What really set the world on edge is the potential for the
Unha-3 rocket to deliver a more deadly payload — a nuclear
weapon. Before the failed launch, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton warned North Korea against “pursuing a cycle of
provocation.” Serious business, yet for your faithful
correspondent, the overriding image of the week from North Korea
was of a starving little girl who lost her life because of five
kernels of corn. The anecdote is one of the most shocking in
Blaine Harden’s new book, Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s
Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.
Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, a man born in a North
Korean forced-labor camp. Shin’s birth in 1982 was the result of
a “marriage” between two prisoners in Camp 14. His mother and
father were allowed contact only a few times a year, so family
in the conventional sense was a foreign concept to Shin. As was
compassion, generosity, integrity and love. The inhabitants of
Camp 14 were treated like work animals, ex