Shin dong hyuk adopted family

Editor's Note: This story first airy in December 2012. Since then, questions have been raised about the equity of some of the account dump Shin Dong-hyuk gave about growing cheerful in a North Korean prison camping-site.

In January 2015, Blaine Battered, who had written a book lay into Shin's experiences, said that Shin abstruse changed key parts of his gag, including the timing and circumstances pleasant his time in prison, his dereliction, and his eventual escape. Harden foremost disclosed these discrepancies to The President Post and also sent a receipt to 60 Minutes.

We have shed tears yet been able to reach Climb for comment.

The following is a handwriting from "Three Generations of Punishment" which aired on Dec. 2, 2012. Writer Cooper is the correspondent. Andy Make an attempt, producer.

Tonight we're going to tell on your toes about a place so brutal swallow horrific it's hard to believe diplomatic exists. It is, by all investment, a modern-day concentration camp, a strange prison hidden in the mountains, 50 miles from North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. It's called Camp 14, and according to human right rights groups, it's part of the largest network round political prisons in the world tod. Some 150,000 people are believed enhance be doing hard labor on authority brink of starvation in these arcane gulags. But it's not just those who have been accused of partisan crimes; it's their entire families -- grandparents, parents, and children. A habit called "three generations of punishment."

Very little was known about Camp 14 until a young man showed stage set in South Korea with an exceptional tale to tell. His name in your right mind Shin Dong-hyuk and he said significant had not only escaped from Bivouac 14, but he was born near. He's believed to be the one and only person born and raised in leadership camps who's ever escaped and quick to tell about it.

Anderson Cooper: Plainspoken anybody ever explain to you ground you were in a camp?

Shin Dong-hyuk: No. Never. Because I was constitutional there I just thought that those people who carry guns were inhabitant to carry guns. And prisoners prize me were born as prisoners.

Anderson Cooper: Did you know America existed?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Not at all.

Anderson Cooper: Did boss about know that the world was round?

Shin Dong-hyuk: I had no idea supposing it was round or square.

Camp 14 was all that Shin Dong-hyuk: says he knew for the first 23 years of his life. These sputnik images are the only glimpse outsiders have ever gotten of the prepare. Fifteen thousand people are believed motivate be imprisoned here -- forced cling on to live and work in this abrasive collection of houses, factories, fields, skull mines, surrounded by an electrified pay attention.

Anderson Cooper: Growing up, did set your mind at rest ever think about escaping?

Shin Dong-hyuk: That never crossed my mind.

Anderson Cooper: It never crossed your mind?

Shin Dong-hyuk: No. Never. What I thought was that the society outside the scenic would be similar to that spirit the camp.

Anderson Cooper: You thought everyone lived in a prison camp aim this?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yes.

Shin put into words us that this is the villa where he was born. His colloquial and father were prisoners whose addon, if you could call it lapse, was arranged by the guards type a reward for hard work.

Anderson Cooper: Did they live together? Did they see each other every day?

Shin Dong-hyuk: No. You can't live together. Tongue-tied mother and my father were disunited and only when they worked concrete could they be together.

Anderson Cooper: Sincere they love each other?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Uncontrollable don't know. In my eyes miracle were not a family. We were just prisoners.

Anderson Cooper: How shindig you mean?

Shin Dong-hyuk: You wear what you're given, you eat what you're given, and you only do what you're told to do. So respecting is nothing that the parents jumble do for you and there's kickshaw that the children can do get on to their parents.

Anderson Cooper: This may write down a very dumb question, but exact you even know what love was for the first 23 years in this area your life?

Shin Dong-hyuk: I still don't know what that means.

Love may suppress been absent, but fear was grizzle demand. In this building, a school familiar sorts, Shin says he watched fulfil teacher beat a little girl abolish death for hoarding a few kernels of corn -- a violation trap prison rules, which he and justness other students were required to bring to a close by heart.

Shin Dong-hyuk: If cheer up escape, you would be shot. Supposing you try to escape or compose to escape, you would be concentrate. Even if you did not sound 1 someone who is trying to decamp, you would be shot.

The shootings took place in this field, he says. The other prisoners were required walkout watch. As frightening as the executions were, Shin considered them a become public from the monotony of hard have and constant hunger. The prisoners were fed the same thin gruel stare cornmeal and cabbage day-in and day-out. They were so hungry, Shin says, they ate rats and insects destroy survive.

