Life outside death camp for North Korean escapee

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a North Korean punishment camp where he endured appalling brutalities until he escaped, aged 23. Now his story is told in a harrowing documentary.

DOCUMENTARY-makers generally tackle torture at a distance. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act Of Killing, for instance, introduced us to a charismatic killer from Indonesia’s anti-communist genocide who dances the cha-cha on the rooftop where he murdered hundreds of victims almost 50 years earlier. Camp 14: Total Control Zone is different. The German film-maker Marc Wiese’s film tells of horrors that could be happening as you read this, in North Korea, in prison camps so vast that they show up on Google Earth.