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How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp

382 points by rrreese 14y ago

bane 14y ago
Probably good to point to http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/
- montecarl 14y ago
  Thank you for posting this link. I have wanted to help the people of North Korea for a long time. This was all I needed to prod me into providing some financial support. I know that donating some money won't fix everything, but I would have felt very bad if later in life someone asked me what I had done to help out people who lived lives like on the one described in the story and my response had been "nothing". Everyone who has the ability to read HN is very blessed. It is so easy to forget how so many of this world's inhabitants are forced to live their daily lives. Human's don't seem to be very good at empathizing with more than a small group of people. If we could literally feel the suffering of our brothers and sister's world wide that live under such oppressive forces, I believe that the suffering would end swiftly as nobody could resist the call to arms that would ensue.
  - bane 14y ago
    One thing you can be sure of is that integrating North Korean refugees is an impressively expensive endeavor. From having little to no useful modern education, to having literally no exchangeable currency. They need job skills training, housing, clothes, everything. These organizations can use donations of all sizes, enough to buy socks to enough to bribe border guards, buy plane tickets or put down a cheonsae [1]. Here's some information on the typical escape path for many of the refugees. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVOrUMWaJ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVOrUMWaJ0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun-say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun-say
unimpressive 14y ago
This is still one of my favorite stories submitted to HN, even if it is devoid of technical content. The last time I saw it the new submissions swept it up like the rising tide.[0] [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716763 [1]: Going through my list of saved articles shocked me with how many I remember.
markross 14y ago
I strongly recommend reading the book that this extract was taken from. http://amzn.com/0670023329 http://amzn.com/0670023329
- fatbird 14y ago
  I've read the book and it's an amazing read, both for details of what occurs in the camps, and for the issues Shin faces trying to assimilate in both South Korea and the U.S. Beyond symptoms much like PTSD, he has perverse difficulties with money and personal finance. At the same time as he expects to be cared for in a bare way (because the camp existed to give him a really shitty place to sleep and really shitty food), he's deeply suspicious of any largesse shown to him--it's either a bribe requiring action, or an unexpected windfall that he must consume immediately to avoid it being taken away from him by a stronger inmate, or the possession of which might be grounds for further punishment. He has trouble saving money or conceiving of budgeting his money. He has trouble planning beyond a few days in the future because, in the camps, nothing was in his control, so planning was not just immaterial, it was counterproductive and risky.
  - cabalamat 14y ago
    When Korea reunifies, the South is going to have to deal with 20 million people with similar symptoms (in most cases less severe).
    - fatbird 14y ago
      Yes, and not just those symptoms, but a generation raised in a truly bizarre educational system, who believe that total corruption is the norm, and who are so economically backwards that they'll be largely unable to meaningfully participate in a re-united economy. I suspect that, if reunification occurs, NK will be held apart as a special zone for a generation or two in order to educate a following generation for real reunification.
      - lostlogin 14y ago
Permit 14y ago
I can't help but wonder if the world will look back on the situation in North Korea the same way it does the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust. The conditions in some of these camps are truly disgusting, and a former guard at one claimed that 1,500 to 2,000 of the workers at his camp were missing limbs[1]. I don't know what the answer is, but I think hindsight will lead future generations to condemn perceived inaction on our part. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22#Conditions_in_the_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22#Conditions_in_the_camp
- fatbird 14y ago
  In the case of Rwanda, a great deal of the breast-beating that followed had to do with the fact that Western nations could have done much more to prevent the genocide than they did (at least on paper). The strategic situation with North Korea mandates that the only thing to be done to relieve the suffering of North Koreans would be to restart and win the Korean War. China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time), and at least in decades past, Russia and China had ideological reasons to prop up the regime. More immediately, Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. In the renewal of hostilities, Seoul would be flattened within hours, and Seoul has 15 million people living in it. More than Russia and China, that gun pointed at South Korea's head has always mandated extreme caution when dealing with the North (and allowed the North to get away with provocations that would have been crazy anywhere else).
