{"id":41843,"date":"2017-02-20T16:18:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T21:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=41843"},"modified":"2019-12-03T22:52:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T03:52:18","slug":"reading-north-korea-booklist-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/reading-north-korea-booklist-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Further Reading: North Korea [in The Booklist Reader]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"BooklistThe three-generation Kim Dynasty has made North Korea one of the most reviled \u2013 and ridiculed \u2013 nations in the world. Memes depicting Kim Jong-un laughing about the fact that he\u2019s \u201cno longer the craziest leader\u201d keep popping up on social feeds, even while reports of the sequestered country\u2019s growing nuclear power<\/a> get buried under what is deemed more immediate news.<\/p>\n

Beyond the finger-pointing, threats, and not-so-funny humor are the hidden people of a devastated country whose stories are agonizingly, slowly coming to light. The regime will fall one day. Until then, insightful books provide our best opportunities for encouraging education and understanding. Here\u2019s a selection of fiction and nonfiction titles\u00a0that allow us to look in.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"The Accusation<\/a><\/strong> by Bandi
Initially published in South Korea in 2014, The Accusation<\/em> makes international history as the first literary work smuggled out of repressive North Korea. Bandi \u2013 whose pseudonym is derived from \u201cfirefly,\u201d an obvious nod to the insect\u2019s ability to cast light amidst vast darkness \u2013 remains a prominent North Korean writer. Written between 1989-1995, a common theme reverberates through these seven illuminating stories: that survival, already threatened by starvation, betrayal, brutality, can hinge on the most absurdly trivial details.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"The Boy Who Escaped Paradise<\/a><\/strong> by J.M. Lee<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s silent protagonist sits in a New York City cell, accused of murder and terrorism, his more notable possessions including four fake passports and 19 pages of mathematical formulas written in an unidentifiable language. The nurse in charge interrupts the aggressive FBI interrogation to care for his gunshot wound. Under her ministrations over the next seven days, the suspect will prove how \u201c[n]umbers reveal our secrets,\u201d divulging a quest that originates in North Korea and lands in North America, with stopovers in China, Macau, South Korea, and Mexico, as the protagonist moves through a prison camp, casinos, hotel rooms, action flicks, and international markets\u2014all to fulfill a childhood promise of everlasting care (and love).<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"The Ginseng Hunter<\/a><\/strong> by Jeff Talarigo<\/p>\n

A middle-aged Chinese man \u2013 the eponymous ginseng hunter \u2013 lives alone on his family farm on the Tumen River, which marks the border between rural China and devastated North Korea. The silence of his initial visit with the latest \u201cMiss Wong\u201d at the village brothel slowly melts as they discover they share the Korean language, as well as stories of escape from the brutal regime across the river.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"How I Became a North Korean<\/a><\/strong> by Krys Lee<\/p>\n

After the brutal murder of his father and his wrenching separation from his mother and sister, Yongju faces yet more deprivation despite his privileged upbringing as the only son of one of North Korea\u2019s power elite. Meanwhile, Danny, a misfit immigrant teen in southern California, abandons his father to join his mother in China, while Jangmi, desperate to protect her unborn child, escapes her North Korean village and becomes the purchased wife of a damaged Chinese man with a spoiled daughter. Through an unlikely combination of adversity and serendipity, the three young people will converge in a house of God \u2013 as victims of abuse and beneficiaries of benevolence. Drawing on her personal experiences working with North Korean refugees, Lee crafts an extraordinary narrative that combines contemporary testimony with literary achievement.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"The Orphan Master\u2019s Son<\/a><\/strong> by Adam Johnson<\/p>\n

In name and stature, Pak Jun Do is not so dissimilar from the anonymous John Doe. His many-stage metamorphosis from a motherless young boy burdened with a North Korean martyr\u2019s name to his reinvention decades later as another dead man becomes a labyrinthine quest for self-knowledge \u2013 and some semblance of redemption. Johnson\u2019s 2013 Pulitzer Prizewinner is unshakable testimony to the power of storytelling.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

Nonfiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag<\/a><\/strong> by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot<\/p>\n

Originally published in French in 2000 and quickly followed by English and Korean translations, Aquariums<\/em> has achieved modern classic status as the first-ever memoir about the horrors of surviving and escaping the brutal labor camps of barren North Korea. Kang, imprisoned at age\u00a0nine with his family, was released at age 19. Upon escaping to South Korea, he became a newspaper journalist who eventually founded\u00a0a North Korea human rights-focused NGO.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee \u2013 A Look Inside North Korea<\/a><\/strong> by Jang Jin-Sung<\/p>\n

