VOA慢速英语2013 AS IT IS 2013-05-05 North Korean Labor Camp Survivor Tells His Story

AS IT IS 2013-05-05 North Korean Labor¹ Camp Survivor² Tells His Story

Hi again. Nice to have you with us on As It Is. I'm Kelly Jean Kelly. Today we are talking about a man named Shin Dong-hyuk.

“He spent the first 23 years of life inside a labor camp in North Korea. He’s the only individual born in the labor camp to escape.”

That was Blaine Hardin, a journalist who wrote a book about Shin Dong-hyuk. Mr. Shin's parents were prisoners in a labor camp called Camp 14.  

Camp 14 is one of a network of labor camps in North Korea. Hundreds of thousands of North Korean citizens are believed to be held inside the camps. People who have seen the camps say the conditions are terrible. They say prisoners are often killed, tortured, raped³ or used for slave labor.  

Mr. Shin was born in Camp 14.

“His values, his worldview, his understanding of what it means to be a human being all came from his formative years in the camp, where he was raised not by his parents so much as by the guards.”

When he was 13, he heard his mother and his older brother talking about escaping from the camp. He knew that people who tried to escape were shot. He also knew that if you hear someone talking about trying to escape and do not report it, you would be shot. So he told the guards about his mother and his brother’s plan. They were shot in front of him. Blaine Hardin says Mr. Shin told him that at the time, he was not sorry.

“He told me when I first met him that he watched his mother die and he was glad that she died and that he hated her because she had put him at risk by plotting an escape with his older brother.”

When Mr. Shin was about 23, he met a prisoner who had lived outside North Korea. The other prisoner told Mr. Shin about television, computers and cell phones. Mr. Shin was most interested in hearing stories about food: he had spent most of his life hungry.

On a winter day in 2005, Mr. Shin and the other prisoner tried to crawl under an electric fence to freedom. The other prisoner was killed. But Mr. Shin escaped.

Blaine Harden tells Mr. Shin’s story in the book “Escape from Camp 14.” The book is being released this week in South Korea, where Mr. Shin now lives.

One of the ideas explored in the book is how the labor camps change human relations, and even human psychology⁴. Mr. Shin is an example.

“Things like right and wrong, concepts like love, friendship and trust, all of these things are foreign languages to him. So he has struggled mightily⁵ to learn the lessons that will make it possible to live outside of a labor camp.”

The book also tries to show how human rights abuses are part of North Korea’s military strategy. Those abuses do not get as much attention as North Korea's actions like the threat in March to attack the United States and its allies.

“What it’s done is effectively distracted the world from one of the ways that Kim family dynasty guarantees its own survival: by being incredibly cruel to its own people.”

Mr. Harden says foreign countries should make human rights part of any conversation about North Korea. He says international leaders should insist that the North Korean government help feed its people. And he says North Korea should absolutely close its labor camps.

A few weeks ago a human rights group said new satellite pictures suggest that North Korea is expanding Camp 14. The camp is about 70 miles kilometers north of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Christopher Cruise reports that Camp 14 is now controlling people who live in a nearby valley.

Private satellite pictures show Camp 14 has grown in the last seven years. Amnesty International says checkpoints and guard towers now surround the Choma-Bong valley. Camp 14’s expansion means that the people who live in the valley are becoming more like prisoners.

Roseanne Rife⁶ is Amnesty International's East Asia chief in Hong Kong.

“There are new housing structures, as well, near the mines which might indicate they’ve increased the work force in the mines. And, the fact that they’re enclosed in this perimeter⁷ then raises concerns about are they being forced to work in the mines as additional forced labor? And, what we normally see, the forced labor is very slave-like conditions.”

A North Korean diplomat⁸ dismissed the report even before it was made public. He called it an “ill-minded” creation of countries such as the United States, Japan and European Union members.

But the United Nations is taking the report seriously. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay is calling for an international investigation⁹ into human rights violations¹⁰ in North Korea. She says human rights must remain an issue of concern, even though many people are focusing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Roseanne Rife of Amnesty International agrees.

“While there’s no denying that there are serious security issues at stake here, human rights should be placed front and center in all this.”

Ms. Rife also says the international community must pay attention to human rights when it responds to North Korea’s military actions. She says restrictions¹¹ on trade and humanitarian¹² aid must not make human rights in North Korea worse.   

I’m Christopher Cruise.

And I’m Kelly Jean Kelly.

One final note on our story. North Korea said this week that an American citizen has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Pae Jun-ho, known in the United States as Kenneth Bae, was convicted of hostile acts against North Korea. Mr. Bae was arrested in November 2012 after entering the country as a tourist.

And that’s our show for today.

1 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

2 survivor   

n.生存者，残存者，幸存者

参考例句：

• The sole survivor of the crash was an infant.这次撞车的惟一幸存者是一个婴儿。
• There was only one survivor of the plane crash.这次飞机失事中只有一名幸存者。

3 raped   

v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸

参考例句：

• A young woman was brutally raped in her own home. 一名年轻女子在自己家中惨遭强暴。 来自辞典例句
• We got stick together, or we will be having our women raped. 我们得团结一致，不然我们的妻女就会遭到蹂躏。 来自辞典例句

4 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

5 mightily   

ad.强烈地；非常地

参考例句：

• He hit the peg mightily on the top with a mallet. 他用木槌猛敲木栓顶。
• This seemed mightily to relieve him. 干完这件事后，他似乎轻松了许多。

6 rife   

adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的

参考例句：

• Disease is rife in the area.疾病在这一区很流行。
• Corruption was rife before the election.选举之前腐败盛行。

7 perimeter   

n.周边，周长，周界

参考例句：

• The river marks the eastern perimeter of our land.这条河标示我们的土地东面的边界。
• Drinks in hands,they wandered around the perimeter of the ball field.他们手里拿着饮料在球场周围漫不经心地遛跶。

8 diplomat   

n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人

参考例句：

• The diplomat threw in a joke, and the tension was instantly relieved.那位外交官插进一个笑话，紧张的气氛顿时缓和下来。
• He served as a diplomat in Russia before the war.战前他在俄罗斯当外交官。

9 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

10 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

11 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制

12 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。