Some time ago I read a review of the book by Blaine Harden titled Escape From Camp 14, the story of a young North Korean named Shin Dong-hyuk who was born in a prison camp and managed at age twenty three to escape it - the only person who, born in a camp, has been known to have escaped.
The review prompted me to buy the book, and I encourage anyone looking for summer reading to do the same. The details of Shin's story are gripping, from the reason for his birth in the prison, to his childhood betrayal of his mother and brother, to his amazing escape, Harden's account makes you not want to stop reading.
Equally gripping is his ancillary description of the hell that is North Korea. The entire country is a prison that has deadened the souls of its people, of course, but the prison camps are places of especial savagery, cruelty, and amorality, a place where people have no hope, where all that matters is avoiding a beating and getting a scrap of food to stave off starvation.
Shin was so scarred by his experience, so emotionally stunted by what he did and what was done to him, that adjusting to life after his escape has been almost as difficult as living in Camp 14.
The book also offers a fascinating illustration of the depth of depravity to which people sink once they've conflated a deep hatred of Christianity with power. North Korea is spiritually barren and consequently the only morality is a might makes right ethic according to which whatever those who have power do is ipso facto right. It's a repetition of the trajectory of virtually every state of the twentieth century whose leaders were both atheists and politically all-powerful - from the Soviet Union to Germany to China to Cambodia to Cuba and dozens of lesser states. The stories of the miseries inflicted by these governments on their people are everywhere. North Korea is perhaps worse than most but only because its people suffer worse deprivations than have the people of other totalitarian states.
Anyway, I recommend the book. You won't be sorry you read it.
