Always look on the bright side of life

Excerpts from the story of an escapee from a North Korean prison camp:

[U]ntil he was 20 years old, North Korean [labor camp inmate] Shin Dong-hyuk had heard of neither Kim Il-sung nor Kim Jong-il...

Mr. Shin's mother was imprisoned in "Total Control Camp No. 14" in central North Korea, for political crimes. As reward for good work, she was allowed to marry. The couple's "honeymoon" was five nights together before being separated again. Mr. Shin was born in 1982...

When Mr. Shin was 13, his mother and brother attempted an escape, unsuccessfully. That day, a civilian car met Mr. Shin outside the camp school. He was driven to a secret, underground location.

There, guards demanded details of the plot. Mr. Shin was ignorant of it. He was suspended over a fire. When he screamed, a hook was hacked into his groin. Unconscious, he was slung into a cell with a skeletal old man.

The man cared for the child's festering injuries and gave him his own meager rations. It was the first time Mr. Shin had ever received affection from another human. "I will never forget him," Mr. Shin wrote. "I came to love him more than my parents."

After seven months, Mr. Shin was released to witness his mother's hanging and his brother's execution by shooting...

Life continued. His niece was raped and killed by guards. He dropped a sewing machine; guards chopped off a fingertip with a knife. Constantly hungry, he once found three corn kernels in a pile of cow manure, his "lucky day." Unaware of any world beyond the wire, his dreams were to excel at work, gain permission to marry or become a team leader.

On Jan 2, 2005, [shortly after learning of the existence of the outside world], while collecting firewood in the mountains, Mr. Shin escaped, lacerating his legs on electrified barbed wire.

It's weird to think that this all happened in the last 10 years. That camp is still there, and those same things are still happening to the people there. It's real. That's what human beings are really like.