North Korea's Public Face

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Author :
Publisher : Hku Museum and Art Gallery
ISBN 13 : 9789881902405
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea's Public Face by : Katharina Zellweger

Download or read book North Korea's Public Face written by Katharina Zellweger and published by Hku Museum and Art Gallery. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stylistically influenced by communist brutalist propaganda and ideologically informed by the foundational work on North Korean art -- Kim Jong Il's 1992 publication Treatise on Art (Misullon) -- these state-commissioned posters promote 'correct' forms of socialist realism that document the socio-political and economic policies communicated from the Leader to the North Korean people. In so doing, daily activities are aligned with political beliefs; for example, the metaphorical configuration of rice farming with the cultivation of socialism. Beyond their overtly ideological character, the posters convey practical messages related to new agricultural methods, or industrial and social developments, while portraying a distinctly human picture of the varied urban and rural communities across the North Korean landscape. Altogether, the imagery offers insights into a country that few have visited and from which first-hand information remains sporadic and inconsistent at best."--Foreword.

The Real North Korea

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199964300
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Real North Korea by : Andrei Lankov

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. After providing an accessible history of the nation, he turns his focus to what North Korea is, what its leadership thinks, and how its people cope with living in such an oppressive and poor place. He argues that North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds. A living political fossil, it clings to existence in the face of limited resources and a zombie economy, manipulating great powers despite its weakness. Its leaders are not ideological zealots or madmen, but perhaps the best practitioners of Machiavellian politics that can be found in the modern world. Even though they preside over a failed state, they have successfully used diplomacy-including nuclear threats-to extract support from other nations. But while the people in charge have been ruthless and successful in holding on to power, Lankov goes on to argue that this cannot continue forever, since the old system is slowly falling apart. In the long run, with or without reform, the regime is unsustainable. Lankov contends that reforms, if attempted, will trigger a dramatic implosion of the regime. They will not prolong its existence. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive.

North Korea

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1442215771
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea by : Heonik Kwon

Download or read book North Korea written by Heonik Kwon and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely, pathbreaking study of North Korea’s political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country’s unique leadership continuity and succession. Leading scholars Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung begin by tracing Kim Il Sung’s rise to power during the Cold War. They show how his successor, his eldest son, Kim Jong Il, sponsored the production of revolutionary art to unleash a public political culture that would consolidate Kim’s charismatic power and his own hereditary authority. The result was the birth of a powerful modern theater state that sustains North Korean leaders’ sovereignty now to a third generation. In defiance of the instability to which so many revolutionary states eventually succumb, the durability of charismatic politics in North Korea defines its exceptional place in modern history. Kwon and Chung make an innovative contribution to comparative socialism and postsocialism as well as to the anthropology of the state. Their pioneering work is essential for all readers interested in understanding North Korea’s past and future, the destiny of charismatic power in modern politics, the role of art in enabling this power.

North Korea's Hidden Revolution

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300217811
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea's Hidden Revolution by : Jieun Baek

Download or read book North Korea's Hidden Revolution written by Jieun Baek and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Author's Note -- Dramatis Personae -- Prologue -- 1 Immortal Gods: Why North Korea Is Such a Durable Regime -- 2 Cracks in the System: An Information Revolution -- 3 "Old School" Media: From Trader Gossip to Freedom Balloons -- 4 The Digital Underground -- 5 A New Generation Rising -- 6 Implications, Predictions, and a Call to Action -- Appendix: How Remittances Are Sent to North Korea -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W

Dying for Rights

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231548990
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Dying for Rights by : Sandra Fahy

Download or read book Dying for Rights written by Sandra Fahy and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea’s human rights violations are unparalleled in the contemporary world. In Dying for Rights, Sandra Fahy provides the definitive account of the abuses committed by the North Korean state, domestically and internationally, from its founding to the present. Dying for Rights scrutinizes North Korea’s treatment of its own people as well as foreign nationals, how violations committed by the state spread into the international realm, and how North Korea uses its state media and presence at the United Nations. Fahy meticulously documents the extent of arbitrary detention, torture, executions, and the network of prison camps throughout the country. The book details systematic and widespread violations of freedom of speech and of movement, freedom from discrimination, and the rights to food and to life. Fahy weaves together public and private testimonies from North Koreans resettled abroad, as well as NGO reports, the stories and facts brought to light by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into North Korea, and North Korea’s own state media, to share powerful personal narratives of human rights abuses. A compassionate yet objective investigation into the factors that sustain and perpetuate the flouting of basic rights, Dying for Rights reveals the profound culpability of the North Korean state in the systematic denial of human dignity.

