tried to catch Shin's eye, but he averted his eyes. When the convulsions stopped and her body went limp, three guards shot Brother Shin. Each of them fired three shots.

Shin watched them die and was glad he wasn't in their shoes. He was very angry at his mother and brother for trying to escape. And although he did not admit this to anyone for 15 years, Shin was sure that it was he who was to blame for their death.

Escape from the death camp

INTRODUCTION:

HE NEVER HEARD THE WORDS "LOVE"

Nine years after his mother's execution, Shin squeezed between rows of electrified barbed wire and ran across a snowy plain. It happened on November 2, 2005. Before him, no one born in North Korean political prison camps had ever escaped. According to all available data, Shin was the first and on this moment the only one who made it.

He was 23, and outside the barbed-wire camp, he did not know a single living soul.

A month later, he crossed the border to the Chinese side. Two years later he was already living in South Korea. Four years later, he settled in Southern California and began working as an authorized representative of the American human rights organization Freedom in North Korea” (“Liberty in North Korea,” or “LiNK”).

In California, he rode his bike to work, supported the Cleveland Indians baseball team (because South Korean Shin Soo Choo played for them), and ate lunch at the In-N-Out Burger two or three times a week, believing that hamburgers You won't find better ones there in the whole world.

Now his name is Shin Dong Hyuk. He changed his name immediately after arriving in South Korea, trying to start new life is the life of a free man. Today he is a handsome man with a tenacious, always wary look. One of the dentists in Los Angeles had to work hard on his teeth, which he had no opportunity to clean in the camp. In general, he is almost perfectly healthy. But his body has turned into clear evidence of all the hardships and hardships of his childhood spent in one of the labor camps, the very existence of which North Korea categorically denies.

From constant malnutrition, he remained very short and thin: his height is less than 170 centimeters, and his weight is only 55 kilograms. His hands are twisted from overwork. The lower back and buttocks are covered with burn scars. On the skin of the abdomen, just above the pubis, punctures are visible from the iron hook that held his body over the torture fire. His ankles were scarred from the fetters by which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His legs from ankles to knees are mangled with burns and scars from the electrified barbed wire cordons that failed to hold him in Camp 14.

Shin is about the same age as Kim Jong Un, the plump, chubby third son and Kim Cher Il's official "great heir". Being almost peers, these two antipodes personify endless privileges and total poverty, that is, the two poles of life in North Korea, a formally classless society, where in fact the fate of a person depends entirely on blood relationship and the merits or sins of his ancestors.

Kim Jong Un was born a communist prince and raised behind palace walls. Under an assumed name, he completed his secondary education in Switzerland before returning to North Korea to study at an elite university named after his grandfather. Due to its origin, it is above any laws and has unlimited possibilities. In 2010, despite the complete lack of military experience, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army.

Shin was born a slave and grew up behind a fence made of barbed wire, through which electricity was passed. high voltage. He received elementary skills in reading and counting at the camp school. His blood was hopelessly stained by the crimes of his father's brothers, and therefore he had no rights and opportunities. The state had given him a sentence in advance: overwork and an early death from diseases caused by malnutrition ... and all this without trial, investigation, the possibility of appeal ... and in complete secrecy.

Stories about people who managed to survive in concentration camps are most often built on a fairly standard plot scheme. The state security agencies take the protagonist from a cozy home, tearing him away from his loving relatives and friends. To survive, he has to drop everything moral principles and human feelings, cease to be a man and turn into a "lone wolf".

The most famous story of this type is probably "Night" Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel. The 13-year-old narrator in this book explains his torment, telling about the normal life that existed before he, along with his whole family, was herded into wagons going to German death camps. Wiesel studied the Talmud every day. His father was the owner of a store, looked after the order in their native Romanian village. There was always a grandfather nearby, with whom they celebrated all the Jewish holidays. But after the whole family died in the camps, Wiesel felt “loneliness, terrible loneliness in a world without God, without man. Without love and compassion."

But Shin's survival story is very different.

He was beaten by his mother, and he saw in her only a rival in the fight for food. His father, who was only allowed to sleep with his mother five nights a year by the guards, completely ignored him. Shin barely knew his brother. The children in the camp were at enmity and mocked each other. Among other things in his life, Shin learned that the key to survival is the ability to snitch on others first.

The words "love", "pity" and "family" had no meaning to him, God did not die in his soul and did not disappear from his life. Shin never even heard of O god. In the preface to his Night, Wiesel wrote that the child's knowledge of death and evil "should be limited to what can be learned about them from literature."

Shin at Camp 14 did not know that literature existed. He saw only one book there, a Korean grammar book. She was often held in the hands of a teacher dressed in military uniform, who wore a holster with a revolver on his belt, and once beat one of his classmates to death with a heavy pointer.

Unlike those who fought for survival in concentration camps, Shin never felt that he was torn out of a normal civilized life and cast down to the bottom of hell. He was born and raised in this hell. He accepted his laws and regulations. He considered this hell to be his home.

