Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

If you're like me, you see the title of a book about North Korea that reads "Nothing to Envy" and you think, "I'll say. Their lives really are nothing to envy." After all, these are people who spent the years 1989-1994 in a state of starvation while at the same time idolizing their leader Kim

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Il-Sung, whose policies brought the situation about. But if that's what you think is meant by the title, you'd be wrong. The laugh would be on you because "Nothing to Envy" is taken from the title of an anthem that every North Korean kindergarten student leans by heart:

"Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world.
Our house is within the embrace of the Worker's Party.
We are all brothers and sisters.
Even if a sea of fire comes toward us, sweet children do not need to be afraid,
Our father is here.
We have nothing to envy in the world."

Lovely Korean songs like this, or possibly a little ditty entitled 'Shoot the Yankee Bastards,'were part of a kindergartner's school curriculum.

Barbara Demick reveals the story of modern life in North Korea since the end of the Korean War by following the lives of several North Korean defectors. She gets into specifics that stun you into the realization that a country this backward is still in existence; a country where the people are actually gathering weeds and grass to eat because they have nothing else; where they must display a picture of Kim Il-Sung and his son, present ruler Kim Jong-Il on a wall in their home where nothing else is displayed except perhaps the state-provided cloth with which to wipe the frame; where children may not celebrate their own birthdays but, instead, must celebrate the birthdays of their illustrious leader and his son; and on and on. A people persecuted by the state, yet they continue to love their leaders. How to explain this?? They're not aware that anything better exists and that is just the way the state intends to keep it.

Heartbreaking, fascinating, frustrating, maddening, you'll find yourself cheering for these persecuted people whose human spirit triumphs over overwhelming adversity. Very highly recommended.

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This seemed like a timely choice of reading shortly after Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011. Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times journalist, has painted a harrowing picture of what life has been like in North Korea since the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic in 1948. Her

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narrative is based on interviews with several defectors from Chongjin, North Korea who told her their life stories and related the huge change in quality of life they experienced following Kim Il-sung's death in 1994. Up until then, everyone had a roof over their heads and sufficient food, but the famines of the 90s made what had been difficult living until then seem like ideal times. This novel was published in 2009, prior to Kim Jong-il's death of course, but of particular interest was the description of how the North Korean people reacted to the passing of Kim Il-sung, who had been considered as a god, due in no small part to the propaganda which is all-pervasive. It was easy to draw parallels between the images we saw in the news last month of grieving people in the capital. It was reported here that the images of grieving North Koreans had been staged, and descriptions of how people reacted to Kim Il-sung's death would seem to support this theory, but also explain the extent of the oppression of the North Korean regime on it's people. Fascinating, and of course, very troubling.

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This is an amazing and insightful book! As the North Korean government is once again in the news for attacks against South Korea, it couldn't have been published at a more opportune time. Who are the North Koreans? What do the civilians think about such attacks and about their government? How do

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they live and was the 1990s famine as bad as we were led to believe? Barbara Demick interviewed hundreds of defectors, mostly from the northern city of Chonjin to try and find the answers to these and dozens of other more homey questions.

I had just recently finished The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, when I picked up Nothing to Envy from the library. It was both a continuation of the military history and a corrollary: a continuation because the North and South Koreas are officially still at war, especially for the North; and a corrollary, because it offers a perspective of how everday citizens are taught about the war and what they think about South Koreans and the "Yankee imperialist bastards". Because I knew so little about the Korean War, it was helpful to me to have read the history first.

According to the defectors interviewed by Demick and the sources with which she tried to corroborate their stories, life in North Korea was not bad after the war ended. China and Russia provided raw materials, food, and technology, and North Korea soon had a stronger economy than South Korea. When the Communist bloc support ended, however, North Korea found herself politically isolated, economically bankrupt, and without a means to feed its population. What followed was the absolute collapse of social services, but not an end to the government's Stalin-esque control of society. When Kim Il-Sung died, things in many ways deteriorated more, because Kim Jong-Il cracked down on some of the black market economies that had kept people alive.

