"Shin Dong-Hyuk is a human rights activist and the only person born in a North Korean labour camp known to have escaped to the West"

 

Dear Reader, 

HELLO,

My name is Shin Dong-Hyuk.

 

I was born in 1982 in Camp 12, a political prison—more like a nightmare or hell— in the high mountains of North Korea. For more than 50 dull years, Kim Jong Un, his father and his grandfather have used prisons such as Camp 14 as orthodox methods to punish, starve and work harmless, susceptible people to death who the regime decides are a threat. Prisoners are sent to places like Camp 14 without trial and in utmost secrecy. A prisoner’s “crime” can be his relation by blood to someone the communist regime believes is a wrongdoer or wrong-thinker. My crime was solely being related or being the son of a man whose biological brother fled for escape to South Korea in 1950s. At this very moment, in Camp 14, people are starving in these camps. Others are being beaten, and most likely, someone will be publicly executed soon, as a lesson to other prisoners to work hard and obey the rules. I grew up watching these executions, including the hanging of my mother. On orders of the guard in Camp 14, inmates are forced to marry and produce children to be raised and educated by guards to become disposable slaves. Until I escaped in 2005, I was one of those helpless slaves. My body is covered with scars from torture I endured while residing in the camp.

 

Recent satellite pictures show that some of the North’s labor camps, including Camp 14, may be expanding. The U.N. World Food Programme says four out of five North Koreans are hungry. Severe malnutrition has stunted and cognitively impaired hundreds of thousands of children. Young North Korean women fleeing the country in search of food are often sold into human-trafficking rings in China and beyond.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. once told us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and we must remember this when standing up for the rights of our fellow humans. Millions of deaths and a poor standard of living are the result of an oppressive tyranny. Nearly every human right ensured to the citizens of the world by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is denied to the North Koreans by their government. From total control of citizens’ lives, to starvation and prison camps, the crimes of the North Korean government against its people are devastating in every way possible. My personal story is proof of the atrocities and of our need to act now. Human rights are being violated in North Korea. As humans, it’s our job to stop this.

 

I am writing to you, because, more than anything else, I want every single living human being on this very planet to hear the cries of his or her people. I want everyone to be aware and mindful of the ghastly and repulsive movements being made in North Korea. No dictatorship lasts forever. Freedom will come to North Korea someday. When it does, my wish is that you will have, in some way, helped bring about change. I end this letter in hope that you can use your knowledge and influence to share with others what about this tragic fact about human violations in the North.

 

Best Regards,
Shin Dong-Hyuk