4. Korean Bar Association, ‘White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2008’ (Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2008).
5. American television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee spent nearly five months in North Korean prisons after crossing illegally into the country in 2009. They were released after former President Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang and had his picture taken with Kim Jong Il.
6. Hyun-sik Kim and Kwang-ju Son, Documentary Kim Jong Il (Seoul: Chonji Media, 1997), 202, as cited in Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh, The Hidden People of North Korea (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 27.
Chapter 1
1. Author interview with Chun Jung-hee, head nurse at Hanawon resettlement centre in South Korea. The government-funded centre has measured and weighed North Korean defectors since 1999.
Chapter 3
1. Author interviews with defectors between 2007 and 2010. The system is also well described by Andrei Lankov in North of the DMZ (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007), 67–69; and by Hassig and Oh in The Hidden People of North Korea, 198–99.
2. Details on the lifestyle of Kim Jong Il are gathered in Hassig and Oh, 27–35. See also Google Earth photographs compiled by Curtis Melvin, on his blog, North Korean Economy Watch, http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2011/06/10/friday-fun-kim-jong-ils-train/.
3. Andrew Higgins, ‘Who Will Succeed Kim Jong Il’, Washington Post (16 July 2009), A1.
Chapter 9
1. Kang and Rigoulot, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, 100.
2. Kim Yong, Long Road Home (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 85.
Chapter 10
1. Andrea Matles Savada, ed., North Korea: A Country Study (Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1993).
2. Yuk-Sa Li, ed., Juche! The Speeches and Writings of Kim Il Sung (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972), 157. Quoted in the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 1, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 105.
Chapter 11
1. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 175.
2. Wonhyuk Lim, ‘North Korea’s Economic Futures’ (Washington, DC, Brookings Institution, 2005).
Chapter 13
1. Elmer Luchterhand, ‘Prisoner Behavior and Social System in the Nazi Camp’, International Journal of Psychiatry 13 (1967), 245–64.
2. Eugene Weinstock, Beyond the Last Path (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1947), 74.
3. Ernest Schable, ‘A Tragedy Revealed: Heroines’ Last Days’, Life (18 August 1958), 78–144. Cited by Shamai Davidson in ‘Human Reciprocity Among the Jewish Prisoners in the Nazi Concentration Camps’, The Nazi Concentration Camps (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1984) 555–72.
4. Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 142.
Chapter 14
1. Yong, Long Road Home, 106.
2. Park was excessively hopeful. The United Nations, which created a Special Rapporteur for North Korean human rights in 2004, has gained no traction in influencing the government in Pyongyang. Nor has it had much success in raising international awareness about the camps. North Korea adamantly refused to allow the UN’s human rights representative into the country and condemned his annual reports as plots to overthrow the government.
Chapter 16
1. Yoonok Chang, Stephan Haggard, Marcus Noland, ‘Migration Experiences of North Korean Refugees: Survey Evidence from China’ (Washington: Peterson Institute, 2008), 1.
Chapter 17
1. Lankov, North of the DMZ, 180–183.
2. See Daily NK, 25 October 2010, for a detailed description of the servi-cha system and another attempt by the government to try to shut it down.
3. Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine (Washington: United States Institute for Peace Press, 2001), 218.
4. Charles Robert Jenkins, The Reluctant Communist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 129.
5. Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009), 159–72.
Chapter 18
1. Human Rights Watch, ‘Harsher Policies Against Border-Crossers’ (March 2007).
2. Lankov, North of the DMZ, 183.
3. Author interview in Seoul with officials from Good Friends, a Buddhist non-profit organization with informants based inside North Korea.
Chapter 19
1. Chang et al, ‘Migration Experiences of North Korean Refugees’, 9.
2. Demick, Nothing to Envy, 163.
3. Rimjin-gang: News from Inside North Korea, edited by Jiro Ishimaru (Osaka: AsiaPress International, 2010), 11–15.
4. United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 12 (2), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm.
Chapter 20
1. Lee Gwang Baek, ‘Impact of Radio Broadcasts in North Korea’, speech at International Conference on Human Rights, 1 November 2010, http://www.ned.org/events/north-koreas-shifting-political-landscape/gwang-baek-lee
2. Peter M. Beck, ‘North Korea’s Radio Waves of Resistance,’ Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2010).
Chapter 21
1. Choe Sang-hun, ‘Born and Raised in a North Korean Gulag’, International Herald Tribune (9 July 2007).
2. Blaine Harden, ‘North Korean Prison Camp Escapee Tells of Horrors’, Washington Post (11 December 2008), 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003855.html
Chapter 22
1. Suh Jae-jean, ‘North Korean Defectors: Their Adaptation and Resettlement’, East Asian Review 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2002), 77.
2. Donald Kirk, ‘North Korean Defector Speaks Out’, Christian Science Monitor (6 November 2007).
3. George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), 422.
4. Korean Bar Association, ‘White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2008’, 40.
5. Moon Ihlwan, ‘North Korea’s GDP Growth Better than South Korea’s’, Bloomberg Businessweek (30 June 2009).
Chapter 23
1. Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 94–95.