Demick focuses her book by following the lives of six main interviewees, including a girl's love for a boy from a higher social class, a female doctor, and a middle-aged Socialist believer who clings to her beliefs far longer than seems possible. The book ends with a look at their lives in South Korea as defectors. From first page to last, I was completely entralled by their lives and their perceptions of life in this last Communist dictatorship.

I would highly recommend this book.

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This is a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Demick is a journalist, I think currently for the LA Times, who wrote a series of articles based on interviews with North Korean defectors currently residing in South Korea. From these interviews she created this book, looking at the lives of 6

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North Koreans. This is such a fascinating and horrifying book. We've all heard a lot about the famine, sanctions, and antics of Kim Jong-il, but this puts a human face on all of the rhetoric. She manages to stay away from too much discussion of politics and focuses on the lives of average North Koreans. The lives of these six people and the things they've seen are horrifying. I've read books about other dictatorships, famines, wars, etc. but this is happening NOW. Pretty much the only way to have any inkling of what the average North Korean is going through right now is from these people who've gotten away, since no one else, not even aid workers, are allowed into the country with any amount of freedom. Demick does a great job of humanizing the issues but she doesn't try to say that everything is easy for these defectors after they make it to South Korea. There they face challenges of trying to get used to modern life and deal with the guilt of being somewhere safe with food to eat when they all left children (yes, their own children, some still young), parents, or siblings behind.

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Welcome to beautiful North Korea! Please stay on the designated path. When Demick started her research for this book, she tried interviewing people in North Korea but no one would speak with her (and for a very good reason). She cannily took another approach and tracked down dozens of defectors,

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mostly in South Korea and interviewed them extensively. She finally narrowed the group down to six individuals. She closely follows each of them as they tell their “stories”, growing up in a “closed society”, going through incredible hardships, the fears of everyday life and finally their difficult decision to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving their loved ones, including their children behind.
This is a brilliant and masterful peek into a country, we know very little about, giving us a better understanding of these fascinating and durable survivors. Highly recommended.

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I thought I knew a little about what life was like in North Korea before reading this. I'd seen years ago photos of a super highway with no cars on it, and a poster advertising the government permitted hairstyles. I had no idea that this was merely scratching the surface, and that most of the

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country remains in abject poverty. Like the years of the famine in the 1990s (2 million people died - I had no idea), as of 2010 people were still hiking out to the countryside to find grass and weeds to eat, with most people living in a constant state of starvation.

Having finished the book, my head is still trying to get around this, and moreover that the Western world allows this to go on. I wonder would things be different if it was a country rich in oil reserves...

North Korea, the ultimate closed state, was always going to be an interesting read, but I think Barbara Demick did a fantastic job with this book. By taking the lives of 6 defectors, she brought a human narrative to a non-fiction subject, and these 6 people became fascinating real life protagonists, with love stories and personal tragedies.

It's sad there's no happy ending to this book, and that if anything the country is declining further backwards.

4 stars for a fascinating and shocking read.

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Six-word review: Surviving in a starving Communist society.

Extended review:

When I read The Orphan Master's Son two months ago, I wondered how much of its depiction of life in North Korea was based in fact and how much of it was fanciful speculation. After reading Barbara Demick's vivid account of

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the lives of six defectors, supported by exhaustive journalistic research into the social, economic, and political environment they fled, I've concluded that Adam Johnson's novel embodies more truth than fiction. Even the clearly imaginative story elements appear to depict the truth in a way that trumps literalness.

However, the realities of life in a famine-ridden land where a person's efforts to subsist are seen as crimes against the state are even more extreme in the factual narrative than in the fiction.

Nothing to Envy is a window into a world so repressive that despite mountains of corroborating detail it is virtually impossible to imagine. State-controlled media promote idolatrous adoration of the godlike leader and deliver nonstop false reports that no one can counter. People don't dare to whisper the faintest hint of adverse opinion even in private; the most innocuous joke can get you sent away for life if it sounds to someone like a criticism of the leader. Anyone can be a spy, and denouncing one's neighbors is a routine fact of life.

