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

"Escape From Camp 14" by Blaine Harden is a great read as well if you are interested in what goes on in these camps.

I recommend reading Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. .

You think that you've just made a super intelligent point because you've pointed out the obvious fact that the US has issues with human rights and with over-criminalization. It isn't an intelligent point because you don't know jack shit about North Korea. You don't know dick about how people live there, and I know that because if you did, you would pull your head out of your ass and realize that the issues that the United States has are not even in the same order of magnitude as the issues that North Korea has.

I recommend that you read the following books to give you a better sense of life in North Korea, so that in the future you can be more educated on the subject:

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

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

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

Yes, thank you, I've read that. I also just read Escape from Camp 14.

This happened in camp 14, the same that is described in Escape from Camp 14, about a North Korean born and raised there and who lived to escape and tell his story. It's not a long read and I recommend it to everyone who want to learn about the horrors that are going on in North Korea. Not for the faint hearted.

Escape From Camp 14 by Shin Dong-hyuk and Blaine Harden

Lol proof? It's common knowledge dude, like globally. Just google north korean concentration camps or watch any video from the numerous defectors who've made it to South Korea and are campaigning against the human rights violations in NK.


For a book assuming you're not just being a little troll, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea, about Shin Dong-hyuk is an incredible and horrifying read. He's the only man alive to have escaped their concentration camps.

For a video that highlights the difference between life in North and South Korea, watch this pair of videos Part One and Part Two to hear direct from the mouths of North Koreans what it's like there. How they stage brutal public executions of anyone trying to escape the country, and send their next 3 generations to gulags.

For another interesting video with many of the same people from the other two videos, this shows North Koreans trying American food, and discussing how shocking the differences are between American and North culture.

We're on the internet man, it's really easy not to be ignorant, just up to you to put in a basic modicum of effort to not look like an idiot when commenting on things.

Based on testimonies from escapees of these prison camps - not to mention the report of numbers in the prison camps is probably biased.

The most notable of these testimonies is from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Death seems to be extremely common in the prison camps of North Korea at least much more so than the typical prison in the United States or any developed country.

We can assume if it is true that people die much more quickly in prison than in civilian life in North Korea that their prison numbers will stay lower due to fatalities. If you arrest 100 people per year and 5 of them die per year your prisons grow at 95 people per year, if 50 of them die they grow much more slowly. It is simple math and extrapolation from things we can assume to be true.

People that offend the government, and people that are born there. In NK they have something called the 5 generation imprisonment, and basically you go to the camp, and you and your next 5 generations have to live there all of your life. They are essentially little communities or ghettos, but with strict enforcers. There are farms, jobs, and things of that nature but no one is payed and people are harshly punished.

There is actually a book written by a young man who escaped one of these camps -
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

I would recommend reading it, but it is not for the faint of heart. One of the tortures he describes includes him being hung by a meat hook through his stomach...

Anyone who hasn't already should absolutely read Escape From Camp 14. It's a first hand account of being born into and living in a North Korean prison camp.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143122916/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_QO3NDbYP2JSFH

Escape from Camp 14

If anyone is interested, I highly recommend reading the book "Escape from Camp 14"

It's an easy and highly intriguing book and gives an unfathomable account of life in the camps and shows how mentally warped the people of the country are.

The guy is in the U.S. now and discusses how before coming here he didn't even truly understand the emotional connection of family or loyalty to them as much as he did fear and loyalty to the country.

Edit: Autocorrect

I encourage, as always, everyone pick up The Aquariums of Pyongyang , Escape from Camp 14 , as well as Nothing To Envy as u/winginit21 mentioned.

Also David Hawk's The Hidden Gulag:Second Edition is a great resource. (PDF File)

escape from camp 14..

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143122916

Try reading this book - I'm not sure how reliable it is, but even if 50% of what he claims is true, this is much worse than gulag.

Read his book. Its incredible http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406833573&sr=8-1&keywords=escape+from+camp+14

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Escape From Camp 14. It's written by a guy who was born into the camps as a result of an arranged marriage between his father and mother, both of whom had never been accused of anything, but were caught up in the three generations policy.

To get an idea of the conditions; imagine a mix of Schindler's List and Twelve Years A Slave, but with a lot more starvation and rape. It's been operating for longer than anyone in this thread has been alive.

I've seen satellite imagery and have read descriptions of escapees.

I'd rather not run the risk of needing to go;"Wir haben es nicht gewusst" in a couple of years.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

This is a book I read awhile back that might make you reconsider that:

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

I'd much rather be homeless in a place like Seattle or San Diego than be born into a prison camp and live the kind of life described in this book... To be honest, I'd rather be in a US federal penitentiary.