At the moment, we can say that the North Korean labor camps lasted twice as long as the Soviet Gulag and 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. The location of these camps is no longer in dispute: high-definition satellite photos that anyone with Internet access can view on Google Earth show gigantic, fenced-off areas among North Korean mountain ranges.

South Korean government organizations estimate that there are about 154,000 prisoners in these camps. The US State Department and several human rights groups put the prison population at 200,000. After examining decades of satellite imagery of the camps, Amnesty International analysts noted that new construction began on their territory in 2011, and it was suggested with great concern that this was due to a sharp increase in the population of such areas. It is likely that in this way the North Korean intelligence services are trying to eliminate the possibility of popular unrest in the bud during the transition of power from Kim Jong Il to his young and untested son. (1)

According to South Korean intelligence and human rights organizations, there are six such camps in the country. The largest stretches for 50 km in length and 40 km in width, i.e., it is larger than Los Angeles in area. Most of the camps are surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences with watchtowers, along which armed guards constantly patrol. In two camps - No. 15 and No. 18 - there are zones of revolutionization, where the most successful of the prisoners undergo an ideological retraining course and study the works of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. Those who are able to memorize these teachings and prove their loyalty to the regime may get a chance to go free, but even in this case, they will remain under the close supervision of state security for the rest of their lives.

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The rest of the camps are "zones of complete control" where prisoners considered "incorrigible" (2) are brought to death by backbreaking labor.

It is such an area of total control that is Camp 14, where Shin lived - the most terrible of all. It is here that many party, state and military officials who suffered in the “purges” are sent, often with their families. This camp, founded in 1959, located in the central region of North Korea (near the town of Kaechon in the province of South Pyongan), holds up to 15,000 prisoners. Spread across deep mountain gorges and valleys, a territory about 50 km long and 25 km wide is home to agricultural enterprises, mines and factories.

Shin is the only person born in the labor camp who managed to escape, but is currently in free world there are at least 60 other eyewitnesses who have been in such camps. (3) At least 15 of them are North Korean citizens who underwent ideological re-education in the special zone of Camp 15, thus earning their freedom and later managed to cross over to South Korea. The former guards of other labor camps also managed to escape to South Korea. A former lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army, Kim Yong, who once held high posts in Pyongyang, spent six years in two camps and managed to escape by hiding in a train car carrying coal.

After carefully studying the testimonies of these people, representatives of the South Korean Bar Association in Seoul made the maximum detailed description Everyday life in the camps. Every year they hold several demonstration executions. Others are beaten to death or shot by guards with virtually unlimited licenses for murder and sexual assault. Most of the prisoners are employed in growing crops, extracting coal from mines, sewing army uniforms, and producing cement. The prisoners' daily ration consists of corn, cabbage, and salt, in quantities just enough to keep them from starving to death. Their teeth fall out, their gums turn black, and their bones lose strength. By the age of 40, most of them can no longer straighten up and walk in full height. Prisoners receive one or two sets of clothes a year, so they have to live, sleep and work in dirty rags, without soap, socks, mittens, underwear and toilet paper. They are required to work 12-15 hours a day until death, which occurs, as a rule, from diseases caused by malnutrition, even before the age of 50. (4) Accurate data on the number of dead is almost impossible to obtain, but according to estimates by Western government and human rights organizations, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people died in these camps.

In most cases, North Korean citizens are sent to the camps without trial or investigation, and many of them die there without knowing the nature of the charges or the verdict. Employees of the State Security Department (parts of the police apparatus with 270,000 employees in the state (5)) pick up people directly from their homes, most often at night. The principle of extending the guilt of the convict to all members of his family has the force of law in North Korea. Together with the "criminal" his parents and children are often arrested. Kim Il Sung formulated this law in 1972 as follows: "The seed of our class enemies, whoever they may be, must be eradicated from society in three generations."

The first time I saw Shin was in the winter of 2008. We agreed to meet at a Korean restaurant in downtown Seoul. Shin was talkative and very hungry. During our conversation, he ate several portions of rice with beef. As we ate, he told the interpreter and me about what it was like to watch his mother being hanged. He blamed her for the torture suffered in the camp and even admitted that he still hates her for it. He also said that he had never been good son' but didn't explain why.

He said that in all his camp years he never heard the word "love", especially from his mother, a woman whom he continues to despise even after her death. He first heard about the concept of forgiveness in a South Korean church. But he did not understand its essence. According to him, asking for forgiveness in Camp 14 simply meant “begging not to punish.”

He wrote a book of memoirs about his experiences in the camp, but few people in South Korea were interested in it. At the time of our meeting, he had no job, no money, he was heavily in debt for an apartment and did not know what to do next. The rules at Camp 14, on pain of death, forbade intimate contact with women. Now he wants to start normal life and find a girlfriend, but he, in his own words, did not even know where to start looking and how to do it.

After dinner, he took me to his squalid, but nonetheless prohibitively expensive Seoul apartment. Stubbornly trying not to look me in the eye, he nevertheless showed me his severed finger and scarred back. He allowed me to take a picture of himself. Despite all the suffering he had endured, his face was quite childish. He was then 26 years old... three years have passed since the escape from Camp 14.

