on police use of technology for surveillance purpose and whether current law protects an individual's right to privacy at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span 2. >> this week on "q & a," blaine harden discusses "escape from camp 14." >> blaine harden, your book is called "escape from camp 14." your first sentence is, "his first memory is an execution." >> the story is about a kid named shin dong-hyuk, who was born in camp 14. one of the political labor camps.

his first memory was going with his mom to a place near where he grew up in the camp to watch somebody get shot. shooting public executions were held every few weeks to punish those who violated camp rules. and the 40,000 people who lived in the camp. >> you say in your book, you've been to north korea once. >> nobody has been to a camp other than north korean guards, other than those who go to them and never come out. they contain between 150 and 200,000 prisoners.

with the exception of one camp, there are no exit-places, where one goes if you are believed or imagined by the north koreans of having done something wrong. of having been a wrong doer or wrong thinker. you are taken away at night. and you stay there for the rest of your life. and very often, you go with your kids and parents. i was at a conference -- half the people in the camps are believed to be a relative. collective guilt is part of this system. the reason the camps exist and have for years is because they are an instrument of terror of the kim family dynasty.

they put away those who may cause trouble and terrorize the people in the country to not only think -- even think about causing trouble. they've been very successful. north korea is the longest- lasting totalitarian state. >> we have a shot of north korea. you see the line of china. above -- when you were there, you said, there are 23 million people there. what is in your mind's eye about north korea? >> this is not a good way to report about north korea. i went with a group of about 600 westerners when the new york philharmonic went to pyongyang.

we were in a high-rise hotel on an island. taken to various places to show off. statues and assembly halls. a day, two and a half later. based on that trip -- the country is full of concrete and emaculately dressed guards. the way you find out the reality, and it's easy for a reporter to do it is go to

seoul, where there are close to 30,000 defectors from south korea. they almost all have arrived in the last 10 years. they are by far the best sources of what this is like and how difficult it is to get out. there are 60 former camp inmates and former guards, who have been interviewed, and given a nuanced and credible picture of what goes on. that picture in their words has been suplemented with sattelite images of the camps. >> 23 milion to the north. how many to the south?

>> more than 50 million. south korea is now the 11th largest economy in the world. they have people obsessed with education. they work hard and have less leisure than any other country in the developed world. and they commit suicide at the highest rate in the world. a high-pressure, high-achieving, educational-obsessed culture. they do not pay enough attention to north korea. they do because they must. >> we lost 50,000 americans in the korean war in the 50's. what was this war about? what was south korea compared to north korea.

>> they were poor and recovering from the ravages of world war ii. that war -- the united states divided the penninsula in the wake of world war ii. the south was a military dictatorship aligned with the united states. the north was aligned with russia. kim il-sung emerged in north korea. he, over several years, he modeled his state after stalin's state. in 1951.

it made some real progress. there was a counterattack. the united nation sources. and the same line was returned. north korea remained aligned with russia. it became increasingly isolated and cruel as time went by. kim ill-sung had a grassroots support. when he died in 1984, people wept. his son, the first hereditary dictator in a communist state, kim jong-il, was less popular.

but he was shrewd and cruel. the camps became increasingly important. the population grew. there are indications with this third kim family leader, jim jong-un, who is 28, 29 years old, and is about the same age as the hero of my book, he -- it's unclear how popular he will be or if he is in control. >> we will come back to your hero of the book. i will show you some video from our first interview in 1990, when i asked you why you like to travel.

>> i read and i got interested and i remember, as a kid in college, i dind't believe they existed. i sometimes would go and think, walter kronkite put together a big, elaborate deception. the world outside is what i knew. >> do you remember saying that. >> i did think that. i spent my life proving myself wrong. >> when we talked to you, you wrote a book about africa. since then, when have you lived?

