Shin Dong-hyuk (human rights activist)
| Shin Dong-hyuk | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Shin In Geun 19 November 1982 Kwalliso No. 14, North Korea, Kaechon, South Pyongan Province |
| Occupation | Human rights campaigner, Witness of Human rights in North Korea |
| Shin Dong-hyuk | |
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 신동혁 |
|---|---|
| Hancha | |
| Revised Romanization | Sin Dong-hyeok |
| McCune–Reischauer | Sin Tonghyŏk |
Shin Dong-hyuk (born Shin In Geun, 19 November 1982 or 1980 ) is a North Korean-born human rights activist. He is reputed to be the only known prisoner to have successfully escaped from a "total-control zone" grade internment camp in North Korea. He was the subject of a biography, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by former Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden. Shin has given talks to audiences around the world about his life in Camp 14 and about the totalitarian North Korean regime to raise awareness of the situation in North Korean internment and concentration camps and North Korea. Shin has been described as the world's "single strongest voice" on the atrocities inside North Korean camps by a member of the United Nations' first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses of North Korea. In January 2015, he recanted aspects of his story but a majority of experts continued to support his credibility as a victim of North Korean human rights abuses.
The following is Shin's biography as told by him prior to 2015 which he later partially recanted.
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." Shin's father, Shin Gyung Sub, told Shin that the guards gave him his mother, Jang Hye-gyung, as payment for his skill in operating a metal lathe in the camp's machine shop. Shin lived with his mother until he was 12. He rarely saw his father who lived elsewhere in the camp and was allowed to visit a few times a year. According to Shin, he saw his mother as a competitor for their insufficient food rations, and consequently had no bonds of affection with his parents or his brother, Shin He Geun. 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.
Shin went to primary and secondary school while in the camp. The secondary school was "little more than slave quarters from which he was sent out as a rock picker, weed puller and dam laborer." At one point, a young girl was beaten to death by the teacher for hoarding a few kernels of corn. His education did not include propaganda or even basic information about North Korea. The personality cult around Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il was also absent; for example there were no portraits of the Kim leaders on display. 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.
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