Escape from Camp 14: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

One day in the Camp 14 school, Shin’s teacher searches through the students’ pockets and finds five kernels of corn belonging to a young girl. The teacher screams at the girl. Then he takes her outside and beats her in the head until she is dead. Shin has been taught to believe that the prisoners deserve whatever punishment they receive, even execution.

In school, Shin is given a new pair of shoes every two years and, if he’s been good, a bar of soap. The classrooms are bare and undecorated—they don’t even have the usual portraits of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung (who, despite having died years ago, is still an official ruler of North Korea). In school, Shin learns basic reading, writing, addition, and subtraction. For exercise, he runs around outside—he doesn’t see a soccer ball until he’s twenty-three. He learns nothing of history or geography, and has only a vague understanding of his country’s rulers.

Growing up, Shin is well aware what lies ahead for him: after finishing school, he’ll be working for the rest of his life. Even while still in school, he and his fellow students are required to scrape excrement out of toilets to provide fertilizer. His happiest moments occur when he and the other students are sent to the fields to search of herbs. These are some of the only occasions when he’s allowed to relax and play with other students.

Perhaps Shin’s only friend is Hong Sung Jo. They play games together between classes, but they also view one another as competitors for food. Shin is a slow worker, and the entire class is often punished for his mistakes, alienating him from Hong.

At ten, Shin begins working in coalmines, where he and his peers have to load coal into ore cars. One day, a girl who is Shin’s age, Moon Sung Sim, slips and crushes her toe beneath a steel wheel; the toe is later amputated. In the evenings, the students have to report what they’ve done wrong that day—Shin and his peers usually invent “sins” to keep their teachers from getting suspicious of any real wrongdoing—and then they’re smacked on the head. At night, the boys sleep together in the secondary school dormitory. Weaker boys such as Shin are forced to sleep far from the heated flue.

Shin knows a boy named Ryu Hak Chul who sasses his teachers. One day, he ditches his work assignment to find food; afterwards, Ryu is tied to a tree, and his peers are ordered to beat him. Without thinking, Shin joins his classmates in hitting Ryu.