North Korea Survival Of The Fittest Summary

In the book Escape From Camp 14, the child refugee Shin Dong-Hyuk faces unimaginable traumatizing experiences while being held captive in the Camp 14 concentration camp. Before Shin, no one has escaped or lived to share what life was inside a concentration camp in North Korea. Within Camp 14, the imprisoned families and individuals struggle through the severe realities that the North Korea government establishes. These laws and rights formed by the government and given to the citizens affect their human rights by violating their political, economic and also by treating them with unfair punishments. In the lawless land of North Korean, laws are just for decorative and show that the North Korea government knows what they are doing and

Imagine thinking you are living life to its absolute fullest. You are in the happiest country in the world. You have no worries, nor do your neighbors, friends, parents, or classmates. This is how most people can say their childhood seemed like: carefree and happy. That is, until one day you mature a little bit, and realize the world is not all flowers and butterflies. You start to the problems in the world: death, sadness, financial issues, and so much more. Hyeonoseo Lee makes a speech called “My Escape from North Korea.” Her speech is all about how she grew up thinking her life was wonderful, but soon realized the actual tragedies of not only life, but also living in North Korea. Throughout her speech, she used many rhetorical appeals to engage the audience, including ethos, pathos, and logos.

“I would tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices,” Elie Wiesel tells his former self (118). Wiesel has dedicated a majority of his future to fighting against the world’s silence with lessons such as these found in his memoir, Night. Even after undergoing the mass genocide called the Holocaust and hearing of the experiences from one of the victims himself, the world has fallen into a time of suffering yet again. Today, North Korea’s line of oppressive rulers practice their absolute control on Korean lives just as the Nazi’s oppressed the Jews. Following the second World War, the Korean War took place resulting in the country splitting in two: communist North Korea, or the Korean Worker’s Party, and democratic South Korea, or People’s Republic of Korea. This event began the brutal reign of the Kim family, consisting of Kim Ill-sung, Kim Jong-ill, and Kim Jong-un, on North Korea. For three generations, North Koreans were burdened with decades of torture, starvation, and manipulation. Now, the world is seemingly turning its eyes away from North Korea and labeling it a lost cause. There is little hope in store for these Koreans as Kim Jong-un expands his control globally with a new force of destruction: nuclear weapons. Similar to the concentration camps depicted in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the people of North Korea continue to face oppression

Through this book Demick establishes her deep knowledge of North Korea all the while following the lives of six defectors as they fought to survive. Demick shows us the struggle that these North Koreans face as their country is consumed by an economic crisis and a famine that killed one fifth of their population, while it also gave us a glimpse at what we never think of when we hear about this country. The collapse of North Korea’s economy caused factories to close and other jobs to be terminated. This led the citizens of North Korea to lose their only source of income and forced to find other means to support their families. It caused them to make sacrifices in order support their families and essentially learn to become selfish, to turn a blind eye to the ones around who were also suffering in order for themselves to survive.

The book Escape from Camp 14, by Blaine Harden, follows the early life of Shin Dong-hyuk, the main character, as he grows up in a North Korean labor camp, Camp 14. The Kim dynasty was in control of North Korea during Shin’s time in the labor camp, and remains in control today. The Kim family runs a communist government and kept control by creating labor camps for those who attempted to fight the government system. The novel goes into detail about Shin’s childhood, his young adulthood, his escape and how he had to adapt after escaping. Blaine Harden convincingly argues that North Korean government is extremely hazardous to its inhabitants. The book highlights the dangers that people face, having to live in the labor camps and the perils of

In a gripping tale of the horrors that take place in the labor camps of North Korea, Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden retells Shin Dong-hyuk's life in Camp 14 and his miraculous escape. Unlike others who managed to escape North Korea, Shin is the first to have been born inside of one of the concentration camps. Since he grew up inside the camp, Shin was never exposed to any of the North Korean propaganda. The book follows Shin’s entire life up to the time of publication, starting with his time in the camp, then his escape, and finally his life after arriving in South Korea.

