Shin Dong-hyuk

Shin Dong-hyuk (born Shin In Geun, 19 November 1982 or 1980

Biography The following is Shin's biography as told by him prior to 2015 which he later partially recanted.

Early life Shin Dong-hyuk was born Shin In Geun at the Kaechon internment camp, commonly known as Camp 14. He was born to two prisoners who were allowed to marry as a reward for good work, although "neither bride nor groom had much say in deciding whom they would marry." The North Korean government officials and camp guards told him he was imprisoned because his parents had committed crimes against the state, and that he had to work hard and always obey the guards; otherwise he would be punished or executed. The camp was near a hydroelectric dam and mines in which the prisoners were forced to labour. In one of Shin's prison cells, where he was held during an interrogation, he said he had electricity and running water. Shin's mother lived in a house with multiple rooms in a "model village" in the camp, given to women who had children.

Shin experienced considerable violence in the camp, and witnessed dozens of executions every year. He witnessed adult prisoners and children beaten every day, and many prisoners dying of starvation, illness, torture and work accidents. However, the school night guard took full credit for discovering the plan, and rather than being rewarded, Shin was arrested and guards tortured him for four days to extract more information, believing him to be part of the plan to escape.

According to Shin, the guards lit a charcoal fire under his back and forced a hook into his skin so that he could not struggle which caused many large scars still visible on his body. On 29 November 1996, after approximately seven months spent in a tiny concrete prison cell, he was released and joined by his father, who had also been imprisoned. They were driven back to the main camp wearing blindfolds and their hands tied behind their backs. Camp officials then forced Shin and his father to watch the public executions of Shin's mother and brother; he then understood he had been responsible for the executions. Shin’s mother was executed by hanging while Shin’s brother was executed by firing squad.

Shin stated that at the time of the executions of his brother and mother, in his teenaged mind he felt they "deserved" their fates for both breaking prison rules and, conversely, not including him in the escape plan. Shin has since expressed remorse over his actions, saying in an interview with Anderson Cooper for the CBS television show 60 Minutes, "My mother and brother, if I could meet them through a time machine, I would like to go back and apologize".

Escape with Park While working at a textile factory, Shin became friends with a 40-year-old political prisoner from Pyongyang (surnamed Park), who was educated and had traveled outside North Korea. Park had been to East Germany and China. Park said that he shook Kim Jong Il's hand. Park told him about the outside world, such as stories about food that Shin had not experienced before. According to Shin, nearly every meal he had eaten up to that point had been a soupy gruel of cabbage, corn, and salt, with occasional wild-caught rats and insects. He was excited by the idea of being able to eat as much food as he wanted to, which Shin considered to be the essence of freedom. "I still think of freedom as roasted chicken," he later acknowledged.

Shin decided to attempt to escape with Park. They formed a plan in which Shin would provide local information about the camp, while Park would use his knowledge once outside the camp to escape the country. On 2 January 2005, the pair was assigned to a work detail near the camp's electric fence on the top of a mountain ridge to collect firewood. Noting the long interval between the guards' patrols, the two waited until the guards were out of sight, then made their attempt to escape. Park attempted to go through first, but was fatally electrocuted climbing the high voltage fence. Shin managed to pass over the wire using Park's body as a shield to ground the current, but still suffered severe burns and permanent scars when his legs slipped onto the lowermost wire as he crawled over Park's body.

After escaping, Shin broke into a nearby farmer's barn and found an old military uniform. Wearing the uniform, he was able to masquerade as a North Korean soldier at times. He survived by scrounging and stealing food. Shin was unfamiliar with money, but within two days of his escape, he had sold a bag of rice stolen from a house and used the money to buy cookies and cigarettes. Eventually, he reached the northern border with China along the Tumen River and bribed destitute North Korean border guards with food and cigarettes.

Revision in 2015 In January 2015, Shin contacted Blaine Harden and recanted parts of his story. Harden outlined the changes to Shin's account in a new foreword to his book, Escape from Camp 14, but did not revise every detail. He said a complete revision of the book would have taken months and he wanted to publish the new version as soon as possible.

