We,
the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, will tell the story of this North Korean
Human Rights Activist, Shin Dong Hyuk, who survived by escaping Camp 14 in
North Korea where he was born in the camp. Similar to Elie Wiesel, his story
will inspire us to remember victims of crimes and those who suffer injustice.
We will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.
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Shin Dong-Hyuk, North Korean defector and author
of Escape from Camp 14, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council. The
United Nations Commission of Inquiry on North Korea formally presented its
report to the Human Rights Council March 17, 2014.
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Born
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Shin In
Geun
19 November 1982 (age 31) Kwalliso No. 14, North Korea |
Occupation
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Human
rights campaigner
Interviewee about life in a North Korea labour camp |
Shin Dong-hyuk
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신동혁
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Revised Romanization
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Sin
Dong-hyeok
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McCune–Reischauer
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Sin
Tonghyŏk
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Shin Dong-hyuk (born 19 November 1982 as Shin
In Geun) is a North Korean
defector and human rights activist living in South Korea. He is
currently the only known prisoner to have successfully escaped from a
"total-control zone" grade internment camp in North Korea alive. He
is also believed to be the only person ever born in a North Korean prison camp
to successfully escape from that country.
Shin came into the public eye after
being the subject of a biography, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable
Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by former Washington Post journalist Blaine
Harden. Shin, sometimes accompanied by Harden, has given talks to
audiences around the world about his life in Kaechon internment camp (Kwalliso
No. 14) and about the totalitarian North Korean regime to raise awareness of
the situation in North Korean internment and concentration camps and North
Korea. Shin has been described as the world's "single strongest
voice" on the atrocities inside North Korean camps by a member of the
United Nations' first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses of North
Korea.
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A still from the
documentary film Camp 14
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North
Korea life
Shin Dong-hyuk was born as Shin In
Geun at Kaechon internment camp ("Camp #14"), a slave labor camp
where prisoners usually stay for life without possibility of release. He was
born to two prisoners who were allowed to sleep together for a few nights a
year as a reward for good work. Shin lived with his mother until he was 12. He
rarely saw his father, Shin Gyung-sub, who lived elsewhere in the camp.
According to Shin, he saw his mother, Jang Hye-gyung, as a competitor for their
insufficient food rations, and consequently had no bonds of affection with his
parents or his brother, Shin He Geun. The North Korean government officials and
camp guards told him he was imprisoned because his parents had committed crimes
against the state, and that he had to work hard and always obey the guards;
otherwise he would be punished or executed.
Shin experienced considerable violence
in the camp, and witnessed dozens of executions every year. Part of Shin's
right middle finger was cut off by his supervisor as punishment for
accidentally breaking a sewing machine. He witnessed adult prisoners and
children beaten every day, and many prisoners dying of starvation, illness,
torture and work accidents. He learned to survive by any means, including
eating rats, frogs, and insects, and reporting on fellow inmates for rewards.
When Shin was 13 years old, he overheard his mother and brother planning an
escape attempt. Shin told the custodian of his school, as informing was
something he was taught to do from an early age, and he hoped to be rewarded.
However, the school custodian took
full credit for discovering the plan, and rather than being rewarded, Shin was
arrested and guards tortured him for four days to extract more information,
believing him to be part of the plan to escape. According to Shin, the guards
lit a charcoal fire under his back and forced a hook into his skin so that he
could not struggle which caused many large scars still visible on his body. On
29 November 1996, after approximately seven months spent in a tiny concrete
prison cell, he was released and joined by his father, who had also been
imprisoned. They were driven back to the main camp wearing blindfolds and their
hands tied behind their backs. Camp officials then forced Shin and his father
to watch the public executions of Shin's mother and brother; he then understood
he had been responsible for the executions. Shin stated that at the time of the
executions of his brother and mother, in his teen-aged mind he felt they
"deserved" their fates for both breaking prison rules and,
conversely, not including him in the escape plan. Shin has since expressed
remorse over his actions, saying, in an interview with Anderson Cooper for the CBS
television show 60 Minutes, "My mother and brother, if I could meet
them through a time-machine, I would like to go back and apologize".
While working at a textile factory,
Shin became friends with a 40-year-old political prisoner from Pyongyang
(surnamed Park), who was educated and had traveled outside North Korea. Park
told him about the outside world, such as stories about food that Shin had not
experienced before. According to Shin, nearly every meal he had eaten up to
that point had been a soupy gruel of cabbage, corn, and salt, with occasional
wild-caught rats and insects. He was excited by the idea of being able to eat
as much food as he wanted to, which Shin considered to be the essence of
freedom, "I still think of freedom as roasted chicken", he later
acknowledged.
Shin decided to attempt to escape with
Park. They formed a plan in which Shin would provide local information about
the camp, while Park would use his knowledge once outside the camp to escape
the country. On 2 January 2005, the pair was assigned to a work detail near the
camp's electric fence on the top of a 1,200-foot (370 m) mountain ridge to
collect firewood. Noting the long interval between the guards' patrols, the two
waited until the guards were out of sight, then made their attempt to escape.