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    So to break the stalemate, china would have to invade north korea?
  - speeder 14y ago
    Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either. Koreans have shown already that they sometimes still think of themselves as one people, with north and south koreans being friendly toward each other and wanting a reunion of the country (the way of the reunion that is the disagreement). North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world. South Korea also has a huge army. Also both of them have huge amounts of military equipment. And finally, Korea in general (both from north and south) and very belligerant, or was at least, in the past, Korea history is filled with wars that they caused, and crazy conquest attempts. Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship. The united Koreas, maybe will just awesomely advance the world technology... Or maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China. There are several countries that don't want to risk the second option, and thus every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself. I am not saying I agree or condone that, but this is how it works.
CapitalistCartr 14y ago
I think we could liberate North Korea by creating a handheld TV/radio that received South Korean and Chinese stations and distributing them inside North Korea. I think the existing regime would change or collapse in a couple of years. It would cost us a couple billion, but we'd get a better return on that investment than a lot of our military expenditures.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  They have TVs, video tape players, DVD players and smuggle enough South Korean TV shows and films. It does help to educate them about the world around them but not much else.
  - adrianm 14y ago
    I think you're possibly overestimating the extent foreign media has proliferated throughout North Korea. It's true that some families do have televisions; but they're only issued to the most trusted families as gifts from the State and are tuned to only government broadcasts which are heavily censored and controlled. Regarding increased smuggling from China, you really cannot extrapolate widespread proliferation from the western press published regarding the crackdowns on the smuggling by the government. Punishment for possessing smuggled devices is so draconian that most people privileged enough to live in Pyongyang (only ~10% of the population) wouldn't risk their lives or that of their families. Electricity is also tenuous in Pyongyang so I think it's reasonable to assume that the situation is orders of magnitude worse throughout the rest of the country where the government invests much less in infrastructure.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      As far as I understand you can buy an used chinese TV set or DVD player. It's legal. It costs thru the nose, but if the family has means of income (the most common way is small business/trading on the market) it can be done. People are also very social so they manage to catch a glimpse. The punishment may be draconian but I guess you can reliably evade it by the means of a small bribe. Pyongyang is kind of special but also nothern regions usually have some niceties due to their proximity to Chinese border (and therefore trade/smuggled goods). I'm basically parrotting a blogger that writes a lot about both Koreas so I might be not entirely accurate. http://tttkkk.lj.ru/ http://tttkkk.lj.ru/
ColinWright 14y ago
This has reminded me to go back and re-read Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Den... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Denisovich-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141184744 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Denisovich-Penguin-Modern-Class... http://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/ http://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/
- onezeno 14y ago
  I'm reading the Gulag Archipelago right now. In it he says that many Russian authorities were actually relieved when they read Ivan Denisovich, because the all new of prison camps with conditions far worse than those depicted in the novel.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Gulag by Anna Applebaum is a good gulag history too.
  - sfont 14y ago
    Indeed the conditions described in the novel were more unpleasant than horrid (if I remember right). My favorite section though was regarding day light savings time. Ivan estimates the time based on the position of the sun and is corrected by one of his fellow inmates that high noon is no longer noon as per "Soviet Decree."
- mike_esspe 14y ago
  I also recommend to read "The Kolyma tales" by Varlam Shalamov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebook/dp/B003AYZBQG http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebo...
deliminator 14y ago
Another story about life in prison and subsequent escape http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&cataId=nk02800 http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&...
parenthesis 14y ago
Shin Dong-hyuk appeared in a Google talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc
sounds 14y ago
That this story ever got this much publicity is largely thanks to LiNK (Liberty in North Korea). http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ Please consider a small donation of money or even time (the "Get Involved" menu). Or even just re-tweet, re-blog, and talk to your friends about this story.
nlh 14y ago
What a fascinating and engrossing read. Thanks for sharing. What I found most remarkable was that despite NK's best efforts at total and complete isolation of the prisoners -- Shin was born into the camp and knew nothing of the outside world -- the human soul still inherently wants to be free. You can "nurture" a miserable existence all you want but it won't keep. And in the end, what cracked the walls of the prison (metaphorically speaking) was an outsider with nothing more than stories. No wonder dictatorships fear things like free speech and dissidents. Even the slightest hint of a better place (through words alone) can start the chain reaction.
- politician 14y ago
  The way I read it was that Shin only knew the virtues are betrayal and of being betrayed until he met the man who nursed him back to health and told him stories of freedom. Although these stories led him to "wake up", he was still steeped in the economy of betrayal when he used his naive friend's writhing body as a staircase to freedom. I read elsewhere that a post-Juche NK would need one or two generations of special oversight before full reunification could take place due to the amount of mental trauma inflicted on the population (of ~20 million).
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - charlieok 14y ago
    “special oversight”? What does that mean? How would such a reunification compare to, say, East and West Germany?
    - cynicalkane 14y ago
      East Germany was by far the most advanced and capitalist of the Communist states, and very close culturally to West Germany, but there is still the phenomenon of "Ostalgie", from Ost=East + Nostalgie=Nostalgia, yearning for the good ol' days of Communist suppression. The movie 'The Lives of Others' was motivated by the filmmakers' desire to smack down the Ostalgie-types achieving popularity in Germany. It is common there to see shops selling East German themed stuff, and there is at least one chain of shops solely dedicated to East German paraphernalia. Polls suggest there is a real yearning in some areas to go back to the days where the secret police and rationing of basic goods were real things. It's bizarre.
james4k 14y ago
There is a documentary on this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149190/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149190/ Have not seen it yet, but I saw the cover browsing around on Netflix.
petercooper 14y ago
If this sort of stuff intrigues you, as it does me, check out "Gulag" by Anne Applebaum. I listened to it in audiobook form (27 hours!) and it was both fascinating and devastating to hear how the Soviets imprisoned, tortured, and, frequently, killed millions in such encampments.
deleted 14y ago
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damian2000 14y ago
This is not the same story, but this book is worth reading... The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag [by Chol-hwan Kang] http://www.amazon.com/Aquariums-Pyongyang-Years-North-Korean/dp/0465011047/ http://www.amazon.com/Aquariums-Pyongyang-Years-North-Korean... Author was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Inexplicably released in 1987, he states that the only lesson his imprisonment had "pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity to be vicious."
znowi 14y ago
Well, that was depressing. To tell the truth I couldn't finish reading the article. It feels so much as a fiction novel that the idea that it chronicles the actual events is deeply unsettling. How the fuck can this happen in our time? And how do we stop it?
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I guess the frustrating part is that we can't stop it without risking the entire population of Seoul. It just has to change on its own, hopefully over time.
notdrunkatall 14y ago
That these camps exist today is a giant pockmark on all of humanity.
sunwooz 14y ago
My grandfather escaped from North Korea during the 1950s by riding on top of trains and eventually riding a cargo boat into South Korea. Apparently the owner of the boat had to throw all the cargo overboard to accomodate everyone. He took a group of women from his village and escaped with his life, leaving behind his now-dead family. I am overwhelmed by the fact that if he didn't escape when he did, I would be in one of the prison camps doing hard labor and sorting through animal feces for undigested corn. Thanks for linking this article, now I have renewed my interest in the past and have requested family in South Korea to send me a copy of our family tree. Grandfather is now gone, and I wish he lived today, so I could say my thanks and hug him.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>I am overwhelmed by the fact that if he didn't escape when he did, I would be in one of the prison camps doing hard labor and sorting through animal feces for undigested corn. I wish more people had this perspective. Most Westerners I met take what they have for granted, completely oblivious to what goes on in other parts of the world.
mr_luc 14y ago
