Escape from Camp 14

The following morning, Shin, Park, and around 25 other prisoners were herded up the mountain. Shin and Park had decided to wait until dusk to make their getaway, as their footprints would be more difficult to track in the snow after this time, so they spent the preceding hours working and waiting. During that time, Shin observed that the other workers seemed like cattle and had no awareness that there was a whole other world lying just beyond the fence. He also reflected that he had been similarly oblivious before he met Park.

By late afternoon, Shin could not bear to wait any longer and yelled at Park to run, grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the fence. Park reached the fence first but, as he tried to make his way through the lowest strands of wire, Shin saw sparks and smelled burning flesh. This fence was evidently not the kind that only emitted a brief burst of electricity; rather, it emitted a continuous, lethal current. Shin proceeded to crawl over Park’s body without hesitation, using it as a means of insulation. He incurred severe burns but managed to run for two hours. The problem was that he had he had no idea how to reach China.

Happening across a farmer’s shed, Shin found some ears of dried corn and a military uniform. With North Korea being the world’s most militarized society and conscription almost universal, uniforms are everywhere; consequently, by donning this outfit, Shin became just another impoverished, malnourished North Korean. By late evening, he reached the outskirts of a coal town called Bukchang and settled down in a pigpen for the night.

Shin spent the next two days scavenging, yet, despite being hungry and cold, he felt exhilarated by his new freedom. Over the subsequent months and years, he would be advised by therapists, career counselors, preachers, and friends. Through this guidance and his own obsessive reading, he would become familiar with politics, geography, and the basics of Western culture. However, his experiences during these first few days of freedom had a greater effect on him than any of these subsequent teachings. He was shocked to see North Koreans go about their lives without taking orders. That North Korea is viewed by human right groups as the world’s largest prison meant nothing to him, nor did the poverty and gloomy winter conditions. After a life spent in the camp, he felt “wonderfully free” (121).

Entering another unoccupied house, Shin saw a bowl of porridge on the table and gathered that someone would probably be returning soon. He consequently took the food, along with a rucksack and some winter clothes, before venturing out into the center of Bukchang. There, a market lady asked whether he had anything to sell. He told her that he had some rice, which she offered to buy for four thousand North Korean won (around four dollars at black-market exchange rates). He consequently sold the rucksack, though he had no idea whether this was good value.

He spent the day eavesdropping on the conversations of various bedraggled looking men in the city. In a survey of North Korean refugees carried out in China from 2004–2005, it was found that most people wandering around North Korea at that time were unemployed laborers and failed farmers. More than half of the refugees had used cash to bribe officials or buy the help of professional smugglers. After the famine, laws were often ignored and police could be bribed quite easily. Vagabonds could therefore head towards China without attracting attention. While the number of defections to China is unclear, the number of North Koreans seeking asylum in South Korea has increased nearly every year since 1995.

Shin fell in with these vagrants and made his way towards the Chinese border in January 2005. Conditions seem to have been quite favorable at that time, and guards were receptive to bribes. There was also an established smuggling network, with operatives claiming that they could get virtually any North Korean out of the country. The North Korean government has tried to quash these smuggling operations, and has succeeded in some cases. The policy is to execute those helping people to defect, but the most successful brokers have contacts in the military, which helps them to bribe the guards. However, many defectors are so in debt to their smugglers that South Korea’s government had to change how it distributed financial support to refugees. Rather than handing out lump sums, it paid money to individuals who gained and held down jobs. In addition, around a quarter of the money went toward housing so as to prevent it being paid to brokers.

Shin did not have the awareness, money, or contacts to employ professional smugglers, but, by falling in with various traders, he was able to learn how to get by in North Korea’s post-famine economy. Along with these traders, he headed north.