The electrical grid is defunct and so homes, streets, and entire cities are dead dark at night. Starving people grind corncobs, bark, grass, and weeds to fend off death by malnutrition and its many complications. Sweethearts can't marry if the low status of one person's family could destroy the career aspirations of the other. Orphaned children roam the streets in rags and live by such desperate means as to make Oliver Twist's street life look like luxury. Bags of rice sent by the U.S. as humanitarian aid to the hungry people are confiscated and sold by the military even as America is condemned as the evil aggressor.

Among the people of this impoverished, aching nation there still remain true believers who trust that theirs is the best and happiest country in the world. "We have nothing to envy in the world," they sing, and they believe it. Or at least maintain such a perfect guard over themselves that no one can suspect otherwise.

A stirring moment of truth occurs when a young college student looks around at the blank faces of his classmates during an ideological lecture and realizes that he himself wears the same vacant expression--all revealing nothing, all concealing the same thing: the knowledge of the lie.

The collapse of North Korea's government was predicted not only by North Korea watchers and pundits but also by ordinary citizens even before the death of "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung and the installation of his son, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, in 1994. Yet still it hangs on. This book was published two years before the death of Kim Jong-il and the succession of his son Kim Jong-un. Author Demick does not offer any guesses about the future of this nation or its people. The stories that she tells are unfinished because they are those of real people who are still living. Nevertheless they offer an astonishing insight into the structure and character of a surpassingly alien society that sees us as the ultimate enemy.

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I know I'm late on the bandwagon for this book but if you like non-fiction at all, this is a superb book. I gave it 4 1/2 stars, but it was nearly 5 - the only thing I'd have liked more of near the end is about the role of the aid agencies, South Korea, and Western countries, and whether there's

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anything anyone can do.

Barbara Demick was the LA Times reporter based in Seoul from 2001 for a few years, and her book tells the stories of 6 North Koreans who defected. I found the first 60 pages of this quite slow, because it was so depressing that I wanted to put it down, but then it got so grim that I couldn't stop till I got to the part where her subjects start to escape - and I read the last 240 pages in one day.

Mentioning that they all escape isn't a spoiler - there is no way she could have spoken to them if they hadn't managed to leave. Anyone who gets a permit to visit Pyongyang has two minders and sees a version of North Korea that bears no resemblance to reality (but even the pretty-pretty version is awful enough). Even for those who get out, the endings aren't overwhelmingly happy - defectors often have trouble fitting in to South Korea and have to deal with guilt and shame for the rest of their lives, because anyone they leave behind in North Korea gets sent to a labour camp for the rest of their life.

Her six subjects really came alive during the book and the things they had to do to survive were ghastly, especially during the famine in the 1990s. One of the stories I'll remember next time I'm a bit sick of folding laundry is Oak-hee's. The paddocks were and still are fertilised with human excrement, and when she was a teenager every family in her apartment block had to produce a bucket of it a week and deliver it to a barn where they would receive a shit chit for their food rations. Oak Khee figured out that nobody was watching the full buckets of poo and would steal one and pass it off as her family's.

The stories about eating grass and weeds and corn husks (which seems to be the staple of most families) were terrible - every page had a new atrocity till they started to escape. *spoiler for those who've read it* And poor Mrs Song, the good-Communist-housewife of the book, whose will to return to Chongjin doesn't waver till she is fascinated by the electronic rice cooker in the house she's being hidden in over the border - I will have to tell my mother-in-law the story in December because she has a fancy rice cooker too! *end of spoiler*

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This book had a profound effect on me. Like many, I came to this book with little knowledge of North Korea, aside from what is on the news. And that's no accident, the country is highly secretive. This is what makes Demick's book so groundbreaking. By interviewing six defectors Demick is able to

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offer an unprecedented look into the lives ordinary people live in this communist dictatorship.

