Escape from Camp 14 - Blaine Harden

  So as I started to write about my most recent read, I was at a loss about how to start. Then I noticed a book that I had checked out of the library last week. The book was a novel by Robert Olen Butler titled Hell! I thought that just about pretty much sums up Shin Dhong-hyuk's life in North Korea's death Camp 14 before he became the first escapee from a North Korean prison! The tale of his life and his escape is chronicled in Blaine Harden's book Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. Shin was born and raise in Camp 14 a part of a prison system of cut-throat  rivalries, and immense cruelty, that have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet Gulags and twelve times as long as Hitler's Concentration Camps, prior to Shin's escape no one had escaped from one of these camps. It's almost incomprehensible to those of us born in the west to imagine living the life Shin was subjected to, not knowing anything about the existence of modern life. He didn't even know what Pyongyang was let alone that it was the capital of North Korea. He had no comprehension of any of the amenities of modern life TVs, VCRs, radios, that we daily take for granted. He constantly performed backbreaking labor and struggled to stay alive, was forced to see everyone around him as competitors and was encouraged to snitch on everyone, including his mother and brother, whose execution he watched after he snitched about their escape plans!! But somehow he stayed alive made a friend and together they formed an escape plan. Harden's narrative, as related to him by Shin tells the story of this incredible man and offers an a look into life in North Korea's prison system that has never been told in this detail before. But overall, it is a story of endurance, courage, survival and hope!! And certainly is a reminder to me that my problems don't amount to a "hill of beans" when compared to what Shin has lived through!! Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea writes this about the book on the back cover:

This is a story unlike any other.... More so than any other book ion North Korea, including my own, Escape from Camp 14 exposes the cruelty that is the underpinning of Kim Jong II's regime. Blaine Harden, a veteran foreign correspondent from the Washington Post, tells this story masterfully.... The integrity of this book shines through on every page> 

So check it out! As for me, I want to check out Demick's book which I read is also a great book about the harrowing life of ordinary citizens in the repressive state of North Korea.

Here is a map of Camp 14 from Google Earth. The southern boundary of the site is the Taedong River and you can see it on the map. The majority of the key event in the book took place in areas along the river. The area of the camp where Shin made his escape is located just above the bend in the fence on the eastern side of the camp north of the river!