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Title: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea ISBN:
· Kindle Edition 338 pages
Genre: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Cultural, Asia, Biography, Audiobook, Writing, Journalism, Travel, Historical, Autobiography, Memoir

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Published December 29th 2009 by Spiegel & Grau, Kindle Edition 338 pages

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. 

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them. 

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.

Must be read

User Reviews

Emily May

Rating: really liked it
They don’t stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.

A painfully human look at North Korea (mostly) through the eyes of defectors now living in South Korea or China.

Demick peels back the layers of propaganda, parades and leader worship to expose the people and lives underneath. If you're anything like me, you'll find it hard not to be fascinated by this exceptionally secretive country and wonder what everyday life can really be like living in one of the strictest regimes on earth.

Of course, even in the darkest places there are love stories, hopes, dreams and family dynamics. We see a young couple courting in secret over many years, a woman who loses everything during the devastating famine of the 1990s - a famine which killed anywhere between a few hundred thousand and several million people - and a man sent to a hard labor camp for petty crimes. Families of defectors, no matter how innocent, are rounded up and shipped off to camps that may as well be called death camps.

Its was extremely interesting to get a look inside this closed country, and perhaps even more interesting to see the outside world through the eyes of those who escaped. I can't even imagine what it must be like to cross a border and discover that the world is nothing like you always believed.

I recently really enjoyed the fictional Korean story in Pachinko, which begins before the country's division and during the Japanese colonization, so it was great to see the history that so intrigued me expanded upon here. For one thing, I had no idea that traditional dress for Korean women was a head-to-toe veil, not unlike the burka. There were lots of small facts like this that I found fascinating.

Nothing to Envy reminds us of something important. That underneath all the craziness that is this regime and its deified leader, there are more than 20 million people just trying to feed their families, live their lives, and not get killed for it.

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Yun

Rating: really liked it
Astonishing and emotionally gripping, Nothing to Envy peels back the curtain and offers that rare glimpse into what life is really like in North Korea.

Reading this, I'm struck by how similar their lives are to ours and also how utterly different it is. They share the same ambitions for a fulfilling life, the same yearning for love and belonging, the same hope of better opportunities for their children. Yet, their lives are nothing like ours.

Not only do they lack any type of personal choice or freedom, but they also have to endure years of famine. Going in, I never really thought about what it means to go through a famine of this severity and magnitude. Every day, all day, their entire time and energy are spent going far into the woods to scrounge for grass and bark and rotten fruit, as all possible edible items nearby have already been eaten.

When situations get so hopeless and people become desperate, they start hardening their hearts against each other. That drive to survive extinguishes everything else, and it's awful to see the transition take place. The most innocent and trusting would often die of famine first because they don't want to steal or go behind the government's back to make a little extra money to trade for food. It makes me wonder what I would do if I had nothing to eat for days or weeks, let alone for years, if I wouldn't be forced to go against my moral code just to have a bite of food.

This book follows the lives of six North Korean defectors, and Demick really makes their stories and perspectives come alive. She shows how complex these people are, even in the face of total calamity. They retain their hope and dignity, and against all odds, eventually escape.

There is no easy solution for them that would solve all their problems. And there is no easy solution for North Korea either. Even if the regime is to eventually collapse, what will happen to all the people there? Assimilation will be a long and arduous process when they have spent a lifetime indoctrinated in a totalitarian regime.

This is one of those books that makes me think and also makes me so thankful for the life I have. By some random luck, I managed to get this life. But I could've easily have been born somewhere else, and maybe now, instead of having the opportunity to read books and share my thoughts, I'd be spending all day walking and scrounging for tree bark to eat. It's a sobering thought indeed.


Will Byrnes

Rating: really liked it
One thread of this riveting National Book Award finalist is a love story. Mi-san is an attractive girl from a family that does not have the right stuff, history-wise, her father having fought for South Korea in the war. They are considered “impure” by the North Korean government and society as a whole. Her prospects are only so-so. Jun-sang is headed to university in Pyongyang to study science. His future includes a good job, a membership in the party and a life of relative privilege. One enchanted evening, Jun, at age 15, sees her across a crowded local movie theater in the northeastern city of Chongjin, and is smitten. For the next ten years, they will dance a courtship ballet that is both heart-warming and horrifying.

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Barbara Demick - image from the US Chamber of Commerce

Dr. Kim Ji-eun is a sprite of a woman, a true believer in a system that allowed her to become a doctor. But in time she comes to feel differently. Learning that all her extra work gains her nothing from her boss. Working in a hospital that loses all it’s electricity, its’ running water, it’s supplies, watching scores of children die of starvation will do that to a person.

Song Hee-Suk, or Mrs Song is another true believer in the North Korean way, volunteering for all sorts of party activities in addition to working full time and caring for her family. She embodies the entrepreneurial spirit here, attempting to put food on the table when there is no work. She keeps trying to start micro-small businesses, struggling mightily against the popular ethos that such activity is inherently wrong, selling all her family’s possessions for the money to start her enterprise.

Nothing to Envy is a riveting, grim portrait of perhaps the most repressive nation on earth, a personification of H.G. Wells’ dark authoritarian nightmare. Barbara Demick is a big time foreign correspondent, for the LA Times since 2001. She became the Times’ Korea bureau chief, and has written much on life behind this particular bamboo curtain. She follows the lives of six North Koreans, all from the northeastern industrial city of Chongjin, and brings us their oral histories. Ultimately all of them find their way to South Korea. It is through their eyes that we see the reality of life in the North. Their stories continue once they have crossed the border, and their tales of adapting to such a strange new world are interesting, but the real core here is the images we get of life in North Korea.

It is truly amazing to learn how complete was (and still is) the control of the authoritarian regime in North Korea, how effective the cradle-to-grave propaganda has been and how alarming the elevation of the Dear Leader to a god-like status. It is chilling to hear accounts of how the nation sank into famine, remarkable to learn what a doctor’s life entails, and infuriating to learn of the lives of homeless orphans, or wandering swallows, as they are known.

It is not at all surprising to see how neighbor eagerly turns in neighbor for thought-crimes. I mean we all went to school, and one can always count on there being those who seek advantage by undercutting others. But getting in trouble with one’s teacher is not quite the same as being transported to a slave labor camp, being marked for life as “impure,” being shunned, or worse.

I expect that most of us have a somewhat cartoonish image of North Korea, focusing on the mad king, sorry, party chairman, his dreams (and now reality) of nuclear power and the willingness of the North Korean people to believe all sorts of fantastical things about him. It merits knowing what the poor people of North Korea must endure. The horror there, the inhumanity, how the denial of reality affects real people, with real lives. It is no laughing matter.

Demick also offers a very insightful look at similarities between those who have escaped the north and holocaust survivors, an apprehension of the qualities one must nurture in order to survive in extreme conditions, and she notes the collateral damage from defecting. The people she portrays in Nothing to Envy are as masterfully portrayed as characters in a great novel. We come to care about their travails, and get to see their flaws as well as their strengths. These are indeed the ordinary people promised in the books’ title, shown in an extraordinary way.

There is indeed nothing to envy in North Korea, but it is important for us all to have some idea of what goes on there, if for no other reason than to be able to point to an example of how things shouldn’t be. No flattering autocrat-to-autocrat-wannabe love-letters should change our national stance towards this rogue dictatorship. Demick’s book will make you angry and it will make you sad. It should.

P.S.
There is an impressive bibliography at the end for this book for any who might be inspired to read about this place in more depth.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

2/13/12 - North Korea Agrees to Curb Nuclear Work; U.S. Offers Aid - The question is not raised in this New York Times article if any of the food aid will ever find its way to the general population or will be taken to feed the army and party officials

6/14/13 - GR friend Jan Rice, in comment #7 below, posted on June 13, 2013, included a link to an AP story about NK, particularly how schools are still promoting hatred of Americans. I was reminded, although to a much lesser degree, of how how we were all taught to hate the "dirty commies" back in my school days. Here is that link, again. IN NORTH KOREA, LEARNING TO HATE US STARTS EARLY By Jean H. Lee

9/18/17 - A riveting New Yorker Magazine article on the mindset in North Korea - must-reading, given the recent ratcheting up of tensions. Even a dotard could learn something here. - On the Brink - by Evan Osnos

7/23/2018 - Fascinating tale in GQ of the American who was returned from NK imprisonment with brain damage. much on fact vs fiction in reportage of that - The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage - By Doug Bock Clark


Shirley

Rating: really liked it
An amazing, unforgettable book about North Korea. Barbara Demick explores the most closed-off society in the world through the stories of six "ordinary" North Koreans who defect to South Korea beginning in the late 1990s. Through their stories, Demick covers a bit of everything (the pathological weirdness that was/is Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il and the cult of worship - and fear of reprisal - that made people cry harder at the former's death than they ever had in their lives, the role of a totalitarian government in the everyday lives of people, the deterioration of North Korea into blackouts/famine/starvation, South Korea's/China's reception of North Korean defectors) very skillfully without sensationalizing; the subject matter speaks for itself.



Here are both moments of beauty (the reminiscences of two of the profiled North Koreans about how the blackouts at night allowed them to chastely walk and talk outside their village for hours at a time) and, more frequently, moments of horror (families deliberately winnowing down their members, i.e., starving everyone else to spare the children, who as the only surviving members of their families then became homeless begging kotjebi - 꽃제비 - literally swallows). As a new mother, I could not imagine being in a position where I could not provide enough food for my young toddler - thinking about all the orphaned kotjebi made me have to put down the book, pause, and collect myself before I could proceed. Not the only such moment.



Demick also discusses the guilt and shame that many defectors have. One woman who left her children and ex-husband in North Korea mourns, "I sacrified my babies for myself." A mother who defects with one daughter is never able to forgive herself because, following their defections, her other two daughters who were still in North Korea were arrested and presumably sent to a labor camp. Another woman, now in South Korea with its plenties and excesses, is haunted by her husband's last words before he died during the famine, "Let's go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine."



I was especially moved by this book. It is completely heartbreaking in many places. I, already a sentimental reader (in case you, dear Goodreads readers, haven't already ascertained as much), tend to get even more sentimental when I read about Korea. Moreover, and more relevantly, my dad is from North Korea, and I can't help but wonder about the fates of relatives I don't even know about. This book should have great appeal beyond my myopically sentimental lens, fortunately, as it is extremely well-written and compulsively readable and deserves to be widely read and discussed.



Stuart

Rating: really liked it
There are few books like this written today: concise, well-researched, plainly yet effectively written, and free of hyperbole. This book is a very personal account of six lives in the failed state of North Korea. The level of deprivation and humiliation these people endure is heartbreaking. The book reads more like an outstanding piece of social anthropology than it does cut and dried journalism. The author is to be commended for her ability to get inside both the hearts and minds of the people she has interviewed.

I think that Nothing To Envy is a landmark book, a study of a culture and political system gone horribly wrong, that will be read for decades. As the author notes, North Korea is the last of its kind, a state with an entrenched despotic, supposedly Marxist, leader who denies not only basic freedoms but also the basic provisions necessary to maintain any quality of life. Reading this book in the comfort of my own well heated home, I felt both pity for those that live in North Korea and anger for the inability of the rest of the world to do anything while North Korea's citizens starve to death. The impact of this book is both emotional and intellectual. I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about the social welfare of people and the role that government plays in people's lives.


Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a 2009 nonfiction book by Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick, based on interviews with North Korean refugees from the city of Chongjin who had escaped North Korea.

In 2010, the book was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010.