The stories in this book present a country where millions suffer from miserable deprivation. People are starving, reduced to eating grass and tree bark. Most of the country no longer has electricity. Pervasive malnutrition has collectively stunted the country's growth.

Meanwhile, the North Korean government offers a program of constant brainwashing, requiring constant supplication to the leadership. Detractors are sent to gulags, as are their relatives. The government practices a policy of "tainted blood," suggesting that any malcontent had tainted the blood of their family by three generations, meaning that grandparents and grandchildren are also undesirables needing eradication.

Demick's care and persistence in collecting these stories is admirable. Even more so is the courage of these North Koreans to tell their stories. Their families have faced retribution for their decision to leave. It is truly astonishing the level of isolation and brainwashing that the government has managed to accomplish. This is important reading for everyone. Such shocking human rights abuses must be made public.

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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy is a thoughtful and compelling journey through the real stories of six defectors from North Korea's totalitarian and improvised Stalinist regime. The book is made all the more powerful by Demick's ability to treat her material without excessive bias, likely a result

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of her "day job" as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. While it is true that the small group of defectors that Demick profiles don't have a lot of good things to say about the country they left behind, there is nonetheless a distinctive strain of nostalgia for the close camaraderie and sense of shared sacrifice that seems to have bonded these individuals while they were still resident in the Hermit Kingdom. Nonetheless, the dramatic differences between the decrepit north and the entrepreneurial south form a big part of this narrative, and Demick does a great job of profiling the unsettling experience of leaving the one for the other, and coming to terms with the fact that the government and the society that control the land of your birth are built upon a deceitful house of cards. All-in-all, a fascinating book delivered by a skilled writer.

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A confession: I've never had much interest in either North and South Korea. I picked up an old New Yorker Magazine and found an excerpt of this book and found it so riverting that I pedaled more and more slowly during my warm up and finally stopped exercising all together. The book chronicles the

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lives of six North Koreans during the time of the Great Strvation and how they managed to escape for new lives in South Korea. Any book written by a Westerner isn't going to have the insights of a citizen from Korea, and the author admits that she was a bit frustrated with her understandable inability to verify details from the survivors. And I wish the epilogue chronicling their new lives was longer. It is still, however, a riveting book.

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Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times' triumphantly successful 'Nothing to Envy' uncovers a romantically human side of North Korea and her disenchanted citizens. Surrounding six multifarious North Koreans' dramatic, decades-long oral histories are brilliantly told

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starting from humble, loyal beginnings to eventual controversial defection. This memorable documentation of ordinary citizens and their amazing survival through unspeakable danger and life-altering trauma is requesting only a receptive audience.

The reader gains a truly well-rounded viewpoint of the times from six different perspectives. From the propped-up and powdered Pyongyang façade to the gritty and industrial Chongjin rail yards, this overarching story starts in the homes of many ordinary citizens who survived countless obstacles growing up in the notoriously restrictive The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Some fortunate few were hand-picked to attend prestigious universities while others had practical duties to provide for their families any way possible. Others still, like homeless children infamously known as "kotjebi", wondered the streets in packs and stole to survive.

Among the personal anecdotes include a dumbfounded medical physician's practical denial of Kim Il-sung's 1994 death. Also, seemingly regardless of social class and family backgrounds, all eventually felt the squeezing grip of famine sweeping across the country in the late 1990s known as the Arduous March. It was through this increasingly inescapable reality that survival became paramount included any and all options; no matter how illegal or dangerous. Each story's journey is more astonishing than the last. Most satisfying is when the reader finds out what they have been up to since the original manuscript was constructed.

Demick's writing style evokes a pleasantly familiar tone. While reading, I drew respectable comparisons to John Hersey's groundbreaking classic 'Hiroshima'. Lo and behold, Demick was a student of Hersey's which makes 'Nothing to Envy' a successful nod of appreciation to his tutelage. Like Hiroshima, you'll find a similar chronological pacing of alternating narrators as well as develop a personal attachment to the people who tell their remarkable journey in amazing lucidity.