I was 56 at the time of this memorable meeting. As a Washington Post correspondent, I have been looking for a story for more than a year to explain how the North Korean authorities use repression in an attempt to save their country from total collapse.

"Collapse" political systems became my specialty in journalism. For almost three decades I worked for the Washington Post and the New York Times, reporting on the "failed states" of Africa, the collapse of the communist bloc in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the painfully slow stagnation of Burma under the rule of the generals. To any observer in the free world, it seems that North Korea is already ripe (in fact, long overdue) for a similar collapse. In a region where literally everyone was getting richer, the people of that country were getting poorer, hungrier, and more and more isolated from the world.

Nevertheless, Kim Jong Il did not loosen his iron grip. Totalitarianism and repression helped him keep his half-dead state afloat.

For me, the main problem that prevented me from demonstrating how the government of Kim Jong Il succeeds was the complete closedness of the country. In the rest of the world, brutal totalitarian regimes do not always succeed in sealing their borders tightly. I had the opportunity to work openly in Mengistu Haile Mariam's Ethiopia, Joseph-Desire Mobutu's Congo and Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. I managed to write about Burma by sneaking in under the guise of a tourist.

But the North Korean regime is much more cautious. Foreign reporters, especially Americans, are very rarely allowed into the country. I was able to visit North Korea only once. There I saw only what my “guardians” from the state security wanted to show me, but about real life I knew almost nothing about the country. Journalists who try to enter North Korea illegally risk being jailed for months or even years for espionage. The release of these people used to require the intervention of former American presidents. (6)

Because of these restrictions, journalistic coverage of North Korea is mostly empty and insipid. Such reports, as a rule, are written somewhere in Seoul, Tokyo or Beijing and begin with a story about another Pyongyang provocation, for example, a civilian tourist who was shot dead or a warship sunk. Then comes a long-weary set of journalistic clichés: U.S. and South Korean officials have expressed extreme indignation, Chinese officials have called for restraint, leading analysts have speculated on how things will play out, and so on. I have written quite a few of these myself.

But with the advent of Sheen, all these reporting standards collapsed. His life story was the key that opened the previously tightly locked doors and allowed any outsider to see how the Kim clan uses child slave labor and kills the citizens of their country in order to maintain power. A few days after we met, Sheen's pretty face and the horrors he had endured appeared on the front page of the Washington Post.

"Wow!" — an e-mail with this one word came to me from the chairman of the board of directors of the Washington Post Company, Donald E. Graham, on the morning of the publication of the material. A German filmmaker visiting the Washington Holocaust Museum decided to make a documentary on Sheen's life the day the article was published (7). The Washington Post ran an editorial stating that as horrific as what Shin had to endure was, even more horrifying is the world's indifference to the existence of labor camps in North Korea.

“Today, American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb the railroads leading to Hitler’s death camps,” the last lines of this article said, “but in a generation, their children may ask why the countries of the West were inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps."

Sheen's story seems to have touched the nerve and ordinary readers. People sent letters and emails offering to help him with money or housing, trying to support him with prayers.

A couple from Columbus, Ohio, read the article, contacted Sheen, and paid for his relocation to the US. Lowell and Linda Dai told Sheen that they would like to be the parents he never had.

A Korean-American woman, Harim Lee, who read my article, had a dream to meet Shin. They later met in southern California and fell in love.

My article was just a very superficial account of Shin's life, and at some point I thought that a deeper study of his history would help us uncover the mystery from the mechanisms of the totalitarian regime in North Korea. A specific study of the details of Shin's incredible escape can also demonstrate that some parts of this car have already become completely unusable, as a result of which the young fugitive, who is completely unaware of the big world, was able to go unnoticed through almost the entire territory of the police state and move to China. Another result will be no less important: no one who has read a book about a boy who was born in North Korea only to die from overwork will no longer be able to ignore the existence of the camps.

I asked Shin if he would be interested in this project. He meditated for nine months. All this time, human rights activists from South Korea, Japan and the United States urged him to agree to cooperation, saying that published on English language the book will help people all over the world to understand what is happening in North Korea, will provide an opportunity to put serious international pressure on its authorities, and also, probably, will allow him personally to solve his financial problems. When Shin agreed, we agreed to conduct seven series of interviews: first in Seoul, then in Torrance, California, and finally in Seattle, Washington. We agreed to share the proceeds from the book in half. But I got full control over its content.

Shin began keeping a diary in early 2006, about a year after he fled North Korea. He continued to write and ended up in one of the Seoul hospitals with severe depression. Exactly these diary entries formed the basis of his book of memoirs "Escape to the Big World", published in Korean in 2007 by the Center for Collecting Data on Human Rights Violations in North Korea.

The content of this book has become Starting point for our joint work. And here's what's interesting: it always seemed to me that the tire was scary with me talk. often I felt like a dentist who undertook to drill his teeth without anesthesia. This painful procedure for Shin dragged on for more than two years. He tried his best to make himself trust me. In general, he readily admitted that it would take a lot of effort to force himself to trust not only me, but also any other person. This distrust was an inevitable consequence of the upbringing received in childhood. The guards taught him to betray and sell out his parents and friends, and he still cannot get rid of the certainty that all other people will do the same to him.