Demick interviewed more than 100 defectors and chose to focus on Chongjin because it is likely to be more representative than the capital Pyongyang. Demick briefly discusses the examination of one of the female interviewees into a position of Kippumjo. The events covered include the famine of the 1990's, with the final chapters describing the route that the main subjects of the book took in order to reach Seoul, South Korea, followed by an epilogue describing the effects of the November 30, 2009 currency reform.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و هشتم ماه ژانویه سال2017میلادی

عنوان: افسوس نمیخوریم - زندگی مردم عادی در کره شمالی؛ نویسنده: باربارا دمیک؛ مترجم: حسین شهرابی؛ مینا جوشقانی؛ تهران، تندیس، سال1393؛ در414ص؛ شابک9786001821349؛ موضوع گزارش از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده21م

همه بسیار از دولت «کره ی شمالی» شنیده ایم که چه تنگناها و فشارهای باورنکردنی و احمقانه برای مردمانش میسازد؛ اما از خود مردم، از زندگی عادی مردم در این دیکتاتوری کمتر میدانیم؛

مردمان «کره ی شمالی» چطور عاشق میشوند؟

کمبودهای غذایی و قحطیها را چگونه تاب میآورند؟

چه فیلمهایی میبینند؟

نویسنده این کتاب میکوشند از راه بازنویس کردن زندگی پنج انسان عادی، که از «کره ی شمالی» بگریخته اند؛ تصویری دیگر اما بسیار غریب به دست دهند؛ نویسنده مینگارند: (در عکسها و تلویزیون، مردم کره ی شمالی مردمی ماشینی به نظر میرسند، که همیشه در حال ژره رفتن با یونیفرم، یا اجرای حرکات گروهی ژیمناستیک، برای اعلام وفاداری به پیشوای کره ی شمالی هستند؛ با نگاهی دقیق به تصاویری از این دست، سعی دارم از واقعیت ورای آن چهره های تهی خبر دهم...)؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 06/12/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی


David

Rating: really liked it
In the aftermath of the Korean war my mother's brother left an enigmatic note on his pillow before stepping out for school. He never returned and the family lamented his apparent suicide.

A half century later a list of names is published in Koreas' national paper. Part of the warming relations between North and South Korea, it offered the chance for families separated by the border to connect. So far nearly 20 thousand Koreans have participated in face-to-face meetings. My uncle's name is there along with some briefly sketched details of the family tree. He is very much alive and living in North Korea. This was the first any of the family had ever heard from him.

My mother eventually traveled to North Korea to meet with her brother. My uncle was wearing a gold watch and a thinning suit. He confided that they were provided by the government solely for the visit. Other Koreans reunited with long lost relations were at nearby tables. Many had brought gifts of linens, food and clothing. He quietly admitted that gifts were pointless as their intended recipients would probably never see them again.

My mother never talked too much about the visit. After a lifetime apart what do you say? Her brother is relatively affluent by North Korean standards, a professor who has raised a large family. Still, his face was gaunt, his teeth stained and crooked. His hands trembled constantly.

I thought about my uncle a lot while I was reading "Nothing to Envy". In it author Barbara Demick pieces together the lives of 6 North Koreans who eventually defect to South Korea. It is an incredible and difficult read, especially the chapters outlining the devastating famine of the 1990's which claimed almost 10% of the population. The stories are riveting and framed beautifully. This isn't some dry recounting of facts outlining the poverty of North Korea but wondrously intertwined narratives that don't end with pat answers once they reach South Korea.

Great read.


Beata

Rating: really liked it
The ordinary people whose lives are presented in this incredible book lead no ordinary lives. They survive against all odds, despite the totalitarian system which aims at supressing everything that is called normal: normal working conditions, normal education, normal shops, normal family bonds etc. etc. So far I have watched only several short documentaries on North Korea, now I have read a book which is not fiction. Written ten years ago, it is a collection of accounts by those fortunate who had courage and opportunity to flee the last truly totalitarian state. It is unimagonable that a state can have such a power over their citizens and is able to suppress a slightest thought of resistance.


Shivesh

Rating: really liked it
A physician, possessing numerous years of education and selfless service to her people, comes upon a isolated farm in a dark field at twilight. The doctor is starving, malnourished and ravenous. She seeks crumbs, maybe a scrap of corn to eat. Slowly, she makes her way into a barn, musty with the odor of hay and equipment. She has not seen more than a handful worth of white rice in years. Indeed, white rice is a rare luxury in the world she comes from.

Suddenly, she sees in the dark of the barn a gleam of a beaten metal bowl with cold lumps of glistening meat, surrounded by heaps of bright white grains. Could it be rice? Dear God, is that fatty pork? How could this be possible? Why would all this rich food be just lying here, in the middle of the floor of a dirty cold barn?

Just then, she hears the dog.

As Barbara Demick icily observes at this moment in the book, "Dr. Kim now realized the truth: in China, dogs ate better than doctors did back in North Korea."

It is a moment of epiphany, and one of six realizations that separate six defectors' lives from their existence in North Korea from their subsequent lives in the free world. It is almost ridiculous to think of China as a truly open and free society, but the constant suppression and fear of the North Korean regime makes it so for the residents that flee to the border. An interesting observation from this book and its collection of defectors' stories is that it wasn't the lack of freedom, or the lack of money, or even the lack of status that propelled people to defect from this state, but the wholesale lack of food. Without food rations, there simply was not any reason for people to stay at their assigned posts or cities - they simply drifted away, or plucked the surrounding hillsides clean of any grass or edible root, or with their last bit of strength, dared the dangerous borders to relative freedom.

If you need something to refocus your appreciation for your life, no matter how flawed or unsatisfactory it may be right now: read this book. It will change the way you think about North Korea, and definitely the way you might look at your own problems. Your life isn't so bad after all, huh?


Stephanie

Rating: really liked it
This book was simultaneously a page-turner and hard as hell to read. I had trouble falling asleep last night because of it, and when I did I had some unsettling nightmares. This isn't a book I can read, write an "oh that's nice, that definitely added to my life" type of review and go about my day. This is some seriously skillful nonfiction. It calls to mind being fourteen and reading Wild Swans. There's a similar structure to both works; history of a country to get the big picture, and memoirs of individual experiences to personalize statistics and news bulletins. And, this is harder to quantify or describe, both books gave me a sick, horrified feeling, even as I felt like parts of my brain were lighting up with brand new information. Some of the best non-fiction makes a reader feel like they can connect seemingly disparate facts together, and history makes a little more sense, and you can't remain distant any longer.

Straight off, I need to say that this is not tragedy porn. That's not why I felt so overwhelmed by this. Demick is respectful of the North Korean defectors that she interviews, and never ventures into the realm of the maudlin. The individual lives take center stage, illuminated by what we know of North Korean history. The reader isn't allowed to rest on their laurels. Capitalism doesn't make their lives 100% better when they escape, and pretty much right off the bat Demick clarifies that Nothing To Envy is not about "oh those wacky North Koreans!" Much of this book demonstrates how to brainwash an entire country into an entire ideology... as well as how, and when, the North Koreans discussed here realized they had been deceived. I was astonished by the ingenuity of every single one of the people profiled, both when it came to surviving the famine and when they had to escape. This book bring back individuality to a nation that's so often reduced to a horror story or a joke.

