The Ghastly Hellhole of Camp 14

Townhall.com ^ | May 10, 2012 | Jeff Jacoby

[Kaslin]

SHIN DONG-HYUK grew up in North Korea's Camp 14, one of the monstrous slave-labor prison complexes in which the world's most tyrannical regime has crushed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, working them to death in conditions of excruciating brutality and degradation. Though the North Korean concentration camps have lasted far longer than their Soviet or Nazi counterparts did, Shin is the first person born and raised in one of them to have successfully escaped abroad. His story is told in journalist Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14, a heart-crushing reminder that man's inhumanity to man has no limit.

It is a book filled with harrowing passages. At the age of six, Shin was forced to watch as one of his classmates -- a short, slight, pretty girl -- was beaten to death by their teacher when he discovered five kernels of corn in her pocket. When Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine while working at the camp's garment factory, half of his middle finger was chopped off as punishment. Time and again he sees other inmates maimed or killed when they are forced to work under appallingly dangerous conditions. And time and again he joins in collective punishment, unhesitatingly obeying when ordered to slap and beat a classmate or some other prisoner singled out for abuse and discipline.

When Shin was 14, he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother for attempting to escape. His dominant emotion as he watched them die was not sorrow, but anger: He was furious at what they had caused him to be put through. Because of their infraction, he had been savagely tortured, suspended in mid-air over a charcoal fire as interrogators demanded information about where his mother and brother were planning to flee after their escape.

"Shin, crazed with pain, smelling his burning flesh, twisted away from the heat," Harden writes. "One of the guards grabbed a gaff hook from the wall and pierced the boy in the lower abdomen, holding him over the fire until he lost consciousness."

North Korea's slave-labor gulag would be horrific even if its inmates were guilty of actual crimes. But most prisoners are guilty of nothing except being related to the wrong family.

Under a demented doctrine laid down by Kim Il Sung, the communist tyrant who founded North Korea, "enemies of class … must be eliminated through three generations." The regime therefore fills these unspeakable camps not only with "enemies" who dared to practice Christianity or failed to keep a picture of Kim properly dusted, but with their entire families, often including grandparents and grandchildren. Shin's father ended up in Camp 14 because two of his brothers had fled south during the Korean War. He and Shin's mother were assigned to each other by camp guards years later as prizes in a "reward" marriage. They were allowed to sleep together just five nights a year. Shin was thus conceived -- and spent the first 23 years of his life -- behind the electrified barbed wire of Kim's ghastly hellhole.

Harden's book is gripping and enlightening. Yet not even the most gifted writer can fully convey what it means to grow up in a Camp 14 -- a realm in which "love and mercy and family were words without meaning," in which betrayal was routine and compassion unknown. How does a human being overcome such damage? Grisly physical scars mark Shin's body, Harden writes, but there are severe psychological scars too. He struggles to show affection and to trust other people; to be capable of sympathy and sadness.

How could it be otherwise? After a lifetime of dehumanization and institutionalized cruelty, Shin can hardly be blamed if he wrestles with emotional paralysis.

But what excuse do we have? We who know what freedom and civilization mean, who live with law and justice and decency, who intone "Never Again" after accounts of genocide and holocaust -- how do we justify our emotional paralysis?

There is no cruelty so depraved that people cannot be induced to do it, or to look the other way while it is being done. Escape from Camp 14 reconfirms what we have known for years: North Korea's rulers brutalize their people with unparalleled and bloody barbarity. Why do we find it so easy to look the other way?

[yldstrk]

So basically, China is enabling North Korea and China must be pressured to do something. China is our enemy, never should we forget that for one moment.

[Fiji Hill]

Conquer the doggone place....

MacArthur would have done the job had Truman allowed him to.

[HereInTheHeartland]

Don’t forget the Zucker video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h3GPc_yMCE

[Norm Lenhart]

1: Announce publicly that “Comsat XXXX” is experiencing orbital stability problems after being dtruck by debris generated from China’s anti-sat weapons test a few years back.

2: plot the trajectory for somewhere in the Atlantic ocean near Antarctica.

3: Put stealth missle tech to use.

4: Blow up every NK military/leadership compound.

5: Apologize to the world because our calculations were slightly off.

6: Remind the world that had China not created a minefield in space against the will of the rest of spacegoing countries, this tragedy could have been avoided.

7: Get on TV and look real sorry.