>> i was there for the collapse of communism and the yugoslav wars. the prague revolution. in czeckoslovakia, they came out to listen tot his speeches, and left the main square and did not step on the flowerbeds. and the crack-up came and it was a horrible mess. americans did not understand. i left about halfway -- two thirds of the way through it. i felt terrible guilt. some post-traumatic stress.

i didn't think i'd done a good job. a very strange assignment. >> you talked about a book on the columbia river. we were on the bus. >> i was born there. >> do you go back lately? >> i spent 1993 and 1994 there, working on a book about the columbia river. the salmon have been wiped out. there is a huge public policy debate. my family went there. i was born in the town the year water was diverted to irrigate

the farms. my education depended on destroying the river. >> where is this? >> in the columbia basin, in washington state. it was a desert. they build the dam and turned the desert into a very productive farm area. >> so you left eastern europe, and came here. >> i was a roving nationa correspondent, who did stories about africa and eastern europe. i went back to the post, "the mothership," and this was the place that hired me when i was young.

and i went out to cover "the washington post." and they said, "do you want to go to asia?" my wife said, "yes, we should go with our daughter and son." we went there until 2010. we went to tokyo. when i went to japan, my boss, david hoffman, the boss of the foreign correspondents, said, you are a future writer. i want you to do something that's hard. something you don't want to do. i want you to write about north korea. tell us how it works and if you

fail, that's fine. but if you don't try, i will be unhappy. i started working on that. >> this book, "escape from camp 14," has the young man. >> he is a survivor, who escaped in 2005. he is the only individual on earth born in those camps who got out and says what this is like. >> where did you get the idea? >> i wrote a story on the front page. it resulted in an incredible emotional reaction. they wanted to know about him, give him money and save his soul. i went back to him and said, "let's do a book and dig into everything you know about that camp and what it was like."

and he didn't trust me and didn't want to do it. so i begged him for 9 months. human rights groups said, you should cooperate. this will further your goals. it goes on in this camps. maybe some kind of governmental pressure. so human rights would be at the top of the agenda. this was important. he didn't have any money or any business aside from being a survivor.

>> where did you get the idea. >> i knew he had a story. a friend of mine -- who is a very clsoe friend, who is with the u.s. committee on human rights, she met my wife at a book group. i talked to her and had lunch with him. >> how did you deal with the language. >> it is interesting. i don't speak korean. he doesn't speak anything other than korean. i had a series of translators. we did interviews in seoul. we did interviews in seattle and hundreds of emails. >> we have this picture in front of the louis vitton store.

>> this was during one of the weeks of interviews in seoul. >> he is about 5'6". he is -- maybe 5'5". he is stunted from malnutrition. most o fthe males are stunted. there are 30,000 of them. they are on an average, more than five inches shorter than their south korean contemporaries. this is an amazing statement. >> where is he today?

>> he is in washington. we are promoting the book. he has moved six or seven months ago back to seoul, where he does web broadcasting with human rights friends, to talk about north korea. >> the translation was expensive? >> no. it wasn't that expensive. a lot of people care about him. they care about his story and want to get it out. i had really good translators, some of whom worked for the "washington post." the most important translator was named david kim, who is a friend of his and whose family befriended him in southern california. when he lived in a suburb of los angeles.

david kim offered to be a translator. he is now at northwestern law school and is incredibly smart. he is very fluent in english, and speaks korean with his parents. he's a good friend. he did all the translating in southern california. this is where he opened up to me. he was working for "liberty in north korea," a human right's group which helped bring shin to the united states in 2009. he was an unpaid volunteer.

they gave him housing and he lived there. between 12 and 25 people lived in that house, most younger than him. >> how old is he today? >> he is 29. >> you have a lot of torture stories. just so people see how far it went, the story about him being put over the flame. >> when he was 13, he was taken to an underground prison. he was taken to ask about the escape plans. he didn't have a good answer. he was very confused.

he was taken to a machine shop, hung upside down by his ankles and wrists, in a "u' with his back hanging down. a cart came in with a coal fire. the flames came up. the cart was rolled under his body and he was burned as they asked him questions. >> what were his injuries? >> they are still visible. burn marks on his back and buttocks, a most severe burn you would get being held over a fire. the middle finger of his right hand was cut off at his first knuckle.

when he was 22, he was working on military uniforms. he worked with seamstresses. he dropped a sewing machine, and they got mad. they are more valuable than the human beings. they hacked off part of his finger. almost immediately. he has scarring on his legs from being hung upside-down. his legs came in contact with the strand. it burned his legs from knee to ankle.

the scars there are horrible. >> what year was that. >> that was in 2005. >> how did he get to this in the first place. his crime was to be born. his parents were there. his parents were there for reasons as flimsy. his father's brothers had flet to south korea. after the authorities heard about that, his father and the many brothers. they were rounded up and taken to camp 14. that's where shin was born. his mother never told him, he never asked. they did not have the kind of relationship where they would talk.

his mom and dad conceived him because they were chosen by the guard for the reward marriage. he was bred like a farm animal, and raised by his mother. his mother gave birth to him, but he was raised with the values of the guards. he had to memorize 10 rules of the camp. most of them say, if you don't do this, you are shot immediately. if you try to escape, you will be shot. and if you hear about an escape and don't report it, you will be shot.

