Blaine Harden

La historia de la crueldad humana parecía haber alcanzado su límite hace tiempo y, sin embargo, las vivencias del protagonista de este libro superan lo imaginable: nacido en cautividad, maltratado por su madre e ignorado por su padre, aprendio a sobrevivir delatando a sus compañeros de cautiverio. Su primer recuerdo, con cuatro años, fue presenciar una ejecucion, y las cicatrices y quemaduras de su cuerpo atestiguan la veracidad del terror padecido.Nunca antes nadie nacido en un campo para prisioneros politicos en Corea del Norte habia logrado escapar y vivido para contarlo.Un testimonio estremecedor sobre los limites de la crueldad y la fuerza del ser humano para sobrevivir al infierno terrestre.Creo que aun estoy evolucionando: de bestia a ser humano.Shin Dong-hyuk

A non-fiction thriller by international bestselling author Blaine Harden (Escape from Camp 14) that explores the worlds most repressive state through the intertwined lives of two North Koreans, one infamous, one obscure: Kim Il Sung, the former North Korean leader and No Kum Sok, once the states youngest jet fighter pilot.Shortly before the Korean War ended, No Kum Sok met Kim Il Sung, who congratulated him for his flying skill and his courage. A few months later, No Kum Sok stole a Soviet-made MiG-15 and flew it to a US airfield in South Korea. Beginning with the arbitrary division of Korea in 1945 and ending two months after the shaky armistice that halted combat in the Korean War, The Great Leader & the Fighter Pilot is an ambitious and gripping book which digs deeply into the character of the Kim family dictatorship.At once an irresistible adventure story and an authoritative guide to the notorious state, it explains why North Korea remains so isolated, why it created and maintains a vast gulag of concentration camps, and why it is still so angry at the western world.

This is the incredible story of Shin Dong-hyuk the only person born in a North Korean gulag ever to escape. A gripping, terrifying biography, Escape from Camp 14 by journalist Blaine Harden uncovers a dark and secret nation.Now a major documentary film.This is a story unlike any other - Barbara Demick, author of Nothing toEnvy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.Twenty-seven years ago, Shin Dong-hyuk was born inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. Located about fifty-five miles north of Pyongyang, the labour camp is a complete control district a no-exit prison where the only sentence is life.No one born in Camp 14 or in any North Korean political prison camp has escaped. No one except Shin. This is his story . .

In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing and previously untold spy stories of the twentieth century.Donald Nichols was a one man war, according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service Cross, along with a chest full of medals for valor and initiative in the Korean War. His commanders described Nichols as the bravest, most resourceful and effective spymaster of that forgotten war. But there is far more to Donald Nichols story than first meets the eye . . .Based on long-classified government records, unsealed court records, and interviews in Korea and the U.S., King of Spies tells the story of the reign of an intelligence commander who lost touch with morality, legality, and even sanity, if military psychiatrists are to be believed. Donald Nichols was Americas Kurtz. A seventh-grade dropout, he created his own black-ops empire, commanding a small army of hand-selected spies, deploying his own makeshift navy, and ruling over it as a clandestine king, with absolute power over life and death. He claimed a legal license to murder and inhabited a world of mass executions and beheadings, as previously unpublished photographs in the book document.Finally, after eleven years, the U.S. military decided to end Nicholss reign. He was secretly sacked and forced to endure months of electroshock in a military hospital in Florida. Nichols told relatives the American government was trying to destroy his memory.King of Spies looks to answer the question of how an uneducated, non-trained, non-experienced man could end up as the number-one US spymaster in South Korea and why his US commanders let him get away with it for so long . . .

If you have a soul, you will be changed forever by Blaine Hardens Escape from Camp 14." Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of Lost in Shangri-LaThe heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Koreas political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalins Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk.In Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the worlds most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shins shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Shin knew nothing of civilized existencehe saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother.The late Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was recognized throughout the world, but his country remains sealed as his third son and chosen heir, Kim Jong Eun, consolidates power. Few foreigners are allowed in, and few North Koreans are able to leave. North Korea is hungry, bankrupt, and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also a human rights catastrophe. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people work as slaves in its political prison camps. These camps are clearly visible in satellite photographs, yet North Koreas government denies they exist.Hardens harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the worlds darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.

