Prominent North Korean Defector Says He Lied About Escape from Camp 14

It always did seem a bit sensational that Shin Dong-hyuk was able to escape the way he did from the notorious Camp 14, but now that it has been revealed that he escaped from a far lesser security prison his ability to escape from North Korea seems more plausible:

A prominent North Korean defector who fled a prison camp and became the face of international efforts to hold the country accountable for widespread human rights abuses has changed important parts of his life story.

Author Blaine Harden said in a statement on his website that he has pressed Shin Dong-Hyuk to “explain why he had misled me” during interviews for Harden’s book on Shin, “Escape from Camp 14.”

North Korea tried to discredit Shin late last year as it fought a U.N. General Assembly resolution that backed the findings of a groundbreaking U.N. commission of inquiry into Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.

Human rights groups say the U.N. inquiry was based on interviews with scores of North Korean defectors. “Its findings are still valid,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. The organization last year gave Shin an award for extraordinary activism and said he is “regarded as the single strongest voice on atrocities taking place in North Korea.”

Shin was traveling and could not be reached for comment. He was expected to arrive in Seoul from the U.S. on Monday afternoon, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

“Every one of us have stories, or things we’d like to hide,” Shin said in an apology for the inaccuracies in recounting his past in his latest Facebook post, giving few details. He said he may or may not be able to continue his work of trying to eliminate North Korea’s political prison camps but urged others to keep fighting. “These will be my final words and this will likely be my final post.”

Shin’s story originally drew widespread attention because he said he had lived in a high-security political prison camp in North Korea from his birth until his escape through an electrified fence. He describes himself on Facebook as “The only known person born in a North Korean prison camp that escaped and survived to tell the tale.”

Harden’s statement said he passed along Shin’s new information to The Washington Post, his former employer. Its report over the weekend said Shin now says he was transferred around the age of 6 to a lighter-security prison camp with his mother and brother. It was there, not the harsher camp, where he informed authorities about an escape attempt by his mother and brother. For that, they were executed. He now says he was later transferred back to the harsher camp.

“The fundamental building blocks of his story have remained the same, although I am fully aware of the differences between (the two camps),” Scarlatoiu said Sunday. “Still, born and raised in a camp, he was subjected to forced labor, induced malnutrition and torture. He informed on his mother and brother, who were executed. He escaped from the camp, and lived to tell his story. None of that has changed.”  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think One Free Korea does a good job of summing up why his new claims are more believable.  See also North Korea Economy Watch on how even the North Koreans have unintentionally confirmed Shin’s new story.  What he has also done is shed doubt on any current or future defector testimony critical of the Kim regime that only plays into the hands of the human rights violators in North Korea.