Seriously. I don't understand why so many people here keep dismissing him as the "stupid child dictator" thing. Speculate what you want about the nuke situation, if he has the balls to do it or whatever, but the human right violations in that country are horrendous and blatant. I really urge people to read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1504557988773

I think the first point to consider is that The Orphan Master's Son should be read as a domestic drama, more along the lines of Nothing to Envy than any of the foreign-policy focused news and zomg-weird-pop-performance-footage that dominates this subreddit and /r/northkoreanews.

In that light, the Orphan Master's Son is a lovely, well-told story, and it was well-researched, but it's still clearly a second-hand impression of the country. It doesn't add to the outside world's stock of DPRK information; it just retells the tragedies already told by Shin Dong-hyuk and Kenji Fujimoto in a literary style.

Then too, there are places where the needs of the story subsume the reality on the ground. For example, the book entertains the notion that the state would promote just individual one actress its paragon of female virtue and one individual soldier as the paragon of male virtue. This is important to author's point about public and private identity and whether love also needs truth, but it's wholly out of step with the Kim regime's way of doing business. Kim Il Sung is the one god in North Korea, and the only permissible icons are his successors, and to a lesser extent, senior party politicians. Pop figures are disposable.

But The Orphan Master's Son is a good read. It would go high on my list of recommendations for someone who wants a starting point on the country but is scared of footnotes and foreign names. But if your DPRK obsession hinges more on predicting the fate of the Kaesong Industrial Zone, it won't give you much.

My family is from an Eastern block country, and was there while the area was under USSR control, and that is how things were at the time. You escape, and your family dies.

You're an idiot if you think that North Korea is any different.

Edit: check out this book when you get the time:
"Escape From Camp 14"
It might open your eyes a bit...

Someone born and raised inside the labor camp escaped. Here's his book.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Concerning prison camps, I might suggest Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey by Blaine Harden.

Look, I totally believe that "people are people" and for the most part the regular folks living under any society are going to be good people. (Possible exception for places like North Korean gulags where they're not treated like humans and so don't grow up understanding basic principles like kindness and compassion - they can't really be faulted for that, though.) I believe that there are people trying to do their best and corrupt individuals in ALL types of gov'ts (some being more ripe for fraud and deception than others).

So when this conversation of "this clean up could only happen in the Soviet Union" began I was like "pssht! there are people everywhere who would sacrifice themselves for the good of their neighbors and the rest of the world." But as the sheer volume of people involved in this clean up effort is revealed - over 600,000 liquidators and over 3,000 on the Маша rooftop alone...I start to question if that could have happened in a Westernized country. I think there's too much "individuality" in America, too much focus on "my rights" for people to blindly follow instructions like this. And they certainly wouldn't have done so without absolute guarantees of wages and future medical care.

And I don't know which one is "right" or "better."

Different country, but Escape from Camp 14 if you want a depressing read about North Korea's current system.

Not so sure on that starving part anymore. I like to listen and read stories from the people who defected to understand their world. Many of them are saying that while it's not super abundant meals, for the most part many of the agricultural reforms that the western world helped out with in the 90's/2000's are paying off. Food still isn't great -- meat and products of the like are still expensive and difficult for the average Korean to get, but it can be bought. Freedom now is really the worst problem they have. Escape from Camp 14 is from one of the people who escaped the prison camps and it sounds like that it is the worst conditions you may encounter in NK now.

Of course a war tends to make every destabilised. A war might actually bring on a new famine.

Escape from Camp 14

It's a brilliant, true-life story.

"Nothing to Envy" https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912

Good read if your into that stuff.

Also "Escape from Camp 14" https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

That one is less about ordinary citizen's lives and more about the modern day concentration camps the North Korean government is controlling.

I think you may like this book:

.com Link

.co.uk link (where I am)

Both are prime and are well under $20, so please use the extra money to gift other peoples :)

John Green talks about the book here.

I recently read Escape from Camp 14. I really opened my eyes to this issue. Anyone that has any interest in the North Korea situation should read it.

a movie based on this would be great: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143122916?pc_redir=1406967681&robot_redir=1

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143122916/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_clf7Ab99NDEFR

Also the person in the neighborhood that reports on you part I mentioned is from this book

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385523912/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fmf7AbD5VBWRV

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden is an amazing book you may have already read about a man who escaped from a prison camp in North Korea, and just reveals what it is really like. If you haven't already, this book is too extraordinary to not read. Potato chips

> bourgeois propaganda

Really?


So, a country that would create Kijŏng-dong, wouldn't even consider telling their citizens that they are required to stay indoors for the filming of something?

As to sources, sources for what? That NK is completely fucked? I needn't look that hard.