Finalist for the 2022 Will Rogers Medallion AwardTerrific. Timothy Egan, The New York TimesA riveting investigation of both American myth-making and the real history that lies beneath. Claudio Saunt,author of Unworthy Republic From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, a terrifically readable (Los Angeles Times) account of one of the most persistent alternative facts in American history: the story of a missionary, a tribe, a massacre, and a myth that shaped the American WestIn 1836, two missionaries and their wives were among the first Americans to cross the Rockies by covered wagon on what would become the Oregon Trail. Dr. Marcus Whitman and Reverend Henry Spalding were headed to present-day Washington state and Idaho, where they aimed to convert members of the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes. Both would fail spectacularly as missionaries. But Spalding would succeed as a propagandist, inventing a story that recast his friend as a hero, and helped to fuel the massive westward migration that would eventually lead to the devastation of those they had purportedly set out to save.As Spalding told it, after uncovering a British and Catholic plot to steal the Oregon Territory from the United States, Whitman undertook a heroic solo ride across the country to alert the President. In fact, he had traveled to Washington to save his own job. Soon after his return, Whitman, his wife, and eleven others were massacred by a group of Cayuse. Though they had ample reason - Whitman supported the explosion of white migration that was encroaching on their territory, and seemed to blame for a deadly measles outbreak - the Cayuse were portrayed as murderous savages. Five were executed. This fascinating, impeccably researched narrative traces the ripple effect of these events across the century that followed. While the Cayuse eventually lost the vast majority of their territory, thanks to the efforts of Spalding and others who turned the story to their own purposes, Whitman was celebrated well into the middle of the 20th century for having "saved Oregon." Accounts of his heroic exploits appeared in congressional documents, The New York Times, and Life magazine, and became a central founding myth of the Pacific Northwest. Exposing the hucksterism and self-interest at the root of American myth-making, Murder at the Mission reminds us of the cost of American expansion, and of the problems that can arise when history is told only by the victors.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of Kim Il Sungs rise to power, and the brave North Korean fighter pilot who escaped the prison state and delivered the first MiG-15 into American handsIn The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deceptionand escape.As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theftjust weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953electrified the world and incited Kims bloody vengeance.During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans.Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kims shadowy rise, as well as from never-before-released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the worlds longest-lasting totalitarian state.

Hace veintinueve años, Shin Dong-hyuk nació en el Campo 14, uno de los cinco centros de reclusión para presos políticos situado en las montañas de Corea del Norte. Localizado a unos 90 kilómetros al norte de Pyongyang, este campo de trabajo es un distrito de control absoluto, una prision sin salida donde la unica sentencia es la cadena perpetua. Nadie nacido en el Campo 14, o en cualquiera de los otros campos norcoreanos, ha logrado escapar. Nadie excepto Shin. Esta es su historia.Evasion del Campo 14es un bestseller internacional traducido a 28 idiomas. El testimonio de Shin y este libro fueron claves en la comision de investigacion de la ONU que concluyo que Corea del Norte ha cometido crimenes contra la humanidad.

Hace veintinueve años, Shin Dong-hyuk nació en el Campo 14, uno de los cinco centros de reclusión para presos políticos situado en las montañas de Corea del Norte. Localizado a unos 90 kilómetros al norte de Pyongyang, este campo de trabajo es un distrito de control absoluto, una prision sin salida donde la unica sentencia es la cadena perpetua.Nadie nacido en el Campo 14, o en cualquiera de los otros campos norcoreanos, ha logrado escapar.Nadie excepto Shin. Esta es su historia."Evasion del Campo 14" es un bestseller internacional traducido a 28 idiomas. El testimonio de Shin y este libro fueron claves en la comision de investigacion de la ONU que concluyo que Corea del Norte ha cometido crimenes contra la humanidad.