Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
No matter how much I read about North Korea, it's still hard to believe that a country like this could exist in our modern world. I kept having to remind myself that the stories in this book happened just a few years ago, not decades or centuries. A country with no electricity, no internet, no food, no clothes, no industry, where commerce is illegal and the possession of foreign literature is punishable by death seems completely improbable, but there it is. The stories in this book humanize a people who, for many on the outside looking in, seem like an enigma, practically a caricature. We don't understand how millions of people could be so successfully brainwashed that they collectively see their leader as a god and thank him for the little they have instead of hate him for everything he's depriving them of. But this book proves that North Koreans do recognize the situation they're in, that being kept hungry and poor and the constant threat of having their entire family sent to the gulags if they speak one word against the regime robs them of the ability to change it. The relatively small number of North Koreans who have been able to get to China and the even smaller number who made the journey to South Korea are testament to how successfully the North Korean leadership has managed to shut their country off from the rest of the world. Books like this that shine a light onto the lives of everyday North Koreans are critical for helping the rest of the world understand what happens there and for encouraging other nations to continue applying pressure to the country to convince them to open their borders and begin joining the rest of the modern world. Horrifying story of six refugees from North Korea and the tribulation they (and their families) experienced. They describe the indoctrination of the populace, elevating their leader to God-like proportions. Everyone informs on their friends and neighbors, hoping to advance in the Party. When famine struck in the 1990's, people were forced to eat tree bark, boil grass and to eat corn kernels out of animal excrement in order to stay alive. Hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions died.One of the refugees was a kindergarten teacher who watched her class dwindle from 50 children, down to 15, the rest having starved to death. The end details the way that each of them escaped and made their way to China, Mongolia and South Korea. This one was a real eye opener.
What do You think about Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea (2009)?
Fascinating and really, really sad. It made me realize how very little I know about North Korea.
—katieleal
