Escape from Camp 14
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40 free Escape From Camp 14 trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Escape from Camp 14 tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who broke out of one of North Korea's political prison camps in 2005. Published in 2012, it gave many readers their first detailed look at the country's hidden camp system. This quiz follows the book from start to finish: hunger and daily life in the camp, the family betrayal at its centre, the friendship that led to the breakout, the trek across the border, and Shin's new life as a human rights campaigner. It also covers how the book came to be written and the parts of the story Shin revised in 2015. It suits students revising the book for class, reading groups looking for discussion starters, and anyone who wants to test how much of this harrowing account they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How did Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of Escape from Camp 14, first come to be a prisoner in the camp?
He was born there
He was born there, to two prisoners whom guards had allowed to marry as a reward for good work. Children of inmates counted as prisoners from birth.
Q 02How did Shin Dong-hyuk survive the electric fence that killed his fellow escapee from Camp 14, Park Yong Chul?
Crawled over his friend's body
Shin crawled over his friend's body after Park, first to the wires, was electrocuted and his weight dragged the bottom strand down to open a gap.
Q 03In Escape from Camp 14, what does Shin Dong-hyuk do after overhearing his mother and brother discuss fleeing?
Reports them to a guard
Shin reports them to a guard, as camp children were trained to do: the rules said any witness to an escape attempt who kept quiet would be shot.
Q 04Which animals did Camp 14 prisoners such as Shin Dong-hyuk catch and eat to ward off the deadly disease pellagra?
Rats
Rats supplied the protein and niacin missing from a diet of cabbage and gruel, and catching them became a passion for Shin, who roasted them on a grill at his school.
Q 05Which Steven Spielberg film has Camp 14 survivor Shin Dong-hyuk named as the one that moves him most?
Schindler's List
Schindler's List stands out for a man who says music stirs no emotion in him at all, while footage of the Holocaust moves him to tears.
Q 06To which former NBA star did Shin Dong-hyuk write an open letter in an American newspaper in December 2013?
Dennis Rodman
Dennis Rodman had travelled to North Korea several times as a self-declared friend for life of its leader, and the letter ran in an American newspaper that December.
Q 07In Escape from Camp 14, Shin Dong-hyuk loses part of a finger as punishment for dropping which valuable object?
A sewing machine
A sewing machine, in the book's telling, was worth more than a prisoner, so a foreman hacked off Shin's fingertip. In 2015 Shin said he had invented that story: guards had smashed the finger during torture.
Q 08In which city did Park Yong Chul, Shin Dong-hyuk's partner in the escape from Camp 14, say he had grown up?
Pyongyang
Pyongyang meant nothing to Shin, who had to ask where it was; Park explained that it was the capital, about 50 miles south of the camp, where the powerful lived.
Q 09Which American journalist, a veteran correspondent in Africa and Eastern Europe, wrote Escape from Camp 14?
Blaine Harden
Blaine Harden based the book on his interviews with Shin Dong-hyuk, and it was a finalist for the 2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Q 10In Escape from Camp 14, what event does Shin Dong-hyuk recall as his earliest memory, at about four years old?
A public execution
A public execution in a wheat field was compulsory viewing for thousands of prisoners, the one occasion when more than two inmates were allowed to gather.
Q 11Which American television journalist interviewed Shin Dong-hyuk about Camp 14 for CBS's 60 Minutes in December 2012?
Anderson Cooper
Anderson Cooper heard Shin say that if a time machine could take him back, he would apologise to his mother and brother.
Q 12What did a 2014 North Korean government video show that led Shin Dong-hyuk to revise parts of his Camp 14 story?
His father, still alive
His father, still alive, appeared on camera denying that Shin grew up in a prison camp; Shin had said he was dead, and read the film as a threat to keep quiet.
Q 13In August 2013 Shin Dong-hyuk gave hours of testimony to a commission of inquiry set up by which organisation?
The United Nations
Q 21Which shallow river on North Korea's north-eastern border with China did Shin Dong-hyuk cross on ice in January 2005?
Tumen
The Tumen was frozen and about a hundred yards wide where he crossed; the ice broke halfway over, soaking his shoes, and he finished on hands and knees.
Q 22In which Chinese city did a journalist meet Shin Dong-hyuk in a restaurant and take him to South Korea's consulate?
