“Park told Shin that the giant country next door was called China. Its people were rapidly getting rich. He said that in the south there was another Korea. In South Korea, he said, everyone was already rich. Park explained the concept of money. He told Shin about the existence of television and computers and mobile phones. He explained that the world was round.”
By Jeff Harding
On Jan. 2, 2005, 23-year-old Shin Dong-hyuk squirmed
through an electric fence and escaped from Camp 14, a political prison camp in
North Korea. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are estimated to be held in the
country’s political camps, and Mr. Shin is the only person known to have been
born in a camp who has made his way to the West. (His father, Mr. Shin
eventually learned, was a prisoner because two of his brothers had defected to
the south during the Korean War. Mr. Shin’s crime was being his father’s son.)
In this excerpt from Escape From Camp
14, Blaine Harden details his unlikely escape.
In 1998, when Shin Dong-hyuk turned 16, he became
an adult worker. His years of schooling to that point had only served as
training for hard labor.
Many of his classmates were assigned to coal mines, where accidental death from cave-ins, explosions and gas poisonings was common. Shin was lucky—he was assigned to a pig farm, where 200 men and women raised about 800 pigs, along with goats, rabbits, chickens and a few cows. As a prisoner, Shin was not allowed to eat the meat of any livestock on the farm. But he and other prisoners could sometimes steal. The smell of roasting pork on the farm would alert guards, leading to beatings and weeks of half-rations, so they ate purloined pork raw.
In March 2003, Shin was transferred to the camp’s
garment factory, a crowded, chaotic, stressful work site where 2,000 women and
500 men made military uniforms. Meals were skimpy, hours were endless, and Shin
was always hungry. There was pressure to snitch on fellow prisoners.
In the garment factory, the superintendent wanted Shin
to inform on an important new prisoner. Park Yong Chul, short and stout, with a
shock of white hair, had lived abroad. He knew senior people in the North
Korean government. The superintendent ordered Shin to teach Park how to fix
sewing machines and to become his friend. Shin was to report back on everything
that Park said about his past, his politics and his family. “Park needs to
confess,” the superintendent said. “He’s holding out on us.”
In October 2004, Shin and Park began spending 14 hours
a day together. Park paid polite attention to Shin’s instructions on sewing
machine maintenance. Just as politely, he avoided questions about his past. But
after a few weeks, Park began to open up. He said he was raised in a large
apartment in Pyongyang and had followed the privileged educational trajectory
of North Korea’s elites, studying in East Germany and the Soviet Union. He
patiently attempted to explain what life was like outside Camp 14.
As they walked the factory floor, Park told Shin that
the giant country next door was called China. Its people were rapidly getting
rich. He said that in the south there was another Korea. In South Korea, he
said, everyone was already rich. Park explained the concept of money. He told
Shin about the existence of television and computers and mobile phones. He explained
that the world was round.
Much of what Park talked about, especially at the
beginning, was difficult for Shin to understand or care about. What delighted
him—what he kept begging Park for—were stories about food and eating. These
were the stories that kept Shin up at night fantasizing about a better life.
Freedom, in Shin’s mind, was just another word for grilled meat.
Intoxicated by what he heard, Shin made perhaps the
first free decision of his life. He chose not to snitch. And he soon began
thinking about escape.
Their plan was simple—and insanely optimistic. Shin
would get them over the fence. Park would lead them to China, where his uncle
would give them shelter, money and assistance in traveling on to South Korea.
Their chance came around New Year’s Day, a rare
holiday when machines in the factory went silent for two days. Shin learned in
late December that on Jan. 2, his crew of sewing-machine repairmen and some of
the seamstresses would be escorted to a mountain ridge on the eastern edge of the
camp. There, they would spend the day trimming trees and stacking wood. He and
Park agreed they would try their escape that day.
Early that morning, a foreman herded Shin, Park and
about 25 other prisoners up the mountain. The sky was clear and the sun shone
brightly on a heavy snow pack, but it was cold and the wind was blowing.
The firewood detail placed Shin and Park within a
stone’s throw of the fence that ran along the spine of the mountain. A guard
tower rose from the fence line about a quarter mile to the north. Guards,
walking two abreast, patrolled the perimeter of the fence. Shin noticed lengthy
intervals between patrols.
At around 4 p.m., Shin and Park sidled toward the
fence, trimming trees as they moved. No one seemed to notice.
Shin soon found himself facing the fence, which was
about 10 feet high. The fence consisted of seven or eight strands of
high-voltage barbed wire, spaced about a foot apart, strung between tall poles.
He and Park had told each other that if they could get
through the fence without touching the wires, they would be fine. As to how
they might be able to do that, they were not sure. Yet as the hour of the
escape drew nearer, Shin surprised himself by not feeling afraid.
It was time. “Let’s run!” he yelled.
Their plan had been for Shin to stay in the lead until
they got clear of the fence, but he slipped and fell to his knees on the icy
patrol trail.
Park was first to the fence. Falling to his knees, he
shoved his arms, head and shoulders between the two lowest strands of wire.
Seconds later, Shin saw sparks and smelled burning flesh.
Most electric fences built for security purposes repel
trespassers with a painful but exceedingly brief pulse of current. Lethal
electric fences, however, use a continuous current that can make a person lock
on to the wire as voltage causes involuntary muscle contractions, paralysis and
death.
Before Shin could get to his feet, Park had stopped
moving. The weight of his body pulled down the bottom strand of wire, pinning
it against the snowy ground and creating a small gap in the fence. Shin crawled
over his friend’s body, using it as a kind of insulating pad. As he squirmed
through the fence, Shin could feel the current.
Shin was nearly through the fence when his lower legs
slipped off Park’s torso and came into direct contact, through the two pairs of
pants he was wearing, with the bottom strand. Voltage from the wire caused
severe burns from his ankles to his knees. But it would be a couple of hours
before Shin noticed how badly he had been injured.
When he cleared the fence, he had no idea where to go.
The only direction he could comprehend was down. He ran for about two hours,
always heading downhill, until he entered a mountain valley. There were barns
and scattered houses. He heard no alarms, no gunfire, no shouting. As far as he
could tell, no one was chasing him.
As the adrenaline of flight began to ebb, Shin noticed
that the legs of his pants were sticky. He rolled them up and saw blood oozing
out of his legs. It was very cold, well below 10 degrees Fahrenheit. He had no
coat.
Park had not told him where he might find China.
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