Date Finished: March 29, 2018
Page Count: 210
Genre: Biography/Nonfiction
So since
you noticed, yes this isn’t exactly what I’d call a review, it’s more of a PSA.
Let’s be honest here, it can be rather challenging to review a nonfiction book
unless you want to spend the duration of the review talking about the
formatting of the book and what you learned. Ironically I’m going to do that,
but the most, most important part of this review is going to be a PSA directed
at you, you unknown internet surfing American/post about lots of stuff I
learned from this book. Thank God this review won’t be as long as my last one (hopefully),
but you shouldn’t skip over this review because it long or because it’s a
nonfiction book. I promise you I will do my best to convince you to read this
book or not. Alright then lets hop to it!
Shin In Geun (now know as Shin Dong-hyuk) is the man of the hour and this book
is about his life. It’s about more than just his life though, it’s about the
life of those born and raised in North Korea’s worst prison camp and the
challenges people who escape from the camp face when trying to assimilate into
other societies. This is the story of current atrocities in our world that many
people are blind to or barely bat an eye at because it’s not them, there no way
this could be going on, why should we have to deal with the sheet storm called
North Korea?
Before reading this book I was one
of the people who would make jokes about North Korea watching us (the US) and I
used to think Hitler was the most inhuman person to have ever walked the planet
recently. How blind I was to the abusive thieves we have walking on our planet
at this moment. I hate to say bas things about Elie Wiesel (and yes, I have
read Night), but he got the better
end of the stick back in WW2. This is one of the mind blowing things about this
book, (and while I don’t remember when things were stated exactly) it pointed
out how all that’s going on is worse in North Korea than the Holocaust as NK’s labor
camps have existed twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps (and
still exist today, just Google map it). “So what?” You say? Here’s the part
where I get slightly biased; the Nazi camps were meant for killing, the NK ones
are meant to punish.
Despite
what you believe the afterlife is going to be like, most people will agree that
pain is not a fun experience and if torture is bad enough they’d kill themselves
rather than have to experience prolonged misery. People who got sent to the Camp
14 have to endure long hours of labor while malnourished and often beaten up
for failure and/or not meeting one’s quota. For those who went in suicide is a
highly likely possibility. There was even a part in the book where Harden talked
about how another defector once jumped down a mine shaft trying to kill himself
and was then upset when he failed. That’s super messed up. You think it isn’t
because some Jews also completed suicide? The scale of prisoners is far greater
and the fact that the guards don’t want them to die should give you some
indication that the intention isn’t mass murder, is mass labor in hell on
earth. Don’t even get me started on the social structure of the camp.
NK concentration
camps don’t throw babies into fires, don’t gas women, and don’t get rid of the
unhealthy workers immediately. Men and women are “give” to each other as
rewards to try and have children in the camp as (with Camp 14 at least) the
idea is to purify the criminals by at least three generations (the worst political
enemies and stuff go to Camp 14). These kids are raised to be informers and alert
their guards, or “teachers” as the kids grow up calling them, of anyone who
might break the rules, even their own family. To them there is no love with
family as there is no love allowed at camp. With the pressure to snitch and
keep oneself from harm, it’s probably impossible to develop strong, positive emotions
at another other than fragile trust when it isn’t even taught to them.
Speaking of taught, teaching there
is horrible. Shin describes how he once watched his six-year old classmate get
beat to death with a chalkboard pointer by the teacher. That was something
normal at school, you work or get beaten till you can’t be beat anymore. NK has
(had?) a population of about 23 million people; it can keep sending people to
those labor camps for a long time. With such a poor economy, the prisoners are practically
always working starting at their schooling years. Most of school is doing work
and not actually learning so the prisoners are usually literate and light-years
behind in schooling. Most of the people assume they’re going to die working
someday soon, it’s that bad.
To be born and raised in such a
death pit in the 21st century is shocking to say the least, but what’s
more shocking is how little the world is doing to fix the sins of the Kim
dynasty. Lots of food and medical aid is sent to the country but NK is so tense
and heavily armed that the supplies gets in unsupervised and then mostly given
to the elites or sold at cheap prices to outside markets so that the civilians
and prisoners starve. Starvation is so bad there that populations of normal pet
creatures, ex: dogs, are very low since many starving NKs scavenge and eat them
in times of famine. That’s messed up!
I could go on and on about the
terrible lives the people in the concentration camps live and the challenge
they face if they happen to escape (highly unlikely since Shin is the only
person to escape from Camp 14 so far, but other camps, yeah people might escape
those) or you could read the book. Seriously, if you’re an American talking
about NK like it’s something awful but only know about its supposed nuclear
power and not its failure to establish decent human rights for its people you
are a disgrace and a testimony to the ignorance and self-centeredness that (I feel)
plagues the country today. Shin’s life story is a remarkable one that needs to
be shared if the world ever stands a chance at helping the prisoners of NK, not
just those in camps, but those restricted by the government who live in fear of
their lives and have no dreams due to its censorship on the rest of the world
(though NK apparently teaches kids that America is a b*stard and SK is
it's b*tch). It’s highly enlightening and doesn’t gloss over anything or over
exaggerate on stuff, and he’s even honest about the lie he told for years about
never knowing anything about his mother’s plans for escape when spoiler alert: Shin
was the one who alerted the authorities of his mom and his older brother’s plan
for escape. You know they’re teaching some messed up sheet when a guy admits
that he didn’t want to seem inhuman and be a pariah so he lied about a crucial
part of his life story to the world. Take it from someone who is young
and just finished the book, this is not a boring to read and you can actually
learn a lot form it without having to sit through the (sometimes) boring format
of normal nonfiction books. Heck, I even (brace yourself) found Escape from Camp 14 to be more a hell of
a lot better than Elie Wiesel’s Night,
not that I’m hating on Night (that book was okay).
Please, I want you to be raise awareness
about the NK problem and read this book by checking it out from your local
library or buying the book from a bookstore (not from Amazon, they may have it
cheaper but you shouldn’t help them in their quest to take over the world
before Google) as it truly is a book worth keeping. While not for the faint of
heart I’d say people starting at age 13 should read this book no matter who
they are; we can’t fix a problem we don’t know about so please read the book
and realize just how bad things are in NK. Have I said you should read the book
enough times? Go read the book now! Stop reading this review and go read it
now.