And, yeah, to circle back to my opening paragraph... The sense of individuality in this book will stick with me. I'm completely overwhelmed by just how many lives have been snuffed out in the North Korean famine. So many people with stories akin to those featured in Nothing To Envy. Gone.


JanB(on vacation till October)

Rating: really liked it
Far from a dry accounting filled with historical detail, this is a look into the lives of six average North Koreans who eventually defect, giving investigative journalist Barbara Demick access to their stories. We are given a peek into what it is like to live under an extreme totalitarian regime. Children are taught to sing anthems of praise where they "have nothing to envy in this world." They are taught that they live in the greatest place on earth, and they know so little of the outside world that they believe this to be true.

Demick excels in humanizing the North Korean people. We know the regime is evil, but the people are not. As she gets inside their hearts and minds, we see that there is much more that binds humans together than sets us apart. These are ordinary people. But their lives are anything but ordinary. Their individual stories are touching. The famine of the '90s is covered, which killed upwards of millions of people. It’s difficult to describe the horrors and deprivation they endure(d) on a daily basis.

Most defected out of desperation, not out of disloyalty. When they did so, their eyes were opened as they began to understand that everything they had been told was propaganda and a lie. The challenges continued as they learned to assimilate into a modern culture of which they knew nothing about. When one defector, a physician, realized that a bowl of rice and meat on the ground was for a dog, she was shocked that “dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”

This is a must read for everyone. It left me heartsick over man's inhumanity to man, but it is not without hope. It renewed an appreciation and respect for the perseverance of the human spirit, gave me a new appreciation for our country, and put what I consider my 'problems' in perspective.

The narrator of the audiobook is excellent, which, combined with compelling content, made for a riveting listen. I can't recommend this highly enough. It's been in my tbr for years. My son-in-law and my Goodreads friend Jenna recently read and recommended it, which was the incentive I needed to finally pick it up. I'm only sorry I waited so long.


Iris P

Rating: really liked it
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea


photo Barbara Author 2.jpg-20130212_zpszoptyjca.jpg
Barbara Demick is an American author and journalist

"Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world. Our house is within the embrace of the Workers’ 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 this world."
Popular song taught to North Korean school children praising the Dear Leader
***********************************************

Six years after its original publication, Barbara Demick’s remarkable work of investigative journalism remains a very compelling, reader-friendly account of what is like to live and escape from one of the most brutal and repressive states in the world.

Reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, felt like stepping into a large-scale re-enactment of George Orwell's 1984. If somebody had intentionally set out to recreate the famous novel, they couldn't have done a better job than what this dystopian-like regime has become.

The subtitle of the book might as well have been called “How to make it as a Dictator in the 21st Century”.
For anybody that has such aspirations, this might be the best how-to manual available.
Be aware though, as despotic regimes go, the Kim dynasty, with their 70-year ruling over the so-called Hermit Kingdom, is a tough act to follow.

Here are some pointers on how to do it:

• Foster a cult of personality that raises you to a God-like status allowing you to harness the power of faith, invoke religious sentiments among the people and manipulate them at your will.

• Enforce a policy requiring that every household ostentatiously displays your photo. The Public Standards Police should make surprise visits to ensure strict compliance.

• When a devastating famine hits your country due to your failed economic policies, allow that up to 2 Million or roughly 10% of your people die of hunger. The first ones to perish would be the sick, the children and the elderly.

• Establish work labor camps that could manage as many as 200,000 political prisoners or the equivalent of 2% of your country’s population. Citizens might be taken to these camps for crimes as petty as failing to go to work.

• Use any medium available to relentlessly deliver propaganda, especially to children, demonizing the foreign “bastards”, namely, America, Japan, and South Korea.

• Use the threat of nuclear and biological weapons to coerce those same “foreign bastards” countries into providing billions of dollars in food aid to your country without any pre-conditions.

• Talking about weapons, be willing to spend up to 25% of your country’s GDP (versus the average 5% used by most developed countries) to sustain your military army and infrastructure.

• Make sure the population is blocked from getting access to any news or communications from the outside world. If they ever learn that their counterparts in the south have an income per capita 20 times higher than theirs, that your infant mortality is 7 times higher and that their life expectancy is at least 10 years longer, you could lose control over the people and who knows where that might lead.

So this is how you attempt to control a country of 24 million people, who continue to be the victims of their leaders utopian Stalinist fantasies.

North Korean Boy photo North Korean boy_zpsslo236o7.jpg
Chol (a pseudonym), a nine-year-old North Korean boy, shows a picture of the place where he was raised by his grandparents in North Korea- Photo by Katharina Hesse

In interviews, Demick has mentioned that her motivation to write this book was to find answers to questions many of us have: What happens to people living in the most totalitarian of regimes? Do they lose their essential humanity? What were they thinking behind the blank stares of the video footage we saw of mass gymnastics or goose-stepping soldiers? Were these people anything like us?

Nothing To Envy also gives the reader a condensed history of the Korean peninsula, how it got fractured and North Korea’s role as it relates to the major powers in the region, both with its allies (China and Russia) and its foes (Japan and South Korea).

Primarily though, the book focuses on the plight of the North Korean people right after the economic collapse of the late 1990’s and the brutal famine that followed.

Demick does a remarkable job at humanizing this story by introducing us to six North Koreans that fled the industrial city of Chongjin. There is even a love story, albeit one of the star crossed-lovers variety, as alas, a happy ending was not meant to be.

The author portrays these men and women with profound respect and sensitivity and painstakingly re-creates their everyday lives in amazing detail. Inevitably, one by one realizes that their government has betrayed them and that all they’ve been told throughout their whole lives have been propaganda and lies.

photo North Korea children school_zpsfwzdm70c.jpg
Hating starts early- North Korean children line up to view anti-U.S. propaganda posters

One of the people we meet is Mi-ran, a sensible kindergarten teacher who is considered to have "tainted blood" because her father was born in South Korea.
Hers is one of the most heartbreaking of all these stories. As an elementary teacher, she is expected to teach her pupils the blessings of being a North Korean, the best nation on earth, while she watches them die of starvation.