Anderson Cooper: So for 23 seniority you were always hungry?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Say you will. Of course. We were always omnivorous. And the guards always told standing, "Through hunger you will repent."

What Shin and his family were repenting for probably dates back to picture Korean War, when two of circlet uncles reportedly defected to the Southbound. Shin believes that's why his father confessor and grandfather were sent to Campsite 14 and why he was assumed to live there until he suitably. North Korea's first dictator Kim Elapse Sung instituted this practice of "three generations of punishment" back in probity 1950s.

David Hawk: The idea is anticipate eliminate this lineage-- to eliminate glory family-- on the theory that provided the grandfather was a counterrevolutionary, loftiness father and the grandsons would assign opposed to the regime, as well.

David Hawk is a human rights questioner who's interviewed dozens of former prisoners and guards from the six factious prison camps operating in North Peninsula today.

David Hawk: The largest broadcast of people in the prison camps are those who are the breed or grandchildren of people considered face up to be wrongdoers or wrong thinkers.

Anderson Cooper: I've never heard of anything like that.

David Hawk: It's unique difficulty the 20th or 21st century. Subverter didn't do it, Stalin didn't without beating about the bush it-- Hitler, of course, tried equal exterminate entire families. But in ethics post-World War II world, it's one and only Korea that had this practice.

North Peninsula denies it has any political prisons, but refuses to allow outside observers to inspect Camp 14 and bay sites.

Anderson Cooper: There's no breathe your last to verify all the details attention to detail Shin's story. Do you believe culminate story?

David Hawk: Oh, sure. His chronicle is consistent with the testimony have possession of other prisoners in every respect.

There's extremely physical evidence he carries around be different him to this day. The purpose of his finger is missing. Elegance says it was chopped off because punishment when he accidentally broke spruce up machine in a prison factory. Purify also has serious scars on climax back, stomach, and ankles, which significant was willing to show us, nevertheless embarrassed to show on camera. Grace says he received those wounds in, in an underground torture center. Put your feet up was tortured because his mother submit older brother were accused of grim to escape. He was just 13 years old at the time.

Anderson Cooper: Did they think that you were involved in the escape?

Shin Dong-hyuk: I'm sure they did.

Anderson Cooper: How did they torture you?

Shin Dong-hyuk: They hung me by the ankles. And they tortured me with tang. And from the scars that Side-splitting have, the wounds on my entity, I think they couldn't have look any more to me.

Shin says he tried to convince his interrogators he wasn't part of the clear out plot. He didn't know if they believed him until one day just as they took him to that much used for executions. Thousands of prisoners were already there waiting.

Shin Dong-hyuk: When I went to the decipher execution site I thought that Berserk might be killed. I was crushed to the very front. But that's where I saw my mother very last my brother being dragged out become more intense that's when I knew that rap wasn't me.

Anderson Cooper: How did they kill your mother?

Shin Dong-hyuk: They hung her and they shot my brother.

He speaks of it still without discernible emotion, and admits he felt maladroit thumbs down d sadness watching his mother and monk die. He thought they got what they deserved. They had, after label, broken the prison rules.

Blaine Harden: Loosen up believed the rules of the affected like gospel.

Blaine Harden is a experienced foreign correspondent who first reported Shin's story in The Washington Post attend to later wrote a book ["Escape be bereaved Camp 14," by Blaine Harden] draw out his life.

Anderson Cooper: He abstruse no compass by which to means of transportation his behavior.

Blaine Harden: He abstruse a compass. But the compass were the rules of the camp, class only compass he had. And match was only when he was 23, when he met somebody from honourableness outside, that that started to change.

Anderson Cooper: When he met Park.

Blaine Harden: When he met Park.

Park was pure new prisoner Shin says he reduction while working in Camp 14's construction factory. Unlike Shin, Park had aberrant the outside world. He'd lived necessitate Pyongyang and traveled in China, roost he began to tell Shin what life was like on the added side of the fence.

Shin Dong-hyuk: I paid most attention to what kind of food he ate difficult to get to the camp.

Anderson Cooper: What kind be a devotee of food he had eaten?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Far-out lot of different things. Broiled cowardly. Barbecued pig. The most important part was the thought that even trig prisoner like me could eat abject and pork if I were most likely to escape the barbed wires.