Park attempted to go through first, but was fatally electrocuted climbing the
high voltage fence. Shin managed to pass over the wire using Park's body as a
shield to ground the current, but still suffered severe burns and permanent
scars when his legs slipped onto the lowermost wire as he crawled over Park's
body.
After escaping, Shin broke into a
nearby farmer's barn and found an old military uniform. Wearing the uniform, he
masqueraded as a North Korean soldier and worked his way northward, surviving
by scrounging and stealing food. Shin was unfamiliar with money, but within two
days of his escape, he had sold a 10 lb (4.5 kg) bag of rice stolen
from a house and used the money to buy cookies and cigarettes. Eventually, he
reached the northern border with China along the Tumen River and bribed
destitute North Korean border guards with food and cigarettes. After spending
some time working as a laborer in different parts of China, Shin was
accidentally discovered by a journalist in a restaurant in Shanghai, and the
reporter recognized the importance of his story. The journalist brought Shin to
the South Korean embassy for asylum, and from there he traveled to South Korea,
where he underwent extensive questioning from authorities to determine if he
was a North Korean assassin or spy. Afterwards, his story was broadcast by the
press and he published a Korean language memoir.
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The
Firing Squad in Camp 14: Total Control Zone
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Post-North
Korea life
Shin later moved to southern
California, changing his name from Shin In Geun to Shin Dong-hyuk, and worked
for Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), a non-profit
organization that raises awareness of human rights issues in North Korea and
provides aid to North Korean refugees. Shin moved back to South Korea to
campaign for the eradication of the North Korean prison camps.
In August 2013, Shin gave several
hours of testimony to the United Nations' first commission of inquiry into
human rights abuses of North Korea. A member of the UN commission described
Shin as the world's "single strongest voice" on the atrocities inside
North Korean camps.
Shin described some aspects of his
personal life in South Korea in a Financial Times interview, on popular
culture saying that "I don't really know anything about music. I can't
sing and I don't feel any emotion from it. But I do watch lots of films and the
one that moves me the most is Schindler's
List". On food he says "I know everything is delicious. I
look at the colours and the way the food is presented on the plate but it's
very difficult to choose. When I first came to South Korea, I was so greedy
that I used to order too much food. Nowadays I try to order only as much as I
can handle." Although Shin lives in South Korea, he was adopted by an
American couple in Ohio during his time there. He says he maintains the
relationship, "I have a good relationship with my US foster parents. I contact
them often. Whenever I have a holiday, I visit them. I think of them as good
parents and I try to be a good son."
In December 2013, Shin wrote an
open-letter in the Washington Post to American basketball star Dennis
Rodman who visited North Korea a number of times as a self-avowed "friend
for life" of Kim Jong-un.
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Escape from Camp 14:
One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West Paperback – March 26, 2013
by Blaine Harden (Author)
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Books and
film
In 2012, journalist Blaine Harden
published Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea
to Freedom in the West, based on his interviews with Shin. The book
reveals, among other things, that Shin was the one who had reported his mother
and brother, a fact he had not included in earlier accounts. Harden gave a
one-hour interview about the book on the C-SPAN television program Q&A.
Executive Director of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Greg
Scarlatoiu, said the book played "an important role" in raising wider
public awareness of the North Korean camps. Dalhousie University issued a statement
averring that Shin's story, as told through the book, "has shifted the
global discourse about North Korea, shining a light on the human rights abuses
so prevalent within the regime."
A German documentary, Camp 14: Total Control Zone,
directed by Marc Wiese, was released in 2012. It includes interviews with Shin Dong-hyuk
and two former North Korean officers: the first, Kwon Hyuk, was a guard in Camp 22 and
brought out amateur film footage (the only known footage of Camp 22), and the
second, Oh Yang-nam, was a secret policeman who arrested people who were sent
to camps. Supplementing the film are animated sequences of the camp created by
Ali Soozandeh.
On 2 December 2012, Shin was featured
on 60 Minutes during which he recounted to Anderson Cooper the story of
his life in Camp 14 and escape. Shin said "when I see videos of the
Holocaust it moves me to tears. I think I am still evolving—from an animal to a
human."
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Camp
14: Total Control Zone
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Awards and
honours
n June 2013, Shin received the Moral
Courage Award given by UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO (non-governmental
organization).
In May 2014, Shin was awarded an
honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia, Canada).
Students at the university "held a peace march and launched a social
media campaign to raise awareness of human rights violations in North Korea.
They then fundraised to bring Mr. Shin to Halifax, where his speech to an
over-capacity crowd drew international attention."
Criticism
According to Felix Abt,
a businessman who has lived in North Korea, the circumstances regarding the
death of Shin's mother, as initially reported by Blaine Harden in the Washington
Post, changed when Harden published the book version. Abt believes this is
indicative of the difficulties in verifying the stories of North Korean
defectors in general.
In 2014, the North Korean government
produced a video which appeared to show Shin's father and acquaintances criticizing
him. The video alleged that Shin worked in a mine and fled North Korea after
allegedly raping a 13 year-old girl. The video claimed he was now spreading
"preposterous false information" about human rights. Shin confirmed
the man was his father, but denied the allegations. Shin said that he believed
the government was sending him a message to be quiet about human rights abuses
or his father would be killed, in effect holding his father hostage.
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