Escape from Camp 14 " a pack of lies from start to finish
Normally we would not bother ourselves with trying to refute every piece of anti-DPRK propaganda. Much of it is churned out by the lie machine of the south Korean National Intelligience Service on Mt Nam in Seoul and then recycled by journalists of the imperialist world. Look at some of the stories and you can see it is the same story but under different names according to what news agency or newspaper is running the story. The DPRK is also a target of the Western media due to anti-communism. This year some anti DPRK stories fell flat on their faces such as a nuclear test that was meant to happen in May but did not, that the Unha-3 rocket was delayed and being taken off the launch pad and a whole host of fairy tales from the pens of venal journalist. Thus anti DPRK propaganda is ten a penny . However some of our friends have asked us to write refutation of the story "Escape from Camp 14" but someone calling himself Shin Dyung-ok (probably not his real name) . This book is designed to pull the heartstrings of liberals and trendy human rights types. It has been on BBC Radio 4 (that mouthpiece of the bourgeois chattering classes) and in the right wing "Evening Standard"
Looking at basics of the story it is appears to be based on a number of impossible or questionable premises . Firstly why wasn't Shin just sent to an orphanage or to live with relatives rather than being brought up in a camp. Would this been much easier for the authorities rather than adding the difficult matter of childcare to burdens of running a high security penal establishment. Why would the DPRK that regard children as the future of the country and the successors to the revolution have children brought up in the midst of dangerous counter-revolutionaries and desperate criminals ?

Secondly it seems implausible that in Camp 14 ( assuming something like it really existed ) supposedly such a terrible and severe penal institution that people were allowed to get married(surely male and female prisoners would be in separate camps) , have intimate relations and give birth to children( this would not be allowed in an English prison which some think are liberal) ! Quite unbelievable. It is contradictory to have a high security institution for the most hardened elements but then grant them many privileges . Third , in a such an environment an overcrowded labour camp could people find space or indeed to have intimate relations .Fourthly how could a child survive in such a place where allegedly everyone was starving and his parents would have been too busy doing forced labour to look after him. What purpose would it serve to keep a child a prisoner in the camp( in actual fact the age of criminal responsibility in the DPRK is 16 years so no one under that age can be imprisoned ) Fifthly instead of a "reward marriage" why did the authorities just grant an amnesty to them instead and save the expense of keeping them in prison. Indeed the DPRK has had several amnesties for prisoners to mark important anniversaries. Sixth, how could an inexperienced 23 year old with little knowledge of the outside world manage to escape from such a high security institution and know his way around (the escape part of the book reads like something from an old POW escape film from WW2). The story of the escape itself reads like a Hollywood film . One could not help wondering why the enterprising Mr Shin did not steal a KPA motorbike and jump over the fence on it like Steve McQueen in the "Great Escape ". Again there are many flaws and questions in this part of the book. Wouldn't a high security penal institution have been better guarded ?. Supposedly the DPRK is a country of electric power shortages so would it have a high voltage fence ? . Could Shin and his friend have waited for a power cut. Surely his friend falling on the fence would have shorted the power out anyway
There are some even deeper things that show the book is based on falsehood. Referring to his parents marriage in such a derogatory and disrespectful is highly unusual for any Korean as respect for parents and elders is a key part of Korean culture. So Shin is either a wild and mentally unstable person or a spiteful minded criminal . He has not only betrayed the DPRK but also his own parents by writing mean things about them. Of course the other possibility is quite simply the book has been written by someone who is not a Korean and only has sketchy knowledge of Korean culture and society. Another thing that points to this book being ghostwritten by a non Korean author (such a CIA sponsored hack writer). Another thing that points to it being ghostwritten by someone not familiar with the DPRK is the idea that Shin have never heard of Pyongyang until another prisoner told him about it( and surely why not say that the other cities of the DPRK had grilled meat) . All children in the DPRK are taught about Pyongyang. It is pretty inconceivable that in any country children would not know the name of the capital city of their country.
"Escape from Camp 14" has actually been discredited by an unlikely source. Mr Blaine Harden a New York Times journalist and biographer of Mr Shin (Harden is no friend of the DPRK at all and is a typical imperialist journalist )was quoted; as follows " As Mr. Harden now acknowledges in “Escape From Camp 14,” his blunt, best-selling book about Mr. Shin’s life, Mr. Shin had built his own memoir upon a gigantic lie..... In writing this book, I have sometimes struggled to trust him,” Mr. Harden writes" So even the imperialists have doubts about the accuracy of Mr Shin .
All this goes to prove that the book is a big pack of lies from start to finish that deserves to be put in the bin. It is part and parcel of the hostile campaign waged< by the south Korean puppets and the US imperialists using so-called "defectors" from the DPRK to spread lies and falsehoods. Many of these have now been exposed as criminals and traitors whereas others such as Mrs Pak Jong Suk and Mr Kim Kwang Hyok and his wife returned to the DPRK saying that they were tricked into going into south Korea under false pretences.
As to the whole question of so-called "camps" in the DPRK I have visited the DPRK 8 times but never seen such a camp. I was told that prisons do exist in the DPRK but these are a last resort for serious and persistent offenders. Rather the approach of re education is used. The aim to point the errors made by offenders and help to get back on the right path. Those of us who have watched the famous DPRK film "Girl Traffic Controller at the Crossroads " saw how minor offenders simply get a lecture at the local police station and are certainly not sent to any labour camp or prison. Corrective labour is also used a punishment but this does not involve penal incarceration it is a bit like community service or community payback in the UK. It would appear that anti DPRK propagandaists conflate corrective labour and prison mischievously.
In the DPRK citizens independent rights are guaranteed by law . The Juche ideathe governing philosophy of the DPRK states that "man is the master and decides everything ". Therefore repression would run counter to the Juche idea and is inconceivable in the DPRK .
The Radio 4 listeners and human rights liberals instead of worrying about imaginary "human rights " abuses in the DPRK should instead turn their attention to the many homeless sleeping rough on the streets of London and the unemployed queueing up at foodbanks for food handouts because they are starving.
The UK Korean Friendship Association together with the Juche Idea Study Group of England call for progressive and labour movement organisations to refute
lies such as those spread by the author of "Camp 14" and do more to defend the
DPRK.
UK KFA
JISGE
ASSPUK