"Citizen of the Galaxy," by Robert Heinlein, jumped to mind when I read this story. The protagonist, Thorby, is a freed slave, and most of the people he encounters in the story are skeptical that slavery still exists.
ttar 14y ago
Wait, in the middle of the story Shin was to be executed, then wasn't? What happened there?
- MBCook 14y ago
  I found that kind of confusing as well. I believe it was his brother and his mother who were executed. I believe his brother was named Shin as well, with the rest of his name different. I think this is a family name / given name issue.
  - onethree 14y ago
    Korean names are in the order Family Name then First name. They refer to him by his family name, so its easy to confuse him, his brother, and his father
shaggyfrog 14y ago
CBS/60 Minutes interviewed him; it was on TV a few weeks ago: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n
mbubb 14y ago
hacker news - this really bums me out. Last week HN was rightly all over Atlantic for shilling for Scientology. This article is written by the unification church - right up in the same bat shit crazy neighborhood as LR Hubbard and his pals... And the discussion - Korea is crazy and belligerent? The country known as the hermit kingdom. Did not open to the west until ~ 1870s. The last time it was involved in trying to invade another country was as a vassal state of Kublai Khan. And yet such assertions go unchecked. Korea is not belligerent and has much riding upon regional stability. We are talking about an economy that is roughly the scale of Italy's and a standard of living that is in many ways better than the US. The biggest impediment to North South reunification is the immense disparity. The difference between East and West Germany was minute in comparison. I am not Korean but love Korea. Have had the chance to work there (3 yrs) and know a slight bit of the history, language and culture. There are many better sources of information on North Korea - don't give the Unification Church any more publicity. The Netflix documentary mentioned is a good one. And stop with the misinformed ideas of Korea. It is not like China and Japan even though it is stuck in the middle. Korean language and culture compared to Chinese is roughly analogous to English with Latin. The base is completely different but Koreans borrowed Chinese philosophy and science. Linguistically Korean has more in common with Mongolian and Hungarian than it does to Mandarin.
- Volpe 14y ago
  Umm it's a book, and the piece was written by The Guardian... So not sure what you are talking about... Also, there are 2 Koreas, you talk as if there is only 1. No one is suggesting that South Korea is crazy or belligerent. I didn't even see that assertion with North korea... What are you referring to? Also I'm quite sure the standard of living is not better in North Korea (than in the US), or are you referring to the south? if so, why?
  - mbubb 14y ago
    Obviously I don't mean both Koreas - North Korea is significantly worse than Haiti. And yes more than one commenter referred to Koreans as being warlike (speeder, etc). And the piece is cited in the Unification Church alumni website - not the Guardian, so i do not know what you are talking about. Reread this whole discussion and tell me that is is an accurate portrayal of Korea or the current state of relation s. It is not. There are a few intelligent comments about East Germany but then a bunch of drivel about North Korea as a buffer for China against an imperialistic Korea. There is not really one comment to attack here for factual wrongheadedness. Start from a Unification church review and spirals off from there. The discussion is completely off the rails.
selvan 14y ago
There is a say in my language "Birds born in a cage too have wings". Sometimes its hard for me to digest how a society that has 99% literacy rate, could continue living like this, under NK regime.
warmwaffles 14y ago
Truely amazing story. I can not fathom the pain and suffering this man had to endure. It's odd that I was getting angry that he betrayed so many people, and betrayed one man that was trying to escape with him. But, in that situation, it really is a dog eat dog world and I'm sure Park would not have hesitated to leave Shin behind. Crazy article, makes you really wonder if NK will ever be able to rejoin SK or what will happen to the nation entirely
davidroberts 14y ago
Looks like I'm not the only UTS alumni who reads Hacker News...
- kareemm 14y ago
  Grin, me neither.
stretchwithme 14y ago
It's Anthem all over again, times a thousand.
Aissen 14y ago
The original story, from 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/asia/09iht-korea.4.6569853.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/asia/09iht-korea.4.6... I still remember it vividly from that day.
grahammather 14y ago
This made me physically sick to read. The sheer scale of this tragedy and the utter depravity of nearly everyone involved makes me weep for humanity. I lost sleep last night as this story haunted me, reminding me that this evil is happening right now, still, to hundreds of thousands more like Shin. Eric Schmidt owes this man a visit (if he hasn't already). If he can fly halfway around the world to pay his respects to the architects of this abomination, buttressing their hateful regime, then he can use his powers of publicity to call attention to the plight of those like Shin.

