How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp

Absolutely fascinating story...

There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee…

Excerpt:

Nine years after watching his mother's hanging, Shin In Geun squirmed through the electric fence that surrounds Camp 14 and ran off through the snow into the North Korean wilderness. It was January 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is still the only one to do it.

He was 23 years old and knew no one outside the fence.

Within a month, he had walked into China. Within two years, he was living in South Korea. Four years later, he was living in Southern California.

Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight -- five feet six inches, about 120 pounds. His arms are bowed from childhood labor. His lower back and buttocks are scarred with burns from the torturer's fire. The skin over his pubis bears a puncture scar from the hook used to hold him in place over the fire. His ankles are scarred by shackles, from which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His right middle finger is cut off at the first knuckle, a guard's punishment for dropping a sewing machine in a camp garment factory. His shins, from ankle to knee on both legs, are mutilated and scarred by burns from the electrified barbed-wire fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/born-in-the-gulag-why-a-north-korean-boy-sent-his-own-mother-to-her-death/255110/

Here are some drawings of the harsh life in North Korean Prisons...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/06/north-korea-prison-camp-drawings.html

Check out some amazing photographs of North Korea here...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/04/north-korea-unveiled.html