Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden - Essay Example

Shin Dong-hyuk’s Struggle for Psychological Freedom There have been many books written about North Korea, especiallyby escapees and scholars. Escape from Camp 14 offers a new perspective of life in North Korea as it is gathers its information from the only escapee born in a North Korea prison camp. When bringing to life the reality of North Korean life in the midst of a gulag, it reveals the life of Shin Dong-hyuk who was born in one such gulag and lived the first twenty-six years of his life in a prison camp (Harden 5). The book makes a compelling read due to its modern-day gulag description, as well as, its focus on a generation of prisoners who are physically weakened and psychologically maladjusted. Shin Dong-hyuk has undergone these horrors, which has made him unprepared to live in the contemporary world, finding it difficult to adjust to a totally different environment with freedom. Being psychologically free refers to freedom from attachment and from identifying with anything. In addition, psychological freedom also refers to when an individual is a being, rather than a knowing or a doing. Because of his experiences in prison camp 14, which have resulted in classical symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and Stockholm syndrome, Shin has been unable to gain psychological freedom. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a North Korean prison camp and lived under harsh and inhuman conditions for the first twenty-four years of his life. This was a period material, physical, and emotional deprivation for Shin, who underwent physical abuse and torture before making a successful escape from the prison camp (Harden 12). However, he escaped with scars consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, such as flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks, which have denied him psychological freedom. Although he has received treatment for his posttraumatic stress disorder, he still finds himself in the grip of anger and fear, while he does not want to be alone with his thoughts for a long time because they trouble him (Harden 14). Shin has been unable to attain psychological freedom because of his trauma’s fundamental psychological effect, which is the shattering of his innocence. His experiences in prison camp 14 have led him to lose faith in any meaning, predictability, and safety in the world or any safe place that he can retreat to, including his family, which reinforces his feeling of isolation (Harden 167). His body or mind did not process his traumatic experiences at the prison camp, unlike other experiences. This is most likely due to their shocking and overwhelming nature, which means they were not digested or integrated. This has caused his traumatic experiences to take on a life of their own, haunting him through its continued effects and preventing him from living a normal life as he is still psychologically imprisoned by his experiences. His posttraumatic stress disorder has resulted from this continued psychological imprisonment, while it can also be considered as a result of his psychological imprisonment. The events he went through, such as the torture and execution of his parents (Harden167), were outside the realm of normal human experience, which caused psychological distress. Such an experience would be distressing to almost anyone, leading to intense helplessness, fear, and terror due to its assault on the person’s psyche and biology. Shin Dong-hyuk shows three symptoms of posttraumatic disorder with the first being his re-experience with the trauma he went through in his mind. This curtails psychological freedom because, as he wakes up, he relives the traumatic events as vivid flashbacks. In addition, Shin also has nightmares at night as his mind recalls the trauma he underwent (Harden 166). Sometimes, Shin is so disturbed by the nightmares that he tries to avoid going to sleep. Shin also tries t avoid things that remind him of his experiences, such as conversations about his prison life. He refuses to talk about his mother and brother, lying about it at the beginning, which has also made it difficult for people to trust him (Harden 10). By avoiding any talk on this traumatic experience, he exhibits a crucial symptom of posttraumatic disorder that curtails his psychological freedom. Emotional numbing as a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder is also present in Shin’s inability to be psychologically free. He finds that he cannot express his feelings regarding the death of his mother and brother, making it seem that he feels nothing about them. Because of this emotional numbing, his relationship with other people after he escapes is strained, hiding in a cocoon and refusing to join society (Harden 167). In addition, his emotional numbing has also resulted in limited sources of support because most people think that he is in control and does not require any support from them. Of course, this is not true because he is traumatized, leading to an inability to share his story and resultant psychological imprisonment. Finally, his experiences have also caused him to become extra-vigilant, especially because he still believes that the North Korean government is after him. Therefore, he has attained an exaggerated startle reflex, while any mention of his prison life in the beginning brought an extreme emotional response, especially as he starts to deal with survival shame. This is visible where he asks why everyone else in the camp had to suffer as he alone escaped (Harden 13). In addition, he also seems to be especially sensitive to some sounds and sights that remind him of his mother and brother’s death, such as seeing happy families together. While post-traumatic stress disorder is responsible for most of Shin’s inability to be psychologically free, some of it can also be attributed to the effects of the Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome involves a phenomenon that causes trauma victims to sympathize and empathize with their captors. The main reason why Stockholm syndrome curtails psychological freedom is that the victim has to learn again how to dissociate his emotions from the captors, which is very difficult. