Born in Korean gulag, punished for no crime

(PHOTOS: Jerome Taylor)

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 20 June 2007

For the first 22 years of his life Shin Dong Hyok's home address was Political Prison Camp No 14, Gaechon County, South Pyeongan Province, North Korea.

He grew up in unimaginable hardship in one of North Korea's kwanli-so, the gulag system built by Kim Il Sung in 1972 to work prisoners until they died.

His "crime" was to have been born to parents cate-gorised by the regime as from the "hostile classes" - the 27 per cent of the population considered national enemies, impure elements and reactionaries. Under Kim Jong Il's "three generation" policy, the family members of anyone who commits a political crime are punished alongside the perpetrator, even if they have yet to be born.

Two years ago, Mr Shin did the unthinkable. He escaped from the labour camp of his birth, then from the world's most secretive and repressive state. Now he is trying to rebuild a new life in South Korea. He has never told his story in public before but, as the international community courts the regime of Kim Jong Il in an attempt to wrest nuclear weapons from his grasp, Mr Shin has broken his silence about the estimated 200,000 people held in labour camps.

With no education beyond the simple writing and maths taught in Camp 14's school, Mr Shin speaks slowly and unsteadily, but in concise sentences. "I don't know why I was there," he says. "I was simply born there. I knew nothing of the outside world. I had no complaints; I just accepted my lot."

In 1996, at the age of 14, he was forced to watch the executions of his mother and brother. They had been caught trying to escape. His mother was hanged, and his brother was shot.

Lifting his shirt, Mr Shin reveals a wild and angry scar left by the camp's torturers as they applied hot coals to his back during interrogation after the failed escape. Even the weathered, wrinkled skin above the scar looks like it should belong to someone at least twice his 24 years. The end of the middle finger on his right hand is missing, sliced off as punishment for dropping a sewing machine table.

On 2 January 2005, Mr Shin and a friend were collecting firewood. They noticed that a section of the electrified barbed wire fence surrounding the camp was unguarded and decided to make a run for it. His friend was electrocuted and died instantly but Mr Shin managed to crawl through, suffering horrific leg burns.

For 25 days he walked and hitched his way towards the Chinese border. "I broke into three houses and took what food and money I could find," he says. "Eventually, I came across a group of merchants heading into China and joined them." Despite possessing no papers (political prisoners are not classed as citizens) he got past the border guards by bribing them with cigarettes.

Owing to the secretive nature of the North Korean state, Mr Shin's testimony is almost impossible to verify. But Kim Sang Hun, an activist with a decade's experience of defectors, says he is telling the truth. "Whether he will ever be able to overcome the psychological trauma of what he's been through I don't know," says Mr Kim. The two men met the Tory leader, David Cameron, yesterday and they plan to visit the Foreign Office today.

Rights groups are concerned that the international community is ignoring North Korea's appalling human rights record.
A new Christian Solidarity Worldwide report says abuses in North Korea are so systematic and widespread that they constitute crimes against humanity which individual states and the United Nations have a responsibility to prosecute.

Mr Shin cannot forget those he left behind. "Please don't make me out to be a hero," he says. "I was a coward. In the prisons there were real heroes, people who refused to confess as the guards executed them. There are many more people just like me in there." news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2679480.ece