Tyranny of North Korean Regime
The main theme of the book is the tyrannical North Korean regime that is passed from generation to generation to leaders who all seem to be more sadistic and controlling than the one who went before them. Since the 1940s the Kim family has controlled North Korea. Despite claims of being democratically elected the regime is essentially a dictatorship. Camp 14 is like a small version of the country itself where the main goal is to isolate people from their own families and instil only loyalty to the regime. The police and military personnel controlling the camps are brutal and sadistic. North Koreans can be jailed or shot for the most minor offenses and questioning the absolute divinity of the Kim family is punishable by execution. When someone is punished, three generations of their family can be punished as well and because of this there are people imprisoned in camps who did nothing wrong at all, other than find themselves related by blood to someone who has transgressed.
The majority of North Koreans do not believe in the divinity of their rulers, but are afraid for their lives and realize that they have to at least give the impression of absolute devotion. There is also an enormous propaganda machine dedicated to giving their leaders the appearance of being superhuman and almost divine.
Fluid Morality
In order to survive, prisoners find morality to be a fluid concept. The priority when waking up each morning is surviving until the next and in order to do so a prisoner's moral compass might veer wildly away from the norm. Shin is a prime example of this; he feels no loyalty to his family but wants instead to curry favor with the authorities to protect himself and to win more food. Shin has no empathy, and signs a document lying about his mother and brother, claiming that they murdered someone, and snitching on them and revealing their plans to escape. After his escape he develops a re-calibrated morality that makes him reluctant to write an honest memoir, knowing how he will be viewed by others.
Brainwashing
Camp authorities do not care particularly for basic skills like reading and writing, but need to teach them so that they can be used as tools for understanding the propaganda they are feeding the students in their schools. What Shin is taught in his school at camp is taught in schools in the outside world as well. It is not enough that prisoners behave; they must believe what the guards believe as well. So begins the relentless indoctrination of every prisoner at the camp, and every person in North Korea. They are also humiliated and ridiculed constantly, leaving them confused and emotionally helpless and thereby lowering their resistance to the propaganda they are being subjected to. This can be effective to a degree on prisoners who have previously lived in the outside world, but it is difficult to convince them of things that contradict their experiences. With men like Shin, who have grown up in a camp, the process is entirely effective, because he has no life experiences of his own and consequently believes what he is told by the prison guards simply because he knows no different. It is his norm. The book shows the insidious and evil process that made prison camps the North Korean's favorite tool for brainwashing an entire generation of young people.
