"Just 14-years old, Shin says he felt no guilt in condemning [his mother and older brother] to death."
Shin Dong-hyuk, born, was born in one of North Korea's worst prison camps: the infamous camp 14. He managed to escape at age 23, after over two decades of horrible experiences and treatment. A book was written about him later, called Escape From Camp 14. Here is an excerpt: "His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field near the Taedong River, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. Excited by the crowd, the boy crawled between adult legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man to a wooden pole.
Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to remember or understand the speech that came before that killing. But at dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a supervising guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered "redemption" through hard labor, but had rejected the generosity of the North Korean government. To prevent the prisoner from cursing the state that was about to take his life, guards stuffed pebbles in his mouth and covered his head with a hood.
At that first execution, Shin watched three guards take aim. Each fired three times. The reports of their rifles terrified the boy and he fell over backwards. But he scrambled to his feet in time to see guards untie a slack, blood-spattered body, wrap it in a blanket, and heave it into a cart.
In Camp 14, a prison for the political enemies of North Korea, assemblies of more than two inmates were forbidden, except for executions. Everyone had to attend. The labor camp used public killing — and the fear it generated — as a teachable moment. Shin's guards in the camp were his teachers — and his breeders. They selected his mother and father. They taught him that prisoners who break camp rules deserve death. On a hillside near his school, a slogan was posted: "All according to the Rules and Regulations." The boy memorized the camp's ten rules, "The Ten Commandments," as he later called them, and can still recite them by heart. The first one said: "Anyone caught escaping will be shot immediately.""
Source: Harden, Blaine. “Excerpt: Escape From Camp 14.” Escape From Camp 14, www.npr.org/books/titles/149017521/escape-from-camp-14-one-mans-remarkable-odyssey-from-north-korea-to-freedom-in-t#excerpt.