Escape from Camp 14: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Shin’s time on the pig farm is some of his happiest at Camp 14. He doesn’t work very hard, and although the foreman sometimes hits him, he’s used to harsher beatings. His meals are larger than usual, and he has opportunities to eat corn intended for the pigs. He sleeps in a warm building, and he isn’t bullied. He seems uninterested in anything other than his next meal. His memories of informing on his family and being tortured recede into “numbness.”

Meanwhile, North Korea was going through big changes. Famine and flooding destroyed the national economy, and households are forced to trade with one another to survive. During this period, North Koreans (possibly as many as 400,000) snuck across the border to enter China. Kim Jong Il tried to control his people, punishing those who traded goods without government permission. However, corruption was becoming increasingly common at the time, and black market trading continued. Between 1995 and 2003, the U.S. donated more than a billion dollars worth of food to North Korea, for which Kim claimed all the credit. Studies found that, even after food aid, North Korea had higher malnutrition rates than Angola, a country that recently experienced a bloody civil war.

In the face of a nationwide food crisis, the North Korean government had no choice but to institute economic reform. In 2002, Kim Jong Il legalized private farming and began offering farmers higher prices for food to incentivize agriculture. Slowly, capitalism began to grow in the country, weakening Kim’s “iron grip.” Kim retaliated by sending the Korean People’s Army to confiscate much of the food grown on new farms. This sparked widespread bribery—farmers just paid off soldiers rather than surrender their food.

Unbeknownst to Shin at the time, a system of corruption and “extralegal intercity travel” is growing, and this system will eventually help him escape from Camp 14. At the time, however, Shin doesn’t think about escape at all. Now twenty years old, he believes that he’s going to die on the pig farm. Then, without any explanation, he is transferred to the camp garment factory. There, Shin is under more pressure than usual to meet his quotas. It’s during Shin’s time at the factory, however, that Shin meet a prisoner from Pyongyang, who “would tell Shin about what he was missing.”