Character Analysis: Forced Labor Camps In North Korea

Cultures around the world are divide by their distinctive characteristic of people, and how people interact within their society. Most cultures are driven by the way their environment has been set for them. Many of cultures have to adapt to the way their environment are due to the conditions that are set for them and the amount of resources that they are provided. The biggest drive for culture are the historical custom. Most countries continue to carry their ancestor custom so that the tradition may stay with them throughout their years, in which making other countries distinctive from one another. One of the particular country that will be discuss in this report is North Korea. In this report, I will be discussing the North Korean culture, with describing their living condition in the country, common issues that they face with on a daily bases, and common threat that they pose on other countries.

In this work, Kang’s family is living in North Korea when he and his family are sent to Yodok prison camp for the supposed crimes of his grandfather. It is important to note that Kang was only nine years of age at the time. He, his young sister, his grandmother, his father, and his uncle were sent to Yodok where they were placed in a cold hut and immediately forced to learn how to survive without the amenities they were accustomed to in

the awful camp. Shin thought that his father was selfish in letting in mother and brother

revealed frightening similarities in the structure and nature of the camps to those of North Korean

“I am evolving from being an animal, ' Shin said. 'But it is going very, very slowly. Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything. Yet tears don 't come. Laughter doesn 't come.” Tears, laughter, this all comes easy to most of the world, but it is much more complex than that for North Korean escapee, Shin Dong-Hyuk. After living in a prison camp for his entire life, it is no wonder how tears and laughter would be difficult to manage. Both Shin’s past and the environment of places like Camp 14 play a significant role in who he is today. Understanding the struggle to assimilate after escaping hell on earth and how all of these events have affected Shin and his mental health is crucial. To fully

Slavery was, and is, the mistreatment of people as property. Slavery in British colonies dates all the way back to 1619 when African Americans first arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. As soon as the African Americans arrived they were no longer considered to be “human”. Slaves were property; therefore they could be traded and sold. Slaves were cruelly whipped if they did something their master did not approve of. Some slave owners were so violent that they whipped their slaves until they bled and then they would rub salt into the wounds. Morosely, slaves were so horribly mistreated, some chose to take their own lives over continuing to be a slave. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery once and

Imagine life on the brink of death and being completely isolated from the outside world. Your surroundings are filled with the scent of rotting corpse and the image of walking skeletons with deformities due to scarce supply of food and countless beatings, torture, and even executions. What I am describing here is the reality for the prisoners in the concentration camps of North Korea. This is a clear violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights because these prisoners are subjugated under these harsh treatments by the government of North Korea. One living example of the brutal treatment endured in these camps is about a survivor of the camps whose name is Shin Dong-hyuk.

In 2001 journalist, Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Six Ordinary Lives in North Korea, moved to Seoul, South Korea as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where she was to report over both North and South Korea. When she was in North Korea, Demick found it was immensely difficult to report anything as their trip was very closely monitored. They were assigned “minders” who would make sure that: no unauthorized conversations took place, that they visit specific monuments, and allowed no contact with ordinary citizens. While in South Korea, Demick began speaking with North Koreans who had defected and escaped to South Korea and China. As she spoke with the people who had defected, Demick uncovered what lied beneath the façade

The most effective source is Shin's first-hand account. His account gives a closer, more detailed look into the life of a North Korean labor camp prisoner as well as into the life of a defector. When looking into the life of a labor camp prisoner, Shin tells that “the four families shared a common kitchen, which had a single bare lightbulb. Electricity ran two hours a day, from four to five in the morning and ten to eleven at night” (15). His age varies in his account, he grew up in a labor camp and stayed there into his early twenties. The variation in age gives the reader a broader understanding of what people of different ages experienced in North Korea. Shin may have been somewhat biased having suffered under the Kim family's rule. Harden could have possibly included a first-hand account from someone with a higher level of power than Shin. The statistical research was also efficient in supporting Harden's argument. It gave the reader an accurate count of important data such the lack of food in North Korea, “Every year North Korea needs to produce more than five million tons of rice and cereal grain to feed its twenty-three million people. Nearly every year it falls short, usually by about a million tons” (22). This shows how bad the living conditions were in North Korea. A combination of a first-hand account, history, and statistical research helps Harden to support his argument.

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick is a narrative non-fiction novel that shows the importance of propaganda in a totalitarian regime. As the story unfolds, the six defectors leave North Korea because of the famine. Because the country ran out of food and fuel, they left in order to survive; it was never out of disloyalty to their country. Up until their departure, several of the defectors were loyal believers that North Korea was the best country in the world. North Korea still stands today and is able to indoctrinate its people because of its effective use of propaganda.

Blaine Harden has to rely on his own intuition as a professional journalist to guide him in telling Shin’s narrow escape from North Korea without losing the audience’s attention and sympathy. Harden interchangeably

Perhaps most intriguing, Jenkins said that he had heard reports of a work crew of captive white men, whom he believed to be American prisoners of war. For many years, rumors circulated that American POWs from the Korean War remained in North Korea, but Jenkins said he understood the captives to be younger POWs, from the Vietnam War, sent by the North Vietnamese to Pyongyang as thanks for North Korean assistance during the war. He said that he thought they had been imprisoned at a “model farm” called Chongsan-ri. What North Korea would want with a work crew of American men is not obvious—the country has plenty of indigenous labor. The greater goal of assembling a menagerie of captive Westerners, Jenkins thinks, was to breed them. They would

The family did not live together, and Shin even had a brother that he hardly knew because he lived and worked miles away in a different part of the camp. Shin knew nothing of the outside world and was taught to work hard and to snitch on his family, classmates, and coworkers. As a reward for his hard work and snitching, he would be beaten less and

Later though he revised his story into the true one, the one where it actually documented what happened correctly. Anyways, onto what this story portrays. Shin begins in the first chapter stating his first memory was an execution. Showing already the horrors of Camp 14, and what death may come.

Hyeonseo Lee gave a presentation on TED Talk entitled, “My Escape from North Korea”, summarizing about her life in North Korea. She was born and raised there and sing patriotic songs. All the history books told her that North Korea was the best country in the world. As she got older, a famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990’s. Although, she never experienced starvation, she witnessed the events first hand. This was the pushing point for Hyeonseo, who decided to leave North Korea. Due to China and North Korea’s stringent border policies and the Chinese government immigration policy, the life of a North Korean refugee is challenging and extremely risky. They risk being deported back to the very country that they escaped from. There are reports and stories about the violation of human rights and labor camps in North Korea. She would live in China for ten years before moving to South Korea. Hyeonseo was forced to help her family escape from North Korea. The regime caught Hyeonseo for sending money to her family. Lee’s family to be relocated by the order of the North Korean government. She needed to smuggle them through China to a South Korean embassy in Laos. Unfortunately, Hyeonseo Lee’s story won’t be the last we hear about the abysmal conditions in North Korea. There are, potentially millions more, stories detailing the humanitarian disaster in the country and we must take steps to prepare for the eventual collapse of the country.