Escape from Camp 14 is the story of Shin In Geun, now Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person known to have been bred and born inside a North Korean labor camp, indeed, its most infamous labor camp, and to have escaped and survived to tell his story.

So here's the thing.  I can't wrap my head around this story.  It is impossible for me to imagine living conditions so bad that a human being doesn't really know how to feel like a human being.  Shin grew up viewing his own mother not as a mother, but as a competitor for food!  He says, "sometimes I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything."  Brutality, cruelty, torture, dehumanization were normal to Shin.  What was not normal, or even known to him was love, generosity, kindness.  I cannot comprehend a human child being torn down to the point that his humanity is virtually non-existent.  What is even harder for me to comprehend is that the humanity in this child was dismantled before he was even born!  His parents were literally bred together.  Like animals.  He was born into the world lower than a slave, lower than livestock.  Born in no better than a beast.  I can't comprehend that!  

Shin didn't escape from his labor camp because he had finally had enough, and imagined a better life beyond the fence.  He didn't know there was a world beyond the fence--I don't think he could imagine, really.  He had heard stories from newly incarcerated prisoners that there was food beyond the fence.  He escaped because he wanted to eat.  That's it.  It was the allure of stories of roasted meat that made Shin run and propel himself at an electrified fence, made him risk being shot down like he was nothing, made him risk public execution if caught, made him risk dying of exposure, starvation, or murder.  It wasn't because of his humanity.  It was because he wanted to have food in his belly.  Basic animal survival instinct.  

You know what this book made me think of?  Victor of Aveyron, a French feral child who was found in 1800.  One observer remarked of Victor, "there is something extraordinary in his behavior, which makes him seem close to the state of wild animals".  This is true of the people born inside Camp 14, too.  Like Victor, they too lived lives with no notion or affirmation of their humanity.  I am glad Shin escaped, and I am glad that he is maybe getting to know the nobility of his humanity.  And that is hard to wrap my head around, too.  What must it take to find value in yourself when your whole life you've been trained to believe none exists there?

Heartwrenching, horrifying, whatever shocking words you can think of describe this book well.

It's the sort of book that spurs you on to do research about North Korea but then you realize that you can't do anything and frustration boils over.

I would've given it a higher rating except that a few months after I read this (this "review" is months late), Shin revealed that he had lied to Blaine Harden about what he experienced as a prisoner in North Korea's concentration camps.

This is good if you're looking for a general survey of the atrocity that is North Korea's government but if you want a 100% truthful account, look elsewhere.

A true horror story though there is always a silver lightning at the end. Shin a North Korean born in camp 14 ; one of the harshest places in the world.

His escape and life in the camp reads to the banality of evil. to the selfishness of dictators to the cult of personality of North Korea's leaders - past and present.

Snitching is a way of life in the camp, in school and among family members. Shin Snitching caused major problems for him and affected his life later on.

When reading this book one should think like a camp resident to understand the actions of the Koreans. To the normal person those actions sounds like something from Lord of the Flies.

Recommended to anyone who wants a book that will keep him/her up at night.

”Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, (the) Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, (the) Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney. North Koreans have no one like that.

Actually North Koreans have imgur, Dennis Rodman and Ken Jeong in Stevie Wonder glasses.



A couple of months back, Petra recommended this book to me after posting this link from imgur. I’m the least literate person I know when it comes to world politics but human depravity is always fascinating even within the harrowing context of non-fiction. And should you bother to check that link, I’m pretty certain you’d be just as compelled to make time for this book. To actually sit down and take a pause from complaining about the Starbucks barista never getting your name right or needing to charge your smartphone when it’s not even lunch time yet. 

Shin Dong-hyuk is a political prisoner born and raised in Camp 14, serving a sentence on behalf of the forefathers he’s never met. Within the concentration camp he is raised not as a person but as a cog in the Juche ideology; with a moral code comprising of ten laws, each involving someone getting shot if not observed. His story is a succession of snitching, scavenging and stealing in order to escape his perpetual state of starvation. Often these would lead into violence, incarceration and more violence that were simultaneously compelling, horrifying and astonishing that a part of me had to doubt the veracity of his story. But at the same time, the explicitness feels beyond the grasp of any stretch of imagination.

Excellent source material for aspiring dystopian writers out there, by the way. I couldn’t have dreamed this scenario if I tried.

I liked that Harden strove to link Shin’s story with the bigger events happening in the country as a whole, though these aspects could’ve been integrated better. How events in the global scale trickles from history to government to the very basic unit of this oppressed society: the man, the machine. 

However, there were redundant lapses and some pacing issues with regards to Shin’s backstory that often sent me into a numb lull from the unrelenting violence and portrayals of hunger. In some ways this helped me in finishing the other book I was reading because for a stretch, I could only read a chapter of this at a time.The first half a bit of a struggle to read through in one sitting but I was thoroughly engrossed with the second, after Shin has escaped from camp as he tries to assimilate in normal society. I can almost see the tearjerking historical fiction book this could inspire but I quite liked the ragged edges and halted progression this took in terms of Shin’s evolution. Because that’s what I had to constantly remind myself: he’s a real person and not a character.

I appreciate that Harden managed to cramp as much world politics as he could (I particularly liked that this addressed South Korea’s perspective from where it stands) in this one. Enough to make this casual reader curious about the rest of the story, about the Kim dynasty and what sparked this collective, for lack of a better term, insanity.

I wish I could end with something clever, something to encourage people to stop liking those Facebook posts to end world hunger, an inspiring passage or a quote. Unfortunately I’m left with none. 

Because as much as this was a book about hope, survival and the strength of the human spirit, it was also about the monsters that we all could be under much different circumstances.