The Cleanest Race

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Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1935554972
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (355 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cleanest Race by : B.R. Myers

Download or read book The Cleanest Race written by B.R. Myers and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding North Korea through its propaganda What do the North Koreans really believe? How do they see themselves and the world around them? Here B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.” In a concise but groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled. What emerges is a regime completely unlike the West’s perception of it. This is neither a bastion of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy, but a paranoid nationalist, “military-first” state on the far right of the ideological spectrum. Since popular support for the North Korean regime now derives almost exclusively from pride in North Korean military might, Pyongyang can neither be cajoled nor bullied into giving up its nuclear program. The implications for US foreign policy—which has hitherto treated North Korea as the last outpost of the Cold War—are as obvious as they are troubling. With North Korea now calling for a “blood reckoning” with the “Yankee jackals,” Myers’s unprecedented analysis could not be more timely.

Nothing to Envy

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0385529619
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Nothing to Envy by : Barbara Demick

Download or read book Nothing to Envy written by Barbara Demick and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic 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. 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, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . 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

The Education of Kim Jong-Un

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Author :
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815735235
Total Pages : 22 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (157 download)

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Book Synopsis The Education of Kim Jong-Un by : Jung H. Pak

Download or read book The Education of Kim Jong-Un written by Jung H. Pak and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea's opaqueness combined with its military capabilities make the country and its leader dangerous wild cards in the international community. Brookings Senior Fellow Jung H. Pak, who led the U.S. intelligence community's analysis on Korean issues, tells the story of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's upbringing, provides insight on his decision-making, and makes recommendations on how to thwart Kim's ambitions. In her deep analysis of the personality of the North Korean leader, Pak makes clearer the reasoning behind the way he governs and conducts his foreign affairs.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9781429906999
Total Pages : 880 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (69 download)

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Book Synopsis Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by : Bradley K. Martin

Download or read book Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader written by Bradley K. Martin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa. The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.

North Korea at a Crossroads

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Author :
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 9780817957834
Total Pages : 28 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (578 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea at a Crossroads by :

Download or read book North Korea at a Crossroads written by and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Human Rights Discourse in North Korea

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136853154
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Rights Discourse in North Korea by : Jiyoung Song

Download or read book Human Rights Discourse in North Korea written by Jiyoung Song and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jiyoung Song explains how North Korea has understood the concepts of human rights in its public documents since the independence in 1945 from Japan after 36 years’ colonial rule. Through active campaigns and international criticism, foreign governments and non-governmental organisations outside North Korea have been publishing numerous allegations on North Korean human rights violations. On the other hand, the efforts to engage with North Korea in order to improve the human rights situation through humanitarian assistance and to understand how North Koreans interpret human rights are often overshadowed by “naming and shaming” and “push-until-it-collapses” approaches. Dr Song gives thought-provoking and highly debatable accounts for the historically post-colonial, politically Marxist and culturally Confucian elements of North Korean rights thinking. She does this by closely reading and analysing collected works of Kim Il Sung (previous leader) and Kim Jong Il (current leader and Kim Il Sung’s son), North Korea’s official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, and others monthly party magazines as well as by interviewing North Korean defectors and diplomats in South Korea, China and Europe.