>> let me say this quickly so people can understand. almost all of them -- no more than two prisoners can be together. do not steal. guards must be obeyed. anyone who sees a fugitive must report them. prisoners must report suspicious behavior, and prisoners must fufil their work. and there must not be intermingling between the sexes. they must repent the errors, and those who break the rules of the camp will be shot. >> they were shot often. one of the only forms where

people get together to watch something was an execution. so the rules were taken very seriously. particularly by the kids. who saw the results of disagreements. >> the first execution he saw. >> it was whe nhe was four. >> how does he remember this? >> i said, "what is your first memory?" he said, "i went with a crowd of people, and my mom." it was the first time he was around a crowd of people. you don't spend time with people.

he'd never been in a crowd of people, this group of people whispering and being close together. many thousands of prisoners. >> what about putting marbles in their mouths when shot? >> i talked to three others. they do it so they don't denounce the guards or the leadership. they can't say anything. it's rocks. >> rocks. and they put a hood over them. >> sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. >> what about his parents? with the death of his parents and his brother. >> the real heart of the book, and the pyschological trauma comes out of the escape plan of his mothe rand brother.

when he was 13, he was living in a boarding school. they are a few blocks from where he was staying. a guy who wore a gun told him to stay with his mom. he didn't think he would want to. he went home that night. his brother also lived away from home. he lived in a concrete factory. >> his brother was 8 years older. >> shin hardly knew his brother.

they had supper, the supper he'd eaten. the only meal he'd eaten. salt, corn, and cabbage. that was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. >> how do you eat salt? >> they put it in soup. it is a kind of gruel. other than small animals like mice and rats. he had a meal and went to sleep in your gut it was a central kitchen and one bedroom, and the central kitchen was for three other units, so he went to his bedroom and fell asleep and was awakened about midnight, and he heard them talking, and he also saw his mother was cooking rice for his brother.

good rice is something the hardly exists at all in the camp, but it is grown there, so some farmworkers could steal it, and his mom worked at the farm, so she must have stolen some rice. she never made rice for him. he was jealous about that. then he heard of the talking. did you have to understand his brother was in some kind of trouble at the camp. he had violated some rules and have left a concrete factory and gone to his mother, and guards would taken away and punish him, probably not execute him, but beat him up, so she and listed him, and then he heard

his brother mention the word escape, and chin's heart started to pound. he became very upset and very afraid because of these rules. if you do not report an escape, you will be executed. he listens for a while, and it was clear they were talking about trying to escape, and the rice was for him to take and eat after he got out of camp. he got up, told his mom he had to go to the bathroom, and found a guard and reported them. first he went to a classmate, and that classmates said, you should report them, and when he reported this escape, he was thinking, how can i turn this

to my advantage, so he asked a guard if he could have more food and if he could be made class leader, a position that would allow him to do less work, take fewer fewer beatings, and maybe have more food as well. he went to bed in the school. the next morning, he was awakened, told there were guards waiting for him, and they drove him to this underground prison, which he did not know existed, and he was taken inside and interrogated. he went thinking they would see him as a good snitch, so they started asking questions about his involvement, and he was

frightened and confused and did not answer in a coherent way in his first two rounds of interrogation, and in the third, he told them, i did a good job. i turned in my mother. you can check it out, and they did check it out, and he was allowed to recover in the underground prison, and he was taken out after seven months. he was taken to the same officers. he found his father had also been tortured and look horrible. his father's leg had been broken, and his father could

hardly walk, and they were taken back to the execution ground, the place he remembers from when he was for \ur. that he had his blindfold taken off, and he thought, they are going to kill me now, and he was terrified he was about to be shot, but they held him to the front of the road, and they drive out his mom and his brother. what is really interesting about this is when his mom was put out, she was put right in front of him on the gallows. she was not blindfolded, and she tried to catch her son died, and he hated her for the horrors

he had just gone through in this underground prison and for her reckless talk of escape, and he refused to catch her eye, and she was hanged in front of him, and his brother was shot in ahead three times by the guards, and she went back as a 14-year-old. >> what happened to his father and? >> his father lost his job. he began to work as a laborer limping around the camp, and they had a very strained relationship after this execution. he said, i am so sorry we were selfish to have children. i hope somehow you can get out of here, and he said, i do not care what he said. >> is he alive?