While most nonfiction books about North Korea have focused on the extreme deprivation and unbearable suffering of the common citizen, Dear Leader<\/em> is one of few that exposes the highest echelons of the North Korean regime. Jang Jin-Sung wasn\u2019t starving, nor was he\u00a0sent to a labor camp; his family was comparatively safe. As a lauded Poet Laureate, he was one of the \u201cAdmitted,\u201d a small circle of the country\u2019s most elite as recognized personally by the Great Leader Kim Jong-il. What finally caused Jang\u2019s downfall was\u00a0something he shared with a trusted friend: a book\u2014an illegal, foreign book\u2014that gets lost, then found by the wrong people. Facing unfathomable punishment, the two friends flee to the Chinese border, beginning a terrifying odyssey that finally ends in freedom … at least for one.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"Escape from Camp 14: One Man\u2019s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West<\/a><\/strong> by Blaine Harden<\/p>\n

A book without parallel, Escape from Camp 14<\/em> is a riveting nightmare that bears witness to the worst inhumanity, an unbearable tragedy magnified by the fact that the horror continues. Journalist Blaine Harden, former Washington Post<\/em> bureau chief for East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, presents the odyssey of North Korean Shin Dong-Hyuk, the only known North Korean who was born in a prison camp; his prisoner parents were arbitrarily paired by guards to breed a slave. He not only\u00a0escaped, but\u00a0survived.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator\u2019s Rise to Power<\/a><\/strong> by Paul Fischer<\/p>\n

Only the truth could be this shockingly unbelievable. Long before PSY became an international headliner with \u201cGangnam Style<\/a>,\u201d director Shin Sang-Ok and his leading lady Choi Eun-Hee reigned as Korea\u2019s first megastars. In a South Korea devastated by war, Shin and Choi together built Korean cinema to international acclaim\u2014that is, until a clich\u00e9d fade\u00a0from the limelight. North of the DMZ, Kim Jong-Il, not yet the Supreme Leader, fed his obsession for films. He hatched a ludicrous plan to get North Korea onto the international cinematic stage\u00a0… and somehow made it work. First he grabbed Choi. Then he took Shin. Reunited as Kim\u2019s \u2018guests,\u2019 they had little choice but to help make Dear Leader’s celluloid dreams come true.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Barbara Demick<\/p>\n

Barbara Demick spent five years as the Seoul bureau chief for\u00a0The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, where she had unprecedented access to North Korean defectors. Her interviews, which began in 2001, eventually became Nothing to Envy,<\/em> a mind-boggling, heartbreaking, surreal, and humanizing portrait of six North Koreans and their lives on either side of the infamous DMZ. Interwoven with the personal stories is the grueling history of North Korea from its post-Korean War state as a paragon of Communism to the totalitarian regime still in power even with the capitalistic transformations of its former Communist neighbors and supporters.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\"\"Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea\u2019s Elite<\/a><\/strong> by Suki Kim<\/p>\n

Novelist and journalist Kim details the six months she spent teaching English at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, in which the ultimate message is about hope. That Kim, a South Korean-born, U.S.-educated, New York-based writer could enter this dictatorial regime, that she bears witness to noteworthy change among her young students, that this book is available throughout the free world, provides definitive promise that transitions are happening above the 38th parallel.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: The Booklist Reader<\/em>, February 17, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The three-generation Kim Dynasty has made North Korea one of the most reviled \u2013 and ridiculed \u2013 nations in the world. Memes depicting Kim Jong-un laughing about the fact that he\u2019s \u201cno longer the craziest leader\u201d keep popping up on social feeds, even while reports…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,37,38,7243,107,20,1343,6535,66],"tags":[7232,1340,4929,7233,2915,1353,6608,6668,7235,7131,22,6199,1354,10,3475,68,24,7031,51,6439,6198,3476,4930,6279,2274,6611,2917,1344,6280,4931,28,4135,45,6212],"class_list":["post-41843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-fiction","category-korean","category-korean-american","category-lists","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","category-north-korean","category-repost","category-translation","tag-accusation","tag-adam-johnson","tag-aquariums-of-pyongyang","tag-bandi","tag-barbara-demick","tag-blaine-harden","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-booklist-reader","tag-boy-who-escaped-paradise","tag-civil-rights","tag-dear-leader","tag-escape-from-camp-14","tag-family","tag-ginseng-hunter","tag-haves-vs-have-nots","tag-historical","tag-how-i-became-a-north-korean","tag-identity","tag-j-m-lee","tag-jang-jin-sung","tag-jeff-talarigo","tag-kang-chol-hwan","tag-kim-jong-il-production","tag-krys-lee","tag-makoto-shinkai","tag-nothing-to-envy","tag-orphan-masters-son","tag-paul-fischer","tag-pierre-rigoulot","tag-politics","tag-suki-kim","tag-war","tag-without-you-there-is-no-us"],"yoast_head":"\nFurther Reading: North Korea [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/reading-north-korea-booklist-reader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Further Reading: North Korea [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The three-generation Kim Dynasty has made North Korea one of the most reviled \u2013 and ridiculed \u2013 nations in the world. 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