While working on this book, I, too, had to contend with a sense of incredulity. Sheen misled me by talking about his role in the death of his mother in the very first interview, and then continued to do the same in subsequent conversations. As a result, when he suddenly began to talk about it in a completely different way, I wondered if some other episodes of his story were not a figment of fantasy.

It is impossible to verify the facts of what happened in North Korea. No foreigner has ever been able to visit North Korean political prison camps. Accounts of what goes on inside these camps cannot be confirmed by independent sources. Satellite photos have helped to better understand what these camps are like, but the main source of information about them is still defectors, whose motivations and veracity are often in some doubt. Often, when they find themselves in South Korea or other countries, these people seek to make money by any means and, accordingly, willingly confirm tendentious statements and rumors spread by human rights activists, militant anti-communists and right-wing ideologues. Some fugitives refuse to speak at all unless they are paid up front. Others repeat the same sensational stories, heard from others but not experienced first hand.

Although Shin continued to treat me with a certain amount of distrust, he answered every question I could think of about his past. The circumstances of his life may seem completely implausible, but they turned out to be quite consonant with what other former prisoners and camp guards told about their experiences.

“Sheen’s story is consistent with what I have heard about the camps from other sources,” said human rights expert David Hock, who spoke with Sheen and sixty other former labor camp inmates while working on the Hidden Gulag report, in which stories fugitives were compared with annotated satellite images of the camps.

The first memory in his life was the execution.

His mother took him to a wheat field near the Taedong River, where the guards had already rounded up several thousand prisoners. Excited by so many people, the boy crawled under the feet of the adults into the very first row and saw the guards tying a man to a wooden pole.

Shin In Geun was only four years old, and he, of course, still could not understand the meaning of the speech delivered before the execution. But as he attended dozens of other executions in the years to come, he would hear more than once the head of the firing squad tell the crowd that the wise and just government of North Korea gave the death-row man the opportunity to “redeem himself” through hard work, but he rejected this generous offer and refused to take the path of correction. To prevent the prisoner from shouting the last curses at the state, which was about to take his life, the guards stuffed a handful of river pebbles into his mouth, and then covered his head with a bag.

Shin's teachers (and tutors) at the camp were guards. They chose his mother and father. They taught him to always remember that any violator of the camp order deserves death. On the hillside near his school was inscribed the motto: ALL LIFE ACCORDING TO RULES AND REGULATIONS. The boy learned well the ten rules of behavior in the camp, "Ten Commandments", as he later called them, and still remembers them by heart. The first rule was: Detainees attempting to escape are shot immediately.».

Ten years after that execution, the guards again gathered a huge crowd on the field, only next to the wooden pole they also built a gallows.

Although Shin was not so important for the regime, to spend time and effort on his indoctrination, he was taught to inform on relatives and classmates from an early age. As a reward for squealing, he was given food, and also allowed, along with the guards, to beat the children devoted to them. Classmates, in turn, pawned and beat him. When the guard removed the blindfold from his eyes, Shin saw the crowd, the wooden pole, the gallows, and thought that he was about to be executed. However, no one began to put a handful of stones in his mouth. The handcuffs were removed from him. The soldier led him to the front row of the waiting crowd. He and his father were assigned the role of observers.

The guards dragged a middle-aged woman to the gallows, and tied a young man to a post. They were Shin's mother and older brother.

There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.

"Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."

— Bill Keller, The New York Times

"An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" Escape from the death camp tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... "Escape from the death camp" the story of Sheen's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start a new life, this is a bewitching, amazing book that should be made required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.

– The Seattle Times

“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. "Escape from the death camp"- this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.

— Terry Hong, Christian Science Monitor

"If you have a heart, then "Escape from the death camp" Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, "Escape from the death camp" turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.

"An outstanding story, a heart-searing story about the awakening of a personality in a prisoner of the most severe prison in North Korea."

– The Wall Street Journal

“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Not distracted from main theme book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.

– Associated Press

“In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin’s escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film “The Great Escape”. If we talk about it, as about an episode from the life ordinary person She rips her heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw his family only as rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.

– The Daily Beast

“Amazing biographical book… If you really want to understand what is going on inside the rogue state, you simply must read it. This is a heartbreaking story of courage and a desperate struggle for survival, dark in places, but ultimately life-affirming."

– CNN

IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes the whole amazing odyssey of Shin, from the first childhood memories - a public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - to his activities in South Korean and American human rights organizations ... By retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral scourge of humanity, existing 12 times longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.

— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Harden, with great skill, intertwines assessments of the current state of the entire North Korean society with the personal history of the life of the hero of the book. He clearly and clearly shows us the internal mechanics of this totalitarian state, its international politics and the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophes taking place in it ... This small book makes a strong impression. The author operates only with facts and refuses to exploit the emotions of the reader, but these facts are enough to make our hearts ache, so that we begin to look for additional information and wonder how we could accelerate the onset of big changes.

— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian

“A story that is fundamentally different from all others ... Especially from other books about North Korea, including the one I wrote. "Escape from the death camp" shows us the unparalleled brutality on which the regime of Kim Jong Il rested. Veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden of The Washington Post has a masterful storytelling… An honest book, it shows on every page.”

“Harden tells a story that is breathtaking. The reader follows as Shin becomes aware of the existence outside world, normal human relationships, devoid of evil and hatred, how he finds hope ... and how painfully he goes to a new life. A book that every adult should read.

– Library Journal

“When we get to know the main character, doomed to backbreaking forced labor, deadly enmity with his own kind and life in a world where there is not a drop of human warmth, it seems to us that we are reading a dystopian thriller. But this is not fiction – this is a real life biography of Shin Dong Hyuk.”

– Publishers Weekly

"A bone-chilling, amazing story of escaping from a country no one knows anything about."

– Kirkus Reviews

"Talking about amazing life Sheena, Harden opens our eyes to a North Korea that exists in reality, not in high-profile newspaper headlines, and celebrates the desire of a person to remain a person.

“Blaine Harden of The Washington Post is an accomplished reporter who has traveled to many hotspots such as the Congo, Serbia and Ethiopia. And all these countries, he makes clear in no uncertain terms, can be considered quite successful compared to North Korea ... For this dark, terrifying, but, in the end, gives a certain hope book about a man with a crippled soul, who survived only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and who did not find happiness even in freedom, Harden deserves not just admiration, but much, much more.

– Literary Review

"Sheen's life story, which at times is simply painful to read, tells of his physical and psychological escape from a closed prison society where there is no place for human feelings, and a journey to the joys and difficulties of life in a free world where a person can feel like a person."

“There are a lot of good books coming out this year. But this book is absolutely unique… Shin Dong Hyuk – only person, who was born in a North Korean political prison camp, who managed to escape and leave the country. He described his adventures in detail in conversations with veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden, who later wrote this outstanding book ... I cannot say that there are answers to the questions posed in the book. But one question is very important. And it sounds like this: “Now American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb the railroads leading to the Nazi death camps. But literally in a generation, their children may ask why Western countries have been inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps. Reading this book is hard. But we have to".

— Don Graham, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Washington Post

"An unforgettable adventure, the coming-of-age story of a man who had the scariest childhood imaginable"

– Slate

Sheen's map of Camp 14

On the big map:

Taedong River

Camp fence - Camp fence

Guard post - Guard posts

1. The house where Shin Dong Hyuk lived

2. The field where the executions took place

3. Shin School

4. The place where Shin's class was attacked by the children of the guards

Source 5The dam where Shin worked and fished out the bodies of the drowned

6. The pig farm where Shin worked

7The Garment Factory Where Shin Learned About The Outside World

8The hedgerow where Shin escaped from the camp

On a small map:

China - China

Russia - Russia

Camp 14 - Camp 14

Korea Bay

Pyongyang – Pyongyang

Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan

Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea

South Korea - South Korea

Shin's escape route from Camp 14 to China

Approximate journey length: 560 kilometers

On the big map:

China - China

Yalu River - Yalu River

North Korea - North Korea

Camp 14 - Camp 14

Taedong River

Bukchang - Bukchang

Maengsan - Mansan

Hamhung - Hamhung

Korea Bay

Pyongyang – Pyongyang

Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea

South Korea - South Korea

Seoul - Seoul

Helong – Helong

Russia - Russia

Tumen River

Musan - Musan

Chongjin – Chongjin

Gilju - Kilju

Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan

On the small map:

Map name - KOREA REGION

Otherwise, everything is the same as in any geographical atlas.

Blaine Harden

Escape from the death camp

North Korean citizens remaining in the camps

...

Blaine Harden

ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14:

One Man\"s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea

to Freedom in the West

There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.

...

"Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."

— Bill Keller, The New York Times

...

"An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" Escape from the death camp tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... "Escape from the death camp" the story of Sheen's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start a new life, this is a bewitching, amazing book that should be made required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.

– The Seattle Times

...

“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. "Escape from the death camp"- this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.

— Terry Hong Christian Science Monitor

...

"If you have a heart, then "Escape from the death camp" Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, "Escape from the death camp" turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.

...

"An outstanding story, a heart-searing story about the awakening of a personality in a prisoner of the most severe prison in North Korea."

– The Wall Street Journal

...

“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Without digressing from the main theme of the book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.

– Associated Press

...

"In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin's escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film" big escape". If we talk about it as an episode from the life of an ordinary person, then it tears the heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw his family only as rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.

– The Daily Beast

...

– CNN

...

IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes the whole amazing odyssey of Shin, from the first childhood memories - a public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - to his activities in South Korean and American human rights organizations ... By retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral scourge of humanity, existing 12 times longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.

— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star Tribune

...

— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian

...

“A story that is fundamentally different from all others ... Especially from other books about North Korea, including the one I wrote. "Escape from the death camp" shows us the unparalleled brutality on which the regime of Kim Jong Il rested. Veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden from The Washington Post leads his story simply masterfully ... An honest book, you can see it on every page.