382 points by rrreese 14y ago

bane 14y ago

Probably good to point to http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/

montecarl 14y ago
Thank you for posting this link. I have wanted to help the people of North Korea for a long time. This was all I needed to prod me into providing some financial support. I know that donating some money won't fix everything, but I would have felt very bad if later in life someone asked me what I had done to help out people who lived lives like on the one described in the story and my response had been "nothing". Everyone who has the ability to read HN is very blessed. It is so easy to forget how so many of this world's inhabitants are forced to live their daily lives. Human's don't seem to be very good at empathizing with more than a small group of people. If we could literally feel the suffering of our brothers and sister's world wide that live under such oppressive forces, I believe that the suffering would end swiftly as nobody could resist the call to arms that would ensue.
- bane 14y ago
  One thing you can be sure of is that integrating North Korean refugees is an impressively expensive endeavor. From having little to no useful modern education, to having literally no exchangeable currency. They need job skills training, housing, clothes, everything. These organizations can use donations of all sizes, enough to buy socks to enough to bribe border guards, buy plane tickets or put down a cheonsae [1]. Here's some information on the typical escape path for many of the refugees. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVOrUMWaJ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVOrUMWaJ0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun-say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun-say

unimpressive 14y ago

This is still one of my favorite stories submitted to HN, even if it is devoid of technical content. The last time I saw it the new submissions swept it up like the rising tide.[0] [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716763 [1]: Going through my list of saved articles shocked me with how many I remember.

markross 14y ago

I strongly recommend reading the book that this extract was taken from. http://amzn.com/0670023329 http://amzn.com/0670023329

fatbird 14y ago
I've read the book and it's an amazing read, both for details of what occurs in the camps, and for the issues Shin faces trying to assimilate in both South Korea and the U.S. Beyond symptoms much like PTSD, he has perverse difficulties with money and personal finance. At the same time as he expects to be cared for in a bare way (because the camp existed to give him a really shitty place to sleep and really shitty food), he's deeply suspicious of any largesse shown to him--it's either a bribe requiring action, or an unexpected windfall that he must consume immediately to avoid it being taken away from him by a stronger inmate, or the possession of which might be grounds for further punishment. He has trouble saving money or conceiving of budgeting his money. He has trouble planning beyond a few days in the future because, in the camps, nothing was in his control, so planning was not just immaterial, it was counterproductive and risky.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  When Korea reunifies, the South is going to have to deal with 20 million people with similar symptoms (in most cases less severe).
  - fatbird 14y ago
    Yes, and not just those symptoms, but a generation raised in a truly bizarre educational system, who believe that total corruption is the norm, and who are so economically backwards that they'll be largely unable to meaningfully participate in a re-united economy. I suspect that, if reunification occurs, NK will be held apart as a special zone for a generation or two in order to educate a following generation for real reunification.
    - lostlogin 14y ago

Permit 14y ago

I can't help but wonder if the world will look back on the situation in North Korea the same way it does the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust. The conditions in some of these camps are truly disgusting, and a former guard at one claimed that 1,500 to 2,000 of the workers at his camp were missing limbs[1]. I don't know what the answer is, but I think hindsight will lead future generations to condemn perceived inaction on our part. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22#Conditions_in_the_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_22#Conditions_in_the_camp

fatbird 14y ago
In the case of Rwanda, a great deal of the breast-beating that followed had to do with the fact that Western nations could have done much more to prevent the genocide than they did (at least on paper). The strategic situation with North Korea mandates that the only thing to be done to relieve the suffering of North Koreans would be to restart and win the Korean War. China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time), and at least in decades past, Russia and China had ideological reasons to prop up the regime. More immediately, Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. In the renewal of hostilities, Seoul would be flattened within hours, and Seoul has 15 million people living in it. More than Russia and China, that gun pointed at South Korea's head has always mandated extreme caution when dealing with the North (and allowed the North to get away with provocations that would have been crazy anywhere else).
- mahyarm 14y ago
  So to break the stalemate, china would have to invade north korea?
- speeder 14y ago
  Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either. Koreans have shown already that they sometimes still think of themselves as one people, with north and south koreans being friendly toward each other and wanting a reunion of the country (the way of the reunion that is the disagreement). North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world. South Korea also has a huge army. Also both of them have huge amounts of military equipment. And finally, Korea in general (both from north and south) and very belligerant, or was at least, in the past, Korea history is filled with wars that they caused, and crazy conquest attempts. Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship. The united Koreas, maybe will just awesomely advance the world technology... Or maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China. There are several countries that don't want to risk the second option, and thus every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself. I am not saying I agree or condone that, but this is how it works.