[Pearls Before Swine]

This makes 1984 sound utopian.

[Le Chien Rouge]

For North Korea

“O most holy apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honours and invoke thee universally, as the patron of hopeless cases, and of things almost despaired of. Pray for them, who are so miserable. Make use, I implore thee, of that particular privilege accorded to thee, to bring visible and speedy help where help was almost despaired of. Come to the assistance in this great need, that they may receive the consolation and succor of Heaven in all their necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly freedom and that we may praise God with thee and all the elect throughout eternity. I promise thee, O blessed Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor thee as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to thee.

[cripplecreek]

And China returns escapees to North Korea, which is depraved.

I remember seeing a report that had an interview with a Chinese border guard. His face was blurred but he was crying as he recalled handing over some illegals from North Korea.

He said that the N Koreans had a heavy chain with large hooks attached every couple of feet. They drove the hooks through both hands of each prisoner as a means of shackling them together.

Yes the place is a horror show but until the world makes a conscious commitment to end it with real force it will continue. Unfortunately, since WWII, the world doesn't do total war solutions.

[thackney]

And what do we hear from Amnesty International concerning this?

Amnesty International is refused a presence in North Korea. But they do help point out the criminal level of abuse that happens there.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/north-korea

I think the problem you see is a refusal of the main-stream media to cover their reports, or the reports of others.

[yldstrk]

I read the North Koreans attached a sharpened steel cord to the body of the returned escapee by poking it under their collar bone, similarly depraved behavior.

[gibsosa]

bfl

[Elsie]

Uh...

Take out the ‘leaders’??

[Elsie]

[Elsie]

Since few of them have any direct knowledge that a better life is possible, I really don’t think I will happen any time soon.

---

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done round here.

[Carry_Okie]

But what excuse do we have? We who know what freedom and civilization mean, who live with law and justice and decency, who intone "Never Again" after accounts of genocide and holocaust -- how do we justify our emotional paralysis?

The degree to which we ignore this condition is indicative of the power of a Marxist mass media which does not wish to publicize the consequences of the philosophy with which they are directly associated. "It will be different when I am king."

[littleharbour]

As things currently stand, the only way that the madness in NK could end is if the Chi-coms decided to end it. But they enjoy having this buffer between them and democratic SK and they enjoy having so many American troops tied down in SK to deal with the threat posed by the madmen in Pyongyang. The NK people are effectively human shields for the greater ambitions of the Chi-com leadership.

The Americans can’t unilaterally invade NK without the full support of SK, as it is SK which would take the brunt of any NK retaliation. The damage in SK could be severe, even if a war was short in duration, given the close proximity of Seoul to the NK border and the possibility that at least one NK nuke could be delivered before the regime was crushed. NK should have been taken down in the early 90s, after the collapse of Russia and before they got nukes. Too late now.

[X-spurt]

Is it just me or do Asians seem to have a special penchant for brutality?

A good friend who escaped when Saigon fell, told me this is so because they have no loyalty or empathy for anyone not in their family.

[X-spurt]

Have read, the reason the Chinese let NK gov continue is that they do not want the flood of NK refuges. Maybe that is only a partial reason.

[X-spurt]

Don’t these GD lefties just make ya want to puke?

[SampleMan]

Actually, the problem I have with AA is their total lack of perspective.

Several years ago I researched AA’s annual report and found about 8 pages on North Korea and about 150 on the use of tasers in American prisons. Looking at such things, its obvious what their focus is.

[Publius Valerius]

Yes. I picked up this book last week. It’s short and difficult to put down. It is horrifying in every aspect, but at least for me, it was very difficult to comprehend that this is a true story because it is so very outrageous and so far beyond our social norms that North Korea might as well be an alien planet. Part of this, I suspect, is the writer’s very matter of fact style (he used to be a reporter, and it shows).

For instance, not only was the boy unloved by his mother—ok, fine—but it goes even beyond this. His mother viewed him as a competitor for food and beat him when he ate their food. When he overheard his mother and brother contemplating escape, he turned them in to the authorities, which—though required by the camp rules—earned him a trip to an underground prison where he was nearly tortured to death.

I don’t usually go out and buy books at retail, but this fellow has had a difficult time in normal society since his escape, and the author has agreed, as a condition of writing the book, to split half the profits with the protagonist. Seemed like a worthy cause to me.