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in Camp 14 prison because his parents had advocated against the dynasty ruling North Korea, which the prison guards used to make him ignorant of love (Harden 6). The guards in prison camp 14 acted like gods; vengeful and warlike, on the one hand, while they were also patronizing on the other hand. Because Shin had no knowledge about what lay beyond the prison’s walls and fence until he befriended a fellow prisoner, he was happy to obey the guards and viewed the camp’s rules as necessary. This was the main reason for turning on his mother and brother because they disobeyed the guards, which leads to his most traumatic experience in the prison. Stockholm syndrome relates to controlling and abusive relationships, such as that suffered by Shin during his imprisonment, preventing him from becoming psychologically free because he irrationally believed he suffered from contaminated identity (Harden 181). Some symptoms of Stockholm syndrome that are exhibited by Shin Dong-hyuk include positive feelings towards his prisoners and their representatives as a prisoner, as well as negative feelings to family members like his mother and brother. In addition, he also helps the prison guards because of the irrational connection he feels to them. Reading Shin’s story, one can see him dissociating from his helplessness, pain, and terror in prison by subconsciously viewing the situation from the perspective of his captors. In fact, he begins to see himself as being the product of a sinful union of traitors, which makes him hate himself (Harden 18). He agreed with the prison guards with some aspects of his opinions and personality fade to the background, which means that he is still psychologically imprisoned. Shin also began to please and appease his abuser in order to avoid being hurt, such as telling on his family members, indicating that he had become psychologically imprisoned. After a while, Shin started to realize, albeit irrationally, that the prison guards had similar human characteristics to other people, meaning that he saw them as less of a threat. In this case, the prison guards shared personal information about his parents to bond with him and promote pity for their cause, raising him to be totally indifferent about history (Harden 163). This bonding also led to conflicting emotions of pity and anger, coupled to illogical concerns for his captors’ needs, leading him to ignore his own needs for family connections. Shin’s lack of psychological freedom could also have resulted from perceived and real threats to his physical survival, as well as his belief that his captors would carry out their threats. Therefore, he struggles to trust and reach out to others because anyone could be an enemy (Harden 10). The prison guards had assured him that only his cooperation would ensure his safety, offering subtle threats of revenge in order to remind him that the same would happen to him if he escaped. In addition, the prison guards’ history of violence makes Shin sure that the same will occur to him if he attempts to disregard their orders. Psychological imprisonment also occurs when the prison guards give the prisoners, including Shin, small gestures of kindness to alter the prisoners’ perception of them. In this case, prisoners were allowed conjugal rights for good behaviour to show that the regime was not as bad as they thought, further ensuring that Shin would struggle to regain his psychological freedom from the environment created in prison camp 14. Shin also finds himself isolated from the perspectives of others, suffering from paranoia that is interpreted as weird and rude by South Koreans, leading to his isolation and lack of psychological freedom (Harden 164). In order to survive, Shin began to accept his captors’ perspective so intensely that he developed anger to those attempting to help him. In addition, towards the end of his imprisonment, he began to feel that the situation was his fault for being born by traitors. Finally, his belief that he could not escape from imprisonment ensured that he felt he could not survive alone, particularly because of the threats from the prison guards about torture if he attempted to disobey their orders. This feeling that he could not survive alone led to an environment of groupthink, which made him have a weak strong ethic, ensuring that he became psychologically isolated in South Korea that had a strong work ethic (Harden 167). All these situations came together to ensure that Shin was still a psychological prisoner of prison camp 14. Works Cited Harden, Blaine. Escape from Camp 14: One Mans Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. New York: Viking, 2012. Print. Read More