Blaine Harden

Documents the rise of Kim Il Sung, the origins of North Korea's anti-American stance and the daring theft of a Soviet MiG-15 warplane to benefit the United States by fighter pilot No Kum Sok. By the New York Times best-selling author of Escape From Camp 14.

The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

Now with a new foreword by the author. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in the early 1980s inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. Located about 55 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. A gripping, terrifying memoir with a searing sense of place, ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14 will unlock, through Shin, a dark and secret nation, taking readers to a place they have never before been allowed to go. 'This is a story unlike any other' Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea A major documentary film.

One man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West

Escape from Camp 14

Fuga dal campo 14

Twenty-six years ago, Shin Dong-hyuk was born inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. This is the gripping, terrifying story of his escape from this no-exit prison-- to freedom in South Korea.

Побег из лагеря смерти

In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was stationed on Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After three months' training he was sent to Korea, then a backwater largely beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific Command. Nichols quickly insinuated himself into the affections of South Korea's first president, Syngman Rhee, and became a key player in the American war effort. Harden traces Nichols's rise and ruin-- and in doing so explains the history of our foreign policy mess with North Korea.

The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea

King of Spies

Nord-Korea har mellom 150 000 og 200 000 politiske fanger. Veldig få som er født og oppvokst i disse leirene har greid å flykte. Men det gjorde Shin Dong-hyuk. I denne boken forteller journalisten Blaine Harden historien om hans fangenskap og forbløffende flukt. Gjennom beretningen får vi et innblikk i de hemmelige fengslene i verdens mest totalitære stat. Shin visste ingenting om det sivile livet utenfor murene. Han betraktet sin mor som en motstander i kampen om maten, vaktene oppdro ham til å bli en tyster og han var vitne til henrettelsen av sin egen familie.

en beretning fra Nord-Korea

Flukten fra leir 14

The powerful and the powerless are here in dramatic narratives that explain a land swept up in change, lurching between an unworkable Western present and a collapsing African past. By focusing on individuals, Blaine Harden uncovers an Africa that endures behond the sum of its statistics.

Dispatches from a Fragile Continent

Africa

incredibila odisee a unui om din Coreea de Nord până în lumea liberă

Evadare din Lagărul 14

Flykten från läger 14 är den första inifrånskildringen av ett nordkoreanskt arbetsläger eller koncentrationsläger. Det är också den första berättelsen om någon som har rymt ur ett sådant läger.↵↵Shin Dong-huyk föddes i lägret 1982 och kände inte till något annat än den värld som fanns innanför det elektriska taggtrådsstängslet. Han föddes inspärrad och under de första tjugo åren av sitt liv svälte han, torterades och underkastades alla koncentrationslägrets fasor tills den dag han lyckades fly och fann en helt okänd värld utanför taggtråden.↵↵I Flykten från läger 14 berättar journalisten Blaine Harden om Shins ofattbara livsöde och resa, och visar för första gången vilka ohyggligheter som äger rum i fånglägren. Man räknar med att det i dag sitter uppemot 200 000 fångar i dessa läger, dömda som motståndare til regimen. I Nordkorea är man skyldig i tre generationer för sådana brott, riktade mot landets idé och ledning. Blaine Harden sätter strålkastarljuset på den ljusskygga och totalitära regim som vi vet relativt lite om, som resten av världen fruktar eller blundar för.

Den dramatiska rymningen från ett nordkoreanskt fångläger

Flykten från Läger 14

The New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Camp 14 returns with the untold story of one of the most powerful spies in American history, shedding new light on the U.S. role in the Korean War, and its legacy In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, then a backwater beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific Command. Though he lacked the pedigree of most U.S. spies—Nichols was a 7th grade dropout—he quickly metamorphosed from army mechanic to black ops phenomenon. He insinuated himself into the affections of America’s chosen puppet in South Korea, President Syngman Rhee, and became a pivotal player in the Korean War, warning months in advance about the North Korean invasion, breaking enemy codes, and identifying most of the targets destroyed by American bombs in North Korea. But Nichols's triumphs had a dark side. Immersed in a world of torture and beheadings, he became a spymaster with his own secret base, his own covert army, and his own rules. He recruited agents from refugee camps and prisons, sending many to their deaths on reckless missions. His closeness to Rhee meant that he witnessed—and did nothing to stop or even report—the slaughter of tens of thousands of South Korean civilians in anticommunist purges. Nichols’s clandestine reign lasted for an astounding eleven years. In this riveting book, Blaine Harden traces Nichols's unlikely rise and tragic ruin, from his birth in an operatically dysfunctional family in New Jersey to his sordid postwar decline, which began when the U.S. military sacked him in Korea, sent him to an air force psych ward in Florida, and subjected him—against his will—to months of electroshock therapy. But King of Spies is not just the story of one American spy. It is a groundbreaking work of narrative history that—at a time when North Korea is threatening the United States with long-range nuclear missiles—explains the origins of an intractable foreign policy mess.

