Sunday 20 January 2013

Escape from Camp 14

I just finished reading an incredible story of survival. 

The story of Shin Dong-Hyuk takes you right into one of North Korea's most horrifying prison camps that make the Holocaust seem like a spring vacation. Human life is disposable. Human feeling unheard of. Trust even between a mother and her son does not exist. Love is impossible.

What was most scary for me, was truly coming to terms with this place where I could understand how and why Shin made the decisions he did. And I question my own moral integrity were I to be in the same place.

To get such a vivid description of what life was like for Shin, who happens to be my age, and so many others in these camps, was very serial. I have grown up with the comforting thought that camps like these were a thing of a Nazi past, not happening simultaneously as I've been living my very comfortable free life.






Shin met many strange, and deeply troubled characters along his path, and I couldn't help wondering 'why?' Why certain people acted this way or that? What was their motive or drive? Did no one feel any emotional attachment? And most of all what happened to many of them? - Questions, I'm sure, that will forever haunt Shin.






What's heart breaking is there is no foreseeable end to camp 14 and the likes of it. But I believe, at the very least, they deserve our attention.

You can purchase 'Escape from Camp 14' in trade paper back here: Chapters'

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