I can recommend this book without reservation as it will obviously appeal to human rights minders, North Korean experts looking for oral history reports, and a handful of academics interested in totalitarian dictatorships, wide-spread economic systems failure, and human trafficking. I also want to earnestly suggest this book for the intimate character-driven narratives that appeal to any and all. You feel for this people. You realize that they are no different than any other ordinary people born into extraordinary circumstances. Some were disillusioned with their government from the get-go while others were staunch supporters of their ideology. For better or for worse, their sincere stories are unabashedly told here.

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This is a moving, tragic and sometimes horrifying story of the lives of a number of North Koreans who managed to leave the country. The oppression of life there and the overwhelming presence of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in every facet of life is choking and stifling even to read about. The

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stories of suffering in the famine of the 1990s are especially heart rending. Freedom is so long in coming there and there is no dissident movement as there was in the USSR and Eastern Europe, due to this overwhelming oppression. Arguably never before in human history has there been a society for which the word totalitarian was a more apt description.

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Ever since North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, I realized I knew little about that country.  I had visited South Korea twice in the late 1980's and enjoyed the energy and unbridled enthusiasm for capitalism that I saw, but North Korea remained a mystery.

Barbara

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Demick, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, was assigned to Korea for several years, and found the North Korean enigma difficult to crack.  Unable to get any North Koreans to talk to her, she changed tactics and located defectors from North Korea who had managed to escape to safety in South Korea.  Her stories of the famine, the lack of work, electricity, transportation, clothing, basic health and opportunity, the lack of color and culture, the terror felt by ordinary citizens about anything and everything, the flourishing black market, the absolute lack of trust in anyone and the total control of "the party" over every phase of  everyday life painted a very clear but bleak picture of the lives of North Koreans from the end of the Korean War to the present.

She has chosen six different people to follow from their younger days in North Korea to their now settled lives in the south.  Their stories of escape, capture, imprisonment, and final flight to safety through China was every bit as engrossing as the first part of the stories when we see how utterly awful life was for people with no hope.  By detailing the process of repatriation to the south, through de-briefing, and a forced enculturation experience we are able to see how totally deprived the people of the north were. In the north, where most had never seen a telephone, they had no mail service, books, very little transportation, no writing paper, and basic hygiene articles were not easy to acquire.  Even a top engineering school graduate had never used the Internet before he was able to escape to the south.  Radio and TV (when electricity was available) was limited to a few pre-set and government approved channels.

This is not a pretty or easy book to read. It is gut-wrenching, appalling, and frightening.  It is also totally engrossing, and for me at least, very enlightening.  I was so anxious to read it that I grabbed the audio book that was available at the library.  I do intend though to get the print version, because there are illustrations that should enhance my mental picture of this 5 star report.

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It has been obvious for decades that the North Korean regime was a criminal organization, killing millions through a combination of stupidity, corruption, incompetence and unconstrained lusts for power. This book puts a human face on that murderous regime. The impact of the Kim family will be felt

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for generations, even once they are brought to their bloody and deserved end, as the victimized millions of North Korea attempt to regain civilization. It was hard for the European communist citizens to regain civil society - hasn't happened yet in Russia and other places. It will be so much harder in North Korea where normal human feeling has been turned on its head, and barbarism is encouraged by the State. Thank you Barbara Demick for writing this book.

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An infuriating, fascinating encounter with daily existence in North Korea in a city far from the capital, through the first-hand stories of six North Koreans from different walks of life. Based on facts gleaned from numerous defectors and extensive interviews with the main subjects, all of whom

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defected to South Korea, the book reads more like a dystopian novel than journalism, but maybe that's the only way to write about this strange, hermetically-sealed society.

