0:00:09.682,0:00:12.741
I've been a journalist for 32 years,

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and I'm going to tell you about the saddest story [br]that I've ever heard.

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Inside Camp 14, 13-year-old inmate [br]named Shin Dong-hyuk

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betrayed his family.

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It was late at night, [br]he was supposed to be asleep

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but he heard his mother and brother

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talking about a plan [br]to escape from the camp.

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The rules of Camp 14 are clear.

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If you try to escape, you'll be shot.

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If you hear someone talking about escape

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and you fail to report it, you'll be shot.

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Shin got out of bed, [br]told his mother he had to pee

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walked outside and found a guard.

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While he was snitching, [br]he asked for more food

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and easier work.

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About seven months later --

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about seven months later,

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he was taken to the execution grounds in the camp.

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A place that he'd gone to twice a year

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ever since he was five years old.

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There, the entire camp was assembled.

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There were about 20,000 people [br]in Camp 14 at the time.

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He was taken to the front, [br]and he witnessed

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the shooting death of his brother, [br]and the hanging of his mother.

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Before his mother died, [br]she tried to catch his eye.

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He refused to look at her.

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For the next 10 years, [br]he felt no guilt

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for his role in the death [br]of his brother and mother.

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In concentration camps survivor stories,

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there is a conventional narrative arc.

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The protagonist is taken away[br]by security forces

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from a comfortable home [br]and a loving family.

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The most famous of these stories, [br]I'm sure most of you've read

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is by Elie Wiesel, it's called "Night."

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In the book, he writes that, [br]after his entire family perished

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in the Nazi death camps, he was alone.

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Terribly alone. In a world without man,

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without God, without love, without mercy.

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Shin's story is even darker.

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Words like love, mercy, family --

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for him had no meaning at all.

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God did not disappear or die. [br]Shin had never heard of him.

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In "Night," Wiesel writes

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that an adolescent's knowledge of evil [br]should come from reading books.

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In Camp 14,

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Shin saw only one book, [br]a Korean grammar

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in the hands of his teacher. [br]A man who wore a uniform,

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had a gun on his hip, [br]and who beat one of Shin's classmates

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to death with a chalkboard pointer.

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Shin did not abandon

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civilization and descend into hell.

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Uniquely among all[br]the concentration camp survivors

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we know, he was born there. [br]He accepted its rules.

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He regarded it as home.

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In a very real way, [br]Shin was a creation

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of the guards in Camp 14. [br]They were quite literally his breeders.

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They chose his parents, [br]who were young adults in the camp

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and they ordered them [br]to have sex.

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He was raised mostly by the guards. [br]He had a very bad relationship with his mother.

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But he was raised by the guards,

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to snitch on his parents, [br]and to snitch on his friends.

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It was a long playing behavioral experiment

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run by the security apparatus of North Korea.

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And, it continues to this day. [br]The rules are very simple.

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The more you snitched, [br]the more you ate.

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Let me ask you, [br]how many of you knew

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before I started talking, that there are [br]concentration camps in North Korea?

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That's good.

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Well, there are about six of them. [br]Between four and six.

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135,000 to 200,000 people[br]are in them right now.

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Half of them are the relatives

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of perceived political enemies of the state.

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The relatives.

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The way justice works in North Korea, [br]there's collective punishment.

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If I were to say that the leaders [br]were stupid and corrupt

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my kids and my parents [br]would go with me to a camp

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like Camp 14, and eating a diet of corn, [br]cabbage and salt, we would all be worked to death.

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These camps have existed for half a century.

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They're clearly visible on Google Earth, [br]you can see them on your Smartphone.

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North Korea continues to deny,

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officially deny that they exist.

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North Korea didn't invent these camps. [br]

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They were invented [br]in this form by Stalin.

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But, when Stalin died[br]in the former Soviet Union,

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the camps died out too.

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In North Korea however, the camps [br]have survived the death of founding dictator,

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they've survived the death of his son,

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and they're thriving now[br]with the third generation

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of totalitarian leadership, Kim Jong Un.

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Who's about 28, 29 years old. [br]Coincidentally, he happens to be

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about the same age as Shin.

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But you can see from this slide [br]the camps have existed

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twice as long as the camps[br]in the Soviet Union,

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about 12 times as long as the camps [br]in Hitler's Germany.

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And the reason North Korea [br]seems to have lost none of its appetite

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for being cruel to its own people.

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They're just as cruel now [br]as they were 50 years ago.

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The camps are operated [br]in almost exactly the same way.

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Shin's story is the case study in that cruelty.

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He's the only person,

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the only person so far, [br]born and raised in those camps

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to get out and tell the story.

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But, his story is more than just a tale[br]of state-sponsored sadism.

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It is an escape adventure, [br]and it's a story about the resilience

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of the human spirit.

