. A must-read for anyone interested inside the North Korean prison system, and the modern day equivalent of the Holocaust. As supervisor of the material distribution center, she was summoned outside to speak to the bureau chief, but was quickly shoved into a car and whisked away to the train station. On october 26, 1986, soon ok lee was enjoying a peaceful morning at work in Communist North Korea when her misery began.
In fact, she would not see her husband alive again. She did not return to her family that night. Soon ok lee learned that her "crime" was refusing to satisfy the greed of a government officer.
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
Kang chol-hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. In 1992, he escaped to south korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.
This record of one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, informants are rewarded, where displays of affection are punished, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Elegantly structured and written, it is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.
John delury, slate “at times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology. The philadelphia Inquirer Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize. An eye-opening account of life inside north korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” the new york review of books national book award fiNALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il the father of Kim Jong-un, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population.
Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
Through harden's harrowing narrative of shin's life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. But shin Donghyuk did. In escape from camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. Between 150, 000 people are being held in its political prison camps, 000 and 200, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
Blaine harden's latest book, King of Spies, will be available from Viking in Fall 2017. North korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent.
The Girl with Seven Names
Her home on the border with china gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea.
She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize. A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived. William Collins.
Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea
He may never see his family again. Back in america, family and friends rally support by establishing a website and creating a petition for Ken’s release. Meanwhile, ken grapples with his new, solitary reality as a captive of one of the world’s most brutal governments. From the first harrowing moments of his ordeal to his release—and even today—Ken never wavers in his love for the North Korean people, even his captors.
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize. A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived. William Collins. Readers will marvel at the rare, taking in the landscape, meeting its people, firsthand tour of life inside the most shrouded country on the planet, experiencing their daily lives, and encountering the tyranny of a totalitarian regime.
Driven by his passion to help the people of North Korea, Bae moves to neighboring China to lead guided tours into the secretive nation. For the first time, kenneth Bae tells the full story surrounding his arrest and imprisonment in North Korea. Not forgotten is a modern story of intrigue, suspense, and heart.
Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom
With so few accounts by north korean women and those from its rural areas, Jang's fascinating memoir helps us understand the lives of those many others who have no way to make their voices known. Forced to marry him when she found herself pregnant, she continued to be abused by him. Driven by starvation―her family’s as well as her own―Jang illegally crossed the river to better-off China to trade goods.
. Harpercollins Christian Pub. She managed to convince her family to let her return home, only to have her in-laws and parents sell her son without her knowledge for 300 won and two bars of soap. There, a man she thought was courting her raped her. She was caught and imprisoned twice, pregnant the second time.
They had not wanted another mouth to feed. By now it was the beginning of the famine of the 1990s that resulted in more than one million deaths. She knew that, to keep the child, she had to leave North Korea.
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
As she writes, “i convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable. I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea. Yeonmi park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape.
By the time she and her mother made their way to South Korea two years later, her father was dead and her sister was still missing. Those years in China cost Park her childhood, and nearly her life. Penguin Books. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life.
. But there was more to our journey than our own survival.
Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea
Penguin Books. Every falling star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who was forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize. A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
William Collins. To survive, sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains.
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize. A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived. William Collins. A river in darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit.
His father, was lured to the new communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, himself a Korean national, and a higher station in society. Harpercollins Christian Pub. An amazon charts Most Read and Most Sold book. The harrowing true story of one man’s life in—and subsequent escape from—North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes.
Half-korean, half-japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. Penguin Books.
The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project
From the moment Robert S. As part of a global espionage project, the regime had attempted to reeducate these abductees and make them spy on its behalf. Drawing on extensive interviews with the abductees, Boynton reconstructs the story of their lives inside North Korea and ponders the existential toll the episode has had on them, and on Japan itself.
But in 2002, with his country on the brink of collapse, Kim Jong-il admitted to the kidnapping of thirteen people and returned five of them in hopes of receiving Japanese aid. A bizarre, little-known tale about the most secretive culture on earthFor decades, North Korea denied any part in the disappearance of dozens of Japanese citizens from Japan’s coastal towns and cities in the late 1970s.
Harpercollins Christian Pub. Torn from their homes as young adults, living for a quarter century in a strange and hostile country, they were returned with little more than an apology from the secretive regime. In the invitation-only Zone, Boynton untangles the bizarre logic behind the abductions. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize.
A new york times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
