Today@Dal

» Go to news main

Media Highlight: Anger at North Korean defector a failure to understand his nightmare

Posted by Communications and Marketing on January 23, 2015 in Media Highlights

Article by Dalhousie professor Robert Huish, published January 20 by the Globe and Mail:

Shin Dong-hyuk has suffered unimaginable horrors. Born in a North Korean prison camp, Mr. Shin was shunned by his parents, bullied and beaten by prison guards, forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother, and routinely tortured. Mr. Shin’s life story has galvanized human rights activism against North Korea, more so than any other defector in recent history. “Witness number one” at the UN Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in the DPRK, Mr. Shin has compelled the world to act to condemn the Kim Regime.

When Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14 – a book chronicling Mr. Shin’s journey – told the Washington Post on Saturday that Mr. Shin misled him in recounting his story, North Korean human rights activists were shocked and hurt. Mr. Shin now says that he was born in Camp 18, not Camp 14. He escaped Camp 18 before being caught and returned, and then transported to Camp 14. The prison guards roasted him over a fire, suspended by a meat hook, at age 20, not age 13.

Defector testimony is a powerful political weapon, and inaccuracies such as these can undermine it. What’s more, Western society disdains false testimony. No wonder why emotions are running high among activists and readers of Escape from Camp 14.

Yet, it is recognized by our courts that victims of abuse do distort details, bury facts, or smudge fine points of testimony, especially when recounting events of childhood abuse. Also accepted by courts is to recognize as evidence testimony that evolves over time.

Michael Kirby, an Australian judge who headed the UN commission of inquiry, validated Mr. Shin’s testimony this past weekend, even after these revelations saying, “he’s not a fraud. He bears wounds that can be identified and are corroborative of his story of torture.”

Read the rest of this article online.