Escape from Camp 14

 “Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight – five feet six inches and about one hundred and twenty pounds. His arms are bowed from childhood labour. His lower back and buttocks are scarred with burns from the torturer’s fire. The skin over his pubis bears a puncture scar from the hook used to hold him in place over the fire. His ankles are scarred by shackles, from which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His right middle finger is cut off at the first knuckle, a guard’s punishment for dropping a sewing machine in a camp garment factory. His shins, from ankle to knee on both legs, are mutilated and scarred by burns from the electrified barbed-wire fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.” 

This passage describes the physical scars that Shin has incurred during his time in the camp. His slight appearance attests to malnourishment, which, in turn, explains his preoccupation—and fascination—with food. His body also reveals the intensive labor, punishment, and torture to which he has been subjected. This quote thus establishes the effects of his time in the camp, and the book goes on to detail the specifics of Shin’s experience. 

“Most North Koreans are sent to the camps without any judicial process, and many die there without learning the charges against them. They are taken from their homes, usually at night, by the Bowibu, the National Security Agency. Guilt by association is legal in North Korea. A wrongdoer is often imprisoned with his parents and children.” 

This quote summarizes the process whereby most North Koreans find themselves in labor camps. This is not applicable to Shin, who was born in Camp 14, yet what Shin has in common with many of these individuals is his ignorance about what he has done wrong. In North Korea, no trial is required before people are imprisoned: people are simply snatched from their homes by the National Security Agency and find themselves in labor camps. As this quote also affirms, they do not even have to have committed a crime: guilt by association provides sufficient legal grounds for imprisonment.  

“The Washington Post ran an editorial saying that the brutality Shin endured was horrifying, but just as horrifying was the world’s indifference to the existence of North Korea’s labour camps.

‘High school students in America debate why President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t bomb the rail lines to Hitler’s camps,’ the editorial concluded. ‘Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il’s camps, and did nothing.’”

Harden comments on the world’s indifference to North Korea’s labor camps at various points in this book. Whereas the horrors and injustice of the Nazi regime have been recorded for posterity, human rights issues in North Korea continue to be overlooked.