Premium Essay

Escape From Camp 14

Submitted By
Words 1593
Pages 7
The first book that I read this summer was Escape From Camp 14, by Blaine Harden. The book retells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk’s escape from Camp 14. Camp 14 is a prison for the political enemies in North Korea, and in the camp Shin was forced to survive torture, starvation, malnutrition, and grueling hours of manual labor since he was a child. In a constant battle zone, Shin fought for food and was brainwashed by the camp into believing nothing existed beyond the fences he was trapped in. On January 2, 2005 Shin escaped from the North Korean political camp and was able to see beyond the fences when he was 23 years old. Shin then dedicated his life to sharing his story and is the only person to ever escape any of the North Korean political …show more content…
The camp’s environment forced Shin to do whatever was necessary in order to survive, and an essential part of Shin’s time at Camp 14 was finding ways to survive his environment. Throughout the book, Shin faces many obstacles and through it all he was forced to find ways to ensure survival by either snitching, stealing food, or advancing into better positions in the camp. In the camp friendships weren’t tangible because inmates were told to “snitch” on others in hope of more food or less manual labor. Harden said, “Shin was a scrawny, incurious, and for the most part friendless child whose one source of certainty was the guards’ lectures about redemption through snitching” (106). The benefit of snitching was that it allowed you to for a moment to feel secure in your situation, and children were taught to atone for their sins by snitching. Since Shin was a “reliable snitch” (129) his teacher prevented his other classmates from stealing his food, beating him up, snuck Shin food, assigned him less work, and gave him a warm place to sleep in the student dorm. Shin says that without his help he would have died. By having a record of snitching it allowed Shin to receive better treatment and secure his survival in the camp. While, snitching was one means of survival in Camp 14, prisoners still had to manage through malnutrition, starvation, and diseases. If you were sick you were unable to work, and if you were unable to work and couldn’t meet your quota guards would commonly cut your food portions. As a boy, Shin had to find various methods in order not to starve or catch diseases. Two of the methods that Shin mentioned in the book was catching and roasting rats, which could help prevent pellagra and was another source of food (86). The other method was regurgitating a recent meal and consuming it again (88). The fight for food continued even into Shin’s teenager years. When Shin was fifteen he competed

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Escape from Camp 14

...Korean’s political prison camps? Many people might do not know what there are. They have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. But Shin Dong-hyuk did. He was destined to a life of hard labor and an early death. Thinking of love and family were no meaning. He just saw his mother as a competitor for food. He is taught to trust no one, to snitch on everyone and to be loyal only to the guards. When he was 23, Shin managed to evade the guards and crawl through an electrified fence over the dead body of his friend to escape. He found his way to China, then to South Korea and eventually to the U.S. He is the only prisoner born and raised in one of North Korea's prison camps who is known to have escaped. Reporter Blaine Harden has written an account of Shin's journey called Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. Not surprisingly, Shin's PTSD and learned way of life make it very difficult for him to open up and share the brutal details of his life. Not just because he had bad things done to him, but because he believes he did some very bad things himself. Although Shin has physical freedom, he cannot achieve psychological freedom evidenced by his distrust of others, others’ distrust of him, his lacks of loving role models, his shame of surviving Camp 14, and his self hatred from having “contaminated identity”...

Words: 1899 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Escape From Camp 14 Research Paper

...Bryan Nevis Mrs. Welkenbach Pre-AP English II 3 November 2015 Escape from Camp 14: Loss of Innocence In today’s world, most people know about North Korea’s political standpoint of how they claim to treat their people well, but has one ever questioned the honesty of North Korea? For several decades, satellites have detected prison/labor camps all over the Mountainous regions of North Korea. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people reside in these camps; Many of them born in the camp and are unaware of the outside world. At a young age many of the children born in the camp, are malnourished, abused and given a taste of what the camp life is like. A popular novel known as Escape from Camp 14 is the true tale of a young man’s life, in a labor camp known...

Words: 1079 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Jan Komski: Surviving In The Holocaust

...Jews you never seen or even knew of Auschwitz; thinking you were not going to survive in the Holocaust or never knowing what's going to happen to you. Jan Komski was one of the survivors. On June 14, 1940, Jan Komski was sent to a camp with around 750 Jews in the same situation. Before he knew it no Jews could go anywhere. School and swimming pools became off limit to them. When he goes to Auschwitz, Komski was later to be identified. He got the number 564 tattooed and was one of the people who were “horrible”. “It was miserable.” he said “because they barely had any food and if they wanted food the next morning they had to wake up at four o’clock in the morning, waiting in line, in front of the bakery for hours for a loaf of bread.” (United States 1)....

Words: 456 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Man's Search For Meaning Summary

...Phillip Robertson 11/21/14 Dr. Michael Railey Biographical Sketch Viktor E. Frankl the author of Man’s Search for Meaning had a very important and eventful life. His life before being forced into the Nazi concentration camps although vague showed that he was a very accomplished psychiatrist with a scientific journal ready for publication and a loving husband. He then became a forced laborer until his medical skills saved him. He was moved from forced labor to a position as a doctor helping typhus patients until his camp was liberated. After his imprisonment in the concentration camps he used his experiences and observations of all he had seen to form a new school of psychology called Logotherapy. Summary The book starts off in the transport...

