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4.47 AVERAGE
4.47 AVERAGE
The story itself made up for the subpar storytelling.
I sometimes come across informative tiktoks about north korea, especially the account of @northkoreaedu on tiktok. They use this book a lot in their tiktoks and I was very intruiged. It is hard to comprehend how such a country can exist nowadays. Even though this book came out in 09, it gives a very good explanation of the country during that time, from real people. I love how Demick used Chonjin, instead of the capital to give more of a real-life image of how North Korea is, because the capital is so much different from the land around it. This book is often nauseating in the sense that it is hard to comprehend how bad life must be in that country. Yet North Korea intruiges me to no end. Definitely recommend reading this if you want to know more too.
Great background knowledge. Some facts were repeated too often. Beyond this, I would recommend this book.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Trafficking, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Classism, Deportation
Moderate: Abortion
dark
informative
medium-paced
Not much has been written or said about North Korea. Although news reports of certain events in North Korea are well-known (the famines, the deaths of Kim Il-sung and Kin Jong-il, nuclear tests), the country as it remains shrouded in a cloud of propaganda, censorship, and secrecy. As a lover of geography and world history, I've always been curious as to what is going on inside that reclusive country. How do they live? What makes them so docile and worship the Kims? What happened to the great famine in the 90s? Do they really behave like cult members? I'm so grateful I found the answers in this book.
Nothing to Envy is an oral history of six North Korean defectors who are now living in South Korea. They are our tour guides as they relate their early lives and we see North Korea through their eyes. We see the rigidness of their lives (portraits of the Kims must be in each home and must be wiped every day because inspectors will randomly check homes for dust), the brutality of the government (so many forbidden things/activities and punishments, the social hierarchy), the anachronism (lack of electricity and water, lack of food as it is rationed, lack of the things we take for granted), and the most horrifying of all, their stories of the famine that gripped the nation in the '90s where it is estimated that more than a million people died.
This book is not just a showcase of horrors as there are also moments of friendship, camaraderie, and love (two defectors were former lovers who had to meet at night to avoid being seen because there was no electricity and who had to wait years to hold each other's hands). There are also stories of sheer fortitude as they survived the famine even when their family members died. Ultimately, there are moments of hope as they forsook their loyalty to the Party and risked everything they had to leave North Korea and defect to another country. We see how they survived everything even when the odds are highly stacked against them. The stories moved me and made me appreciate what I have. What a way to jumpstart my reading in 2022.
Nothing to Envy is an oral history of six North Korean defectors who are now living in South Korea. They are our tour guides as they relate their early lives and we see North Korea through their eyes. We see the rigidness of their lives (portraits of the Kims must be in each home and must be wiped every day because inspectors will randomly check homes for dust), the brutality of the government (so many forbidden things/activities and punishments, the social hierarchy), the anachronism (lack of electricity and water, lack of food as it is rationed, lack of the things we take for granted), and the most horrifying of all, their stories of the famine that gripped the nation in the '90s where it is estimated that more than a million people died.
This book is not just a showcase of horrors as there are also moments of friendship, camaraderie, and love (two defectors were former lovers who had to meet at night to avoid being seen because there was no electricity and who had to wait years to hold each other's hands). There are also stories of sheer fortitude as they survived the famine even when their family members died. Ultimately, there are moments of hope as they forsook their loyalty to the Party and risked everything they had to leave North Korea and defect to another country. We see how they survived everything even when the odds are highly stacked against them. The stories moved me and made me appreciate what I have. What a way to jumpstart my reading in 2022.
One of the best books I read this year, and one of the easiest 5-star ratings I've ever given. I was absolutely riveted from page one, and that didn't change as I journeyed through the book. This book tells the story of six North Koreans over more than a decade, all from the same northern city, and all of whom ended up defecting. The human stories were so rich, and, while heartbreaking in so many ways, provided rare glimpses into all aspects of regular North Korean life, from schooling and propaganda to transportation, work, and food. This book explores the devastating affects of the famine in the 1990s, and the harrowing journeys each of the six people took to ultimately leave their country. This is what it was like to be a doctor, a teacher, a student in Pyongyang, and more. This is what it is like to have all your fervent beliefs in your leader and your country crumble away, in some cases, or to cling to those beliefs even through devastation, until finally something happens to rip the wool from your eyes. Eye-opening and sobering, these stories of those who survived (but who were also surrounded by many who didn't). The pacing and the ways the stories were woven together, both with each other and with other statistics and researched material, was masterful, the writing vivid, and the overall effect one that makes the reader long for change for North Korea more than ever before.
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced