NK escapee admits account of life partly untrue
Print Edition
A North Korean whose torture and daring escape were detailed in a best-selling book has admitted that parts of his story are untrue.
Shin Dong-Hyuk, believed to be the only person born in a North Korean prison camp ever to have escaped, apologized on his Facebook page, saying he had “forever wanted to conceal and hide part of my past.”
Shin spent the first 23 years of his life in a prison camp where he recounted in the harrowing “Escape from Camp 14” that he was tortured and did forced labor before escaping in 2005.
Ever since gaining his freedom, Shin has campaigned prominently to highlight “rights abuses” in North Korea, testifying before a United Nations commission last year.
However, the 32-year-old recently changed some of the details in his story, Blaine Harden, the book’s author, said on his website.
“On Friday January 16, I learned that Shin had told friends an account of his life that differed substantially from my book,” he said. “I contacted Shin, pressing him to detail the changes and explain why he had misled me.”
Shin told Harden that some of the ordeals had been “too painful” for him to revisit and he had “altered some details” that he had thought would not matter, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
In his Facebook post, Shin said he was “very sorry.”
“I ... forever wanted to conceal and hide part of my past. We tell ourselves that it’s okay to not reveal every little detail, and that it might not matter if certain parts aren’t clarified,” he said.
“To those who have supported me, trusted me and believed in me all this time, I am so very grateful and at the same time so very sorry to each and every single one of you,” he said, without elaborating on which elements had been fabricated.
In Harden’s book, Shin says he was brutally burned and tortured when aged 13, after a failed bid to escape the camp.
But according to the Washington Post report, Shin now admits the event took place when he was 20.
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