A fascinating page-turner of an ebook with stories of the defectors that the author interviewed over time. The stories were especially focused on the famine of the 1990s, a period I knew about only vaguely.

Apparently, much of the country’s fuel and food had been donated by the Soviet Union and China for years. When the Soviet Union collapsed in ~1991, and China entered a semi-capitalist period and wanted to do business with South Korea, North Korea’s donated fuel and food suddenly stopped coming. With no fuel and almost no electricity, the factories stopped operating. Many went to work every day with nothing to do at the job and no pay. Many died of malnutrition and disease at home and on the streets, while many others risked arrest by selling their few belongings and food from their gardens, etc.

When the Dear Leader Kim Il Sung died in 1994, there was mass mourning, except for a few brave souls who only pretended to cry, for their own safety. His son, Kim Jung Il, continued the oppression, imprisoning anyone who tried to escape.

The book includes some important history, but mainly personal drama that reflects the lives lived through that history, and includes the many challenges defectors face in South Korea and elsewhere, such as in China.

The book was published in 2009. Kim Jung Il died in 2011. The Afterword in the ebook updates the history to ~2022 to include Kim Jung Un, Trump, and the pandemic.

Highly recommended! ( )

An exploration of life in North Korea between the 1980s and roughly 2010, through a group biography of six people from the city of Chongjin who survived the famine and managed to escape to South Korea. It's an engrossing read which shows just how much an already hardscrabble life became ever more brutal as the North Korean economy spiralled ever further downwards in the '90s. There are moments of great brutality and also humanity here, as people sometimes help one another and something hurt one another.

The closed nature of North Korean society means that Barbara Demick has limited capacity to verify the accounts of her subjects, and of course it's questionable how much these interviewees—who are atypical in many ways as people with the drive and connections to get themselves over the border; far fewer people are able to defect each year from the North than were for example from East to West Germany—are representative of more general Northern Korean attitudes towards the Kim regime. I'd be fascinated to read an updated edition of this book with a follow up look at the six subjects and what life is like under Kim Jong Un. ( )

Journalist Barbara Demick has compiled her interviews with North Korean defectors living in South Korea to paint a picture of what it was like to live in this notoriously secluded communist nation following the Korean Civil War. The human toll of the famine of the 1990s hit an emotional nerve in the context of the individual tragedies experienced by the book's subjects. I was struck by how the circumstances that lead her subjects to seek refuge seemed appallingly desperate and yet the people she interviewed still felt a twinge of guilt for the family and friends they left behind. She begins and ends her account with the most charming love story between two teenagers that persisted even though the darkest of times until the devastation of economic deprivation became too much. Reality finally pierced the veil of propaganda woven by their callous dictator and the urge to survive overcame even the tender romance of young love. ( )

Докато предишната книга, която прочетох за С.Корея бе написана от човек, който е бил на сравнително висок пост в министерството на пропагандата, член на политическия елит и дава представа за по-горните ешалони на обществото, за историята и политическите игри в държавата, настоящата книга е писана на базата на разкази на най-обикновени хора.

Така можем да видим какво означава да живееш в Северна Корея, да работиш, да обичаш, да гладуваш...

С.Корея е държавата, напреднала най-много в прилагането на комунистическата идеология - и поради това превърнала се практически в държава-робовладетел, където робите са собствените й граждани.

Това е държава, в която дори храната не си купуваш - магазини няма, всичко се отпуска по план. Всеки месец по толкова килограма това и онова на човек, на дете, на пенсионер, два ката дрехи и един чифт обувки годишно. Да продаваш каквото и да е е забранено. Да произведеш каквото и да е е забранено. Да вземаш пари за услуги е забранено. Да откажеш да ходиш на работа където те назначат е забранено. Да говориш е забранено. Да мислиш е забранено.

Но както е казал Лао Дзъ, колкото повече закони и забрани има в една държава, толкова повече престъпници. С. Корея що-годе крета до 1989 г. когато получава практически безплатно горива и храни от СССР и Китай, но след промените цялата икономика на страната, която в никакъв случай не може сама да се издържа, рухва тотално.

Настава масов глад, предприятията не работят, никой не поддържа електрическата и пътната система. Хората успяват да оцелеят само под радара, с малки незаконни търговийки тук там, черен пазар и т.н. Е, разбира се, между 1 и 2 млн умират от глад, а други 200 хил. бягат в Китай.

Да, социалистическа утопия, наистина. ( )

Such a thoughtfully historical, personal, and economic review of North Korea and the effect of the Kim family on the people at large. Overshadows previous books about North Korea that I've read. Even well-trod territory about the country found new life through her subjects' perspectives. ( )