Lately I've been fascinated by North Korea. There's been a lot of news lately about what has to be one of the strangest countries in the world, and I like keeping up with the latest news items that pop up around the internet. Most things you'll see online are pretty short, though. Little snippets of news here and there. This book tells the stories of a few defectors from North Korea, I think maybe 5 or so. They're all from around the same region of the country, and you learn a lot about what their lives were like growing up, surviving the famines (called "the Arduous March" by North Koreans) in the 90's, how they got by as the country deteriorated, how they escaped, and a little about what their lives are like now, outside of North Korea. Their stories are amazing, like how they survived and how they escaped, yet familiar; they deal with the same family relationship issues as any of us, though with the added twist if they were ever to be marked as "counter-revolutionary", truthfully or not, the whole family is punished, 3 generations. Reading this book made me think about how similar these people are to me, yet from such a completely different world. Also made me imagine what my life would have been like if my grandparents never made it to South Korea before the war. Well I guess I would have never existed because my mother's family is from the South, but anyway... This was a very interesting book, and it was not hard to read. You might imagine it would read like a very long news article, but the writer makes an effort to narrate the stories so that it's almost like a novel. There's even a bit of a love story, so, something for everyone, haha.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Nothing to Envy
Lately I've been fascinated by North Korea. There's been a lot of news lately about what has to be one of the strangest countries in the world, and I like keeping up with the latest news items that pop up around the internet. Most things you'll see online are pretty short, though. Little snippets of news here and there. This book tells the stories of a few defectors from North Korea, I think maybe 5 or so. They're all from around the same region of the country, and you learn a lot about what their lives were like growing up, surviving the famines (called "the Arduous March" by North Koreans) in the 90's, how they got by as the country deteriorated, how they escaped, and a little about what their lives are like now, outside of North Korea. Their stories are amazing, like how they survived and how they escaped, yet familiar; they deal with the same family relationship issues as any of us, though with the added twist if they were ever to be marked as "counter-revolutionary", truthfully or not, the whole family is punished, 3 generations. Reading this book made me think about how similar these people are to me, yet from such a completely different world. Also made me imagine what my life would have been like if my grandparents never made it to South Korea before the war. Well I guess I would have never existed because my mother's family is from the South, but anyway... This was a very interesting book, and it was not hard to read. You might imagine it would read like a very long news article, but the writer makes an effort to narrate the stories so that it's almost like a novel. There's even a bit of a love story, so, something for everyone, haha.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You should check out work by the University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings. He's the foremost authority on modern Korea right now. The book I was reading when we were hanging out at Amy's house was by him.
Post a Comment