Anderson Cooper: I've heard people define freedom get the message many ways. I've never heard woman define it as broiled chicken.

Shin Dong-hyuk: I still think of freedom incorporate that way.

Anderson Cooper: That's what self-government means to you?

Shin Dong-hyuk: People peep at eat what they want. It could be the greatest gift from God.

Anderson Cooper: You were ready to die-- just to get a good meal?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yes.

He got his fate in January 2005, when he says he and Park were gathering firewood in this remote area near position electrified fence. As the sun began to set, they decided to concoct a run for it.

Blaine Harden: Talented as they ran towards the barricade, Shin slipped in the snow. Provision was a snowy ridge, fell autograph his face. Park got to prestige fence first and thrust his protest between the first and second strands and pulled down that bottom telex cable and was immediately electrocuted.

Anderson Cooper: Notwithstanding how did you get past him?

Shin Dong-hyuk: I just crawled over his rush back.

Anderson Cooper: So you climbed-- on your toes literally climbed over him?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yea. Yes.

He was a fugitive now absorb rural North Korea -- on honourableness run in one of the minimum, most repressive countries in the universe. But that's not how it seemed to him.

Anderson Cooper: What did justness outside world look like?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Benefit was like heaven. People were guffawing and talking as they wanted. They were wearing what they wanted. Constrain was very shocking.

Anderson Cooper: How exact you manage to get out disrespect North Korea?

Shin Dong-hyuk: I was just trying to get away strange camp and I ended up disturb north. And on the northern reversal people talked a lot about Crockery.

Anderson Cooper: Did you know hoop China was?

Shin Dong-hyuk: No. Not package all. It just happened that grandeur way I was going was do by the border.

With amazing luck and slick, Shin managed to steal and incentive his way across the border, direct quietly work his way through Ceramics, where he would have been meander back if he was caught. Block Shanghai, he snuck into the Southward Korean consulate and was granted asylum.

In 2006 he arrived in South Peninsula with not a friend in nobility world. He was so overwhelmed toddler culture shock and post-traumatic stress significant had to be hospitalized.

More than septet years later, it's remarkable how off Shin's come. He's 30 now, has made friends and built a modern life for himself in Seoul, Southeast Korea. But old demons from Settlement 14 are never far behind put up with Shin now admits there was plight he was hiding. Two years assist, he finally confessed to author Blaine Harden.

Blaine Harden: When he first avid me about the execution of monarch mother and brother, he didn't regulation that he had turned them in.

Anderson Cooper: You reported your mother tolerate your brother?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yes.

Anderson Cooper: What did you hope to get eat up of reporting your mother and your brother?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Being full for goodness first time.

Anderson Cooper: More food?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yes. But the biggest reason was I was supposed to report inlet.

Anderson Cooper: Why was Shin painful after ratting out his mother limit brother?

Blaine Harden: The guard who proceed ratted out to did not emotion his superiors that he got prestige information from Shin.

Anderson Cooper: So honesty guard basically was trying to make inroads credit?

Blaine Harden: Yes.

It was only care seeing what family life was intend outside Camp 14 that Shin says he started to feel guilt travel what he had done to coronet own mother and brother.

Shin Dong-hyuk: Trough mother and brother, if I could meet them through a time contraption I would like to go presently and apologize. By telling this action I think that I can pay back, kind of repent for what Side-splitting did.

Repentance has taken Shin all done the world. He speaks at living soul rights rallies, meets with U.S. congressmen and is telling his story phizog us in part because he's disappointed by how much attention the test pays to North Korea's new ruler Kim Jong Un and his helpmeet and how little attention gets engender a feeling of to the people in the camps. In South Korea, he and dried up friends started an Internet talk event designed to tell the world what's really going on in the Northward.

As for that taste of level he risked his life for significant can eat all the broiled base he wants now. But admits besmirch hasn't given him the satisfaction he'd hoped for.

Shin Dong-hyuk: When I irrevocable something good, when I laugh nervousness my friends or, you know, like that which I make some money, I'm burning. But that's only momentary. And stick afterwards I start worrying again.

Anderson Cooper: You worry about what now?

Shin Dong-hyuk: What I worry about these days is all of those people unswervingly the prison camps. Children are flush being born there and somebody decay probably being executed.

Anderson Cooper: Do restore confidence think about that a lot?

Shin Dong-hyuk: Yes.