Shanghai
Shanghai was where the chance meeting won him asylum; once in South Korea he faced long questioning to rule out that he was a spy or an assassin.
Q 23Which American human rights group did Shin Dong-hyuk serve as an ambassador after moving to southern California?
Liberty in North Korea
The United Nations panel was its first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea, and one member called Shin the world's single strongest voice on the camps.
Q 14In which capital was Shin Dong-hyuk renting a small room when the author of Escape from Camp 14 interviewed him in 2008?
Seoul
Seoul was home after he was hospitalised with post-traumatic stress disorder; at that time he was the only known prison-camp escapee among South Korea's defectors.
Q 15Which North Korean leader established Camp 14 around 1959 for people judged politically unredeemable?
Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung, the country's founder, also decreed that a political offender's guilt should pass down through three generations of the family.
Q 16In Escape from Camp 14, which rare food does Shin Dong-hyuk's mother cook for his runaway brother, stirring his envy?
Rice
Rice was a luxury Shin had never been given at home; he guessed she had stolen it a few grains at a time, while his own supper had been the usual thin porridge.
Q 17In Escape from Camp 14, how is Shin Dong-hyuk's mother put to death while he and his father watch from the front?
Hanged on a gallows
Hanged on a gallows, she searched the crowd for her son and he refused to meet her eye; his brother was shot at a wooden post moments later.
Q 18Which of fellow prisoner Park Yong Chul's tales of life abroad did Shin Dong-hyuk keep begging to hear in Camp 14?
Meals he had eaten
Meals he had eaten, from chicken to pork and beef in China, Hong Kong and England, so delighted Shin that he made perhaps his first free choice: not to inform on Park.
Q 19Where was Shin Dong-hyuk badly burned as he squeezed through Camp 14's high-voltage fence on a mountain ridge?
His lower legs
His lower legs slipped onto the bottom wire and were burned from knee to ankle; he ran downhill for about two hours before noticing the blood on his trousers.
Q 20For which American newspaper did the author of Escape from Camp 14 work as a foreign correspondent for 28 years?
The Washington Post
The Washington Post sent him to Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, and in 2008 it ran his article on Shin that grew into the book.
Liberty in North Korea, known as LiNK, raises awareness of rights abuses and aids refugees from the country; Shin was its ambassador in California within four years of crossing into China.
Q 24According to Escape from Camp 14, why was the family of Shin Dong-hyuk's father first locked up in the camp?
His brothers fled south
His brothers fled south during the Korean War, which made the whole family guilty; Shin learned this from a file pushed across an interrogator's desk.
Q 25Before Camp 14, Shin Dong-hyuk's fellow escapee Park Yong Chul headed a training centre for which martial art?
Taekwondo
Taekwondo was even part of the escape plan: if guards caught the pair at the fence, Park was supposed to fight them off.
Q 26In Escape from Camp 14, what does the old cellmate who nurses the tortured Shin Dong-hyuk ask to be called?
Uncle
Uncle, a man of about 50 named Kim Jin Myung, rubbed salty cabbage soup into the boy's burns as a disinfectant and became the first person Shin ever trusted.
Q 27In Escape from Camp 14, which job does Shin Dong-hyuk hold before the garment factory and expect to keep for life?
Pig farming
Pig farming let him snack on cabbage and other vegetables and even sneak afternoon naps, so at 20 he believed the farm was where he would grow old.
Q 28In Escape from Camp 14, what offence gets a six-year-old classmate of Shin Dong-hyuk beaten to death by their teacher?
Hiding five kernels of corn
Hiding five kernels of corn broke the camp rule that anyone who stole or concealed food would be shot, and Shin recalls thinking the punishment was just.
Q 29What did Shin Dong-hyuk find in a farmer's shed after fleeing Camp 14 that let him pass as an ordinary North Korean?
A military uniform
A military uniform turned the runaway into one more ill-fed soldier, and in that disguise he later bribed his way through border checkpoints with crackers and cigarettes.
Q 30In Escape from Camp 14, what do Shin Dong-hyuk and thousands of fellow prisoners build on the Taedong river in 1998?
A hydroelectric dam
A hydroelectric dam rose largely by shovel, bucket and bare hands; when a flash flood swept away hundreds of workers and students that July, Shin was set to burying them.