Shin Dong Hyuk

Michael C. Walker

Amish-born, country farmhand; Spirited Journeyman and Life Adventurer; Technologist and Computer Scientist
b. 1994

Falling through the endless blue sky, the rush of wind against his cheeks, Michael Walker finally felt he was living the life he wanted. He’d long craved speed, and here he was, hurtling toward the earth, miles of blissful air between him and the ground. It was an extraordinary leap of freedom for a young man born to a family of strict rules and beliefs. Amish boys don’t get into airplanes. They certainly don’t dive from them. “Going up two miles into the air and then jumping out of the plane was really scary,” he said, “but I took faith that everything would be okay.” It had been only a few years since Walker left everything behind to chase his dreams, and in some ways, he was still in freefall. But he’d never doubted his decision to jump. His fascination with the technology so forbidden by his upbringing had become his calling—“I felt,” he said, “like I couldn’t live without it.” Walker was born in Apple Creek, a small village in northeastern Ohio with a sizable Amish population. His mother died when he was just 11, leaving Walker’s father to raise his four sons and two daughters on his own. The family was part of the Swartzentruber Amish, one of the most conservative and best-known subgroups of Old Order Amish, recognized by their plain dress and strict avoidance of modern technology. It’s their belief that one honors God through a simple life, free from the distractions of signs, symbols and artifacts of the English, or non-Amish, secular world. Walker spent his youth toiling away on the family farm, rising with the sun to milk the cows and feed the horses. He mucked stalls and repaired broken fences. During harvesting season, he could spend 14 hours a day husking and piling corn. The work was mundane and exhausting. Walker yearned for more—something faster, louder. He found himself infatuated with his neighbor’s radio. “It just intrigued me,” he said, “how something that small can make that sound.” Radios, of course, were forbidden in his world. The Swartzentruber Amish avoid not only cars, telephones and computers, but also most electricity and indoor plumbing. They dress in browns and grays and frown on lavish, worldly colors. They stop attending school after the eighth grade. Walker would listen to his father loudly and forcefully proclaim that both higher education and technology were the tools of the devil—distractions and temptations to stop doing less physical labor and less dutiful reverence to the Lord. But Walker couldn’t fight this temptation. He inched his way toward the banned devices until he was able to get one of his own. “A radio was the first thing that I could really get cheap,” he said. “I was able to go to a thrift store and buy it for like $8. It was an old clock. It was like a fortune to me.” Slowly he began to collect his new, taboo treasures, squirreling them away beneath his mattress and bed sheets where his father wouldn’t find them. He purchased a CD player so he could listen to popular music—back then, Katy Perry and Alan Jackson were particular favorites. He saved up to buy a phone. He watched television at a neighbor’s house. He pretended to be Amish until he no longer could. One Saturday, a few months before he turned 18, he told his brothers and sisters he was leaving. That spring day, he stepped away from the farm and into an exciting, unsettling world. It is not unheard of for young Amish men and women to flee their communities. Some subgroups observe a rite of passage called rumspringa, where adolescent misbehavior, including time spent in the English world, is overlooked rather than harshly condemned. While Walker was the first of his siblings to leave, even his father had stepped away from the community as a young man, returning when he found little of interest and substance out there. But for Walker, there would be no turning back. His eyes were opened by the English world. He landed a job working in a large furniture company that employed hundreds of ex-Amish and English workers, and while it was a grind, he was used to that. His new life traded buggies for cars, and he marveled at how he could arrive at his destination in minutes, a far cry from the hours it took to prepare and ride a horse and buggy for a three-mile trip. He felt exhilarated moving at this new speed. Still, he wanted more. His job at the furniture store barely covered the bills, and his options for advancement were limited by his eighth grade education. He decided his next step would be to earn his GED, and “what I noticed is that I felt so fulfilled,” he said. “Up until I started the GED, I was down. I didn’t have a lot of work—sometimes only two days a week, which doesn’t really pay the bills. College felt more doable after I noticed how well it went with the GED.” Furthering his education and working toward a dream job suddenly felt within his grasp. Walker applied for federal student aid at Columbus State Community College but was told that, to move forward, he would need an income statement from his father. In the Amish community, the father-son relationship is a sacred bond. Anything or anyone that gets in the way is viewed as demonic in nature and must be extracted from the family and community. Any violation is met with zero tolerance. No choice, no mercy, no forgiveness—there is no going back. Walker had been the one to sever that bond, and now he had proof of his punishment. He reached out to his father, “and he basically told me that he wouldn’t do it,” he said. “And I shouldn’t bother coming back.” As a boy, Walker often found himself wounded and angry over his father’s intolerance of his interests and curiosities, numbed by the harsh tone and relentless edicts. But the years had softened the impact. In time, he’d grow to take on a more forgiving, even appreciative view of his father’s choices. “I know it sounds really strange to say, but I think it was good he disowned me in the long run,” he said. “That was a big turning point. Even though I was English and he was Amish, I still kind of felt like I owed him for raising me and everything. Him disowning me pretty much threw that out the door. It canceled the debt.” Walker got the loan without his father’s help. He powered through community college. It turned out his Amish education had prepared him for even rigorous college classes. He graduated with an associate degree and enrolled at The Ohio State University, where the young man who was once forbidden to use a radio decided to major in computer information science. He also took an elective course in skydiving because it scared him. The first time Walker got in an airplane, he jumped from it. “I had never actually flown before,” he said. “I didn’t really know how I would feel. I was unsure how I would react. And everything was OK. It was one of the greatest experiences that I had ever had.” In 2020, he graduated from Ohio State, accepted a job as a software developer and was promoted within five months. He rented a small apartment a few miles from his job to save up for his own house—one that, unlike his childhood home, will include electricity and indoor plumbing. The farm is far behind him. Walker’s story is a complicated, difficult one. He had to sacrifice everything he knew to become the man he is today. He’s had to wrestle with the loneliness and isolation that so often accompanies a journey of self-reflection and discovery. And he’s had to come to terms with the principled man whose actions are dictated by the tenants of a strict, rule-bound culture — his father. “I could not treasure what I learned from my father, or who he has been for me, when I was seeing him only from a point of bitterness,” Walker said. “When I changed my lens to a more appreciative stance, to what we had in common and what I have learned from him—even reluctantly— I could begin to recognize his genuine goodness in the midst of our prickly past. Today, I can see a more fully formed, fleshed-out father, not just a narrowly sketched out farmer with a rule book. It’s hard to do all this, but it’s been liberating for me.” If you find yourself in a world where you don’t feel like you belong, think of Michael Walker’s journey. Think of his father’s. Listen to that voice inside you, and make a choice. You can either stay and find your place—or take that terrifying, freeing leap.