Words: 861 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

1984 Power

...immense power over individuals. Often times, political parties use this power to deprive qualities that define humans as a species from a population. In the fictional novel, 1984 by George Orwell (1949), the Party goes to extreme lengths to torture and brainwash their citizens to achieve utopian concepts. In Terry Gilliam’s film, Brazil (1985) the authorities operate behind the shadows, using technology to manipulate the masses and to eliminate the emotions of the citizens. In the real world, similar examples are evident; in North Korea, these stories are truer than ever. To be more specific, overseers order...

Words: 1061 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Ar 190

...Army Regulation 190–8 OPNAVINST 3461.6 AFJI 31-304 MCO 3461.1 Military Police Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees Headquarters Departments of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps Washington, DC 1 October 1997 UNCLASSIFIED SUMMARY of CHANGE AR 190–8/OPNAVINST 3461.6/AFJI 31–304/MCO 3461.1 Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees This revision-o o o Establishes a multi-service regulation for all services (para 1-4a). Ensures compliance with DOD Directive 2310.1 dated August 1994 (para 1-4g). Establishes HQDA, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations as the primary Army Staff responsibility for the Enemy Prisoner of War, Civilian Internee and Retained Persons Program (para 1-4c). Establishes a DD FORM 2745, Enemy Prisoner of War(EPW) Capture Tag (para 21b). Highlights Combatant Commanders, Task Force Commanders and Joint Task Force Commanders responsibilities (para 1-4g). Establishes procedures for conducting tribunals (para 1-6). Establishes Public Affairs policy (para 1-9). Establishes policy for EPW held aboard ship (para 2-1b). Updates OCONUS evacuation policy (para 2-3). Establishes the use of Health and Comfort Packs as a temporary substitution for Advance of Pay for short term operations (para 3-4h). Updates procedures for contracting EPW (para 4-22). Combines AR 190-8 and AR 190-57 (para 6-1). o o o o o o o o o Headquarters Departments of...

Words: 40335 - Pages: 162

Premium Essay

Fantl's 'The Song Is Over'

...The Holocaust lasted from January 20, 1933 until May 8, 1945. So much happened in such a short period of time. Only the people that were present during this gruesome time in Germany will be able to fully penetrate just how violent the Holocaust was. Luckily, there were many artists present at camps such as Auschwitz who painted pictures that allow our generations to imagine the tragedy. Pavel Fantl, a doctor born in 1903 was deported to Auschwitz with his wife and son in January of 1945. A Czech policeman gave Fantl art materials which allowed him to secretly paint pictures of his surroundings and his observations. Fantl has many well-known paintings and one of his many is known as “The Song is Over”. It is a painting that portrays Hitler...

Words: 362 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Nazi Death Camps Paper

...Nazi Death Camps Nazi Death Camps Arbeit Macht Frei Arbeit Macht Frei 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 Arbeit macht frei; when translated into English means labor makes you free. This was the first thing many Jews in the 1940’s saw as the banner above the gates of the place they’d likely die read. (Wachsmann) German soldiers fed Jews false hope, thinking that the harder they worked the closer freedom would be when in reality freedom could only come with death. The world changed forever when an estimated 20,946,000 people died due to the world war ignited by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Third Reich was the name for Nazi Germany under Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary. (Dictionary) Soldiers were killed in battle, Civilians in cross fire, and by starvation but nothing compares to the systematic execution and elimination demonstrated by the Third Reich sponsored death camps. Before the organized concentration camps that are well known throughout the world to have killed a countless number of people there were camps built in the early 1930’s when the Nazi’s first came into power. Earlier camps were temporary and were set up to confine, interrogate, torture, and weaken...

Words: 2592 - Pages: 11

Premium Essay

Harmon Hh

...boys’ first year at camp turns into a real life horror story when he’s brutally bullied and decides to seek revenge. . BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In 1964, HARMON HEATH (14) runs away from Camp Kinasaka. He sifts through the black swamp where a disembodied arm reaches out from beneath the water. Harmon wanders to Happy House, a home for the mentally unfit. He’s found by two orderlies and taken in. They believe he’s from the summer camp. Harmon tells the orderlies that he had to kill them. In 1969, Heath (now 20) escapes from the Happy House. He returns to the camp and hides in cabin 2. Kids sit around a campfire telling horror stories about camp, including the story about Harmon Heath, SHERMAN a boy found dead in cabin 2, and a little girl GEORGIA HINES (7), who went missing near cabin 2....

