Blaine Harden, former national correspondent and writer for The New York Times, delivers a harrowing and heartbreaking story about a man's extremely conflicted life in a work camp and a business to escape this place where he grew up. This man's name is Shin Dong-hyuk. Together, Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk tell the story of this man's imprisonment and escape to South Korea and ultimately to the United States from North Korea. This biography, which takes place from 1982 to 2011, gives its readers an account of what is really happening in "one of the darkest nations in the world" (back cover of the book), ruled by a communist state and a totalitarian dictatorship led by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and currently led by Kim-Jong-un. In Escape from Camp 14, Shin shows us the adaptation of his life and how a man can truly evolve from an animal to a true human being. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a labor camp, more accurately known as Camp 14. In this camp, Shin was considered living "below the law" (3) due to the crimes of his brother's his father. In this camp, Shin experienced things that many people could not even imagine. He survived on his own. His mother beat him, his father ignored him and he didn't trust anyone. "Before he learned anything else, Shin learned to survive by reporting them all." (3). In this camp, the word “family” did not exist. This all sounds horrible to many people living outside North Korea, but it's only the beginning. His life became worse and worse when his mother and brother made the decision to try to escape the camp. On April 5, 1996, Shin's older brother, He Guen, came home. While He Guen was talking to Shin's mother, he heard that "his brother was in trouble and... in the middle of a newspaper... I would recommend him to anyone, even if you don't know anything about what is happening here. North Korea. I love this book because I always hear about what North Korea does to their prisoners in the labor camps, but no one is ever really sure what's going on there because it's so isolated . Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk really show what this hidden society is doing inside their country, which is terror. I congratulate Shin Dong-hyuk for what he has endured in life. The beatings from guards, the stress of doing something wrong, and the worry of not finding food are things many people couldn't even imagine. He truly evolved from the status of an animal to that of a human being. Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk truly capture the secrecy and terror that reigns in this totalitarian society and I hope that with this, it will one day stop. 14