Reddit reviews Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Can I just point out that North Korea is a nation with active concentration and slave labour camps, where torture, beatings, rape, starvation, disease and the killing of babies are downright common occurrences? And where not only the children of prisoners, but the grandchildren of prisoners, are continually held as punishment for the sins of their parents? There are people in those camps today, because their grandparents fought against North Korea in the Korean War (also, seriously, just go read Escape from Camp 14 for a firsthand account of this horror).

Which means that these idiots are now trying to work out a way to rationalize how this unfathomable evil doesn't actually exist. It's Holocaust denial by any other name.

Also, your entire family will be sent to a concentration camp if you escape (or try to). I've always wondered why North Korean athletes don't try to seek asylum during international sporting events, I'm assuming this is why.

Also, obligatory North Korean reading list for those who are interested:

• Escape from Camp 14 (My favourite)
  
  
• This is Paradise! - My North Korean Childhood
  
  
• Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
  
  
• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

The book comes out March 29th

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

North Korea, very very likely.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

I wonder how harshly history will judge my inaction.

I'd also add Escape from Camp 14 in the same vein.

I recommend everyone to read "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" to see how people suffer in these gulags from first person experince.

> Yet, how is it any different from those of you who suggest that life is better than death?

What the hell is wrong with you? North Koreans aren't some alien race, they're human beings who also don't want to die. Read memoirs from NK escapees like The Aquariums of Pyongyang or Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. I attended a talk by the man written about in Escape from Camp 14, a man born in a NK prison camp who managed to escape.

These are not people longing for death; they're people longing for life.

>Why do you feel that it is fair to use your own experiences in this life to determine the value of life for other people?

We're not. You are:

"We shouldn't let people starve to death."

"But how do we know they don't want to starve to death!?"

You have absolutely no idea at all what you're talking about, your opinion is idiotic, and you're an awful person for having it.

Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you? I hate this false "all positions are equal, teach the controversy!" charade.

Sort of off the top of my head:

Not Supernatural:

• The Road
  
• Lord of the Flies
  
• One Second After
  
  Supernatural:
  
  
• World War Z
  
• I am Legend
  
• Robopocalypse
  
  Often times books about survival don't need to be fiction to be amazingly interesting, so I'll add these:
  
  
• Unbroken
  
• Escape from Camp 14

For number 3, here are some good books that will go a long way to answering this question:

Nothing to Envy (stories of ordinary citizens who eventually fled)
http://www.amazon.ca/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383083638&sr=8-1&keywords=nothing+to+envy

Escape from Camp 14 (this one is about a prisoner camp inmate who escaped)

http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329/ref=pd_sim_b_2


The short answer is that many people are starting to (illegally) cross between the border of North Korea and China to trade, as well as escaping permanently. There are smuggling businesses that you can hire to get you or a loved one out. If you have the money, this will involve a fake passport and even a plane flight all the way to South Korea. If you are poor, the trip is much more harrowing and dangerous.

The amount of people defecting seems to be growing by quite a bit each year.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

Do some research on that guy.

That's just one example, there are also a great number of documentaries of people that visit the DPRK on tours (which are allowed btw). Some of these people take videos in risks of getting caught and making the tour guides angry. One such documentary is the "Vice guide to North Korea", by just watching it you can clearly see that stepping foot in North Korea is like going back in time to a 1950 ish Soviet Russia and that North Korea is clearly a country that focuses on propaganda and focusing their money towards government/military first.

Also they have an ideology that they grasp known as "Juche" (주체) that has an effect on their economy as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche#Effects_on_the_economy

There ARE a lot of sources from defectors and those who have escaped from North Korea-- here's a great book: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

It's about a man who was born in a NK labor camp because he had ancestors who tried to escape (3 generations of "traitors" get punished). As a young boy, he sold out his brother and mother who had plans to escape the labor camp-- they were hanged in front of him, and he felt no remorse. The books talk about what happens to families of those who try to be escape.

The full book comes out tomorrow. If you are actually interested in reading this story in full, wait. This article spoils it.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

if you're okay with pretty modern history, I recommend North Korea. the secretiveness about the country is fascinating.

For documentaries, i recommend National Geographic: Inside North Korea. there's also the Vice Guide to North Korea and I also personally like their documentary on North Korean work camps inside Russia. If you have netflix, there's also Kimjongilia and Crossing the Line.

As for books, I really liked Nothing to Envy:Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. It talks about the lives of several defectors mainly during the famine in the 90s and also talks about how their lives are now in South Korea. Right now i'm reading Escape from Camp 14
which is about a guy who escaped from one of North Korea's many prison camps.

With a lot of recent events, I think it's important to understand the history of the country. also, Korea under Japanese rule might be interesting to.

Good Luck :)

EDIT: spelling

This is a tell all...pretty messed up stuff. Great read.

[Escape From Camp 14] (http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329)

It is kind of amazing to remember that many North Koreans aren't even in a position to care about abstract concepts like freedom: they're too hungry to care about anything but staying alive. One escapee from a prison camp, in his autobiography, said that he didn't escape because of political persecution, he escaped because in his mind the outside world was a place where you could eat as much meat as you wanted.

>150,000 in labor camps? Or death camps? Because they're not the same thing at all.

In North Korea they are. Life expectancy in North Korean labor camps is only a few years, due to the kind of abuses described in the link I provided earlier.

>You've linked some napkin drawings from a single defector

Are you suggesting that conditions in North Korean camps aren't as grim as what that defector portrayed? Because there are plenty of other sources on this. e.g.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670023329?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0670023329

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9826125/Google-Earth-exposes-North-Koreas-secret-prison-camps.html


>Someone must have been released instead of getting killed.

Or someone escaped, or someone from the North Korean government defected, or we have satellite images and other forms of espinonage.


Also, your statement that

>Pol Pots didn't even let people work and had true "death camps".

is utterly false. The VAST majority of Pol Pot's victims died in labor camps. If you go to Cambodia today you can still see irrigation canals dug by forced labor under Pol Pot. Most of the Cambodian genocide victims died from starvation and disease in those camps. You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West :(

I want to live in dancing Korea, not nightmare Korea :( :( :(

i just read escape from camp 14, pretty amazing read

Read this

That book is now on my wishlist.

Even when escapees reach China, they're not safe. China treats them as illegal immigrants. If they are caught, China will deport them back to North Korea, where they will be tortured and killed. So, escapees must still evade the Chinese authorities as they make their way to Laos, and then Thailand, before making it to South Korea. Another option would be to go right to Mongolia, as Mongolia is sympathetic to them, and will send them to South Korea. That is more direct, and a much, much shorter route, but almost never taken, as it requires traversing the Gobi Desert.

Naturally, Venezuela and Cuba both support North Korea, claiming that allegations of human rights abuses by North Korea are false, and China says North Kora has made much progress to protect human rights. (sources) Shameful.

http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329

you might be interested with this book: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329