Camp 14: Total Control Zone Page #2

Firstly:
Inmates aren't allowed to escape.

Anyone trying to escape

will be shot immediately.

Anybody who sees an inmate trying to escape and

doesn't reported will be shot immediately.

Secondly:
Stealing is forbidden.

Anyone who steals or hides any

food will be shot immediately.

Thirdly:
Inmates must obey the officer of

the state security department completely.

Those who display improper or

disobedient behaviour towards the teacher

of the state security department,

will be shot immediately.

Fourthly:
Outside of work men and women

are not allowed to be in contact privately.

If physical contact exist between

man and woman without permission

they will be shot immediately.

Lastly:
Inmates must have the deepest

remorse for the own mistakes.

Those who cannot take

responsibility for the own guilt

or who have an opinion about

that guilt will be shot immediately.

There are camp officers who monitor

and control the birth of children

and the sex lives of the inmates.

The women are sometimes sexually abused

or even got pregnant by the guards.

Since life in the camp is very tough,

the women put up with everything.

They hope that their lives will be easier

if a guard likes them and

they have his child.

One example:
there was a women I liked.

Most of the female inmates were attractive.

Before they came to the camp, they

usually led a life of affluence.

That's why they had

particularly pretty faces.

When I liked a woman,

I called her and took her home.

She knew she wasn't allowed to refuse.

Otherwise she would be shot.

It was rare, but occasionally the women

who were with us guards in this way

got pregnant.

Then we thought up some

accusation and killed them.

I saw that with my own eyes.

A woman was pregnant.

She already had a big belly.

A guard had got her pregnant.

While she was pregnant the guard hung

the woman from the branch of a tree

and cruelly beat her to death with a whip.

Geneva

...friend from North Korea, Donghuyk Shin,

who used to be also a political

prisoner, was born in a prison camp

in North Korea and was

finally able in 2005 to escape

and we are very happy to have

you with us here today.

Thank you for inviting

me to this conference.

According to officials figures

from the South Korean government

around two hundred thousand prisoners

are currently interned

in North Korean camps.

I think there are around twenty, thirty

thousand inmates in Camp 14, where I lived.

My parents didn't know each other

before their time in the camp.

My father received my mother as a reward

for good forced labour.

They were married by a guard.

That's how it came about that I was born

in the labour camp.

It was clear that I would have

to live there until I died.

Camp 14 is a death camp,

nobody is released from there.

We knew that we had to obey

the guards unconditionally.

In all the years I was there,

I never saw anyone complaining.

I'm an American journalist.

Do you speak English a little bit?

A little?

I want to make an interview with him

in a few words about his personal ...

Through my work with LINK, a

human rights organization

I have been to lectures

all around the world.

In the United States, Canada,

Europe and even Japan.

But I never felt in any of these

places that I really arrived.

The public executions in the camp

weren't restricted to adult inmates.

That could happen to children too.

I was seven or eight.

Every week our teacher checked our pockets.

There were around thirty-five

children in the class.

The teacher called out some names

and searched the pockets.

Once a few grains of corn were

found in a girl's pocket.

When we stole food, we usually

swallowed it immediately.

But she was unfortunately caught.

The teacher put the grains on the

table and the girl had to kneel.

She was beaten mercilessly with a cane.

It started at eight o'clock in the morning and

only ended at around one in the afternoon.

He ignored her begging and

her pleas for forgiveness.

He kept beating her.

It was a form of training for him.

I was beaten like that too once.

At the end the girl couldn't cope with it anymore

and she collapsed on the floor unconscious.

We took our friend on our

back and carried her home.

She had a severe head

injury and was bleeding.

The next day she wasn't in school anymore.

Since the teacher ordered us to get her

from home, we sought out her family.

We just heard she was dead.

The wound on her head had become infected.

When we watched this scene non of us

thought that was anything wrong with it.

Those were the camp's

rules and regulations.

That's why we thought that was absolutely normal that this

girl was punished so severely for five stolen grains.

Sometimes we laughed.

I don't know exactly how

often that happened.

I was quite naive as a small child.

I didn't have any ambition so

I talked and laughed a lot.

In the camp everyone watch everyone.

That was the rule.

I had to spy on my parents and my

parents had to monitor me too.

If there were any suspicions I had to publicly

criticized my parents in the ideological assembly.

I was 14 when I came home that day,

my brother was there too.

He wasn't allowed to be there.

He was meant to be at work.

My mother and my brother

were talked in quietly.

I eavesdropped on that conversation.

It turned out that my brother had

left from the cement factory.

Now he was asking my mother for advise.

If my brother were caught he'll be shot

because he left the factory

without permission.

My mother told him that

he mustn't stay with her.

"You must to hide in the mountains or flee

from the camp as quickly as possible."

I heard her said that.

When I overheard this conversation

I felt a little hurt.

My mother put a small portion of our daily

food rations back for emergencies

and on this day she cooked

the portion of rice for my brother.

I was hungry every day.

But she didn't give me any.

That's hurt me.

I don't know.

Maybe it was just because I

reported them to the teacher.

I ran to the teacher and said that I suspected that

my mother and my brother want to flee at night.

Before I told the teacher I

tried to negotiate with him.

I suggested two conditions.

I said that "I had something

important to say,

so could you make sure

that I could get a good meal?"

And also I wanted to be the

But he didn't keep his promise.

I was so naive.

you been angry on your mother that she chosen

your brother for this escape and not you?

I don't know.

I'm not certain today whatever they were

really hatching a plan to flee from the camp

thinking about it now.

But I was young, 14.

I felt that they wanted to try and flee.

I did what my instinct, the rules required.

I reported that plan.

But thinking about it now

I can't be certain that they

really wanted to escape.

But it was clear that my brother had

secretly fled from the cement factory.

That's why I reported the

plan to the teacher.

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