{"id":1630,"date":"2013-06-14T18:08:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T22:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1630"},"modified":"2013-10-23T14:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T18:34:40","slug":"the-bookshelf-escape-from-camp-14%e2%80%94one-man%e2%80%99s-remarkable-odyssey-from-north-korea-to-freedom-in-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1630","title":{"rendered":"Escape from Camp 14\u2014One man\u2019s remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night shows South Korea ablaze with lights and then, as if someone drew a line at the 38th parallel, North Korea ink black except for the tiny dot of Pyongyang. North Korea is a country where public displays of affection are prohibited, international aid workers aren\u2019t allowed to study Korean, the internet doesn\u2019t exist, doctors operate in hospitals without electricity, heat, water, or antibiotics, schools have no books or paper, postal workers burn the mail for heat, attendance at public executions is compulsory, history is reinvented wholesale, religion is forbidden, people step over dead bodies in the street, and, in the late 1990s, upwards of two million people died in a famine\u00a0\u2014 thanks to the Great Leader Kim Il-sung (1912\u20131994) and his son Kim Jong-il (1941\u20132011). Sudan, Congo and Laos all have higher per capita incomes than North Korea.<\/p>\n

As many as 200,000 citizens also languish in North Korean labor camps. Many thousands have perished in them. You can see exactly where these camps are by using Google Earth. Camps 15 and 18 are for \u201cre-education\u201d of prisoners. Camp 14 is what\u2019s called a \u201ccomplete control district\u201d for \u201cirredeemables\u201d who are worked to death. There are about 15,000 prisoners in Camp 14. Blaine Harden, a correspondent for the Washington Post<\/em>, tells the remarkable story of one of them, Shin In Geun. It\u2019s remarkable because Shin was born in Camp 14, and as far as we know he\u2019s the only person born in a labor camp to escape. According to Harden, \u201cjust two people other than Shin are known to have escaped from any political prison camp in North Korea and made it to the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shin documents the worst sorts of human atrocities you might imagine, including six months in an underground dungeon, and being roasted over a fire. Experts who\u2019ve vetted him believe his story. A year after he escaped he began a diary, which eventually resulted in a memoir that was published in 2007 in South Korea (and widely ignored). Harden\u2019s book has enjoyed a different fate; it\u2019s already been translated into 23 languages and made numerous best seller lists. In addition to his many interviews with Shin, he incorporates the insights of human rights activists, other defectors, refugees, and intelligence experts. When Shin escaped Camp 14 on January 2, 2005, he was twenty-three. He knew nothing about the outside world. He had no idea where to go or what to do. It\u2019s not been easy, he says: \u201cI\u2019m evolving from being an animal. But it is going very, very slowly. I escaped physically; I haven\u2019t escaped psychologically.\u201d<\/p>\n

reviewed by\u00a0Journey with Jesus<\/a><\/em> webzine, www.journeywithjesus.net, with founder Dan Clendenin\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As many as 200,000 citizens languish in North Korean labor camps. Blaine Harden tells the remarkable story of one who may be the only person born in a labor camp to escape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-1630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}