Escape from Camp 14

One day, at the age of nine, Shin is picking up coal that’s spilled from a passing railway car. Suddenly, the children of Camp 14’s guards begin throwing rocks at the prison children. One rock cuts Shin just below his eye. Afterwards, the teacher yells at Shin and the other students for failing to meet their quota.

The guards’ children see Shin and his classmates as “irredeemable sinners” who’ve betrayed their country. Beginning in 1957, Kim Il Sung created the modern North Korean class system: the highest group, the “core class,” consisted of farmers, families of soldiers who’d died in the Korean War, and bureaucrats. The next group was the “neutral class,” consisting of soldiers, technicians, and teachers. Then there was the “hostile class,” consisting of former property owners and those whose relatives had fled the country or opposed the government. The hostile classes worked in mines and factories, or in prison camps.

The only people allowed to work as guards in prison camps are the relatives of government workers and other core elites, such as An Myeong Chul. An began working at a camp at the age of nineteen; he was required to sign documents saying he’d never talk about his work. However, An fled the country in 1994, after his father, a government worker, committed suicide. He later became a human rights activist—a crime for which his relatives in North Korea were severely punished.

When Harden met An in Seoul in 2009, An seemed intimidating. He spoke about studying martial arts and being taught not to care if his beatings severely injured the prisoners. He also told Harden that guards were allowed to rape the prisoners, many of whom consented to sex because they thought it led to a better life. An claimed that many guards beat prisoners simply because they were bored.

Some “core” families live in Pyongyang in large apartments. In general, the core is believed to consist of approximately 100,000 people out of 23 million. American intelligence agencies have found that core North Koreans who venture outside the country have been involved in counterfeiting, cyberterrorism, and drug trafficking. Members of the core class have also sold weapons in Iran and Syria.

One elite North Korean, Kim Kwan Jin, spoke to Harden about his experiences in Kim Jong Il’s inner circles. Kim Kwan Jin studied at elite universities and learned how to maintain North Korea’s global insurance fraud, which reaps huge sums on false insurance claims filed with the world’s biggest insurance companies. The scheme works well because 1) each one of the claims is relatively small, 2) the world’s insurance companies have no way of investigating the claims themselves, since North Korea doesn’t allow many visitors, and 3) some insurance workers don’t even realize that North Korea is a totalitarian state.

One of the most baffling things about Pyongyang is that the quality of life there isn’t very good, even for elites. Elites have fairly big apartments and access to “luxuries” such as fruit and liquor. But the electricity is poor, hot water is scarce, and travel is almost impossible. The Kim family, however, lives in luxury: they own dozens of houses, each with swimming pools, horseracing tracks, water parks, and more.

The present leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Eun, had no real qualifications to run a country. He studied in Switzerland, where he played basketball and liked to draw. However, after Kim Jong Il suffered a near-fatal stroke, the North Korean propaganda industry worked hard to make Kim seem like a great leader. Television programs have portrayed Kim as a kind man who spent time with his wife at concerts and other state events. Kim has instituted reforms, firing some of his generals and proposing economic changes to fight famine. However, he has also approved the launch of three-stage rockets, signaling to the world that North Korea would soon be able to strike the United States with a ballistic missile. Meanwhile, the camps remain open.