Free Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden Page A

against the rules to fantasize about what life would be like if the government were to set you free. Uncle told Shin that
both of them would one day be released. Until then, he said, they had a sacred obligation to stay strong, live as long as possible and never consider suicide.
    ‘What do you think?’ Uncle would then ask Shin. ‘Do you believe I’ll also be able to make it out?’
    Shin doubted it, but said nothing.
    A guard unlocked the door of Shin’s cell and handed him the school uniform he had worn on the day he arrived in the underground prison.
    ‘Put on these clothes and come along quickly,’ the guard said.
    As Shin changed, he asked Uncle what would happen. The old man assured him that he would be safe and that they would meet again on the outside.
    ‘Let me hold you once,’ he said, grasping both of Shin’s hands tightly.
    Shin did not want to leave the cell. He had never trusted – never loved – anyone before. In the years ahead, he would think of the old man in the dark room far more often and with
far greater affection than he thought of his parents. But after the guards led him out of the cell and locked its door, he never saw Uncle again.

8
    They took Shin to the big bare room where, in early April, he had first been interrogated. Now, it was late November. Shin had just turned fourteen. He had not seen the sun for
more than half a year.
    What he saw in the room startled him: his father knelt in front of two interrogators who sat at their desks. He seemed much older and more careworn than before. He had been brought into the
underground prison at about the same time as Shin.
    Kneeling beside him, Shin saw that his father’s right leg canted outwards in an unnatural way. Shin Gyung Sub had also been tortured. Below his knee, his leg bones had been broken and they
had knitted back together at an odd angle. The injury would end his relatively comfortable job as a camp mechanic and lathe operator. He would now have to hobble around as an unskilled labourer on
a construction crew.
    During his time in the underground prison, the guards told Shin’s father that his youngest son had informed them of the escape plan. When Shin later had a chance to talk to his father
about this, the conversation was strained. His father said it was better to have told the guards than to have risked concealing the plan, but his caustic tone confused Shin. He sounded as if he
knew his son’s first instinct was to inform.
    ‘Read it and stamp it,’ one of the interrogators said, handing a document to Shin and one to his father.
    It was a nondisclosure form stipulating that father and son would not tell anyone what had gone on inside the prison. If they did talk, the document said, they would be punished.
    After pressing their inked thumbs to their respective forms, they were handcuffed, blindfolded and led outside to the elevator. Above ground, their cuffs and blindfolds still on, they were
guided into the backseat of a small car and driven away.
    In the car, Shin guessed that he and his father would be released back into the camp’s population. The guards would not force them to sign a secrecy pledge and then shoot them. It did not
make sense. But when the car stopped after about thirty minutes and his blindfold was removed, he panicked.
    A crowd had gathered at the empty wheat field near his mother’s house. This was the place where Shin had witnessed two or three executions a year since he was a toddler. A makeshift
gallows had been constructed and a wooden pole had been driven into the ground.
    Shin was now certain that he and his father were to be executed. He became acutely aware of the air passing into and out of his lungs. He told himself these were the last breaths of his
life.
    His panic subsided when a guard barked out his father’s name.
    ‘Hey, Gyung Sub. Go sit at the very front.’
    Shin was told to go with his father. A guard removed their handcuffs. They sat down. The officer