Why are enough people attempting to escape that this begins to happen?

"I had to be careful of my thoughts because I believed Kim Jong-il could read my mind."


["He controls his administration exclusively. It operates absolutely by his word. It's an autocracy."](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/them/defector.html
)


I'm all for defending the Soc\Com view and promoting it, but if you think that NK is working out great and simply being held down by the capitalist majority, you're being ignorant. Take the picture of a pitch black NK surrounded by the lights of Japan, China, and SK. You would have me believe that that's a propaganda job? That they've colored over the actual amount of lights? Who exactly benefits from that? It's not like NK has some vast supply of resources that are highly sought after. They provide nearly nothing to the international community. The Korean was is long over, and the only benefit that NK serves currently is a Buffer between The US and China, which is why China props them up-something that they are growing quite tired of doing if the rumblings are indeed correct.

Propaganda benefits someone or something. If it doesn't, it serves no purpose.


Furthermore, are you trying to say that The Famine which was documented by numerous aid groups, wasn't true? In that case, what leads the NK military to lower its physical requirements in a fitting time span for stunted growth patterns due to undernourishment? Just plain chance?

I mean, read some books about the reality of NK. Here's some good choices-

Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea

Nothing to Envy

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

Escape from Camp 14

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

If you honestly believe that his many people are part of some propaganda campaign to make a country that already looks terrible look worse, that's pure /r/conspiracy thinking.

from what i read they have nearly no fun at all.
you should check out this book as it goes very deep into what its like.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143122916

I read "Escape from Camp 14" a few years ago.

Black markets are huge there, and they operate under the knowledge of the government. Imagine a North Korean city, you've got big-wigs, soldiers etc- they're supposed to arrest black-market dealers. But the thing is, those officials are just dirt-poor N. Koreans themselves. So, bribe them with some cigarettes, a VCR even, and they look the other way.

But if there were enough pressure on them from command, they'd have to crack down. So maybe that just means now there is.

To answer your question, I am not interested in killing thousands of innocent North Koreans, many of whom are good people, but rather the people who are enslaving, killing and torturing them, often for decades while wiping out whole family lines. I hope you aren't too sympathetic towards kim and the cabal surrounding the kims who perpetuate this mass and inane human slaughter but if you are in favor of it, not much else needs to be said. The problem is there are too many pieces of old artillary pointed towards Seoul and they can't all be neutralized at once. I would like for the suffering to stop for the NK people though if it ever becomes possible from an international standpoint. If you would like to learn more about what the North Korean people go through I highly recommend you read;

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Falling-Star-Survived-Escaped/dp/1419721321/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492036877&sr=1-1&keywords=star+north+korea

Also you might like watching this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc

and to lighten up the mood after;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0TYCEXmi90

edit: fixed derpy stuff, also added kim himself into it because he is responsible as are his inner circle and the military. also added some links to books i've read that give perspective.

Are you familiar with the novel, Escape from Camp 14? It was a very moving read. The subject of it, Shin Dog-hyuk, also worked for a similar human rights organization after he escaped the prison camp.

> But to address your point you make on Immigration tariffs, what's wrong with making people pay to immigrate?

what if it were a bunch of whahabist Saudi's? they have the money..... to buy citizenship... whats wrong with rich whahabists (the extreme version of Islam ISIS Al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia ascribe to) and no religious safeguards? this is a self answering question

>Why should someone be able to come from a different country, to this country and instantly get access to all the social services and security nets that this country offers it's citizens, when they haven't paid a red cent into the system?

read this book if you can, i highly recommend it, or this one, or this one, or this one , or this one.... etc

see above, also because if they are are unable to pay, and they are fleeing say, our bombs? or warfare aided by us? or our lovely Wahhabi Saudi allies or economic hardship caused by capitalist greed... the list goes on, but we have no problem causing that as a nation, the time for this line of dialogue was back before we went to war for 17 years as Americas loyal lapdogs, over a lie of WMD's that little johnny KNEW was a lie (or was too much of a weak person to demand the truth about) after spending BILLIONS at war, crying poor mouth when it comes time to fix what we did, just doesn't sit right, why is nobody ever asking "how are we going to pay for XYZ" when it comes to buying obsolete hand me down jets, defective jets or retrofitting nuclear subs to diesel? or drones (which there is a good case to be made, actually causes more terrorism than conventional planes) to the tune of BILLIONS AND BILLIONS

>If the profession they work in, is not in an 'in demand' area, then while we have thousands of unemployed Australians, why should we be taking these people in? Further disadvantaging the native Australians.

>This idea has been championed by Nobel Prize laureate Professor Gary Becker, who argues that a tariff is always preferable to a quota approach on efficiency grounds as it applies price theory rather than bureaucratic procedures.

