Read Escape from Camp 14 Online
Authors: Blaine Harden
Escape from Camp 14 (24 page)
APPENDICES
The Ten Laws of Camp 14
Shin was required in the camp’s school to memorize these rules and was often ordered by guards to recite them.
1. Do not try to escape
Anyone caught escaping will be shot immediately.
Any witness to an attempted escape who fails to report it will be shot immediately.
Any witness to an attempted escape must promptly notify a guard.
Groups of two or more are prohibited from assembling to devise a plot or to attempt to escape.
2. No more than two prisoners can meet together
Anyone who fails to secure permission from a guard for a meeting of more than two prisoners will be shot immediately.
Those who trespass into the guards’ village or who damage public property will be shot immediately.
No gathering may exceed the number of prisoners allowed by the guard in charge.
Outside work, no group of prisoners may gather without permission.
At night, three or more prisoners may not travel together without permission from the guard in charge.
3. Do not steal
Anyone found stealing or in possession of arms will be shot immediately.
Anyone who does not report or who aids a person who has stolen or possesses arms will be shot immediately.
Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.
Anyone who deliberately damages any materials used in the camp will be shot immediately.
4. Guards must be obeyed unconditionally
Anyone who harbours ill will towards or physically assaults a guard will be shot immediately.
Anyone who fails to demonstrate total compliance with a guard’s instructions will be shot immediately.
There must be no backtalk or complaints to a guard.
When meeting a guard, one must bow deferentially.
5. Anyone who sees a fugitive or suspicious figure must promptly report him
Anyone who provides cover for or protects a fugitive will be shot immediately.
Anyone who holds or hides a fugitive’s possessions, conspires with him, or fails to report him will be shot immediately.
6. Prisoners must watch each other and report any suspicious behaviour immediately
Each prisoner must observe others and remain vigilant.
The speech and conduct of others must be observed closely. Should anything arouse suspicion, a guard must be notified immediately.
Prisoners must faithfully attend meetings of ideological struggle, and they must censure others and themselves vehemently.
7. Prisoners must more than fulfil the work assigned them each day
Prisoners who neglect their work quota or fail to complete it will be considered to harbour discontent and will be shot immediately.
Each prisoner must be solely responsible for his work quota.
To fulfil one’s work quota is to wash away sins, as well as to recompense the state for the forgiveness it has shown.
The work quota as assigned by a guard may not be changed.
8. Beyond the workplace, there must be no intermingling between the sexes for personal reasons
Should sexual physical contact occur without prior approval, the perpetrators will be shot immediately.
Beyond the workplace, there must be no conversing between the sexes without prior approval.
One is prohibited from visiting bathrooms designated for members of the opposite sex without prior approval.
Without special reason, members of opposite sexes may not go about holding hands or sleep alongside each other.
Without prior approval, prisoners may not visit living quarters of the opposite sex.
9. Prisoners must genuinely repent of their errors
Anyone who does not acknowledge his sins and instead denies them or carries a deviant opinion of them will be shot immediately.
One must reflect deeply upon the sins he has committed against his country and society and strive to wash himself of them.
Only after having acknowledged sins and reflected deeply upon them can a prisoner begin anew.
10. Prisoners who violate the laws and regulations of the camp will be shot immediately
All prisoners must truly consider the guards as their teachers, and, abiding by the ten laws and regulations of the camp, yield themselves through toil and discipline to washing
away their past errors.
Sketches from Shin’s Life in Camp 14
The teachers at Shin’s school in Camp 14 were uniformed guards. They always carried a pistol and Shin saw one of them beat a six-year-old classmate to death with a
chalkboard pointer.
Children in the camps scavenged constantly for food, eating rats, insects and undigested kernels of corn they found in cow dung.
Shin watched as his mother was hanged and his brother shot for planning to escape.
After the discovery of his mother and brother’s escape plan, Shin was held for seven months in a secret underground prison inside Camp 14. He was 13 years old.
In the underground prison, guards tortured Shin over a coal fire, seeking to find out his role in the planned escape of his mother and brother.
As punishment for dropping a sewing machine while working at a garment factory in the camp, guards used a knife to cut off Shin’s right middle finger at the first
knuckle.
ENDNOTE
1
. A Skinner box, developed by American psychologist B. F. Skinner, is an isolation chamber used to study and teach behaviour using rewards of
food and water as reinforcements. In one such box, a rat learned how to press a lever to get food.
Escape from Camp 14
Blaine Harden
is a reporter for PBS Frontline and a contributor to
The Economist
, based in Seattle, having completed a tour as the
Washington Post
’s bureau chief in Tokyo. He is the prize-winning, acclaimed author of two books:
Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent
(Norton,1990) and
A River Lost:
The Life and Death of the Columbia
(Norton,1996).
Also by Blaine Harden
Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent
A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia
First published 2012 by Viking
An imprint of Penguin, USA
First published in UK 2012 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
This electronic edition published 2012 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0230-76118-6 EPUB
Copyright © Blaine Harden 2012
The right of Blaine Harden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.