For Tuesday: Harden, Escape
From Camp 14: Preface-Chapter 2 (pp.xi-32)
Answer TWO of the
following:
Q1: What did the education
of the schoolchildren at Camp 14 consist of? Similarly, what information was
hidden from them? How did this education affect his mental and social
development?
Q2: How does the camp
re-define basic human relationships such as husband, wife, children,
brother, sister, and teacher? What does it suggest about human
nature that these relationships, which have universal meanings throughout
history, can be altered within a single lifetime?
Q3: Suzanne Scholte, an
activist who works in Washington, said that “Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and
Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and
George Clooney...North Koreans have no one like that” (13). Given all the
suffering and horrors of the camps, why do you think there are no celebrity
spokesmen/women for North Koreans? What makes this any different than the
Holocaust or other genocides and prison camps?
Q4: The author of the
book, who is writing the life and experiences of the North Korean, Shin
Dong-Hyuk, writes that “In writing this book, I have sometimes struggled to
trust him. He misled me in our first interview about his role in the death of
his mother, and he continued to do so in more than a dozen interviews” (10).
Based on this, how do we know whether any of this story is true? Why is
it difficult to verify his story? And related to this, why might Shin be
unwilling (at least initially) to tell Harden the actual, factual truth?
Q1. The education of the schoolchildren at Camp 14 consisted of very little information. Mostly they listened as their teachers lectured. These students attempted learning their alphabet, and simple addition and subtraction. Information that was hidden from them included anything consisting of their history. They knew very little of the outside world. This education affected them greatly by not allowing them to form their own thoughts. These children did not know any better, so they thought exactly the information that they were told.
ReplyDeleteQ2. Camp re-defines basic human relationships by influencing the thoughts of these people. The husband/father was absent. Wives were considered prizes for good behavior. Children were just another mouth to feed. Teachers were considered an authoritative figure, but not a positive one. Each of these different roles were simply another competitor to fight against. Thus turning everyone against one another.
Cameron Corbin
ReplyDelete1. The education in the concentration camp contained only the bare fundementals needed to function within the camp. No information was presented about any subject in the outside world. Campers who have grown up inside the camp are completely ignorant to the fact that life outside the camp is any different on the outside. There weren’t even any sick days at the school, as Shin had to drag some of his ill classmates to school on certain days. As a result of the poor schooling conditions, Shin never learned skills that we would consider basic such as multiplying and dividing, and was hindered socially by the group communication restrictions in the school.
3 I don’t think that there has been a celebrity to privy to step up to the plate to defend North Korea because of the threat of punishment from North Korea. North Korea is a very intimidating nation to western civilization, and no one famous is trying to go out of their way to make them angry in any way, shape, or form. The North Korean camps are different than other concentration camps throughout history because of the level of secrecy that North Korea maintains as a nation. They are truly a mystery to the outside world except what we know through defectors.