Jun-sang, Mi-ran's boyfriend, has Japanese relatives that help supplement his family's income. This allows him to live a relatively privileged life. He attends one of the best universities in Pyongyang, and as part of an intellectual elite enjoys some small perks that include access to western literary classics such as Gone with the Wind and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

North Korean Refugee in China photo North Korean refugee in China_zpsc14ocfpc.jpg
A 20-year-old refugee from North Korea in a farmhouse in northern China hides his identity- Photo by Katharina Hesse

We also get to know Kim Ji-Eun, a 28-year-old pediatrician at a small district hospital who has been a lifetime staunch supporter of the North Korea’s Worker’s Party.
She begins to question her loyalty to the party after her father dies during the famine and her superiors give orders that compromise her Hippocratic oath.

The relentless search by ordinary citizens for food from any conceivable source - weeds, frogs, and insects - is a heartbreaking and constant theme of these stories. The accounts of Mi-Ran and Dr. Kim are particularly difficult to read because they involved starving children as well as the elderly.

One of the most powerful scenes in the book happens after Doctor Kim, who has just crossed the river into China, bone-tired, starving and dripping wet stumbles into the courtyard of a farmhouse. She is confused to see a bowl of rice and meat on the ground, just an hour out of North Korea she realizes that dogs in China eat better than doctors in North Korea.

North Korean Defector 1 photo North Korean defector 1_zpszfwkzywu.jpg
Kim Jeong-Ya (a pseudonym) a Chinese activist helps North Koreans defectors cross safely to China- Photo by Katharina Hesse

The majority of people become defectors by crossing the Tumen River which divides the two countries. That is not an easy undertaking since the Chinese authorities monitor the border and routinely repatriate defectors back to North Korea.

They also have to live with the reality that their escape may put the families they left behind in great danger as the government consistently retaliates by placing them in labor camps. The customary term is anywhere from six months to three years.

Reading the accounts of the defectors seems to suggest that a great deal of North Koreans is privately very aware and cynical about the leadership of their country and that they only play along out of fear of repercussions.

The Tumen River photo The Tumen river_zpsa2acrwzx.jpg
The Tumen River - Photo by Katharina Hesse

Nothing I’ve read here or from any other source, suggests that this regime will collapse anytime soon. But in recent years certain improvements have surfaced and the country has experienced something of an economic revival, at least by North Korean standards.

This is mostly the result of the constant flow of information coming from China and South Korea that is making its way into the North.
Over a million people now have mobile phones, many have personal computers (the caveat is that there's no internet access), there are department stores with foreign goods and fancy restaurants in Pyongyang and the government has decided to "tolerate" small farmer markets.

I suspect that if you are a well-informed reader on North Korea issues, Nothing to Envy might not provide any significant amount of new information, if like me you are looking for a great introduction to this most secretive and fascinating of places, I would definitely recommend it.

***********************************************

In 2014 PBS's Frontline produced a riveting documentary called "Secret State of North Korea". I think it makes for a great companion to this book and it provides an updated picture of North Korea and the changes that have been taking place there in the last few years.

You can find a link here. As of the date of this review the program is also available on Netflix.

You can find the majority of the pictures on this review here.


Lilo

Rating: really liked it
This book is a must read — an absolute MUST READ! It is inexcusable not to be informed about what has been going on in North Korea. What we hear on the news is just simply not enough.

There are great reviews of this book on Goodreads. So I won’t elaborate about the contents of this book.

What I would like to do is compare The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (in short DPRK, or just simply North Korea) to Hitler’s Third Reich.

Upfront: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is just as much democratic as Hitler’s “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) was a Socialist Worker’s Party. Both designations are misnomers with the clear purpose to fool the population. Brutal dictatorships like to disguise themselves with terms that are well received. The word “democratic” had a good reputation after WWII, and the word “socialist” rang well in the ears of workers during the 1920s and 1930s.

I’ll take the liberty of using LeeAnne’s wonderful review of “Nothing to Envy”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

as basis for my comparison of the two oppressive regimes.

LeeAnne writes: “North Koreans live in the most isolated bubble in the world”. This is very true. North Koreans cannot correspond with anyone outside of North Korea (with certain exceptions of relatives in Japan); there isn’t even any mail service across the borders.

During the Third Reich, Germans could correspond with anyone in foreign countries but might have drawn the attention of the Gestapo with such correspondence. Letters might have been opened, read, and censored. Were the contents criticizing the regime, the writer might have landed in a concentration camp.

There is no Internet in North Korea, and cell phones are banned.

Well, there was no Internet and there were no cell phones at the time of the Third Reich. There were even hardly any private phones. To make a phone call (usually reserved for emergencies), people had to go to the post office (unless they had any business owners as friends who let them use their phones). However, most urgent notifications were handled with telegrams. And for normal long-distance communication, regular mail was the way to go. Phones and mail were, of course, subject to wiretapping and interception. And I assume that there were informers at most (or possibly even all) post offices.

It is forbidden in North Korea to tune in on foreign TV and radio stations. The usual punishment for breaking this law is to be sent to the gulag (or concentration camp, whatever name for this North Korean institution you prefer).

It was forbidden in Hitler’s Germany to listen to the BBC or any other foreign radio station. (There was, of course, no TV.) Depending on individual implication of this law, noncompliance could earn the offender a heavy fine (best case scenario), a prison sentence, a concentration camp stay of indefinite length, or even a death sentence, unless the Gestapo would simplify the issue and shoot the offenders without any court procedure. — My family members took great risks by listening to the BBC. When my mother realized that I had become aware of it that they were listening to a foreign radio station, she cautioned me not to tell anybody, and especially not any Nazi neighbors. She stressed that if we were found out, the Gestapo would come and shoot us all, and if I happened to be spared, I would land in an orphanage. The problem: Unbeknownst of the danger, I, then 2 1/2 years old, had already told the two daughters of an SS relative of our Nazi landlady, who were 3 and 5 years old. Their father was a murderous SS criminal, who had bragged about throwing Jewish children onto the pavement from 4th-floor windows. Fortunately, the two girls never told their SS father (their mother was a decent person) nor our landlady; otherwise, I would not be here to tell. (These girls were not the smartest and did not seem to be interested in politics.) I spent the remaining three years of the war expecting the Gestapo to come any day to shoot us. I never told any of my family members. They all died without ever learning that our lives had hung on a thread.

