NOTHING TO ENVY, Ordinary Lives In North Korea. Barbara Demick. Spiegel & Grau. 314 pages.$26.00
This is an insightful and detailed look at horrible everyday life in North Korea as described by men and women who lived there during the last 15 years. You wish it were fiction but the former Los Angeles Times Korea writer and current Times Beijing Bureau Chief depicts clearly that life north of the 38th parallel in the divided country is a harsh deadly existence. The "Hermit Kingdom" is cut off from its neighbors and the world. This last bastion of the failed Communism dream became a nightmare led by a dictator who makes even Cuba look happy and prosperous in comparison
The lights literally went out across the country in the 1990s when Russia stopped sending supplies. Factories closed, jobs and Party status disappeared and hunger slowly became starvation and years of famine. Citizens struggled as the socialist state became mere slogans, empty promises and 34,000 statues of the Grand Leader. The book is a series of accounts from defectors and, true journalist that she is, Demick has double checked and cross referenced the sources and adapted her newspaper style to make a book very much worth reading.
While millions continue to be spent on nuclear development and testing instead of rebuilding the economy, Kim Jong-il rebuffs international offers of humanitarian assistance for his helpless and hopeless people and has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Defectors say the national isolation and hatred for outsiders is fostered on all levels. "First-grade reader primers are filled with stories of children who were beaten, bayoneted, burned, splashed with acid or thrown into wells by villains who were invariably Christian missionaries, Japanese invaders or American imperialist bastards."
The jarring transition to freedom for individuals and families who escape to China or South Korea is described in aching detail by stunned survivors of this 21st century disaster. This book provides a hard look behind today's headlines.
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Charles Lee Boyd is a writer
who lives in Hanahan
[This review was submitted to the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper]
This is an insightful and detailed look at horrible everyday life in North Korea as described by men and women who lived there during the last 15 years. You wish it were fiction but the former Los Angeles Times Korea writer and current Times Beijing Bureau Chief depicts clearly that life north of the 38th parallel in the divided country is a harsh deadly existence. The "Hermit Kingdom" is cut off from its neighbors and the world. This last bastion of the failed Communism dream became a nightmare led by a dictator who makes even Cuba look happy and prosperous in comparison
The lights literally went out across the country in the 1990s when Russia stopped sending supplies. Factories closed, jobs and Party status disappeared and hunger slowly became starvation and years of famine. Citizens struggled as the socialist state became mere slogans, empty promises and 34,000 statues of the Grand Leader. The book is a series of accounts from defectors and, true journalist that she is, Demick has double checked and cross referenced the sources and adapted her newspaper style to make a book very much worth reading.
While millions continue to be spent on nuclear development and testing instead of rebuilding the economy, Kim Jong-il rebuffs international offers of humanitarian assistance for his helpless and hopeless people and has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Defectors say the national isolation and hatred for outsiders is fostered on all levels. "First-grade reader primers are filled with stories of children who were beaten, bayoneted, burned, splashed with acid or thrown into wells by villains who were invariably Christian missionaries, Japanese invaders or American imperialist bastards."
The jarring transition to freedom for individuals and families who escape to China or South Korea is described in aching detail by stunned survivors of this 21st century disaster. This book provides a hard look behind today's headlines.
########
Charles Lee Boyd is a writer
who lives in Hanahan
[This review was submitted to the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper]
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