>native Australians.

drone king Obama also won a peace prize, after he droned his own citizens (albeit terrorists) depriving them of their constitutional rights, lets not put too much weight into a peace prize, after all of you know who DR nobel was......there was an invention of his.....

>None of that seems bad.

on the face of it no no it doesn't, the saying "don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind

>The Liberal Democrats are, however, opposed to those who seek to impose their religious views on the entire population

so as a religious view, one couldn't say stop gay marriage on a national level, and that i agree with, but one certainly could do a chick fill-a

yes, i am pretty sure it was this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

130577878| > None Anonymous (ID: mXFgZAVg)

Here's an super-graphic book on the 200,000 people who were born into North Korean prison camps

>kids fighting over the undigested corn kernels they find in pig manure
>being strung up for questioning and put over a fire burning your whole back
>snitching on your to-be-executed parents for food

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

song of ice and fire

What world do you live in? Seriously, I would really like to know what deluded fantasy that you live in where this kind of money goes back to the people. It doesn't. You think this tourism helps people, think its help them open their eyes? Well what happens then if their eyes are somehow magically opened by the tourists who they have little to no contact with. Its not like you can walk up to someone and start talking to them, or does somehow the sight of a foreigner open their eyes to over 60 years of continuous brainwashing? But say they are somehow magically opened, what then? They are stuck in a country where their neighbors would rat them out for a hint of dissent, and they and their entire family would be shipped off to concentration camps that would make the Nazis proud.

Are you so fucking naive to believe this actually helps the citizens? Every time we try to give aid to the North, we can't even get the simplest guarantee from them that they would go to the people. They can't even finish their own infrastructures without foreign help, and even if they finish the outside they don't even bother to work on the inside. The vast majority of their spending goes to the military, we know this for a fact, that's why they invest so heavily into nuclear weapons and they actually have been able to accomplish some things (albeit poorly).

Economic liberalization would be helpful to the North for a variety of reasons but this is all tightly controlled, regulated and run by the state. This is not some private enterprise of North Koreans, they are carefully, screened, chosen and watched by a state, whose only purpose is to keep itself afloat and to keep its top people rich off the backs of its own citizens. But this tourism is stupid, especially when people come back with these misguided ideas of "Oh it doesn't look so bad". To think that this benefits anyone other than the state is a complete delusion. If you actually want to learn something about North Korea I would reccomend those books.

Take a look at Sartre's Nausea. Although it takes place in the middle of a city, in terms of isolation, the author still manages to make it feel like it's taking place on the moon.

Escape from Camp-14 might be another thing you could look into.

And if one gets the feeling it's all fun and games, here's a book on the subject.

I read Escape from Camp 14 in which the author was imprisoned because of the crimes of his parents.
I can't remember, but I think he never found out what they had done.
Awful, brutal story.

That was surprisingly accurate and reasonable.

I really hope whoever is helping him write these script is helping him make foreign decisions too.

North Korea is the worst. The concentration camps there are far worse than hitler. Hitler's camps are paradise comparatively.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Morals are learned. There are normal people who would kill pregnant women and poison family to test types of chemical weapons and not feel any guilt. Apparently they felt like those who were killed deserved it. All because the regime fcked with their heads.

https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/

Escape from Camp 14 (http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916) tells a survivor's tale of escape from one of North Korea's brutal prison camps. It's terrifying and very real. Will piss you off and give you nightmares.

Escape From Camp 14

It bummed me out but it was a great read.

Let this sink-in:
He's an author of an amazon bestseller - escape from camp 14

Which is now turned out to be a fraud.

I am a grandkid of a woman that fled the Communist Party in North after the State police tortured her father and wrecked her family because her father could read and speak Japanese, post occupation. I don’t care if you hold socialist or whatever ideals and philosophy you deem suitable for your life. It’s your human right to believe in something regardless of what people say. But please don’t spread something that is so irrevocably untrue or at best controversial as a fact. My grandmother still has nightmares about the horror she saw when she was 12.

About the concentration camps, reportedly there are about 12 known concentration camps spread throughout the northern part of North Korea. Of course, NK government denies any of this, but there are countless anecdotal accounts of such camps from North Korean refugees and a few years back, we had the first NK refugee who was imprisoned in one of those camps. Later he went on to publish the book titled Camp 14 in English. I recommend you give it a read.

Those camps, according to him, are used as a way to maintain what is already failing regime. Their occupants range from political dissenters to families left behind defectors who successfully made the escape. Their size has been reported to have exceeded that of concentration camps in Nazi Germany.


*the book is titled Escape from Camp 14

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916