Summary Of Escape From Camp 14

In the memoir of Escape From Camp 14, by Blaine Harden, a young North Korean boy named Shin Dong-hyuk struggles through the hardships that permanently scar him in a labor prison camp called Camp 14. In this novel, people are portrayed as indifferent on what is happening inside of North Korea. This is probably due to people not being aware and how serious the dictator of North Korea treats its people. Shin is one of the victims exposed to the evil clutches of the camps and the dictator. Because he was born inside the camp, he doesn’t know the outside world, experiencing a loss of innocence. Many people don’t know the real truth behind North Korea, but this book uncovers the many secrets that people like the Kim Dynasty have to hide from us. Many people including myself do not know much about the happenings inside North Korea. Before I read this book, all I knew about North Korea was that it was overrun by a tyrant named Kim Jong Un, and that it was not on friendly terms with most countries. I didn’t know that it held unjust labor prison camps like the one that Shin was held in. As Blaine Harden recalls, “Guards taught him and other children in the camp that they were prisoners because of the ‘sins’ of their parents”(Harden,18).

Most North Koreans that are defectors are known to be shy, introverted people, who are untrusting. As Shin states when he arrived to America after meeting the author of Camp 14, “I am evolving from an animal, ‘he 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”(Harden,181). According to Judith Lewis Herman,a Harvard psychiatrist, said that most survivors suffer from post-traumatic syndrome, and feeling shame, self hate, and believing that they are a