Words: 550 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Man Search for Meaning

...Tuan Nguyen Professor Jeffrey McMahon July 28, 2014 English 1C Drama in Meaning I had a friend who studied with me in elementary to high school; her name was Lan. She was unlike other friends, always controlled by her parents. Because she grew up in a rich family and her parents did not want her to contact other people, she always isolated herself from the collective class. She couldn’t do whatever she wanted, just listened and did the thing that her parents want. With her, there was no goal and purpose in her life anymore. Lan did not care and just blindly did it; she was blind and lied to herself. This girl became frustrated and gradually stepped deeper into the whole of sink and darkness that she was digging up for herself. She couldn’t escape from her darkness because she never tried to escape from it. She only listened to her parents and not listen to herself about what she needed and what she wanted. Lan was not able to live a good life, and she was not being to find her purpose in life. When Lan did the things right, she usually considered that she was good and perfect; she thought that her life was perfect and there was no need to correct or change the way it was. This thought would make her easily become self- satisfied. Lan, who was also not moving or making any changing to adapt to the new situations suddenly come to life, was allowing bad things to come in her life. Moreover, without changing, she would be leaved behind and she would not be able to find...

Words: 2220 - Pages: 9

Free Essay

History

...Charles Bournes History 1200 12/9/14 While watching the videos, I gained knowledge on both how the Jews were treated and how many people were stored at Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel was one out of millions of Jews that were taken to Auschwitz. Him along with his family, were transported to the camp with no type of say or freedom. Wiesel referred to it as a slave labor camp. On the gate of Auschwitz was a sign in German which read, 'Arbeit macht frei', which means work makes you free. The camp was divided into three areas: Auschwitz was the camp commander's headquarters and administrative offices. It is miles away from the main part. At these camps, slave labor was used to kill the people. The working conditions were so poor that death was a sure result. Auschwitz began taking women prisoners in the earlier part of 1942, but later that same years, the women were housed in Birkenau. When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were met with threats and death promises. If they didn't do exactly as they were told, they would be beaten to death, starved, or shot. At times the slaves were told that things would get better. It surprised me on how these people were treated. They literally had no freedom. I learned that up to 8,000 people were being transported to the camps every day. The Nazi’s main goal was to completely wipe out there race. If you weren’t good enough to do labor you were killed in a vicious way. Women along with their children were sometimes put into gas chambers that...

Words: 717 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Document 37: Refugees In Charleston, South Carolina

...In Document 37, Refugees in Charleston, South Carolina, Refugees explain in a petition on how they exit their town which is getting torn down from a battle of whites and revolting blacks. Refugees talk about what’s going on, how they escape, where they escape, and why. They also backup Alexandre Francis Augustus de Grasse and defend him on why he along with his family and other refugees flee to the America’s. June 19-21 of 1793 and a few days after, the town of Le Cap was burned and scorched forcing refugees to escape from Saint-Domingue. In the town of the Cape, there is a battle between the revolting blacks and the army of the whites led by the Adjutant General, M. Alexandre Francis Augustus de Grasse. Augustus de Grasse was captured, persecuted,...

Words: 577 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Applied to Negotiation 36 Chinese Strategies

...right; attack to the left. 7 Create Something Out of Nothing. Turn something that is not substantial into reality. 8 Secretly Utilize the Chen Cang Passage (CNC). Pretend to Advance Down One Path While Taking Another Hidden Path (LB). Pretend to care about an issue and later give it up to get what you really want. 9 Watch the Fire Burning from Across the River. Allow them to fight your other enemy while you rest and observe. Later, defeat the exhausted survivor. 10 Conceal a Dagger in a Smile. Befriend them to get their guard down, then attack their weakest point. 11 Sacrifice a Plum Tree to Save a Peach Tree (RM). Let the Plum Tree Wither in Place of the Peach Tree (TF). Trade up! Take a small loss for a large gain. 12 Take Away a Goat in Passing. Take advantage of every small opportunity. 13 Beat the Grass to Startle the Snake. Stir things up before beginning to negotiate for your true interests. 14 Raise a Corpse from the Dead (LB). Borrow a Corpse to Return the Soul (TF). Revive a dead proposal by presenting it again or in a new way. 15 Lure the Tiger out of the Mountain. Seek a neutral location. Negotiate after leading them away from a position of strength. 16 Let the Adversary off in order to Snare Him. To Capture the Enemy, First Let It Go (RM). Do not arouse their spirit to fight...

Words: 868 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Power Corrupts Absolute Power: Kim Jong-Il

...the dictator of North Korea who was in power from 1994 to 2011. Kim Jong-Il has done many bad things with his power, such as putting thousands of people including children in imprisoned labor camps. They were appointed to imprison labor camps due to the acts he considered to be a crime which was hoarding food, and being an anti-socialist. Inside of the imprisonment labor camps the imprisoned...

Words: 732 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Microbacteria Replicates Research Paper

...12/6/14 Microbiology 83414 Angelo Kolokithas Streptococcus pyogenes There are trillions of bacteria on earth. It is hard to believe that something so small can be so destructive. Bacteria replicates so fast that small symptoms can soon turn way worse, sometimes can even cause death. In fact bacterial infections are the number one cause for death in the United States in young children and elderly adults (Streptococcal Infections). The unknown I was given was unknown number four. The tests I did helped me conclude that the organism unknown number four is Streptococcus pyogenes. The fist step I did when getting the unknown organism was Gram stain it to determine whether it was gram-positive or gram-negative. Viewing the organism...

Words: 726 - Pages: 3