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

Shin Dong-hyuk is the only known escapee born in the brutal North Korean political prison camps. But did Shin find freedom, or did he take his prison with him? In the Escape from Camp 14, Blaine Harden retells the excruciating physical and emotional abuse endured by Shin in the camp where he was born. Yet, to Shin, the brutal beatings at the hand’s of his mother, the camp guards and teachers, and even the other children with whom he was raised was nothing extraordinary. Scrounging on the dining room floor or in the refuse piles for an extra shred of cabbage or kernel of corn, or sneaking off to roast rats or grasshoppers to stave off starvation was simply a way of life. Shin had spent “23 years in an open-air cage run by men who hanged his mother, shot his brother, crippled his father, murdered pregnant women, beat children to death, taught him to betray his family, and tortured him over a fire (123).” Shin survived by doing exactly what he was told to do, when he was told to do it. He had no family. He had no friends. Upon successfully Escaping Camp 14, Shin “felt wonderfully free--and, as

Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14 tells the saddening yet hopeful story of Shin In Geun, A North Korean man who has been locked in Camp 14, one of Korea's most horrific prison and labor camps. Harden tells the story through the facts Shin gives him, while stating facts and goes more in depth and explains why this may have happened or how certain events may have happened. The book keeps you interested, as its words transfer the images of the traumatizing experiences of Shin, explaining things such as how he watched his mother and brother executed in front of him as a child, and how he was savagely beat multiple times by guards for little things such as picking berries so he wouldn’t die of starvation. All of the stories Shin shares in

The memoir Escape from Camp by Blaine Harden is a riveting life story about a young man named Shin who was born inside Camp 14. Camp 14 was one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. In some camps there could be as many as 200,000 people who were either captured or born and raised in the camps. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence. He saw his mother and brother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. They were entitled to beatings daily for having to “pay for the sins” that their parents committed. All thoughts of escaping were diminished by the constant fear of starvation. North Korea was taking in billions of dollars worth of food to

Shin Dong-Hyuk’s earliest memory was of the sound of gunshots and an execution. Underneath Shin Dong-Hyuk’s clothes, he bears numerous burn scars on his lower body from being held over a fire, dangling by a hook. This was after his mother and brother were caught trying to escape Camp 14 in North Korea. There was no such thing as love or mercy in the world Shin was born into. His mother was publicly hung and his brother was shot by the firing squad. As Shin watched his mother die, he felt no remorse. She deserved it and with her gone there was less competition for food. He could receive a bit more of a scarce helping of corn grown from the homemade fertilizer straight from the prisoners into the ground. This was the place Shin Dong-Hyuk called home. This is only one story from the few escapees out of the 80,000-120,000 inmates believed to still live in the prison camps. X

Jun-sang was one of the interviewed defectors and was the son of two relatively wealthy Japanese parents, which leads to an issue of equality in terms of class. In an attempt for North Korea to be the “true” Korea, they tried to remove any foreign influence. As a result, there was a lot of hatred against Japanese collaborators. Japanese Koreans that were prominent in society were purged, which perhaps meant being sent to the gulag (Demick 35). As a result, Jun-sang’s family is already at a disadvantage socially as they are forced to remain in the lower class to

According to senior editor Peter Weber of the political The Week magazine, “North Korea isn’t Nazi Germany--in some ways, it’s worse.” In this column Weber points out a 36 page report and its 373 page addendum report conducted by retired Australian judge Michael Kirby of the United Nations that revealed grisly details about the human rights abuses occurring in North Korea. The report was based on testimonies from witnesses and former inmates who had spent time in one of the encampments and who luckily made it out alive. Pyongyang 14 is one of the many camps that Kim Jong-un has in place to exterminate, murder, enslave, torture, and starve his people as the report notes. In addition, there are also forced abortions and other sexual violence that take place in this inhumane setting. North Korea forbids that their citizens know about life outside of the country, so if they attempt to do so there will be room for them in one of the prison camps since Jong-un is expanding their capacity. Something as little as watching a soap opera can land a North Korean in one of these camps, that is if they are not killed right away. For example, 10 people in the country were executed last year by firing squad when upper echelons in the North Korean hierarchy found out that they were watching “foreign” soap operas (Ryall). It is beyond belief that one’s life can be taken for something of such small magnitude. In Weber’s column he describes an interview Kirby had with a one-time prisoner at

The issues reported on the given document were from the testimonies of sixty former North Koreans who were in forced labour institutions in North Korea (VII). The former North Korean prisoners were interviewed one by one to get the testimonies. On top of these testimonies, satellite images collected by Google Earth were used to coordinate the prison camps and further explain the human rights issues created by North Korea in these sites.

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.