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Escape from Camp 14:

Escape from Camp 14: . One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. Escape from Camp 14.

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Escape from Camp 14:

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  1. Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

  2. Escape from Camp 14 • This non- fiction novel follows the amazing journey of Shin In Geun as he travels out of the mouth of hell and attempts to find a “normal” life. Escape from Camp 14 encompasses Shin’s survival and harrowing escape from the brutality of a 'Total Control' North Korean prison work camp. • From watching classmates being beaten to death and his mother and brother being executed, to being tortured over hot coals at the age of 13 and suffering near starvation for the first 24 years of his life, to the soul-destroying work ethic and unparalleled cruelty of the prison guards, how Shin In Geun is still alive, is inconceivable. • Yet to understand the story of Shin you must first understand the dynamics of North Korea.

  3. North Korea vs. South Korea • The Korean peninsula was governed by the Korean Empire from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, until it was annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1910. • Following the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, Japanese rule was brought to an end. • The Korean peninsula was divided into two occupied zones in 1945, with the northern half of the peninsula occupied by the Soviet Union and the southern half by the United States. • A United Nations - supervised election held in 1948 led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the in the south. Republic of Korea • North Korea and South Korea both claimed sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula, which led to the start of the Korean War in 1950. • An armistice in 1953 committed both to a cease-fire, but the two countries remain officially at war, since a formal peace treaty was never signed.Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.

  4. North Korean Government • North Korea is a single-party state under a united front led by the Korean Workers' Party (KWP). • The country's government follows the Juche ideology of self-reliance, initiated by the country's first President, Kim Il-sung. • After his death, Kim Il-sung was declared the country's Eternal President. • With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, North Korea lost a major trading partner and strategic ally. Combined with a series of natural disasters, this led to the North Korean famine, which lasted from 1994 to 1998 and killed an estimated 800,000 to 3,500,000 people. • North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il adopted Songun, or "military-first" policy in order to strengthen the country and its government.

  5. North Korean Government • North Korea has been described as a totalitarian, Stalinist dictatorship with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kim family. • It is one of the lowest-ranking human rights records of any country, though the North Korean government denies this. • As a result of its isolation and authoritarian rule, it has sometimes been labeled the "Hermit kingdom", a name once given to its predecessor, the Korean Empire. • North Korea is one of the world's most militarized countries, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the 4th largest in the world, after China, the U.S., and India. It is a nuclear-weapons state and has an active space program.

  6. Past and Current Power • On December 28, 1972 party leader and Premier Kim Il-sung proclaimed himself President and thus become head of state. • He held this office until his death on July 8, 1994 when he was proclaimed the "Eternal President of the Republic". • After the death of Kim Il-sung, his son Kim Jong-il held supreme power in the country as Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea and General Secretary of the party until his own death on December 17, 2011. • The current leader is Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-un, who was revealed to be in charge of the country since his father's death.

  7. North Korea’s Secret Work Camps • While there is no clear cut answer to when the work camps were originated…we certainly know why. • In the 1990s there were an estimated 50,000 prisoners in the camp.Prisoners consist of people who criticized the government, people deemed politically unreliable, such as South Korean prisoners of war, Christians, returnees from Japan and purged senior party members. Based on the guilt by association principle they are often imprisoned together with the whole family including children and the elderly. Often times in North Korea three generations must pay for the sins of the original. All prisoners are detained until they die and prisoners are never released. • North Korean work camps are not included on state mapsand the North Korean government denies their existence. • “There is no human rights issue in this country, as everyone leads the most dignified and happy life.”

  8. But, Google Map shows us differently. This is Camp 22, located in North Korea.

  9. North Korea’s Secret Work Camps • The camps are in a maximum security area, completely isolated from the outside world. Shin is the only known survivor who was born in the camp, escaped, and lived to tell his harrowing story. • The camps are surrounded by an inner 3300 volt electric fence and an outer barbed wire fence, with traps and hidden nails between the two fences.The camp is controlled by roughly 1,000 guards and 500-600 administrative agents. The guards are equipped with automatic rifles, hand grenades, and trained dogs.

  10. Conditions in the Work Camps • While there are very few survivors that have lived to divulge the secrets of the work camp we are fortunate to have a few. Below is the account of AhnMyong-chol an ex prison guard for one of the work camps. • AhnMyong-chol recalls the shock he felt upon his first arrival at the camp, where he likened the prisoners to walking skeletons, dwarfs, and cripples in rags. • Ahn estimates that about 30% of the prisoners have deformities, such as torn off ears, smashed eyes, crooked noses, faces covered with cuts and scars resulting from beatings and other mistreatment. • Around 2,000 prisoners he says have missing limbs, but even prisoners who need crutches to walk must still work.Prisoners get 180 g (6.3 oz = less than 1 cup) of corn per meal (two times a day), with almost no vegetables and no meat. • The only meat in their diets is from rats, snakes or frogs they could catch.Ahn estimates that 1,500 – 2,000 people die of malnutrition there every year, mostly children. • Despite these deaths, the inmate population remains constant, suggesting that around 1,500 – 2,000 new inmates arrive each year.

  11. Conditions in the Work Camps • Children get only very basic education.From six years on they get work assigned, such as picking vegetables, shucking corn or drying rice. But since they receive so very little food, only 180 g (6.3 oz) in total per day, many children die before the age of ten years. • Old people have to work to their death. • Seriously ill prisoners are quarantined, abandoned, and left to die. • Single prisoners live in bunkhouses with 100 people in one room. • As a reward for good work, families are often allowed to live together in a single room of a small house without running water. • But the houses are in poor condition; the walls are made from mud and have a lot of cracks. • All prisoners have to use dirty and crowded communal toilets.

  12. Conditions in the Work Camps • Prisoners have to do hard physical labor in agriculture, mining and factories from 5:00 am to 8:00 pm (7:00 pm in winter),followed by ideology re-education and self-criticism sessions. • New Year’s day is the only holiday for prisoners. • The mines are not equipped with safety measures and according to Ahn prisoners were killed almost every day. They have to use primitive tools, such as shovels and picks, and are forced to work to exhaustion. When there was a fire or a tunnel collapsed, prisoners were abandoned inside and left to die. • Kwon Hyuk reported that corpses are simply loaded into cargo coaches along with the coal to be burnt in a melting furnace.

  13. Shin In Geun:Freedom from Oppression • Now that you understand the government of North Korea, current and past leaders, and the secrets of the work camps (as we know them) you can hope to understand the great battle that Shin In Geun faced as he struggled to survive and escape the prison in which he was born.

  14. Escape From Camp 14 begins with a statement by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the official mouthpiece of North Korea’s regime. It reads, ‘There is no “human rights issue” in this country, as everyone leads the most dignified and happy life’. How is this statement ironic?

  15. So do concentration camps exist today in 2013? Or is this just a fantasy as North Korea states in its official report? “There is no ‘human rights issue’ in this country, as everyone leads the most dignified and happy life.” By their reckoning, the astounding memoirs of survival in the country’s most notorious political prison, Shin Dong-hyuk, read as little more than a fairytale.

  16. We will watch the first 9 mins of this CNN clip • cbsnews

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