Suffering and Smiling

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 153819385X
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Suffering and Smiling by : Byung-Ho Chung

Download or read book Suffering and Smiling written by Byung-Ho Chung and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-10-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suffering and Smiling: Daily Life in North Korea, is a field report of North Korean culture based on two decades of the author’s personal observation and contact with people. The dichotomy of suffering and smiling becomes a lens through which the author observes the transformation and resilience of North Korean life. The book delves into historical struggles, such as the Arduous March against Imperial Japan and the 1990s famine, juxtaposed with the persistent theme of smiling propagated by the regime. The author also weaves in the experiences of North Koreans, highlighting their ability to find humor and maintain humanity despite oppressive conditions. Anecdotes, such as spontaneous comments from refugees, showcase the resilience and subversive humor ingrained in North Korean culture. Despite its isolation and nuclear ambitions, the country is undergoing rapid social changes with informal connections to the global capitalist system. The book provides readers with empathetic glasses to view North Korea while considering its historical trauma and the enduring impact of Korean War. It promises a rich exploration of North Korean life, offering readers a compelling narrative that combines personal experiences, political insights, and cultural analysis. It sets the stage for a comprehensive understanding of a nation often shrouded in mystery and misunderstood by the outside world.

Escape from Camp 14

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101561262
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Escape from Camp 14 by : Blaine Harden

Download or read book Escape from Camp 14 written by Blaine Harden and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a New Foreword The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped. North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shin’s shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence—he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother. The late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il was recognized throughout the world, but his country remains sealed as his third son and chosen heir, Kim Jong Eun, consolidates power. Few foreigners are allowed in, and few North Koreans are able to leave. North Korea is hungry, bankrupt, and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also a human rights catastrophe. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people work as slaves in its political prison camps. These camps are clearly visible in satellite photographs, yet North Korea’s government denies they exist. Harden’s harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.

North Korea's Supreme Leaders

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Author :
Publisher : The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN 13 : 1642821705
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (428 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea's Supreme Leaders by : The New York Times Editorial Staff

Download or read book North Korea's Supreme Leaders written by The New York Times Editorial Staff and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2018 summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un brought renewed international attention to North Korea and its leading dynasty. Ruled by three successive generations of the Kim family, North Korea is one of the most authoritarian states in the world. This collection of articles covers the history of their dynasty, including Kim Il-sung's assumption of power in the wake of World War II, the intense cult of personality surrounding him that followed, and the twice-over handoff of power from father to son, first to Kim Jong-il and later to Kim Jong-un. This in-depth coverage presents a tale of human rights abuses, famine, and nuclearization at the hands of three eccentric, unpredictable, and fiercely nationalistic dictators.

North Korea/South Korea

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Author :
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
ISBN 13 : 9781583226032
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea/South Korea by : John Feffer

Download or read book North Korea/South Korea written by John Feffer and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2003-09-20 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Korean peninsula, divided for more than fifty years, is stuck in a time warp. Millions of troops face one another along the Demilitarized Zone separating communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. In the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003, the United States and its allies have gone to the brink of war with North Korea. Misinterpretations and misunderstandings are fueling the crisis. "There is no country of comparable significance concerning which so many people are ignorant," American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood said of Korea some time ago. This ignorance may soon have fatal consequences. North Korea, South Korea is a short, accessible book about the history and political complexites of the Korean peninsula, one that explores practical alternatives to the current US policy: alternatives that build on the remarkable and historic path of reconciliation that North and South embarked on in the 1990s and that point the way to eventual reunification.

Without You, There Is No Us

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307720667
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Without You, There Is No Us by : Suki Kim

Download or read book Without You, There Is No Us written by Suki Kim and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."

Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393249239
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom by : Lucia Jang

Download or read book Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom written by Lucia Jang and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary memoir by a North Korean woman who defied the government to keep her family alive. Born in the 1970s, Lucia Jang grew up in a common, rural North Korean household—her parents worked hard, she bowed to a photo of Kim Il-Sung every night, and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. However, there is nothing common about Jang. She is a woman of great emotional depth, courage, and resilience. Happy to serve her country, Jang worked in a factory as a young woman. There, a man she thought was courting her raped her. Forced to marry him when she found herself pregnant, she continued to be abused by him. 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. 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. Driven by starvation—her family’s as well as her own—Jang illegally crossed the river to better-off China to trade goods. She was caught and imprisoned twice, pregnant the second time. She knew that, to keep the child, she had to leave North Korea. In a dramatic escape, she was smuggled with her newborn to China, fled to Mongolia under gunfire, and finally found refuge in South Korea before eventually settling in Canada. 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.