Escape from Camp 14

Escape from Camp 14

The Story of Shin Dong-hyuk as told by Blaine Harden

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a slave camp in North Korea to a father who had been imprisoned because his brother had fled to South Korea. He never learned why his mother was there. The conditions in the camp were brutal. The guards had ultimate power over life and death. If a guard was too kind they disappeared. Shin and his father were tortured after his mother and brother made a plan to escape. They were brought from the prison to a place of execution where Shin expected to die, but instead was given a front row seat when his mother and brother were executed.

He lived 23 years in an open-air cage run by the men who hanged his mother, shot his brother, crippled his father, murdered pregnant women, beat children to death, taught him to betray his family, and tortured him by roasting him over a fire.

Shin escaped the camp into China where he was lucky not to be captured by Chinese authorities and turned over to North Korea. He remained lucky and found his way to South Korea and eventually travelled on to the United States. "I am evolving from being an animal," Shin says, "But it is going very very slowly. Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything.”

This is a difficult story, but it is a powerful story. As far as the world knows Shin is the only prisoner to ever escape from Camp 14.