>> shin escaped a decade later when he was 23. >> the year he escaped democrats was 2005. the escape was an important part of the book. one thing i want to say about the experience of the execution is said he was raised in such a way he did not really loved his mother. he did not have feelings of affection or trust to his father and his brother, and i ask those things, how could you not look her in the eye when she died, and he said, these people are competitors for food, and they did nothing for me that was useful as he saw it. >> what about god? >> he never heard about god.

learning to trust other people is something he has had to do since he got to south korea and the united states. he has seen other families, other mothers and sons together, and he has begun to feel terribly guilty about the kind of authority was and what he did, but then he was not guilty. >> does he know what happened to his father? >> no, he assumes his father was tortured and killed as a result of his escape. good >> i do not want you to have to go into every detail, but escaping into china was difficult in what way? you said it has never happened before but they escaped. >> this existed since 1958, and no one is known to have escaped

it until 2005, so it was hard to get out of there, and he did it because he met someone who inspired him to think of the outside world, and this is his burden as a human being. he was in the camp, working in the sewing machine factory, when he was assigned to work with an older guy in his early forties, and parts have lived in pyongyang. shin's job was to snitch on him, because he had proved himself as

a snitch, but he started talking about the world, and parks said, i grew up there, and then he started talking about something shin was really interested in, which was food. park liked to eat, and he talked about the joys and wonders in china. you could eat until you were full, and you did not even have to be rich. that is the way people live, and that was a realization he could not get out of his imagination. he fantasized about living well. park told him many other things that were news to him, the whole world was round, but china existed, the united

states existed, but the leaders in north korea were a bunch of thieves and thugs, but none of thought was very interesting. his context was that he had been hungry his whole life and if he could get out of his cage, he could eat. >> it is how far from the border? >> it is about 300 miles, and it is about 50 miles north pyongyang. it was the barbwire friends with lines that were electrocuted. this is not the type of fence where a cow touches it and jumps.

it is the type of fence where it will grab you and kill you. he heard about grilled meat. he got very escaped and said, let's try to escape. park was ok with that idea. they met just two months before he decided to escape. this was very sudden, and they were really lucky in their planning, because they were assigned in the first of the year to gather firewood of was not near the guard tower where they could have shot people, and they waited until late afternoon on january 2, 2005, and they ran toward the fence.

when he decided to go, he said, let's go, and park said, i am not so sure, and shin from his hand and told him during good as they ran, he slipped and fell on an icy part the snow. park was electrocuted. shin crawled over his body and got most of the way over the fence, and his legs lift on both sides, and he got terrible burns.

i talked to an expert on electrocution who deals with people who deal with power lines in the pacific northwest, and this scenario which struck me as pretty weird, he said it was completely believable this could happen, and this is the only way, he needed that insulator so he could get to the fence without taking a legal charge. >> he would have been electrocuting himself if he could get through. >> he was lucky to get through the fence, but is not like winning the lottery. it is conceivable to do, and he got through the fence. the plenum was greeted the plan was for him to be on the inside. once they got through the fence, mr. park was supposed to be mr. outside the record he was supposed to take them to

china and arrange for their shipment to south korean, but park was dead. >> after he got out of prison, how long did it take him to get to south korean of? >> it ago months to get across south korea, a month of walking. he hopped a train. of one thing that is interesting about his journey across north korea, and this is a kid who did not know which way was north, and this was an incredibly lucky trip he made, but he had a couple things to his the vantage. he was very smart.

he had the sense of self survival, and he was also smart enough to keep his mouth shut. he did not tell anyone he was from the camp. he came to an old barn. he found military clothes, which he put on. this is north korea, and north korea is one of the most militarized place on earth. now with 1 million army. >> out of 23 million. >> military uniforms are pretty much everything you can find, so he found a military uniform. he was no longer dressed like a camp inmate and walked into a town, and he looked like a north korean security was skinny.

he was guilty. he was wearing an old uniform, and he did not have much to do. north korea at the lowest level is a very disorganized place where the food distribution system is very informal. it depends on farmers selling food from cooperative farms when they are not supposed to, and the north korean government has no choice but to put up with this messy, informal market system because it is the only way people can. there are estimates that 80% of calories come from this system, so he fell into the system. he was lucky. within a few days he had broken into a house, stole some

clothes, and stole a big bag of rice. it was a 10-pound bag of rice which she put in a backpack, and the market lady said, but you got in the bag, and he said, i have some rights, and she said, i will give you money for it. they told him a few weeks before the money existed. he got some crackers and not and some snacks and when walking out of town and saw some other traders basically moving north to do more trading. he fell in with them, and that was his route out of china. >> let's go back to how you put all this together. how many hours did you talk to get this book? but i think we have seven sessions, and they would start in the morning and end in the late afternoon.

