Escape from Camp 14

We are introduced to Shin Dong-hyuk at the execution of his mother and older brother. By the second chapter a six year old girl is beaten to death at the camp school for the crime of stealing 5 kernels of corn. It's tough slogging here as Blaine Harden profiles the only know person to have been born in a total control zone camp (in this case Camp 14 considered one of the harshest) and escaped. North Korea's labour camps hold between 150,000 and 200,000 prisoners and have existed for twice as long as the Soviet gulags and 12 times longer than Nazi concentration camps.

Shin's life outside North Korea has proven no less challenging. Being raised in that environment leaves Shin suspicious of others, aping the human emotions expected of him. He's still looking for footing in a world completely foreign to him and once again raises the spectre of how a reunified Korea could ever hope to reintegrate such a starkly divided nation.