There is no free speech in North Korea. The most harmless remark criticizing the leader or the regime will be punished by declaring the person who made the remark an “enemy of the state” and sending him/her to the gulag for life. The same thing happens to people who tell jokes about the leader.

There was no free speech in Hitler’s Germany either. Here, too, a person who criticized Hitler, the regime, or Nazi ideology would be declared an “enemy of the state” and would land in a concentration camp. Telling a Hitler-joke would draw the same punishment. And there is, at least, one case where a woman who told such a joke landed on the gallows. — My parents and their friends did tell Hitler jokes, and they were only so lucky that I (who I understood more than my family members were aware of) did not tell (or attempt to tell) any of those jokes to any Nazi neighbors. My adoptive grandmother (biological grand-aunt), called “Oma”, was very talkative (I must have inherited her genes :-)), so she once carelessly remarked to a not-so-well-known acquaintance: “Does this private [referring to Hitler’s low military rank in WWI] really think he can win this war?” The acquaintance turned out to be an informer. This remark was not only derogatory of Hitler, it also was a clear case of “Wehrkraftzersetzung” (= defeatism / undermining of military morale). Oma had to report to an SS official. Normal procedure would have been to turn her over to the Gestapo, which would, then, have hauled her to Dachau, the next concentration camp, or, more likely, would have passed her on to the “Volksgericht”, Hitler’s “kangaroo court”, which might have sentenced her to death because “Wehrkraftzersetzung” was a very serious offense, which was usually awarded with capital punishment. Yet Oma was lucky - VERY LUCKY! The SS official was the son of a farmer, whom Oma’s late husband (then, head of the local Internal Revenue Office) had saved from losing his farm by extending his taxes or even paying them out of his own pocket. The SS guy was grateful; he wasn’t going to send his family’s benefactor’s widow to the gallows. So he threw the report of the informer into the waste basket and released Oma with the advice to, in future, hold her tongue.

There is no free assembly in North Korea.

There was no free assembly in Hitler’s Germany.

Without free assembly it is next to impossible to start a revolt against a regime. How many people can secretly meet in someone’s bedroom? (And how can one organize a revolution in a bomb-tight police state without being found out and executed before the revolt can draw momentum?)

There is no religious freedom in North Korea, and North Korea’s rulers (dead or alive) are worshipped as gods.

There was religious freedom in Hitler’’s Germany — sort of. The Christian churches (Catholic and Lutheran) were strong. Hitler couldn’t dare to abolish them, so he used them for his own purposes. And once he felt that he no longer needed them, Hitler started to harass them and persecute any cleric who spoke up against Nazi ideology or Nazi practices, such as violence against Jews. — A grand-uncle of mine, a Catholic priest, whose parish was in a small village, kept ranting against the Nazis from the pulpit. After he had become too daring, his bishop forced him to retire so that he would not end up in Dachau. (He had already caught the attention of the Gestapo.) — Had it not been for the remaining power of the Christian Churches, Hitler would have also been built up as a god. He was already referred to as “messiah”, “successor of Jesus”, and “unser Heiland” (“our savior”), a term that had, so far, only been used for Jesus. Apart from this, “blood weddings” had started to replace church weddings. These were ridiculous, pompous celebrations that kept referring to Hitler similar to the way church weddings referred to God. (The murderous SS relative of our landlady had gotten married with such a pompous, pseudo-religious “blood wedding”, for which the organ had been confiscated from my hometown’s “Spitalkirche” (= nursing home church).

There is no free movement allowed to North Koreans, not even within their country.

There weren’t any travel restrictions within Hitler’s Germany, but during the war, it became difficult to leave the country without being arrested at the border.

There are no workers’ rights in North Korea.

I don’t think there were any workers’ rights in Hitler’s Germany either, and if there were, they were just on paper.

There is no independent media in North Korea. TV, radio, and newspapers are state-controlled. Instead of news and information, they spread propaganda, brainwash, and outright lies. — Propaganda and brainwash has turned the vast majority of North Koreans into ignorant robots.

There wasn’t any independent media in Hitler’s Germany either. Radio and newspapers were state-controlled, and there wasn’t any TV. News were tampered with and falsified. There was plenty of propaganda and brainwash, and there were also plenty of outright lies. So, for instance, when Hitler invaded Poland, the radio reported, right after: “Seit 8 Uhr wird zurueckgeschossen.” (“Since 8 o’clock [a.m.], fire is being returned.”), claiming that Polish troops had attacked German borders and that German troops had eventually returned the fire. — Propaganda and brainwash had turned roughly half of the German population into Nazis. (There is no way to obtain any exact figures because NSDAP membership wasn’t equivalent to political opinion. Not every true Nazi was a party member [some just never bothered to join], and not every party member was a true Nazi. Some non-Nazis joined the party to further their career or not to lose their jobs. And there were other opportunistic reasons to join the NSDAP.)

It is estimated that about one fifth of the North Korean population has starved to death during the 1990s. People ate tree bark; that is, if they could still find any. Those who weren’t able to tend a private vegetable garden, if only so small, had the least chances to survive.

There was no famine during the Third Reich. However food was very scarce once the war had started, and those people who had to solely rely on the food obtainable with food ration cards would be in serious trouble. Not only was the amount of food allotted with ration cards insufficient; the ration cards were rather useless when the food wasn’t available in the stores. (I should mention, however, that the food/goods supply differed a bit from region to region.) Most people resorted to illegally trading goods with farmers and to foraging in the woods for wild mushrooms and berries. Older, fragile, or poor city dwellers, who weren’t able to make it to the country or didn’t have any bartering goods, would suffer badly from malnutrition or, in some cases, even starve to death. Many such pitiable people raided garbage cans to search for potato peels and other food remnants that more fortunate citizens (some of them privileged Nazis) had discarded. And an unknown number of city dwellers succumbed to illnesses that would not have killed them had they not been undernourished.

