Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Blaine Harden

Mar 2012 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

With a New Foreword

The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped. 

North Korea’s political prison camps 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. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk.

In Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shin’s shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence—he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother.

The late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il was recognized throughout the world, but his country remains sealed as his third son and chosen heir, Kim Jong Eun, consolidates power. Few foreigners are allowed in, and few North Koreans are able to leave. North Korea is hungry, bankrupt, and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also a human rights catastrophe. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people work as slaves in its political prison camps. These camps are clearly visible in satellite photographs, yet North Korea’s government denies they exist.

Harden’s harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.

Ratings and reviews

I thought the book, while not completely surprising, definitely gave me more insight into how the country seems so willing to subject its people to their dogmatic philosophy of self-reliance. The author does a good job of biographying Shin's plight and giving background to North Korea's brutality, but some of the segues between the two are a little bit jagged and messy. Finished in two days, which is unusual for me.

Got to page 74, Shin had just dropped the sewing machine, I was rooted to the book, and then it says I finished and I can't finish reading it! I had six more chapters! This is a crock and should be removed from the store upon charges of fraud!

Not that I'm doubting, but if even half is true, it's worse than anything the Nazis did. Farm animals are treated better than the humans in North Korea. Amazing story.

About the author

Blaine Harden is a reporter for PBS's FRONTLINE and a contributor to the Economist, and has served as The Washington Post's bureau chief in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. He is the author of Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent and A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia. He lives in Seattle, Washington.