Prominent N. Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk admits parts of story are inaccurate

TOKYO Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean prison camp survivor who has become the symbol of human rights injustices suffered in that country, has changed key parts of the story of his ordeal.

Although the most horrific details, such as being lowered by a hook over a fire, still stand, Shin has admitted that many of the places and timing of events in his telling of his story were wrong, Blaine Harden, the author of Escape from Camp 14, a best-selling book about Shins life, said Saturday.

From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around, said Harden, a former Washington Post journalist who first wrote Shins story for The Post in 2008.

Shin, 32, has been one of the most prominent defectors from North Korea, trying to raise awareness about human rights abuses there. He also testified in front of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, whose report has led to an international campaign to hold the totalitarian states leaders to account for decades of human rights violations.

North Korea, alarmed by this campaign and the prospect of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un being indicted, has been trying to undermine Shins testimony and will doubtless seize on these revisions to try to portray all accounts of human rights abuses as fabrications.

In Escape from Camp 14 and in his testimony to the U.N. commission, Shin has told this story: He was born in Camp 14, a sprawling high-security political prison in the mountains of north of Pyongyang, where he was brutally tortured and lived until his escape in 2005. He has consistently said that he escaped with a fellow inmate, climbing over his body when the man was electrocuted on the fence that surrounded the camp, and then made his way into China.

Shin admitted to Harden on Friday that when he was about 6, he, his mother and his brother were transferred to another prison camp, Camp 18, across the Taedong River from Camp 14.

It was there, after learning of his mother and brothers plans to escape, that he betrayed them to the authorities, Shin told Harden. It was also in this camp, he said, that he witnessed their executions.

In the book, Shin recounted all these events as happening in Camp 14.

Shin also now says that he escaped from the camps on two occasions, in 1999 and 2001. The second time, he made it to China but was caught after four months by local police and sent back to North Korea. He was first held at Camp 18, then transferred back to the more draconian Camp 14, Shin told Harden.

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Prominent N. Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk admits parts of story are inaccurate