...

“Harden tells a story that is breathtaking. The reader follows how Shin learns about the existence of the outside world, normal human relationships, devoid of evil and hatred, how he gains hope ... and how painfully he goes to a new life. A book that every adult should read.

– Library Journal

...

– Publishers Weekly

...

"A bone-chilling, amazing story of escaping from a country no one knows anything about."

– Kirkus Reviews

...

“By talking about the amazing life of Sheen, Harden opens our eyes to North Korea, which exists in reality, and not in high-profile newspaper headlines, and celebrates the desire of a person to remain a person.”

...

"Blaine Harden from Washington Post is an experienced reporter who has traveled to many hot spots, such as the Congo, Serbia and Ethiopia. And all these countries, he makes clear in no uncertain terms, can be considered quite successful compared to North Korea ... For this dark, terrifying, but, in the end, gives a certain hope book about a man with a crippled soul, who survived only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and who did not find happiness even in freedom, Harden deserves not just admiration, but much, much more.

– Literary Review

...

“There are a lot of good books coming out this year. But this book is absolutely unique... Shin Dong Hyuk is the only person born in a North Korean political prison camp who managed to escape and leave the country. He described his adventures in detail in conversations with veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden, who later wrote this outstanding book ... I cannot say that there are answers to the questions posed in the book. But one question is very important. And it sounds like this: “Now American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb the railroads leading to the Nazi death camps. But literally in a generation, their children may ask why Western countries have been inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps. Reading this book is hard. But we have to".

North Korean citizens remaining in the camps

ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14:

One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea

to Freedom in the West

True Story Series

"Lost in Shangri-La"

Real story about how an exciting journey turned into a plane crash and a desperate struggle for survival on a wild island inhabited by cannibal natives. Recognized as "BEST BOOK OF 2011".

“In the shadow of eternal beauty. Life, death and love in the slums of Mumbai

The best book of 2012, according to more than 20 reputable publications. The heroes of the book live in the slums, the poorest quarter of India, located in the shadow of the ultra-modern Mumbai airport. They don't have a real home permanent job and confidence in tomorrow. But they seize every opportunity to break out of extreme poverty, and their attempts lead to incredible consequences ...

"12 years of slavery. A true story of betrayal, kidnapping and fortitude"

The book of Solomon Northup, which became a confession about the darkest period of his life. A period when despair almost suffocated the hope of breaking out of the chains of slavery and regaining the freedom and dignity that had been taken from him. The text for translation and illustrations are taken from the original 1855 edition. Based on this book, the film "12 Years a Slave", nominated for "Oscar-2014", was filmed.

"Escape from the Death Camp (North Korea)"

International bestseller based on real events. The book was translated into 24 languages and formed the basis documentary film that has received worldwide recognition. Scandal book! The hero of the book, Shin, is the only person in the world who was born in a North Korean concentration camp and was able to escape from there.

“Tomorrow I go to kill. Memories of a boy soldier

Confessions of a young man from Sierra Leone who, after a militant attack on his hometown, lost all his family members and was forced to join the army at the age of 13. By the age of 16, he was already a professional killer who did not ask too many questions. “Tomorrow I Go to Kill” allows us to look at the war through the eyes of a teenager, moreover, a teenage soldier.

About the book

There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.

[North] Korea Central News Agency, March 6, 2009

"Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."

— Bill Keller, The New York Times

"An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... the story of Sheen's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start a new life, this is a bewitching, amazing book that should be made required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.

– The Seattle Times

“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. - this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.

— Terry Hong Christian Science Monitor

"If you have a heart, then Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.

— Mitchell Zukoff, best-selling author of Lost in Shangri-La

"An outstanding story, a heart-searing story about the awakening of a personality in a prisoner of the most severe prison in North Korea."

– The Wall Street Journal

“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Without digressing from the main theme of the book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.

– Associated Press

"In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin's escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film" big escape". If we talk about it as an episode from the life of an ordinary person, then it tears the heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw his family only as rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.

– The Daily Beast

“Amazing biographical book… If you really want to understand what is going on inside the rogue state, you simply must read it. This is a heartbreaking story of courage and a desperate struggle for survival, dark in places, but ultimately life-affirming."

IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes the whole amazing odyssey of Shin, from the first childhood memories - a public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - to his activities in South Korean and American human rights organizations ... By retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral scourge of humanity, existing 12 times longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.

— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Harden, with great skill, intertwines assessments of the current state of the entire North Korean society with the personal history of the life of the hero of the book. He clearly and clearly shows us the internal mechanics of this totalitarian state, its international politics and the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophes taking place in it ... This small book makes a strong impression. The author operates only with facts and refuses to exploit the emotions of the reader, but these facts are enough to make our hearts ache, so that we begin to look for additional information and wonder how we could accelerate the onset of big changes.

— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian

“A story that is fundamentally different from all others ... Especially from other books about North Korea, including the one I wrote. shows us the unparalleled brutality on which the regime of Kim Jong Il rested. Veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden from The Washington Post leads his story simply masterfully ... An honest book, you can see it on every page.