It's heart-wrenching to read not just about cradle-to-early-grave propaganda and famine, but the small details of life, in which a courtship can continue for three years before the couple even dares to hold hands, for fear of the political consequences of their relationship, or a joke about shoes can land someone in a labor camp.

Who knows what the truth is about life in North Korea? But the author did an admirable job in trying to discover the truth, and present it without sensationalism. As one of the subjects stated, when he finally read "1984" after defecting, "Orwell had an incredible understanding of life in North Korea." No need to read dystopian novels, when you can read a lovingly-researched, beautifully written account of the real thing.

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Fascinating and horrific. Demmick writes in simple journalistic prose (somewhat reminiscent of John Howard) about several North Koreans who eventually defect from a totalitarian land of chronic malnutrition and paranoia.

This is an outstanding book for someone wishing to have some insight into this isolated and introverted country. To interview those that defected from the same city was a masterstroke, allowing a picture to be built from the various stories that they had to tell. This is journalism at its finest,

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and should be commended in both its interest and its depth.

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this book is fascinating and very well researched. Barbara Demick is an excellent author. A thoroughly good read, highly recommended.

Nothing to Envy as an absolutely riveting account of ordinary life in North Korea over the past decades, interspersed with general historical contextualization.

Most of the material for the book comes from extensive interviews with six North Korean defectors, all originally from the same northern

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city of Chongjin, now living in Seoul. The people selected span a variety of ages and backgrounds, giving a fairly broad cross-section of society (to the extent that it exists in North Korea). Demick alternates between stories to present a more or less chronological narrative of their lives, giving broader context when appropriate. It's absolutely riveting. The small, human-scale details are really the exceptional part here. It's one thing to read about the horrific famine of the 1990s when millions starved -- it's another to actually read about what people ate, and about the disbelief with which North Koreans regarded the rumors that even farmers in China had rice to eat three times a day -- they hadn't seen rice in years! (One of the most poignant moments for me was when one of the defectors, just across the Chinese border, looked uncomprehendingly at a bowl of rice set outside -- she couldn't figure out why anyone would leave rice just sitting out. She figured it out when she heard the dog bark.)

As the book moves on, and conditions get worse, even the people who were originally loyal true believers -- one of the women interviewed had been a local enforcer for the regime, and was genuinely aghast when she once accidentally left the house without her mandatory Kim Il-Sung pin -- begin to doubt what they've been told; when the situation was so bad that anyone who did what the regime said would end up starving to death, threats held little power and only people willing to act on their own in some way would survive. The spark of disbelief was sometimes extremely small; in one case that was mentioned, not one of the interviewees, a propoganda photo of an "oppressed" striking worker in South Korea did the trick; the man had a jacket with a zipper and a ballpoint pen, either of which would have been luxuries in the north.

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Nothing to Envy is an eye-opening, jaw-dropping look at the people of North Korea. Indoctrinated from birth to believe that they live in the greatest country in the world with the greatest, most benevolent leader, the truth is that North Koreans live under totalitarian control in one of the

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poorest, most technologically backward countries in the world. In this book you will meet six people who, for one reason or another decide to leave North Korea: A school teacher who watches her kindergartners die of starvation; A student whose intellectual curiosity leads him to listen illegally to South Korean radio; A doctor who can't treat her patients for lack of basic necessities like bandages and medicine; An abused wife who must sacrifice her children and her traditional mother who has already lost half her family to starvation; and a homeless teenage boy who's willing to try anything to make money. I was alternately amazed and outraged by the conditions of life in North Korea - the infrastructure is crumbling, the people are starving, there's no electricity or gasoline. The average 17 year old North Korean boy is 5 inches shorter than his counterpart in South Korea due to malnutrition. Worse still are the human rights atrocities committed. Author Barbara Demick explains that the North Koreans have nearly as many words for prison as the Inuit do for snow. You can be sent to prison for making a joke about Kim Jong-Il's height, traveling without a permit, taking a day off work or for buying food on the black market People are encouraged to snitch on their neighbors and punished if they don't. All communication outside of the country is forbidden.

