Summary

On April 6, 1996, Shin was handcuffed and blindfolded by three soldiers and placed in the back of a vehicle. He was taken to an underground prison within the camp. He was taken to a windowless room where he was interrogated by a military commander. That morning his mother and brother had tried to escape. Shin assured the officer that he hadn’t known anything about it. The officer didn’t believe him.

This was the account that Shin told repeatedly when he made it to South Korea in 2006. Every defector from North Korea was thoroughly debriefed in South Korea. Shin then related his story to counselors and human rights activists and to the media. Shin told the same story to the author when they met in Seoul in 2008. There was no one to confirm his account. His mother and brother were dead by then...