CapitalistCartr 14y ago

I think we could liberate North Korea by creating a handheld TV/radio that received South Korean and Chinese stations and distributing them inside North Korea. I think the existing regime would change or collapse in a couple of years. It would cost us a couple billion, but we'd get a better return on that investment than a lot of our military expenditures.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
They have TVs, video tape players, DVD players and smuggle enough South Korean TV shows and films. It does help to educate them about the world around them but not much else.
- adrianm 14y ago
  I think you're possibly overestimating the extent foreign media has proliferated throughout North Korea. It's true that some families do have televisions; but they're only issued to the most trusted families as gifts from the State and are tuned to only government broadcasts which are heavily censored and controlled. Regarding increased smuggling from China, you really cannot extrapolate widespread proliferation from the western press published regarding the crackdowns on the smuggling by the government. Punishment for possessing smuggled devices is so draconian that most people privileged enough to live in Pyongyang (only ~10% of the population) wouldn't risk their lives or that of their families. Electricity is also tenuous in Pyongyang so I think it's reasonable to assume that the situation is orders of magnitude worse throughout the rest of the country where the government invests much less in infrastructure.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    As far as I understand you can buy an used chinese TV set or DVD player. It's legal. It costs thru the nose, but if the family has means of income (the most common way is small business/trading on the market) it can be done. People are also very social so they manage to catch a glimpse. The punishment may be draconian but I guess you can reliably evade it by the means of a small bribe. Pyongyang is kind of special but also nothern regions usually have some niceties due to their proximity to Chinese border (and therefore trade/smuggled goods). I'm basically parrotting a blogger that writes a lot about both Koreas so I might be not entirely accurate. http://tttkkk.lj.ru/ http://tttkkk.lj.ru/

ColinWright 14y ago

This has reminded me to go back and re-read Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Den... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Denisovich-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141184744 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Denisovich-Penguin-Modern-Class... http://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/ http://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/

onezeno 14y ago
I'm reading the Gulag Archipelago right now. In it he says that many Russian authorities were actually relieved when they read Ivan Denisovich, because the all new of prison camps with conditions far worse than those depicted in the novel.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Gulag by Anna Applebaum is a good gulag history too.
- sfont 14y ago
  Indeed the conditions described in the novel were more unpleasant than horrid (if I remember right). My favorite section though was regarding day light savings time. Ivan estimates the time based on the position of the sun and is corrected by one of his fellow inmates that high noon is no longer noon as per "Soviet Decree."
mike_esspe 14y ago
I also recommend to read "The Kolyma tales" by Varlam Shalamov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kolyma_Tales http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebook/dp/B003AYZBQG http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-ebo...

deliminator 14y ago

Another story about life in prison and subsequent escape http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&cataId=nk02800 http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&...

parenthesis 14y ago

Shin Dong-hyuk appeared in a Google talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc

sounds 14y ago

That this story ever got this much publicity is largely thanks to LiNK (Liberty in North Korea). http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ Please consider a small donation of money or even time (the "Get Involved" menu). Or even just re-tweet, re-blog, and talk to your friends about this story.

nlh 14y ago

What a fascinating and engrossing read. Thanks for sharing. What I found most remarkable was that despite NK's best efforts at total and complete isolation of the prisoners -- Shin was born into the camp and knew nothing of the outside world -- the human soul still inherently wants to be free. You can "nurture" a miserable existence all you want but it won't keep. And in the end, what cracked the walls of the prison (metaphorically speaking) was an outsider with nothing more than stories. No wonder dictatorships fear things like free speech and dissidents. Even the slightest hint of a better place (through words alone) can start the chain reaction.