In addition to being well researched, this book puts a human face on the tragedy that is occurring in North Korea. I highly recommend it.

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What do you picture when you read a headline about North Korea? Until I read this book, I pretty much only knew the name and face of the eccentric leader Kim Jong-Il. This book provided the context for me to understand what daily life is for North Koreans, and what they've gone through in recent

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decades in the world's last stronghold of communism. The author follows 6 individuals and their families through their struggle to survive a regime that has dragged its people through famine, censorship and propaganda, and one of the worst human rights records in the world. The North Korean government does an excellent job of convincing its citizens that, despite the neverending lack of food, clothing, and development, they are actually better off than the majority of the world, particularly South Korea (hence the title, 'Nothing to Envy'). Scarce national resources go to develop nuclear weapons rather than basic human aid. Punishment for crimes like listening to foreign radio or attempting to defect target not just the individual, but their entire extended families, who may simply disappear in the night, possibly sent to Soviet-style gulags. These realities are told through the eyes of an elite student, a young kindergarten teacher, a middle-aged mother, a pediatrician, and others-- all of who at some point realized that their country has betrayed them and choose the dangerous path of defecting to South Korea. I couldn't put this book down, but more importantly, I have finished it with a better knowledge of the state of affairs in this remote corner of Asia.

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Barbara Demick, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times who spent years interviewing defectors from North Korea (and who managed to make trips into the country itself), tells the stories of 6 defectors, while at the same time giving the reader a detailed and harrowing picture of what it is like to

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live in a totalitarian state. While it is obvious that the six main people make it to South Korea (otherwise, how would Demick have gotten their stories?), the grueling experiences most of them went through during the famine of the 90's and the general goings-on of the dictatorship was enough to keep me horrified and engaged in the book. It was really interesting to read each of their stories; how they came to realize the lies their government has been telling them, and the choice they made to defect.

I of course know that North Korea is ruled by an oppressive dictator (and has been for decades), but I had no idea what everyday life was like for these people, and how many of them accepted their situations and even viewed North Korea as the greatest country on Earth. I can't imagine how it must have been for people when they realized how stuck in the past their country actually was, and how horrible their way of life is compared to other countries. It amazes me that one regime can tell so many lies and keep their people in the dark. It really made me realize how much I take for granted as a white American. Demick provided many resources that she used when writing this book, and I am anxious to get my hands on a few books and articles that she cited.

This book was published in 2009. I would love it if Demick revisited this book, providing updates on the people she interviewed, as well as the state of North Korea since Kim Jong-un took over. Reading this book awakened a great interest in North Korea and its people. I highly recommend this book to all.

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This deeply affecting book follows the lives of six people who lived in the same town North Korea through the famine of the 1990s, and ended up defecting to South Korea in the 2000s. It told about their lives, struggles, and how they ended up losing faith in the regime and escaping.

-a young woman

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and her boyfriend, who defected separately without telling each other because it was too dangerous to even discuss that neither of them believed in the regime. The story of these star-crossed lovers was so heartbreaking it could have been fictional, but it wasn't.

-a hardworking mom who loved the Dear Leader and believed strongly in everything the Party told her until most of her family starved to death.

-this woman's daughter, who never quite believed in the regime and sold herself as a bride to a Chinese farmer to escape.

-a homeless orphan who did time in a prison camp for smuggling things to China to survive.

-a young female pediatrician, disillusioned because she had no way to treat all the starving children who came to the clinic.

This book was so fascinating because it provides a rare glimpse into this place so cut off from the rest of the world. It’s frightening to realize that this place exists in this day and age, and there are still millions of people living there, starving to death. They are required to have portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung in their home and dust them every day. Their TV dials are welded in place to only show the party channel. It’s like East Germany, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, or modern-day Belarus or Iran. It’s like living in 1984, but it’s real. This book was a really great way to learn about the past and present of this sad, scary place.

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