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Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean prisoner, raised in Camp 14 for 24 years from birth, is one of the very few who escaped from horrific conditions deep in the backcountry of this primitive, hostile communist state. His beloved wife, an American friend turned soulmate, was our translator. Now, both living in Denver, CO, Dong-huk and his wife are committed to running an active human rights campaign, in part, to free his father and others from the same prison in which he was raised.

Communist Internment Camp Prisoner, Human Rights Advocate

Shin Dong Hyuk

Communist Internment Camp Prisoner, Human Rights Advocate

Shin Dong-hyuk escaped from the infamous North Korean Camp 14 in 2005, when he was 24 and became a human rights advocate and critic of the North Korean regime.

Dong-hyuk’s upbringing can only be described as traumatic, growing up in Camp 14 and similar camps. “The moment I opened my eyes and could really think for myself, I already considered myself just as an animal who needed to live my life as a slave. I had no other concept around me. I literally didn’t know if I was living in a good place or a bad place. I didn’t know that it was wrong, I knew nothing but my life as a prisoner,” Shin explained.

While in Camp 14, Shin had to endure beatings, starvation, and psychological torture. Even his biological parents did not serve in a parental role. “At the end of the day, they were just fellow inmates. It’s not like they had a chance to sit down and guide me or give me any kind of advice.

“I can’t think of them, that I necessarily really learned from them,” Dong-hyuk continued. “We were not even allowed to share emotions or use expressions that were caring or loving. We didn’t have this concept of family, there was really no notion of my parents at that time inside of that kind of circumstance. You don’t have a sense of family because you were born in a circumstance where they are fellow inmates. They didn’t even have the opportunity to share any type of emotions towards me. So, unfortunately, at that time I didn’t have a whole lot of emotion.”

