Escape from North Korea

"There are other people in the world less fortunate than you." -- Your mom probably said this when you were acting like a little brat as a child


North Korea is one of the most isolated, and consequently, strangest places in the world.  It's population is around 25 million. Communication outside the country is forbidden, there are only about 2 million phone lines, most of which belong to public officials. Starvation and famine is common.  The state is completely based on the "cult of personality" surrounding the recently deceased Dear Leader Kim Jong Il (recently succeeded by his son).  The state run news regurally runs absurd stories about the accomplishments of the Dear Leader:

World's Greatest Golfer: "In 1994, Pyongyang media reported that Kim Jong-il shot an amazing 11 holes-in-one to achieve an unprecedented 38-under-par game on a regulation 18-hole golf course - on his first try at golf"

His Shit Don't Stink: "According to the official biography on the North Korean state web site, Kim Jong-il didn't defecate. The biography has since been taken down."

Picky Eater: "A nephew of Jong-il's first wife, Lee Young Nam, wrote that the obsessive leader insisted his rice be cooked using trees cut from Mt. Paektu (the mountain where he was born), and that he had female staff inspected each grain of rice to make sure it met his strict standards."


Mind-boggling-facts-about-kim-jong-il

While the absurdities of the state run media are highly amusing, the reality on the ground is far from it.  As seen from space North Korea is a veritable black hole. (Japan to the East, China to the North and West)

Equally unamusing is the use of work camps to round up dissidents and political enemies in order to work them to death. Only one person has been known to ever escape and make it out of the country.

The South Korean government estimates there are about 154,000 prisoners in North Korea’s labour camps, while the US state department puts the number as high as 200,000. The biggest is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.

His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. The boy crawled between legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man to a wooden pole.

Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to understand the speech that came before that killing. At dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered “redemption” through hard labour, but had rejected the generosity of the North Korean government.

Camp 14 as seen from the air:

 His insane story:

http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-north-korean-prison-camp-3549/