APPENDICES
The Ten Laws of Camp 14
Shin was required in the camp’s school to memorize these rules and was often ordered by guards to recite them.
1. Do not try to escape
Anyone caught escaping will be shot immediately.
Any witness to an attempted escape who fails to report it will be shot immediately.
Any witness to an attempted escape must promptly notify a guard.
Groups of two or more are prohibited from assembling to devise a plot or to attempt to escape.
2. No more than two prisoners can meet together
Anyone who fails to secure permission from a guard for a meeting of more than two prisoners will be shot immediately.
Those who trespass into the guards’ village or who damage public property will be shot immediately.
No gathering may exceed the number of prisoners allowed by the guard in charge.
Outside work, no group of prisoners may gather without permission.
At night, three or more prisoners may not travel together without permission from the guard in charge.
3. Do not steal
Anyone found stealing or in possession of arms will be shot immediately.
Anyone who does not report or who aids a person who has stolen or possesses arms will be shot immediately.
Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.
Anyone who deliberately damages any materials used in the camp will be shot immediately.
4. Guards must be obeyed unconditionally
Anyone who harbours ill will towards or physically assaults a guard will be shot immediately.
Anyone who fails to demonstrate total compliance with a guard’s instructions will be shot immediately.
There must be no backtalk or complaints to a guard.
When meeting a guard, one mus
t bow deferentially.
5. Anyone who sees a fugitive or suspicious figure must promptly report him
Anyone who provides cover for or protects a fugitive will be shot immediately.
Anyone who holds or hides a fugitive’s possessions, conspires with him, or fails to report him will be shot immediately.
6. Prisoners must watch each other and report any suspicious behaviour immediately
Each prisoner must observe others and remain vigilant.
The speech and conduct of others must be observed closely. Should anything arouse suspicion, a guard must be notified immediately.
Prisoners must faithfully attend meetings of ideological struggle, and they must censure others and themselves vehemently.
7. Prisoners must more than fulfil the work assigned them each day
Prisoners who neglect their work quota or fail to complete it will be considered to harbour discontent and will be shot immediately.
Each prisoner must be solely responsible for his work quota.
To fulfil one’s work quota is to wash away sins, as well as to recompense the state for the forgiveness it has shown.
The work quota as assigned by a guard may not be changed.
8. Beyond the workplace, there must be no intermingling between the sexes for personal reasons
Should sexual physical contact occur without prior approval, the perpetrators will be shot immediately.
Beyond the workplace, there must be no conversing between the sexes without prior approval.
One is prohibited from visiting bathrooms designated for members of the opposite sex without prior approval.
Without special reason, members of opposite sexes may not go about holding hands or sleep alongside each other.
Without prior approval, prisoners may not visit living quarters of the opposite sex.
9. Prisoners must genuinely repent of their errors
Anyone who does not acknowledge his sins and instead denies them or carries a deviant opinion of them will be shot immediately.
One must reflect deeply upon the sins he has committed against his country and society and strive to wash himself of them.
Only after having acknowledged sins and reflected deeply upon them can a prisoner begin anew.
10. Prisoners who violate the laws and regulations of the camp will be shot immediately
All prisoners must truly consider the guards as their teachers, and, abiding by the ten laws and regulations of the camp, yield themselves through toil and discipline to washing away their past errors.
Sketches from Shin’s Life in Camp 14
The teachers at Shin’s school in Camp 14 were uniformed guards. They always carried a pistol and Shin saw one of them beat a six-year-old classmate to death with a chalkboard pointer.
Children in the camps scavenged constantly for food, eating rats, insects and undigested kernels of corn they found in cow dung.
Shin watched as his mother was hanged and his brother shot for planning to escape.
After the discovery of his mother and brother’s escape plan, Shin was held for seven months in a secret underground prison inside Camp 14. He was 13 years old.
In the underground prison, guards tortured Shin over a coal fire, seeking to find out his role in the planned escape of his mother and brother.
As punishment for dropping a sewing machine while working at a garment factory in the camp, guards used a knife to cut off Shin’s right middle finger at the first knuckle.
ENDNOTE
1. A Skinner box, developed by American psychologist B. F. Skinner, is an isolation chamber used to study and teach behaviour using rewards of food and water as reinforcements. In one such box, a rat learned how to press a lever to get food.
Escape from Camp 14
Blaine Harden is a reporter for PBS Frontline and a contributor to The Economist, based in Seattle, having completed a tour as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo. He is the prize-winning, acclaimed author of two books: Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent (Norton,1990) and A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Norton,1996).
Also by Blaine Harden
Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent
A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia
First published 2012 by Viking
An imprint of Penguin, USA
First published in UK 2012 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
This electronic edition published 2012 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0230-76118-6 EPUB
Copyright © Blaine Harden 2012
The right of Blaine Harden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Table of Contents
Title page
Dedication page
Epigraph page
Preface
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
PART TWO
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
PART THREE
21
22
23
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes
APPENDICES
The Ten Laws of Camp 14
Sketches from Shin's Life in Camp 14
Author biography
Copyright page
Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14
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