As laborers, Dong-hyuk said, “All of us prisoners had a quota to meet during work hours. There would be certain requirements on how much work we were supposed to do. We would have to think of something to say that I should’ve done better or think of something to say that I could have improved on. The guards always want to hear you calling out your peers, whether it be your mother, brother, or fellow prisoners. So, you would try really hard to come up with something to snitch on the other person even if it didn’t exist. You really want to try and make it seem like you were paying attention because, you’re required to report on people if they are lacking in some area. You basically say what they want to hear and ultimately, they’ll say, ‘Okay, so-and-so gets another scoop’ of whatever distasteful thing that they’re serving or, ‘We’re satisfied with what we heard, here’s another slap of mush for you.’ It’s pretty unfortunate, but literally our whole purpose was to do anything we could to get on their good side. Any chance we got to tell on somebody else, we would, just to make ourselves look a little bit better.”

Dong-hyuk has told journalists that he unknowingly gave information to guards that led to the public execution of his mother and brother. After watching them die, Dong-hyuk plotted to escape Camp 14 with a fellow prisoner. “A really smart person wouldn’t even attempt to escape. Someone who had common sense wouldn’t even think to attempt it, because all you’re trying to do is survive day-to-day, under the continued watchful eye of prison guards. You already know better than to even let that cross your mind. So, in a way, it was because I was so dumb that I thought I could try,” he said. “But I did have the desire to just go across this fence, to just get across and see what it’s like over the fence and maybe I can have a full stomach for once in my life. Maybe, just thoughts like that were a part of the reason. Obviously, there was a higher probability of dying crossing that electric fence successfully. All my life, my 24 years, I had seen and witnessed countless executions in front of me from the moment I was a little boy. I know very well that a lot of those executions were due to individuals who either attempted, talked about, thought about, or tried escaping.”

“There was one other person who was trying to escape with me,” Dong-hyuk recalled. “As we approached the electric fence, he either got to it faster or fell on it, but he got electrocuted first and his body kind of made an opening. I was just lucky to get through. I still had gotten a little electrocuted on my shins, but it was luck, really. Although the other man fell on the wires before me, I still got the electrocution on both of legs and they were bleeding, but I went through, and I kept running.”

Dong-hyuk had focused on freedom his entire life. “There was something I really envied for 24 years of my life living there—I really used to envy the birds that could just fly in and out of the camp. They were just so free to fly anywhere.” The birds were the first hint at the possibility of freedom for Dong-hyuk.

When he finally was free, however, he had trouble adjusting to new thoughts. “When I lived in the prison camp, I never considered myself to have any type of potential or gifts. After ten years of living in freedom, little by little, I started to realize that I do have potential and abilities,” he said. “I had so many years of my life without love or happiness, or the notion of love and happiness. I had so many years where I thought it was hard to really wrap my head around these feelings I was feeling and comprehend these emotions I was dealing with. Even right now, I am struggling to find myself, day-to-day still learning how to cope with these emotions good or bad.”

Now that Dong-hyuk is married and settled in a free and safe nation-state, he has had the opportunity to meet many other people, from different cultures and upbringings. These experiences have made him realize the resilience of the human spirit and see potential in himself and in others. “As I lived in South Korea and traveled the U.S., I noticed that there were quite a few young individuals with potential who would give up so easily or just didn’t have the resilience that I felt like they should really have, as humans all have resilience. I felt like sometimes they lacked that kind of resilience.” But sometimes they need something more. “I can truly say without a doubt that I believe in miracles. My life is a miracle,” Shin said. “If I could do anything to improve somebody’s life or give hope then, I will be content with that alone.”

He became the first home-grown, fully raised North Korean internment detainee to ever escape. Jumping over his dead, electrocuted campmate to get to the other side of the live fence, and then running while partially electrocuted himself through a mountain pass to China beyond to freedom was an amazing accomplishment.

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Michael C. Walker

Shin Dong Hyuk

Shin Dong Hyuk

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