Interviews with Shin Dong-hyuk

China is very close politically to the North Korean regime with regard to the suffering of the people of North Korea.

I believe that China is just like the North Korean regime in the sense that they turn a blind eye to the suffering of North Koreans.

For example, the Chinese authorities actively seek out and arrest North Korean refugees in China and forcibly repatriate them back to North Korea.

In the case of prison camp escapees or other high ranking, important officials that may have crossed the river into China the Chinese government actively seeks these people out, arrests them, and notifies and actually cooperates with the North Korean government, and forces their repatriation.

In that sense, China does not really care about the people of North Korea.

After crossing into China, after some time, I ended up working for Chinese citizens, but I constantly feared being found out, arrested, and repatriated.

Shin Dong Hyuk is the only known person to be born in a North Korean gulag and escape to freedom. In North Korea, whole families are incarcerated for the offenses of a single family member. As many as 130,000 men, women and children are imprisoned in North Korea’s vast system of gulags.

Shin was born in 1982 in Camp 14, the product of a “reward marriage” between two prisoners. He lived with his mother until the age of 12, though they never formed a true familial bond. Shin received a basic education before being pressed into the camp’s labor force. During this time, he witnessed fellow children being beaten, executed and killed in work-related accidents.

In 1996, prison officials brought Shin to a separate detention facility where he was tortured. He had no idea why this was happening to him. Finally, the guards explained that his mother and brother had attempted to escape and they wanted more information. After being held in an underground cell for seven months, Shin was forced to attend the public execution of his mother and brother.

In 2005, Shin and another prisoner were assigned to work on a mountain. Driven by hunger, the two decided to escape over the electrified fence enclosing the camp. Shin’s leg was caught in the fence and scarred, but he managed to get through; the other prisoner was electrocuted and died. From there, Shin managed to cross the border into China where he worked as a laborer for several years until connecting with a journalist who brought him to the South Korean Embassy. From there, Shin escaped China.

Shin’s incredible story has been shared with the world in the book, Escape from Camp 14, by American journalist Blaine Harden. Since escaping, Shin has become a leading voice on North Korean human rights and the country’s gulag system, including providing testimony at the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).