Saturday, March 24, 2012

Escape From a North Korean Prison

Born in a forced labor camp, he knew nothing of the outside world. Then he breached the barbed wire.

By BLAINE HARDEN

KOREA

Shin Dong-hyuk was born into captivity and lived in a labor camp until just a few years ago. Now, having fled North Korea, he now lives in Seoul, broadcasting a weekly web show featuring other North Korean defectors. WSJ's Evan Ramstad reports.

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 turned 16, he became an adult worker. His years of schooling to that point had only served as training for hard labor.

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