Since there was no chemical fertilizer and hardly any livestock in North Korea during the famine (and may not even be today), human feces were (and might still be?) collected on a large scale to fertilize state-grown crops. There were huge campaigns, assigning people to these dirty jobs and have them carry the buckets filled with feces for miles, on foot, to collection plants. Hygiene was (or is?) obviously a non-issue.

Even though there was no famine in Germany, there was no chemical fertilizer available for crops because all chemical fertilizer was used to make explosives. There weren’t sufficient amounts of animal manure. Thus, human feces (while not collected in buckets from toilets, as done in North Korea, but siphoned from outhouses and sceptic tanks) were also used on commercial crops and in private vegetable gardens. This resulted in people getting internal parasites. (I still remember being dewormed with carrot juice.)

There is severe fuel shortage in North Korea. Only few institutions (amongst them schools) and private homes can be heated in winter. There are no street lights, and the availability of electricity is limited to very few hours weekly. People have cut down all accessible trees for firewood. Parks are stripped bare. Private cars and motorcycles are nonexistent.

There was also considerable fuel shortage in Germany during WWII. Coal and firewood was rationed. Electricity was off at certain times. “Kohlenklau” (coal thief)-posters were all about, vilifying people who weren’t frugal in their use of coal. Kids ran after coal wagons, picking up after them. People went to the woods to gather firewood and, yet I never heard of any trees in parks being cut down. The only cars I was aware of in my hometown (of some 5,000 inhabitants) belonged to the two family doctors and to Nazi party officials. (There also might have been an ambulance, but I never saw it.) — All in all, I would say that the fuel shortage in North Korea is way worse than Hitler’s Germany had ever experienced. — Yet we also suffered during the cold months. There wasn’t enough fuel to heat any bedrooms. Thick feather beds and hot water bottles were a necessity. Water was only heated as needed. The hot water boiler in the bathroom was only heated up every second Saturday (for every family member to take a bath). And the living room temperature could only be kept at minimum comfort.

There isn’t supposed to be any unemployment in “the communistic workers’ paradise” of North Korea, but there is (or rather, eventually came to be).

There was little unemployment in Hitler’s Germany, once Hitler started with rearmament (to prepare for WWII).

When anyone is shipped to the gulag in North Korea, his or her blood relatives (parents, grandparents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles) are usually shipped along with him or her (unless they are party members in very good standing or they are protected by some party big shot).

Hitler had also imposed “Sippenhaft” (liability of all members of a family for the “crimes” of one member). Yet he did not differentiate between blood relatives and non-blood relatives.

Sippenhaft of any kind makes it rather impossible to oppose a regime. Even when someone is ready to risk his own life, he or she is rarely ready to risk the lives of family members and relatives.

LeeAnne writes: “People are expected to work 7 days a week, even if they are unemployed. It is not unusual to be employed and working 7 days a week but not receive a paycheck for years.”

I don’t think that Hitler’s “Reichsarbeitsdienst” was an equivalent of North Korean practices. I just know that it was voluntary before 1939 and compulsory after 1939. And I do not know if there was any financial remuneration.

North Korea does not allow everyone to join the North Korean Workers’ Party (the only existing party). Being allowed to join this party is a privilege, and applicants are not only required to have a history of absolute loyalty to the regime but must also have a spotless family background. Career advancement is only possible with party membership.

The NSDAP also did not allow everyone to join. Yet there were few restrictions. Unless someone had a criminal record, a politically suspect past, or politically suspect family members or relatives, they did not have a problem to join “The Party” (the only existing party, after all other parties had been banned once Hitler had come into power). In Hitler's Germany, too, party membership furthered careers.

The living conditions in North Korean gulags (concentration camps) are horrific. There are different types of camps. Those for minor offenses offer a tiny chance of survival. Those for higher graded offenses are designed for life sentences, and due to the conditions in these camps, the convicted can be rather sure that their lives won’t last very long.

Hitler’s concentration camps were similar. Ordinary camps, like Dachau, were not necessarily meant for life sentences. Jews (and also some non-Jews) were shipped from Dachau to death camps, such as Auschwitz. Ordinary inmates (like unimportant socialists, communists, or “enemies of the state” [who might have told Hitler jokes or criticized the regime) were kept indefinitely or released and rearrested at random. They had some chance of survival, yet many died of starvation, exposure, or untreated disease, or were outright murdered by sadistic SS personnel. And had the war ended later, only a fraction of the inmates could have been expected to survive. Most of those who were early released by the Nazis or freed by the Allies at the end of the war, suffered life-long health damage. — What happened in death camps was worse. Those inmates who weren’t useful as slave workers landed in the gas chambers, and slave workers were worked to death (or sent to the gas chambers once no longer useful), unless they were lucky enough to survive until the end of the war. Even then, most survivors perished during so-called death marches.

The main difference between North Korean and German concentration camps is that the North Korean ones don’t have gas chambers, yet some of the inmates may wish that they had, for their tortured existence cannot really be called “life”.

Summa summarum: North Korea and Hitler’s Germany deserve both to be called “hell on earth”, North Korea is just a little different kind of hell. You really would not want to have to choose. (As an Aryan non-Nazi, I would consider Hitler’s Germany the lesser of two terrible evils. As a Jew, I would not be so sure.) Hell is known for containing devils who make hell what it is, and North Korea as well as Hitler’s Germany have/had plenty of those.

Something else: North Korea, even though a small country, has a huge and highly efficient military. Every North Korean male has to serve 10 years in the military. This makes a lot of military experts. And North Korean’s leadership pumps immense sums of money into armament. Thus, North Korea’s military force has to be taken seriously.

Hitler’s Germany was also a small country, yet it was a very powerful military force. Maybe Hitler’s Germany wasn’t taken seriously enough because of Germany’s relatively small geographic size. If this should have been the case, such mistake should not be repeated with North Korea.

The question remains: What can the outside world do against such hellish boils on this globe, which not only treat their own citizens in a barbaric way but also pose a serious danger to the rest of the world?

There was a time when Hitler could have been stopped by the governments of other countries, especially the U.S. This was before he proceeded with the rearmament. The chance was missed. We all know the result.

