Inside North Korea's gulag

Twisted by hunger and cruelty, Shin In Geun betrayed his mother, and then watched her hang

Shin Dong-hyuk, now known as Shin In Geun, is the only known person to have ever escaped from a North Korean labor camp.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen)

NINE YEARS AFTER watching his mother's hanging, Shin In Geun squirmed through the electric fence that surrounds Camp 14 and ran off through the snow into the North Korean wilderness. It was Jan. 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is the only one to have done it. He was 23 years old and knew no one outside the fence. Within a month, he had walked into China. Within two years, he was living in South Korea. Four years later, he was living in Southern California.

Shin is roughly the same age as Kim Jong Un, the chubby third son of Kim Jong Il, who took over as leader after his father's death, in 2011. Shin was born a slave and raised behind a high-voltage barbed-wire fence. His mother beat him, and he viewed her as a competitor for food. His father, who was allowed by guards to sleep with his mother just five nights a year, ignored him. His older brother was a stranger. Children in the camp were untrustworthy and abusive. Before he learned anything else, Shin learned to survive by snitching on all of them. Love and mercy and family were words without meaning.

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