>> how did you document them? >> i recorded them on audio, and i also took notes on the computer simultaneously, and there is a question of verifying the story, and it is very important to deal with. he lied to me about his role in betraying his mother. when he got to south korean he said they were executed, and he thought if he told the story the south korean government might arrest him. good certainly people might think of him as not human, and

he finally about a year into our interviews decided he would tell the truth, and he said he felt an obligation to tell the truth. >> when you see this photo, what do you see in the face? >> what is interesting is that he looks so young given his life. he has aged a little bit. this was taken when he was 28 or 27, but when i met him, i swear he looked like a teenager, and he has a youthful look.

>> how has he changed? >> he has become less wary. yesterday we were talking at the human rights convention, and he talked about selling out his mother and why he did it and what he hopes will come out of the truth he told. he wants people to know this is the type of human being they are trying to raise in these camps. there is the abuse of starving people and sent shooting them but also raising them to be monsters. >> did you ever see him get mad at you? >> he got mad at me because he did not want to talk about all this stuff. journalists keep wanting to drill. i said it was like being a dentist and not using anesthetics, and it was painful to him, and sometimes he would

say no and leave. >> why you think the american people would be interested in this book when you say the south korean could care less about north korean spy? >> the reason people should care about this book now is that it is a great story. it is a great psychological story about how a person goes from having no human emotions triggered the normal trajectory of concentration camps stories is you have someone who comes from a sophisticated, civilized family. did they are taken to the campus. all their of their relatives are killed.

they have to be saved in in in human way to survive, and then they come out and tell their story. this story is completely different, because he was born in hell and thought it was home, and the world and what it means to be a human being are completely different. >> why do the south korean not care about north korean to? >> they have moved on. their aspirations are for greater individual wealth, for technological achievement. north korea is a dead weight on those goals. most of the family ties have been attenuated by time and weakened by age. most of the people who have living relatives are under 60's or 70's or 80's, so the actual connection is falling apart.

>> i said, how about the east of germany, and they said, they are doing very well, and are they worried in south korea is going to cost them to pick up the 23 million people? >> they are very worried. there are estimates it could cost three times as much to have unification with the north because of development problems in north korean. if you fly over the korean peninsula, it is just start in north korean, and that is a good symbol of the stage of development. there are very few roads.

the education system has largely collapsed. factories do not work. if you live where now? >> i live in seattle. >> how old are your kids? >> my kids are 7 and 9. the >> no more washington post? no more new york times?

>> i took a buyout, and i have been working for the economist and occasionally pbs. >> what kind of things have you done for frontline? >> i work on a compromise for alaska. >> do you have another book in mind? >> i do. >> it might be about the compromise in alaska or about my father's generation, and i am not sure. >> what do you expect? will the end of in south korean permanently note, or will they come to the united states? >> a couple has been important. he calls them his parents, and they are happy about that. they helped bring him to the united states, and they have given him counseling, and vice, and love, and security.

he has not have thought from older people. they are from columbus, ohio. >> why did they get into it? >> they are a human rights activists. they are devout christians, and they got interested in this guy and sought him out. >> where do you expect him to end up after this? he is about 30? >> he is 29 now. i hope he will use the money from this note to get more education, and i would hope to learn english and pursue his dream as a human rights advocate. he has not done exactly as everyone hoped in terms of education, psychotherapy. he is his own individual

person, but he is doing this webcast thing in south korean, and he is very excited about it, and he is in a much better place than when i first met it, and he is thrilled this book is selling in the united states and that people are learning about the camps, and and that was the goal. >> thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> thank you. for a dvd copy of this program, call -- for free transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us at q&a.org.

"q&a" is also available as c- span podcast says. next sunday on "q&a" -- >> i want each boat to examine political power in america. seeing what the president can do at a time of great crisis, what does he do to get legislation to take command in washington? that is a way of examining power of the time of crisis. i want to do this in full, so that is why i said, let's examine this. examine this.