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The guards in Camp 14[br]spent 23 years trying to turn Shin

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into a blinkard, malleable slave [br]and they failed.

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They failed because he was very lucky [br]when he was 23.

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A newcomer came to the camp, and this was [br]an individual who had been raised in Pyongyang.

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A member of the elite.[br]He'd been educated in the former Soviet Union.

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Shin's job, was to teach Park, [br]that was the guy's name,

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how to fix sewing machines [br]in the uniform factory.

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Shin was also supposed to snitch on Park, [br]to find out what he thought

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about the leadership, [br]and then report to his superior.

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For the first time in his life,[br]though, instead of snitching

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Shin listened to what Park had to say.

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Park told him --[br]broke the news to him

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that the world was round, [br]which was news to Shin.

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He told him that the United States,

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South Korea and China existed.

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But, he also said, and this is [br]what got Shin's interest --

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He said, "If you get out of here,[br]if you get out of this camp,

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and went to China, [br]you could eat grilled meat".

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That's what interested Shin. [br](Laughter)

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He started dreaming about grilled meat.

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Within a few weeks he asked Shin --

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Shin asked Park [br]to escape together.

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Park agreed.

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On January 2nd, 2005

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they went for the fence. [br]The electric fence.

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The electrified fence [br]that surrounds the camp.

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Shin was supposed to be the Mr Inside Guy[br]in this escape attempt.

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He was supposed to get to the fence first, [br]then Park having more knowledge

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of the outside world, [br]would lead them to China.

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Unfortunately, as they ran towards the fence, [br]on a snowy cold evening up in the mountains,

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Shin slipped and fell on his face

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and Park got to the fence first.

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He was electrocuted on the fence. [br]Shin did not hesitate, though.

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He crawled over [br]Park's smoldering body and ran off.

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The Mr. Outside Guy on that escape attempt

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unfortunately was dead on the fence.

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But Shin still, through a combination of luck,

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keeping his mouth shut, and being shrewd, [br]he found his way out of North Corea in 30 days.

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In a year-and-a-half [br]he'd found his way across China

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and found his way to South Korea.

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Two years later he was living [br]in Southern California.

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Eating at In-and-Out Burger, which he still says [br]it's the best burger in the US.

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(Laughter)

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And he was working for LiNK, [br]'Liberty in North Korea'

0:10:17.735,0:10:20.685
as a Human Rights volunteer.

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But, he's not been a very happy person [br]outside the camp.

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He's struggling to understand [br]what it means to be free.

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He says that he's physically outside, [br]but not psychologically outside barbed wire.

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One of the things he told me is

0:10:36.798,0:10:40.914
that he's evolving from being an animal [br]into trying to be a human being.

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But it's going very, very slowly.

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Very slowly. He still has dreams

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about his mother's death.

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What's terrifying though is that Shin's story [br]is not an isolated tale of horror.

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The two other big adjustment problems [br]that are going on, or that will soon go on.

0:11:05.284,0:11:09.323
There are 24,000 North Koreans [br]now living in South Korea.

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Almost all of them have come there [br]in the past 12 years.

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Almost all of them have been examined [br]by government psychiatrists and psychologists

0:11:17.823,0:11:21.573
in South Korea who say that, [br]virtually all of them are clinically paranoid,

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a useful adjustment for life in North Korea, [br]a place that crawls with security agents

0:11:26.246,0:11:30.596
but they have a very difficult time [br]adapting to modern life.

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They have a hard time distinguishing [br]between criticism and betrayal.

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And, there are 24 million people in North Korea[br]who, if that state ever collapses

0:11:42.042,0:11:45.159
will have to go through [br]the same adjustment problems.

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And no one is thinking that North Korea [br]is on the verge of collapse,

0:11:49.633,0:11:52.817
but totalitarian systems don't last forever.

0:11:52.817,0:11:56.763
And, someday, all of those people [br]will have to go through a version

0:11:56.763,0:11:59.502
of what Shin has gone through.

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Now, the reason Shin told me his awful story

0:12:04.687,0:12:08.072
was because he wants you to know

0:12:08.072,0:12:12.058
that these camps are still in operation.

0:12:12.058,0:12:17.411
They're still breeding children. [br]They're still teaching them to betray their parents.

0:12:20.072,0:12:25.679
He doesn't believe that knowing about this [br]is going to overthrow North Korea.

0:12:25.679,0:12:29.016
But, he went through the humiliation [br]of telling me his story

0:12:29.016,0:12:31.284
and he's traveling the world talking about it,

0:12:31.284,0:12:35.060
because he believes that knowledge [br]is better than ignorance.

0:12:36.676,0:12:40.047
Thank you very much.

0:12:40.047,0:12:42.331
(Applause)