Shin told Harden that he had changed some dates and locations and incorporated some "fictive elements" into the story. Shin said that he did not spend his entire North Korean life at Camp 14. He said that he was born there, but when he was young, his family was transferred to the less severe Camp 18, and spent several years there. He said that not only did he inform on the escape plan of his mother and brother, but also falsely implicated them in murder. He said that he twice escaped from Camp 18. The first time, in 1999, he was caught within days. The second time, in 2001, he said he crossed into China, but was caught after four months by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea. He said that he was tortured in Camp 14 in 2002, when he was 20 years old (not 13, as previously stated), as punishment for his escape. He said he was repeatedly burned and tortured in an underground prison for six months. As a result of education in Camp 18, and his previous escapes, he said he wasn't as naive about the outside world when he made his final escape from Camp 14 as he had previously described.

In Escape from Camp 14 Blaine Harden commented that, "Shin was the only available source of information about his early life." In his new foreword for the book in 2015, he described Shin as an "unreliable narrator" and commented that, "It seems prudent to expect new revisions", Some defectors said his testimony is "completely lies". Kim Young-soon, another defector incarcerated at another camp (Camp 15), states that many defectors "embellish[ed] their stories, making things up and lying to make themselves more valuable." A former member of South Korea's National Intelligence Service said Shin had never lived in a "prison camp". The writer Simon Winchester commented that the "authority" of the UN Commission of Inquiry report was "somewhat challenged" by this revelation.

Shin explained he did not tell the full story because he wished to hide "that my mother and brother were executed because of my report," saying "the most important reason why I could not reveal all of the truth was because of my family." He went on to say "All I did until last September was discuss the camps as they were, but once the video was released [of his father], the nastiness of North Korea infuriated me. Then I realized I should not hold anything back." and from there he traveled to South Korea, where he underwent extensive questioning from authorities to determine if he was a North Korean assassin or spy. Afterwards, his story was broadcast by the press and he published a Korean language memoir.

Shin later moved to Southern California, changing his name from Shin In Geun to Shin Dong-hyuk in "an attempt to reinvent himself as a free man," and worked for Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), a non-profit organization that raises awareness of human rights issues in North Korea and provides aid to North Korean refugees.

In August 2013, Shin gave several hours of testimony to the United Nations' first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses of North Korea. A member of the UN commission described Shin as the world's "single strongest voice" on the atrocities inside North Korean camps. of Kim Jong Un.

On June 30, 2017, Shin Dong-hyuk became a father. His wife Leeann gave birth to Lucas Yohan Shin.

North Korean response In 2012, when the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asked the North Korean government about the status of Shin Dong-hyuk's father, they responded that there was no such person. Then in 2014, after identifying Shin Dong-hyuk as Shin In Geun, the North Korean government produced a video which attempted to discredit Shin through interviews with his father and other supposed witnesses. His father denied Shin had grown up in a prison camp. According to the video, Shin had worked in a mine and fled North Korea after being accused of raping a 13-year-old girl. It also said that Shin's mother and brother were guilty of murder. The video claimed he was now spreading "preposterous false information" about human rights. Shin confirmed the man was his father. He said that the rape allegation was a fabrication that he had heard before. He later confirmed that his mother and brother were convicted of murder, but stated they were innocent. Shin said that he believed the North Korean government was sending him a message to be quiet about human rights abuses or his father would be killed, in effect holding his father hostage.

Books and films In 2012, journalist Blaine Harden published Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, based on his interviews with Shin. Harden gave a one-hour interview about the book on the C-SPAN television program Q&A.

Executive Director of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Greg Scarlatoiu, said the book played "an important role" in raising wider public awareness of the North Korean camps. Dalhousie University issued a statement averring that Shin's story, as told through the book, "has shifted the global discourse about North Korea, shining a light on the human rights abuses so prevalent within the regime." It includes interviews with Shin Dong-hyuk and two former North Korean officers: the first, Kwon Hyuk, was a guard in Camp 22 and brought out amateur film footage (the only known footage of Camp 22), and the second, Oh Yang-nam, was a secret policeman who arrested people who were sent to camps. Supplementing the film are animated sequences of the camp created by Ali Soozandeh.

Awards and honours In June 2013, Shin received the Moral Courage Award given by UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO (non-governmental organization).

In May 2014, Shin was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia, Canada). Students at the university "held a peace march and launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of human rights violations in North Korea. They then fundraised to bring Mr. Shin to Halifax, where his speech to an over-capacity crowd drew international attention."