Escape from Camp 14: An Unforgettable Journey of a Man's Quest for Freedom from North Korea to the West

A: Interesting and informative. Hard to believe what he went through.

Canada on Feb 10, 2024

C Hilton: What an eye opener. I had no idea of the extent of the human suffering and oppression in North Korea. This is an easy read and well written story. If you live in a free country it will make you fall down on your knees and thank God.

United States on Jan 30, 2024

Gregory Williams: This book will take you on an emotional journey in discovering the horrific narrative of one man's life and escape from North Korea prison camps. Unthinkable that something like this still exists in modern times. It deluges the truth of such atrocities against basic human rights, do I dare say greater than the Jewish Holocaust, but lasting 10 times longer! Unthinkable, hurtful, mournful, sickening, madding, a book worth reading.

United States on Jan 15, 2024

Florian: The best horror stories are true. This one is no exception. I never realized the impact of being raised in an environment like North Korea despite having read several books on the topic. This was the first which really shone a light on the psychological impacts.

Germany on Jan 12, 2024

Emmanuel Wietzel: Ce témoignage est remarquable à plus d'un titre. Tout d'abord il raconte l'horreur des camps en Corée du Nord. Ensuite il est le récit d'une évasion rocambolesque. Enfin il est une analyse du travail d'effacement de la mémoire traumatique. Très intéressant de lire l'analyse de celui qui a aidé l'auteur à construire son récit et à faire face aux condratictions d'un passé traumatique qu'il a, peut-être malgré lui, dû modifier pour ne pas sombrer dans la folie.

France on Aug 22, 2021

Nicolas Garcia: Un libro fundamental para entender los horrores no sólo del Comunismo sino de la inacción del mundo libre con la no tan distante Corea del Norte. Shin es uno de esos muchos niños que nacen en el cautiverio de los campos de concentración (o reeducación) de dicho gobierno, un país donde para purgar las faltas de una persona se purga a tres generaciones completas, y este libro es su grito de libertad y posterior éxodo a China donde Shin conoce cosas como el dinero o como que todas las mentiras que le habían contado eran simplemente eso, mentiras. Duro de leer pero indispensable, no es algo de hace cien años, es algo que ocurre hoy en día.

Spain on Jan 19, 2021

Ahsan 9716: Very emotional and a book for all those who usually do not have the courage to fight when life becomes tough for them and they surrender... This is a story for all those...

India on Nov 21, 2018

S. Warfield: An obsession has struck me since I read the first few books about North Korea. The country is widely ignored by a lot of the world and the Korean War has been referred to as "the forgotten war." I remember my own uncle leaving for the war when I was only a very small child, and he came back unharmed, but not much was taught about it in school. In the short time since I read the first books I have been consuming books about this isolated, poor and repressive country that hasn't enough food, energy or industry to keep the people well-fed and with electricity for more than a few hours a day and old smokestacks from former factories rusting away with no smoke coming from them.

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk's life in a political prison and his escape. Shin was born in a political prison and grew up in the unbelievably cruel conditions of a system where prisoners are considered not human and are worked to death with just a little bit of food per day, a set of clothes, no soap, no toothbrush or toothpaste and no underwear. For the slightest transgression they are beaten, hung upside down or hung over a fire with a hook forced through their...

United States on Feb 15, 2016

Mike: Imagine a government so deranged it locks up entire families in brutal slave labor camps, some larger than the greater Los Angeles area in terms of land area, and for 3 generations of family members who had nothing to do with the original POLITICAL offense--all at the say of the regime's tyrant leader. Something out of Orwell? No, the reality of life in North Korea and its infamous and brutal Camp 14, which sadly is only one of many dozens of such political concentration camps throughout North Korea.

Shin is the only person born into one of North Korea's slave labor camps to escape and to live to tell the horrifying tale to the free world. The stultifying brutality Shin describes in the camps becomes almost too much to read, but Blaine Harden, the author, very deftly tells just enough to avoid making the book too burdensome to read, yet giving just enough so we understand the sheer terror being doled out by the parasitic Kim dynasty.

From a school girl beaten to death by a "teacher" merely for having a few kernels of corn, to Shin being permanently maimed by having been held over a fire by sadist guards, to men and women, and the babies, being beaten to death for...

United States on Apr 10, 2012