Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.48 AVERAGE
4.48 AVERAGE
A very humanizing insight into life in North Korea between the '90s and mid-2010's. The very personal nature of the stories is compelling, and the facts and research are worked in seamlessly.
I learned SO much about North Korea and its people, especially through the 90s. What a crazy story these people have.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
informative
sad
medium-paced
Excellent writing, Demick knows how to write a page turner! It's a bit in the past now, mostly focusing on the 90's, but still very enlightening and relevant. I wish it had an up-to-date expanded version to account for Kim Jong-un's reign.
Life in North Korea sounds like a bad dream, totally unrealistic and laughably horrible. That these conditions are completely real and ongoing is so sad, scary, and baffling.
Life in North Korea sounds like a bad dream, totally unrealistic and laughably horrible. That these conditions are completely real and ongoing is so sad, scary, and baffling.
Halfway through the book, I had to stop. The anguish it was producing in me was unsustainable. The author's writing and narrative skills are excellent, contributing to this feeling by the way she manages to bring to life the descriptions of the six people she accompanied and with whom she makes us empathise.
I don't think my problem with the book lay in the atrocities that were committed. I've read much worse descriptions of the Holocaust, Sarajevo or the Gulags. The difference is that all these descriptions, when read, are of a past. It happened; it was bad, but we, as a species, managed to turn it around, and we managed to restore some harmony. Not here.
Reading about what was done to an entire country over decades - annihilation, torture, famine - knowing that those same people, their descendants, are still under that same system is emotionally unsustainable.
As I read, I found myself continually thinking about the ways in which this state of affairs could be brought to an end, namely how the decapitation of the regime would be something within the reach of a small group of special troops, only to then bang my head against the wall of the geopolitical forces - the US, Russia and China - who have the power to act, but because of the differences between them do not. Or to recall the absurd, deeply perverse words of a leader of a party with a seat in the Portuguese Parliament who unashamedly defended the existence of democracy in North Korea.
After a few weeks, I managed to finish the book, which ended up working better since the second part tells the story of how each of the six people described managed to flee, with or without family, from North Korea to South Korea and rebuild their lives, their psychological identities. With that, the book offers a glimmer of hope. Even so, the numbers fleeing, compared, for example, to those from East Germany to West Germany at the time of the Wall, are practically negligible, and here we have once again discovered the hand of China, which has done everything it can to prevent Koreans from escaping via China.
While an entire nation languishes, decade after decade, all of us, the entire planet, continue our lives pretending that nothing is happening there. It's emotionally unsustainable.
I don't think my problem with the book lay in the atrocities that were committed. I've read much worse descriptions of the Holocaust, Sarajevo or the Gulags. The difference is that all these descriptions, when read, are of a past. It happened; it was bad, but we, as a species, managed to turn it around, and we managed to restore some harmony. Not here.
Reading about what was done to an entire country over decades - annihilation, torture, famine - knowing that those same people, their descendants, are still under that same system is emotionally unsustainable.
As I read, I found myself continually thinking about the ways in which this state of affairs could be brought to an end, namely how the decapitation of the regime would be something within the reach of a small group of special troops, only to then bang my head against the wall of the geopolitical forces - the US, Russia and China - who have the power to act, but because of the differences between them do not. Or to recall the absurd, deeply perverse words of a leader of a party with a seat in the Portuguese Parliament who unashamedly defended the existence of democracy in North Korea.
After a few weeks, I managed to finish the book, which ended up working better since the second part tells the story of how each of the six people described managed to flee, with or without family, from North Korea to South Korea and rebuild their lives, their psychological identities. With that, the book offers a glimmer of hope. Even so, the numbers fleeing, compared, for example, to those from East Germany to West Germany at the time of the Wall, are practically negligible, and here we have once again discovered the hand of China, which has done everything it can to prevent Koreans from escaping via China.
While an entire nation languishes, decade after decade, all of us, the entire planet, continue our lives pretending that nothing is happening there. It's emotionally unsustainable.