intervals between patrols.
The foreman in charge of the work crew was also a prisoner and therefore unarmed. In the intervals between guard patrols, there was no one close who could fire a weapon at Shin and Park. They had decided earlier that they would bide their time until dusk, when it would be more difficult for guards to track their footsteps in the snow.
As Shin worked and waited, he brooded about how the other prisoners were oblivious to the fence and the opportunities that lay beyond it. They were like cows, he thought, with a cud-chewing passivity, resigned to their no-exit lives. He had been like them until he met Park.
At around four o’clock, with light draining out of the day, Shin and Park sidled towards the fence, trimming trees as they moved. No one seemed to notice.
Shin soon found himself facing the fence, which was about ten feet high. There was a knee-high berm of snow directly in front of him and then a trail where patrolling guards had tramped it down. Beyond that was a groomed strip of sand, which showed footprint tracks if someone stepped on it. And beyond that was the fence itself, which consisted of seven or eight strands of high-voltage barbed wire, spaced about a foot apart, strung between tall poles.
According to Kwon Hyuk, a defector who worked as a manager at Camp 22, the fences that surround some of the labour camps in North Korea include moats with spikes designed to impale anyone who falls in. Shin saw no moat and no spikes.
He and Park had told each other that if they could get through the fence without touching the wires, they would be fine. As to how they might be able to do that, they were not sure. Yet as the hour of the escape drew nearer, Shin surprised himself by not feeling afraid.
Park, though, was distracted.
After guards had passed along the fence as part of their late-afternoon patrol, Shin heard fear in Park’s voice.
‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t we try it some other time?’
‘What are you talking about,’ Shin said. ‘If we don’t do it now, there won’t be another chance.’
Shin feared it would be months, even years, before they would be allowed outside the factory at dusk near a section of fence that could not be seen from a guard tower.
He could not — would not — endure more waiting.
‘Let’s run!’ he yelled.
He grabbed Park’s hand and pulled him towards the fence. For an agonizing second or two, Shin had to drag the man who had inspired his desire to escape. Soon, though, Park began to run.
Their plan had been for Shin to stay in the lead until they got clear of the fence, but he slipped and fell to his knees on the icy patrol trail. As a result, Park was first to the fence. Falling to his knees, he shoved his arms, head and shoulders between the two lowest strands of wire.
Seconds later, Shin saw sparks and smelled burning flesh.
Most electric fences built for security purposes repel trespassers with a painful but exceedingly brief pulse of current. They are not designed to kill, but to frighten animals and people. Lethal electric fences, however, use a continuous current that can make a person lock on to the wire as voltage causes involuntary muscle contractions, paralysis and death.
Before Shin could get to his feet, Park had stopped moving. He may already have been dead. But the weight of his body pulled down the bottom strand of wire, pinning it against the snowy ground and creating a small gap in the fence.
Without hesitation, Shin crawled over his friend’s body, using it as a kind of insulating pad. As he squirmed through the fence, Shin could feel the current. The soles of his feet felt as though needles were stabbing them.
Shin was nearly through the fence when his lower legs slipped off Park’s torso and came into direct contact, through the two pairs of pants he was wearing, with the bottom strand. Voltage from the wire caused severe burns from his ankles to his knees and the wounds bled for weeks, although it would be a couple of hours before Shin noticed how badly he had been injured.
The human body is unpredictable when it comes to conducting electricity. For reasons that are not well understood, the ability of individuals to sustain and survive a high-voltage shock varies widely. It is not a matter of build or fitness. Stout people show no greater resistance than skinny ones.
Human skin can be a relatively good insulator, if it is dry. Cold weather closes skin pores, reducing conductivity. Multiple layers of clothing can also help. Conversely, sweaty hands and wet clothes can easily defeat the skin’s natural resistance to an electric current. Once high-voltage electricity penetrates a body that is well grounded (wet shoes on snowy ground), the liquids and salts in the blood, muscle and bone are excellent conductors. Wet people holding hands have died of electrocution together.
Shin’s success in crawling through an electric fence designed to kill seems to have been a function of luck. His was astoundingly good; Park’s was terrible. If Shin had not slipped in the snow, he would have reached the fence first and probably died.
Shin did not know it, but to pass safely through the fence he needed a device that could shunt the flow of current from the fence to the ground. Park’s body, lying on damp ground on top of the bottom strand of wire, became that device.
When he cleared the fence, Shin had no idea where to go. At the crest of the mountain, the only direction he could comprehend was down. At first, he weaved through a patch of trees. But within minutes, he was out in the open, stumbling across upland fields and pastures that were sporadically lit by a half moon showing through clouds.
He ran for about two hours, always heading downhill, until he entered a mountain valley where there were barns and scattered houses. He heard no alarms, no gunfire, no shouting. As far as he could tell, no one was chasing him.
As the adrenaline of flight began to ebb, Shin noticed that the legs of his pants were sticky. He rolled them up, saw blood oozing out of his legs and began to comprehend the severity of his burns. His feet, too, were bleeding. He had stepped on nails, apparently, when he was close to the camp fence. It was very cold, well below 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and he had no coat.
Park, dead on the fence, had not told him where he might find China.
16
Racing downhill in the early evening darkness through cornfield stubble, Shin came across a farmer’s shed half buried in the hillside. The door was locked. There were no houses nearby, so he broke the lock with an axe handle he found on the ground.
Just inside the door, he discovered three ears of dried corn and devoured them. The corn made him aware of how hungry he was. Helped by the moonlight, he searched the shed for something else to eat. Instead, he spotted an old pair of cotton shoes and a worn military uniform.
Uniforms are everywhere in North Korea, the world’s most militarized society. Conscription is almost universal. Men serve ten years, women seven. With more than a million troops on active duty, about five per cent of the country’s population is in uniform, compared with about half a per cent in the United States. An additional five million people serve in the army reserve for much of their adult lives. The army is ‘the people, the state and the party’, says the government, which no longer describes itself as a communist state. Its guiding principle, according to the constitution, is ‘military first’. Uniformed soldiers dig clams and launch missiles, pick apples and build irrigation canals, market mushrooms and supervise the export of knock-off Nintendo games.
Inevitably, uniforms wind up in barns and sheds.
The military pants and shirt that Shin found were far too big for him, as were the cotton shoes. But finding a change of clothes less than three hours after escaping the camp and before anyone could get a look at him was an extraordinary stroke of luck.
He stepped out of his cold wet shoes and removed both pairs of prison trousers. From the knees down they
