Books - What are you reading?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-Camp-14-remarkable-odyssey/dp/0330519549

Just finished reading this today. Jesus christ. Terrifying that these places exist and that they're tolerated by governments all over the world even though they're so well known to world leaders.

I realised when I was halfway through that Shin has been in the news over the last couple of weeks apologising for misleading people over his story and recanting parts of it. The DPRK propaganda machine has latched onto that and are busy pumping out gleeful screeds about what a lying traitor he is. Even some Westerners who ought to know better have been mincing about the comments sections on websites going "he took back the whole thing! It was all lies!". As if it's reasonable to expect somebody who was born in a prison camp and spent the first 20-odd years of his life being beaten and tortured by sadistic guards to get every detail about times or locations of his experiences right. In all the interviews about it he seems to really be beating himself up about timeline inaccuracies over things that happened when he was 6, 13, and 20 years old.

I grew up fat and comfortable in a 3 bedroom house with bikes and computers and biscuits whenever I fancied them and even I can't remember wtf I was doing at any of those ages. Seems ridiculous that a kid growing up mostly illiterate in a forced labour camp and then coming out with PTSD should have a better grasp of calendar events than people like me.