politician 14y ago
The way I read it was that Shin only knew the virtues are betrayal and of being betrayed until he met the man who nursed him back to health and told him stories of freedom. Although these stories led him to "wake up", he was still steeped in the economy of betrayal when he used his naive friend's writhing body as a staircase to freedom. I read elsewhere that a post-Juche NK would need one or two generations of special oversight before full reunification could take place due to the amount of mental trauma inflicted on the population (of ~20 million).
- deleted 14y ago
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- charlieok 14y ago
  “special oversight”? What does that mean? How would such a reunification compare to, say, East and West Germany?
  - cynicalkane 14y ago
    East Germany was by far the most advanced and capitalist of the Communist states, and very close culturally to West Germany, but there is still the phenomenon of "Ostalgie", from Ost=East + Nostalgie=Nostalgia, yearning for the good ol' days of Communist suppression. The movie 'The Lives of Others' was motivated by the filmmakers' desire to smack down the Ostalgie-types achieving popularity in Germany. It is common there to see shops selling East German themed stuff, and there is at least one chain of shops solely dedicated to East German paraphernalia. Polls suggest there is a real yearning in some areas to go back to the days where the secret police and rationing of basic goods were real things. It's bizarre.

james4k 14y ago

There is a documentary on this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149190/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149190/ Have not seen it yet, but I saw the cover browsing around on Netflix.

petercooper 14y ago

If this sort of stuff intrigues you, as it does me, check out "Gulag" by Anne Applebaum. I listened to it in audiobook form (27 hours!) and it was both fascinating and devastating to hear how the Soviets imprisoned, tortured, and, frequently, killed millions in such encampments.

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damian2000 14y ago

This is not the same story, but this book is worth reading... The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag [by Chol-hwan Kang] http://www.amazon.com/Aquariums-Pyongyang-Years-North-Korean/dp/0465011047/ http://www.amazon.com/Aquariums-Pyongyang-Years-North-Korean... Author was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Inexplicably released in 1987, he states that the only lesson his imprisonment had "pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity to be vicious."

znowi 14y ago

Well, that was depressing. To tell the truth I couldn't finish reading the article. It feels so much as a fiction novel that the idea that it chronicles the actual events is deeply unsettling. How the fuck can this happen in our time? And how do we stop it?

enraged_camel 14y ago
I guess the frustrating part is that we can't stop it without risking the entire population of Seoul. It just has to change on its own, hopefully over time.

notdrunkatall 14y ago

That these camps exist today is a giant pockmark on all of humanity.

sunwooz 14y ago

My grandfather escaped from North Korea during the 1950s by riding on top of trains and eventually riding a cargo boat into South Korea. Apparently the owner of the boat had to throw all the cargo overboard to accomodate everyone. He took a group of women from his village and escaped with his life, leaving behind his now-dead family. I am overwhelmed by the fact that if he didn't escape when he did, I would be in one of the prison camps doing hard labor and sorting through animal feces for undigested corn. Thanks for linking this article, now I have renewed my interest in the past and have requested family in South Korea to send me a copy of our family tree. Grandfather is now gone, and I wish he lived today, so I could say my thanks and hug him.

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>I am overwhelmed by the fact that if he didn't escape when he did, I would be in one of the prison camps doing hard labor and sorting through animal feces for undigested corn. I wish more people had this perspective. Most Westerners I met take what they have for granted, completely oblivious to what goes on in other parts of the world.

mr_luc 14y ago

"Citizen of the Galaxy," by Robert Heinlein, jumped to mind when I read this story. The protagonist, Thorby, is a freed slave, and most of the people he encounters in the story are skeptical that slavery still exists.

ttar 14y ago

Wait, in the middle of the story Shin was to be executed, then wasn't? What happened there?

