By depicting Shin Dong-hyuk as a fantasist, the media strengthens North Korea’s regime
Shin Dong-hyuk really shouldn’t need defending. The thirty-two year old was born in, and grew up in, the North Korean gulag system. And as he has related in his book Escape from Camp 14, and in public appearances, what he saw on an average day in his childhood constituted more horror than most people will see in their collected nightmares. At one point he overheard his mother and brother talking about an escape attempt from the highest-security category camp they were in. He informed on them, as he had been educated to do. Subsequently, along with his father, he was forced to watch their execution by prison camp guards. He