“Harden tells a story that is breathtaking. The reader follows how Shin learns about the existence of the outside world, normal human relationships, devoid of evil and hatred, how he gains hope ... and how painfully he goes to a new life. A book that every adult should read.

– Library Journal

“When we get to know the main character, doomed to backbreaking forced labor, deadly enmity with his own kind and life in a world where there is not a drop of human warmth, it seems to us that we are reading a dystopian thriller. But this is not fiction – this is a real life biography of Shin Dong Hyuk.”

– Publishers Weekly

"A bone-chilling, amazing story of escaping from a country no one knows anything about."

– Kirkus Reviews

“By talking about the amazing life of Sheen, Harden opens our eyes to North Korea, which exists in reality, and not in high-profile newspaper headlines, and celebrates the desire of a person to remain a person.”

- Marcus Noland, author of " Evidence of Transformation: Refugee Stories of North Korea»

"Blaine Harden from Washington Post is an experienced reporter who has traveled to many hot spots, such as the Congo, Serbia and Ethiopia. And all these countries, he makes clear in no uncertain terms, can be considered quite successful compared to North Korea ... For this dark, terrifying, but, in the end, gives a certain hope book about a man with a crippled soul, who survived only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and who did not find happiness even in freedom, Harden deserves not just admiration, but much, much more.

– Literary Review

"Sheen's life story, which at times is simply painful to read, tells of his physical and psychological escape from a closed prison society where there is no place for human feelings, and a journey to the joys and difficulties of life in a free world where a person can feel like a person."

– Kongdan Oh, co-author of The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom »

“There are a lot of good books coming out this year. But this book is absolutely unique... Shin Dong Hyuk is the only person born in a North Korean political prison camp who managed to escape and leave the country. He described his adventures in detail in conversations with veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden, who later wrote this outstanding book ... I cannot say that there are answers to the questions posed in the book. But one question is very important. And it sounds like this: “Now American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb the railroads leading to the Nazi death camps. But literally in a generation, their children may ask why Western countries have been inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps. Reading this book is hard. But we have to".

– Don Graham, Chairman of the Board of Directors The Washington Post

"An unforgettable adventure, the coming-of-age story of a man who had the scariest childhood imaginable"

Sheen's map of Camp 14

On the big map:

Taedong River

Camp fence - Camp fence

Guard post - Guard posts

1. The house where Shin Dong Hyuk lived

2. The field where the executions took place

3. Shin School

4. The place where Shin's class was attacked by the children of the guards

Source 5The dam where Shin worked and fished out the bodies of the drowned

6. The pig farm where Shin worked

7The Garment Factory Where Shin Learned About The Outside World

8The hedgerow where Shin escaped from the camp

On a small map:

China - China

Russia - Russia

Camp 14 - Camp 14

Korea Bay

Pyongyang – Pyongyang

Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan

Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea

South Korea - South Korea

Shin's escape route from Camp 14 to China

Approximate journey length: 560 kilometers

On the big map:

China - China

Yalu River - Yalu River

North Korea - North Korea

Camp 14 - Camp 14

Taedong River

Bukchang - Bukchang

Maengsan - Mansan

Hamhung - Hamhung

Korea Bay

Pyongyang – Pyongyang

Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea

South Korea - South Korea

Seoul - Seoul

Helong – Helong

Russia - Russia

Tumen River

Musan - Musan

Chongjin – Chongjin

Gilju - Kilju

Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan

On the small map:

Map name - KOREA REGION

Otherwise, everything is the same as in any geographical atlas.

Preface. educational moment

The first memory in his life was the execution.

Shin's teachers (and tutors) at the camp were guards. They chose his mother and father. They taught him to always remember that any violator of the camp order deserves death. On the hillside near his school was inscribed the motto: ALL LIFE ACCORDING TO RULES AND REGULATIONS. The boy learned well the ten rules of behavior in the camp, "Ten Commandments", as he later called them, and still remembers them by heart. The first rule was: Detainees attempting to escape are shot immediately.».

Ten years after that execution, the guards again gathered a huge crowd on the field, only next to the wooden pole they also built a gallows.

Although Shin was not so important for the regime, to spend time and effort on his indoctrination, he was taught to inform on relatives and classmates from an early age. As a reward for squealing, he was given food, and also allowed, along with the guards, to beat the children devoted to them. Classmates, in turn, pawned and beat him. When the guard removed the blindfold from his eyes, Shin saw the crowd, the wooden pole, the gallows, and thought that he was about to be executed. However, no one began to put a handful of stones in his mouth. The handcuffs were removed from him. The soldier led him to the front row of the waiting crowd. He and his father were assigned the role of observers.

The guards dragged a middle-aged woman to the gallows, and tied a young man to a post. They were Shin's mother and older brother.

Introduction. He never heard the word "love"

He was 23, and outside the barbed-wire camp, he did not know a single living soul.

