Escape from Camp 14 (23 page)

Shin did not smile.

He did not want to talk about it.

I persisted, reminding him that he had often told me he did not consider himself capable of love, and certainly not of marriage. Had he changed his mind?

‘We have to work before anything else,’ he said. ‘But after work is done there is hope for progress.’

The relationship did not work out. Six months after he moved in with Harim, Shin called me to say that they were splitting up. He did not want to talk about why. Shin flew the next day to Ohio
to live with the Dye family. He was not certain where he would go from there, perhaps back to South Korea.

While Shin was still in the Seattle area, he invited me to a Korean American Pentecostal church in the city’s northern suburbs. He was giving a speech and seemed
especially eager for me to come and listen. When I showed up at the church a few minutes early on a cold and rainy Sunday evening, Shin was waiting for me. He shook my hand with both of his, looked
me in the eye and told me to sit in a pew near the front. He was dressed more formally than I could remember seeing him: a grey business suit, a blue dress shirt, open at the collar, and polished
black loafers. The church was full.

After a hymn and a prayer from the pastor, Shin strode to the front of the church and took command of the evening. Without notes or a hint of nerves, he spoke for a solid hour. He began by
goading his audience of Korean immigrants and their American-raised adult children, asserting that Kim Jong Il was worse than Hitler. While Hitler attacked his enemies, Shin said, Kim worked his
own people to death in places like Camp 14.

Having grabbed the congregation’s attention, Shin then introduced himself as a predator who had been bred in the camp to inform on family and friends and to feel no remorse. ‘The
only thing I thought was that I had to prey on others for my survival,’ he said.

In the camp, when his teacher beat a six-year-old classmate to death for having five grains of corn in her pocket, Shin confessed to the congregation that he ‘didn’t think much about
it’.

‘I did not know about sympathy or sadness,’ he said. ‘They educated us from birth so that we were not capable of normal human emotions. Now that I am out, I am learning to be
emotional. I have learned to cry. I feel like I am becoming human.’

But Shin made it clear that he still had a long way to go. ‘I escaped physically,’ he said. ‘I haven’t escaped psychologically.’

Near the end of his speech, Shin described how he had crawled over Park’s smouldering body. His motives in fleeing Camp 14, he said, were not noble. He did not thirst for freedom or
political rights. He was merely hungry for meat.

Shin’s speech astonished me. Compared to the diffident, incoherent speaker I had seen six months earlier in Southern California, he was unrecognizable. He had harnessed his self-loathing
and used it to indict the state that had poisoned his heart and killed his family.

His confessional, I later learned, was the calculated result of hard work. Shin had noticed that his meandering question and answer sessions were putting people to sleep, so he decided to act on
advice he had been resisting for years: he outlined his speech, tailored it to his audience and memorized what he wanted to say. In a room by himself, he polished his delivery.

The preparation paid off. That evening, his listeners squirmed in their pews, their faces showing discomfort, disgust, anger and shock. Some faces were stained with tears. When Shin was
finished, when he told the congregation that one man, if he refuses to be silenced, could help free the tens of thousands who remain in North Korea’s labour camps, the church exploded in
applause.

In that speech, if not yet in his life, Shin had seized control of his past.

This book, of course, could not have been written without the courage, intelligence and patience of Shin Dong-hyuk. For two years and on two continents, he took the time and
endured the pain of telling his story in all its awful detail.

I also want to thank Lisa Colacurcio, a member of the board of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, who first told me about Shin. Kenneth Cukier, a correspondent at
The
Economist
, told me that Shin’s story needed a book in English and offered useful suggestions about how to write it.

Since I do not speak Korean, I depended on translators. I would like to thank Stella Kim and Jennifer Cho in Seoul. Also in Seoul, Yoonjung Seo helped with reporting, as did Brian Lee. In Tokyo,
Akiko Yamamoto helped with reporting and logistics. In Southern California, David Kim was a masterful translator and friend to Shin and to me. He also gave me advice on the manuscript.

At Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) in Torrance, Hannah Song and Andy Kim helped me understand Shin’s adjustment to the United States. In addition, Song spent many hours solving logistical
problems for Shin and for me. In Seattle, Harim Lee was also helpful. In Columbus, Ohio, Lowell and Linda Dye, who have helped Shin and whom he regards as parents, offered perspective and
advice.

For guidance in my attempt to understand what is going on inside North Korea, I thank Marcus Noland, deputy director and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in
Washington. He gave generously of his time and expertise. His research on North Korea with Stephan Haggard was a key resource. Also, conversations with Kongdan Oh, a research staff member at the
Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia, helped me understand what I heard from Shin and from other North Koreans. The books she has written with her husband, Ralph Hassig, a North
Korean scholar, were also invaluable. In Seoul, Andrei Lankov, who teaches North Korean studies at Kookmin University, was always willing to share his insight.

Two tireless bloggers, Joshua Stanton from One Free Korea and Curtis Melvin of North Korean Economy Watch, provided useful and constantly updated information and analysis about the North’s
economy, leadership, military and politics. Also, Barbara Demick’s fine book,
Nothing to Envy
, was a key to the thinking of ordinary North Koreans.

I especially want to thank the Seoul-based Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. It published Shin’s Korean-language memoir and generously encouraged him to cooperate with me.
Also, the Korean Bar Association’s ‘White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2008’ was a valuable resource.

David Hawk, author of ‘The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps’ and perhaps the single most important individual in alerting outsiders to the existence and
operation of the camps, shared his expertise and research. Suzanne Scholte, who has led campaigns around the world for human rights in North Korea, also has my thanks. In Seattle, Blaise Aguera y
Arcas made shrewd narrative suggestions and Sam Howe Verhovek gave reporting advice.

My agent, Raphael Sagalyn, did a masterful job in making this book possible. At Viking, editor Kathryn Court embraced the project and offered advice that significantly improved the manuscript,
as did Tara Singh, Kathryn’s assistant.

David Hoffman, the
Washington Post
foreign editor who sent me to Asia, told me to dig into North Korea. When I hesitated, he insisted. When I struggled, he was encouraging.
Post
editors Doug Jehl and Kevin Sullivan were also demanding and supportive. Donald G. Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, paid amazingly close attention to North Korea and always let
me know if I managed to write anything interesting about it.

Finally, my wife, Jessica Kowal, played a major role in making this book. In addition to reading and editing it, she convinced me that telling Shin’s story was the best possible thing I
could do. My children, Lucinda and Arno, asked a lot of good questions about Shin’s life. They could not comprehend the cruelty of North Korea, but recognized Shin as an amazing person. I
feel the same way.