MBCook 14y ago
I found that kind of confusing as well. I believe it was his brother and his mother who were executed. I believe his brother was named Shin as well, with the rest of his name different. I think this is a family name / given name issue.
- onethree 14y ago
  Korean names are in the order Family Name then First name. They refer to him by his family name, so its easy to confuse him, his brother, and his father

shaggyfrog 14y ago

CBS/60 Minutes interviewed him; it was on TV a few weeks ago: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n

mbubb 14y ago

hacker news - this really bums me out. Last week HN was rightly all over Atlantic for shilling for Scientology. This article is written by the unification church - right up in the same bat shit crazy neighborhood as LR Hubbard and his pals... And the discussion - Korea is crazy and belligerent? The country known as the hermit kingdom. Did not open to the west until ~ 1870s. The last time it was involved in trying to invade another country was as a vassal state of Kublai Khan. And yet such assertions go unchecked. Korea is not belligerent and has much riding upon regional stability. We are talking about an economy that is roughly the scale of Italy's and a standard of living that is in many ways better than the US. The biggest impediment to North South reunification is the immense disparity. The difference between East and West Germany was minute in comparison. I am not Korean but love Korea. Have had the chance to work there (3 yrs) and know a slight bit of the history, language and culture. There are many better sources of information on North Korea - don't give the Unification Church any more publicity. The Netflix documentary mentioned is a good one. And stop with the misinformed ideas of Korea. It is not like China and Japan even though it is stuck in the middle. Korean language and culture compared to Chinese is roughly analogous to English with Latin. The base is completely different but Koreans borrowed Chinese philosophy and science. Linguistically Korean has more in common with Mongolian and Hungarian than it does to Mandarin.

Volpe 14y ago
Umm it's a book, and the piece was written by The Guardian... So not sure what you are talking about... Also, there are 2 Koreas, you talk as if there is only 1. No one is suggesting that South Korea is crazy or belligerent. I didn't even see that assertion with North korea... What are you referring to? Also I'm quite sure the standard of living is not better in North Korea (than in the US), or are you referring to the south? if so, why?
- mbubb 14y ago
  Obviously I don't mean both Koreas - North Korea is significantly worse than Haiti. And yes more than one commenter referred to Koreans as being warlike (speeder, etc). And the piece is cited in the Unification Church alumni website - not the Guardian, so i do not know what you are talking about. Reread this whole discussion and tell me that is is an accurate portrayal of Korea or the current state of relation s. It is not. There are a few intelligent comments about East Germany but then a bunch of drivel about North Korea as a buffer for China against an imperialistic Korea. There is not really one comment to attack here for factual wrongheadedness. Start from a Unification church review and spirals off from there. The discussion is completely off the rails.

selvan 14y ago

There is a say in my language "Birds born in a cage too have wings". Sometimes its hard for me to digest how a society that has 99% literacy rate, could continue living like this, under NK regime.

warmwaffles 14y ago

Truely amazing story. I can not fathom the pain and suffering this man had to endure. It's odd that I was getting angry that he betrayed so many people, and betrayed one man that was trying to escape with him. But, in that situation, it really is a dog eat dog world and I'm sure Park would not have hesitated to leave Shin behind. Crazy article, makes you really wonder if NK will ever be able to rejoin SK or what will happen to the nation entirely

davidroberts 14y ago

Looks like I'm not the only UTS alumni who reads Hacker News...

kareemm 14y ago
Grin, me neither.

stretchwithme 14y ago

It's Anthem all over again, times a thousand.

Aissen 14y ago

The original story, from 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/asia/09iht-korea.4.6569853.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/asia/09iht-korea.4.6... I still remember it vividly from that day.

grahammather 14y ago

This made me physically sick to read. The sheer scale of this tragedy and the utter depravity of nearly everyone involved makes me weep for humanity. I lost sleep last night as this story haunted me, reminding me that this evil is happening right now, still, to hundreds of thousands more like Shin. Eric Schmidt owes this man a visit (if he hasn't already). If he can fly halfway around the world to pay his respects to the architects of this abomination, buttressing their hateful regime, then he can use his powers of publicity to call attention to the plight of those like Shin.