Now his name is Shin Dong Hyuk. He changed his name immediately after arriving in South Korea, thus trying to start a new life - the life of a free man. Today he is a handsome man with a tenacious, always wary look. One of the dentists in Los Angeles had to work hard on his teeth, which he had no opportunity to clean in the camp. In general, he is almost perfectly healthy. But his body has turned into clear evidence of all the hardships and hardships of his childhood spent in one of the labor camps, the very existence of which North Korea categorically denies.

Shin was born a slave and grew up behind a barbed wire fence, through which a high voltage current was passed. He received elementary skills in reading and counting at the camp school. His blood was hopelessly stained by the crimes of his father's brothers, and therefore he had no rights and opportunities. The state had sentenced him in advance: overwork and early death from diseases caused by malnutrition ... and all this without trial, investigation, the possibility of appeal ... and in complete secrecy.

Stories about people who managed to survive in concentration camps are most often built on a fairly standard plot scheme. The state security agencies take the protagonist from a cozy home, tearing him away from his loving relatives and friends. To survive, he has to discard all moral principles and human feelings, stop being a man and turn into a "lone wolf".

The most celebrated story of this type is probably Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel's Night. The 13-year-old narrator in this book explains his torment by recounting the normal life that existed before he and his entire family were herded into wagons going to German death camps. Wiesel studied the Talmud every day. His father was the owner of a store, looked after the order in their native Romanian village. There was always a grandfather nearby, with whom they celebrated all the Jewish holidays. But after the whole family died in the camps, Wiesel felt “loneliness, terrible loneliness in a world without God, without man. Without love and compassion."

But Shin's survival story is very different.

The words "love", "pity" and "family" had no meaning to him. God did not die in his soul and did not disappear from his life. Shin had never even heard of God. In the preface to his Night, Wiesel wrote that the child's knowledge of death and evil "should be limited to what can be learned about them from literature."

South Korean government organizations estimate that there are about 154,000 prisoners in these camps. The U.S. State Department and several advocacy groups estimate the number of detainees as high as 200,000. After reviewing decades of satellite imagery of the camps, Amnesty International analysts noted that new construction began on their campus in 2011, and suggested with great concern that this was taking place in as a result of a sharp increase in the population of such areas. It is likely that in this way the North Korean intelligence services are trying to eliminate the possibility of popular unrest in the bud during the transition of power from Kim Jong Il to his young and untested son. (1)

The rest of the camps are "zones of complete control" where prisoners considered "incorrigible" (2) are brought to death by backbreaking labor.

Shin is the only person born in the labor camp who managed to escape, but at the moment there are at least 60 other eyewitnesses in the free world who have been in such camps. (3) At least 15 of them are North Korean citizens who underwent ideological re-education in the special zone of Camp 15, thus earning their freedom and later managed to cross over to South Korea. The former guards of other labor camps also managed to escape to South Korea. A former lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army, Kim Yong, who once held high posts in Pyongyang, spent six years in two camps and managed to escape by hiding in a train car carrying coal.

After carefully studying the testimonies of these people, representatives of the South Korean Bar Association in Seoul compiled the most detailed description of daily life in the camps. Every year they hold several demonstration executions. Others are beaten to death or shot by guards with virtually unlimited licenses for murder and sexual assault. Most of the prisoners are employed in growing crops, extracting coal from mines, sewing army uniforms, and producing cement. The prisoners' daily ration consists of corn, cabbage, and salt, in quantities just enough to keep them from starving to death. Their teeth fall out, their gums turn black, and their bones lose strength. By the age of 40, most of them can no longer straighten up and walk to their full height. Prisoners receive one or two sets of clothes a year, so they have to live, sleep and work in dirty rags, without soap, socks, mittens, underwear and toilet paper. They are required to work 12-15 hours a day until death, which occurs, as a rule, from diseases caused by malnutrition, even before the age of 50. (4) Accurate data on the number of dead is almost impossible to obtain, but according to estimates by Western government and human rights organizations, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people died in these camps.

In most cases, North Korean citizens are sent to the camps without trial or investigation, and many of them die there without knowing the nature of the charges or the verdict. Employees of the Department of State Security (part of the police apparatus with 270,000 employees in the state (5)) pick up people directly from their homes, most often at night. The principle of extending the guilt of the convict to all members of his family has the force of law in North Korea. Together with the "criminal" his parents and children are often arrested. Kim Il Sung formulated this law in 1972 as follows: "The seed of our class enemies, whoever they may be, must be eradicated from society in three generations."

He wrote a book of memoirs about his experiences in the camp, but few people in South Korea were interested in it. At the time of our meeting, he had no job, no money, he was heavily in debt for an apartment and did not know what to do next. The rules at Camp 14, on pain of death, forbade intimate contact with women. Now he wanted to start a normal life and find a girlfriend, but he, in his own words, did not even know where to start looking and how to do it.

After dinner, he took me to his squalid, but nonetheless prohibitively expensive Seoul apartment. Stubbornly trying not to look me in the eye, he nevertheless showed me his severed finger and scarred back. He allowed me to take a picture of himself. Despite all the suffering he had endured, his face was quite childish. He was then 26 years old… three years have passed since the escape from Camp 14.

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