The Dark Reign of an American Spymaster

"Superbly reported and written with clarity, insight, and great skill." —Washington Post Book World After two decades, Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden returned to his small-town birthplace in the Pacific Northwest to follow the rise and fall of the West’s most thoroughly conquered river. To explore the Columbia River and befriend those who collaborated in its destruction, he traveled on a monstrous freight barge sailing west from Idaho to the Grand Coulee Dam, the site of the river’s harnessing for the sake of jobs, electricity, and irrigation. A River Lost is a searing personal narrative of rediscovery joined with a narrative of exploitation: of Native Americans, of endangered salmon, of nuclear waste, and of a once-wild river. Updated throughout, this edition features a new foreword and afterword.

A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Revised and Updated)

Ein erschütternder Bericht aus der Hölle Nordkorea Das diktatorisch regierte Nordkorea ist fast völlig isoliert, aggressiv und bettelarm. Und es hält rund 150.000 seiner Bürger in Lagern gefangen, die vergleichbar sind mit NS-Konzentrationslagern oder dem Gulag. Da die Lager seit Jahrzehnten existieren, gibt es inzwischen Tausende, die dort aufgewachsen sind. Einer von ihnen ist Shin Dong-hyuk. Blaine Harden erzählt die Geschichte des 1982 im sogenannten Lager 14 geborenen Shin, der bis zu seiner Flucht nie etwas anderes kennengelernt hatte als die grausame und primitive Lagerwelt. Menschlichkeit, Vertrauen, Wärme, Zuneigung und jegliche Errungenschaften der Zivilisation waren ihm unbekannt, Hunger, Misstrauen und brutale Züchtigungen hingegen Alltag. Shins Zeugenbericht gibt einen tiefen Einblick in die unmenschlichen Lebensverhältnisse, die in dieser Lagerhölle herrschen, und schildert das berührende Schicksal eines jungen Mannes, dem wie durch ein Wunder die Flucht in die Freiheit gelang.

Die Geschichte des Shin Dong-hyuk, der im nordkoreanischen Gulag geboren wurde und entkam - Ein SPIEGEL-Buch

Flucht aus Lager 14

"Elucidating, captivating...Murder at the Mission is narrative history at its very best.” —Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder "A riveting investigation of both American myth-making and the real history that lies beneath.” –Claudio Saunt, author of the National Book Award finalist Unworthy Republic From New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, a riveting and revealing 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 West In 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.

A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West

Murder at the Mission

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 America's 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 11 years, the U.S. military decided to end Nichols's 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 . . . PRAISE FOR KING OF SPIES "A good yarn and a timely one" Washington Post "An engrossing hidden history of wartime espionage, with elements of derring-do and moral barbarity....Fascinating." Kirkus Review

Kim Il-sung, Eeuwige President van de Republiek Noord-Korea, grondlegger van de Kim-dynastie en schepper van een allesdoordringende persoonsverheerlijking, regeerde de natie met autocratische hand. Hij geldt als een megalomane Sovjetmarionet die zijn land in een verschrikkelijke oorlog met de Verenigde Staten stortte. Terwijl Kim Il-sung zich de status van goddelijk heerser aanmat, was er één jonge luitenant in de Noord-Koreaanse luchtmacht die zich niets van de Grote Leider aantrok. Jarenlang veinsde MiG-piloot No Kum-sok liefde voor Kim Il-sung, totdat hij kans zag aan de ijzeren greep van de dictator te ontsnappen. Hij vluchtte met een gestolen jachtvliegtuig naar Zuid-Korea, waar hij het toestel overdroeg aan de Amerikanen en asiel kreeg. De vlucht van No Kum-sok joeg een schok door de wereld en zette Kim Il-sung aan tot een bloedige wraak. Op basis van nieuwe documenten uit Chinese, Russische en Amerikaanse archieven reconstrueert Blaine Harden een razend spannend ontsnappingsverhaal, dat een verrassende nieuwe kijk geeft op de langstlevende totalitaire staat ter wereld.

de spectaculaire ontsnapping van een jonge Noord-Koreaan aan dictator Kim Il-sung

De Grote Leider en de straaljagerpiloot

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 America's 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 Nichols's 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 . . .

Blaine Harden

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