There was a time when North Korea’s regime could have been reigned in (or ousted) by the Chinese government. (Yet the Chinese appreciated North Korea as a buffer between China and the Western-oriented South Korea.) The chance was missed. Meanwhile, China feels herself threatened by North Korea.

Once a totalitarian, oppressive, belligerent regime is armed to the teeth, trying to stop it means war (in our day and age probably nuclear war).

So what can we do at this point? I don’t know. Does anyone have an answer?







Maciek

Rating: really liked it
On December seventeenth in 2011, Kim Jong-il has died. Known to the world as the supreme leader of the world's most closed society, the "hermit kingdom" which encompasses the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, he has received the posthumous titles of the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission. His death has been mourned by the population in a dramatic and uncontrolled way, with people crying helplessly and expressing their despair. One might wonder how much of it was real. Kim's father, Kim Il-sung is well known for being the country's Eternal President. Both are treated with great reverence. Will Kim Jong-un, the current leader of North Korea, complete the Trinity?

There is a video on YouTube titled "Good Morning Pyongyang" (which you can see if you click here) that can serve as a good illustration of what North Korea is about. It opens with a Pyongyang sunset, slowly revealing tall concrete buildings and some cranes. One immediately notices the complete lack of automobiles of any sort; if a person appears, he or she is walking. However, what immediately captures the attention is an image of a female traffic controller. Dressed up in full regalia, she is standing at a traffic control post in the middle of the street, under a big umbrella . Although there are no cars and the streets are basically empty, she performs her job: turning around, ordering throngs of invisible cars to pass, stop, pass again, stop again, from left to right and right to left, from all sides, never stopping, never resting, forever busy managing the nonexistent traffic. I think that this image better than any other raises the question of how democratic the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea really is, and is it really a kind of society which takes good care of its citizens?

North Korea seems to be the country which fell out of the world, as you can see if you'll take a look at an satellite photograph of the Far East taken at nighttime, you'll see Japan and South Korea, and even China; but you'll also see a black spot. That's DRPK. It's literally a black hole, where 23 million of people have to manage their daily lives, often living without what we take for granted: running water, heating...media, entertainment, freedom.



Nothing to Envy is a record of six refugees from DRPK who fled to the South and their experiences of living in both countries. Althought the book is completely gripping, it is also very hard to read at times - remember that this is non fiction, and all of this actually happened - the stories of the defectors are very moving, like the story of two young North Koreans who fell in love, and thanks to the complete blackout were able to take long walks, and very tragic - stories of people dying from starvation (can you believe that during the time from 1994 to 1998 as much as 80,000 (that's eighty thousand) to 3,500,000 (that's three and a half million) people died in a famine? Through the individual lives of these defectors we are able to see a broader picture of life inside the DRPK, and although the society is a collective one the theme of individuality is the one which carries the book: each defector has a separate and fascinating story to tell, shocking and gripping. They're escape to the South is not the end of their problems, as one of the defectors mourns that she has left her children behind; some North Koreans find themselves unable to exist in a society which we would call "normal"; two soldiers from the North who accidentally crossed the border have asked to be send back to the DRPK. The book shows how an individual is affected by an opressive regime, and how a whole nation can be brainwashed to accept an ideology. A nation where people die from hunger, but which is among the world's most militarized nations; which disappears from sight during the night, but has active nuclear and space programs. A nation where ordinary lives have been turned into a grim horror story or a macabre joke; where stories like these take place every day.

This is a book I can't recommend enough for people interested in North Korea, because of the unique individual perspective it gives. It's never maudlin, sentimental or manipulative. It is honest, and brutally so. It is heartbreaking when one thinks at how many lives are still trapped, and moreover don't even know that they are trapped. Nothing to Envy shows how people believed in their country, only to discover that they have been told lies. One might call them naive, but in what position are we to make this judgement, in our conditioned apartments with broadband internet connections? In a world where we are able to talk about this? Imagine being born and brought up in a subterranean bunker, where the outside world is barely mentioned or brought down with negativity. This is the world that North Koreans live in today, at this moment, and this is a book which deserves to be read for people to understant it.


Caroline

Rating: really liked it
North and South Korea at night


Marvellous. I would say a must read.

This book has several threads....

Firstly it discusses the general idiosyncrasies of life in North Korea under the guru gaze of Kim il-sung and then Kim Jong-il. Think Gulliver's Travels mixed with Alice in Wonderland, then give it a good shake.... I could hardly believe what I was reading. It's another world, and not in a good way.

Secondly, it follows the lives of several people who ultimately defect to South Korea. These people give us great insight into life in North Korea. They also give us insights into the major challenges of being a refugee - particularly in taking the massive step from the repressed society of North Korea, into the freedom and modernity of South Korea. Their stories make a great contribution to the book, bringing us a wonderfully personal and intimate view of wider events.

Thirdly, it describes the economic failures and famine of the 1990s, followed by continuing under-nourishment in the 21st century. Starvation, poverty, desperation - plus resourcefulness and an unbelievable tenacity and will to survive. Lots of people didn't make it though.

And fourthly it describes just what a horrible warmongering little nation this is, thanks to the obsessions of its leaders. Most industrialized nations spend less than 5% their gross national product on the military. North Korea's defence budget is 25%. It keeps one million men under arms, that's the fourth largest military compilation in the world - and this for a tiny country, no bigger than Pennsylvania. Anti-American and anti-Japanese propaganda flourishes, even for schoolchildren, and this in spite of the fact that much of its humanitarian aid has come from the US.

For me reading about North Korea was like reading about a crazy sect, headed by a power-hungry, omnipresent leader. Except this is a sect of almost twenty-five million people.

I thought this book was superbly constructed and well written, giving an excellent picture of what life is like for the people in this troubled country. Highly recommended.

Some notes for my own record......mostly just extracts from the book(view spoiler)

---------------------------------------------

Photography:

And here is a link to an album of photographs taken in North Korea, by the brilliant photographer Eric Lafforgue. This album is a marvellous document of life in that country, and the photographs are superb. I highly recommend it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mytrips...

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BBC Documentary

And here is a link to an excellent TV programme done by Panorama (BBC), on an extraordinary private Western university* that has opened in North Korea. It gives a lot of insight into the culture generally, as well as the work of the university.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

*The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).

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Picture at top was taken from the book.