Escape from Camp 14

No one had paid any attention to Shin’s birthday when he was growing up, yet his new friends threw him a surprise birthday party when he turned 26. Such occasions were rare, though, and Shin was unhappy in South Korea. He had lost his job and was worried about how he would pay his rent now that his stipend from the Ministry of Unification had run out. His social interactions were also minimal and his memoir had flopped. On this note, the director of the Database Center commented that “The indifference of South Korean society to the issue of North Korean rights is so awful” (169). North Korea’s periodic belligerence occasionally provokes retaliatory action by South Korea, but, by and large, South Korea is more concerned with preserving peace and maintaining its standards of living.

South Korean society is also extremely competitive, and people demand high standards, from both themselves and others. It is hard for defectors to assimilate into such an environment, and, though South Korea has enjoyed considerable economic success, its suicide rate is considerable. Likewise, people are reluctant to seek treatment for depression as they are scared of being seen as crazy. Shin had not figured out how to make a life in South Korea but he had decided what he wanted to do with his future: he would become a human rights activist and raise international awareness about the labor camps. This prompted his decision to move to the United States.

Shin made various public appearances in America under the sponsorship of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), but initially he “bored and baffled his audience.” When Harden quizzed him about his reluctance to discuss his escape, he replied, “‘The things I went through were mine alone.’” He also continued to be haunted by nightmares and referred to a “dead space” (177) within him. There is no easy way to adapt to life outside the camps, and Shin feels that it would be selfish of him to be happy with others are suffering. He says that he sometimes tries to laugh and cry like other people, but laughter and tears do not come.

Soon after Shin arrived in California, he was befriended by a Korean family who were kind and welcoming. The mother, Kyung Soon Chung, was a pastor’s wife and began referring to Shin as her eldest son, yet Shin was plagued with nightmares about his mother’s death and guilt for leaving his father behind and stepping over Park’s body. Kyung says that Shin has a strong conscience and a good heart; moreover, he has not been brainwashed by the propaganda surrounding the Kim dynasty. In this respect, she believes that he has “‘a certain purity’” (180).

Shin’s social skills and confidence improved after a couple of years in California. He also began to credit God for his escape from the camp, but his burgeoning faith did not tally with the timeline of his life: he had not heard about God until after the death of his mother, brother, and Park; and he doubted that God had protected his father from the guards’ vengeance. Likewise, guilt had not been an issue in the camp, yet it had now taken the place of anger. Having witnessed the loving bond that existed in other families, he could not bear to consider the kind of son that he had been.

Though Shin had a strong chance of gaining permanent residency in the United States, he did not apply for a green card because he could not decide where he wanted to live. He found it difficult to commit to anything and refused to make a life plan; instead, he “floated around” (182) California. A large number of North Koreans had already settled in Los Angeles, and it was easy to spend time in this area without having to learn another language.

At the end of his second summer in California, Shin met a young woman named Harim Lee who had been born in Seoul but moved to the United States with her family when she was four. She was studying sociology and, after her third year of college, decided to become fully involved in the North Korean issue. It was in this capacity that she met Shin, but the two got on immediately and started dating. Doing so went against LiNK’s rules, and, when they received a warning, Shin became angry. He quit LiNK after several months, though his relationship with Harim was not the only motivating factor: the executive director, Hannah Song, felt that Shin had made little effort to learn English, sometimes avoided responsibility, and expected special treatment.

This was not a surprising turn of events, as North Korean defectors often quit jobs on the grounds that they have been singled out for persecution. At the resettlement center in South Korea, job counselors likewise attest to the paranoia and difficulties that defectors experience as they try to adjust to their new lives. Once they realize that everything they were told in North Korea was a lie, they have difficulty trusting organizations. Still, Hannah was heartbroken by Shin’s decision to leave and blamed herself for not demanding that he take personal responsibility from the outset.

In February 2011, Shin flew to Washington State and moved in with Harim and her parents. Without saying so, they also made it known to the author that they would prefer for the interview period to come to an end soon.

Shin and Harim had formed a two-person NGO called North Korea Freedom Plexus, and they hoped to raise money from donations. Their goal was to open asylum shelters for defectors in China and to smuggle anti-regime pamphlets into North Korea. Lowell and Linda Dye, an Ohio couple who read the author’s first article about Shin in 2008 and helped to pay for his journey to America, were worried and disappointed to hear that Shin had left LiNK. They subsequently told Shin that creating an NGO is risky, and that he would be better off with an established organization. Shin had become close to the Dyes, but he emphasized the fact that he really loved Harim and was dedicated to their plan. Still, for reasons that Shin declined to discuss with the author, his relationship with Harim did not work out and Shin went to live with the Dyes on a temporary basis.

While in the Seattle area, Shin contacted the author to invite him to attend a speech he was giving at a Korean American Pentecostal church. Shin showed no nerves as he addressed his audience, asserting that Kim Jong Il was worse than Hitler and detailing the mindset and behavior fostered in labor camps. Talking about his own actions in the camp, he admitted that they were not noble and that it is only now that he has begun to learn what it means to be human. He specified that, while he had escaped from the camp physically, he has not escaped psychologically.

The author found Shin to be unrecognizable from the meek, incoherent speaker he had observed six months earlier. He later learned that Shin had worked on his delivery, as he was conscious that his earlier talks were not engaging his audiences. As he wrapped up his speech, the audience erupted in applause. Harden concludes that “In that speech, if not yet in his life, Shin had seized control of his past” (191).