Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, (Paperback)

from john257hopper

This is a moving, tragic and sometimes horrifying story of the lives of a number of North Koreans who managed to leave the country. The oppression of life there and the overwhelming presence of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in every facet of life is choking and stifling even to read about. The stor...

from msf59

Welcome to beautiful North Korea! Please stay on the designated path. When Demick started her research for this book, she tried interviewing people in North Korea but no one would speak with her (and for a very good reason). She cannily took another approach and tracked down dozens of defectors, ...

from lahochstetler

This book had a profound effect on me. Like many, I came to this book with little knowledge of North Korea, aside from what is on the news. And that's no accident, the country is highly secretive. This is what makes Demick's book so groundbreaking. By interviewing six defectors Demick is able to ...

from tututhefirst

Ever since North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, I realized I knew little about that country.  I had visited South Korea twice in the late 1980's and enjoyed the energy and unbridled enthusiasm for capitalism that I saw, but North Korea remained a mystery. Bar...

from gaeta

A confession: I've never had much interest in either North and South Korea. I picked up an old New Yorker Magazine and found an excerpt of this book and found it so riverting that I pedaled more and more slowly during my warm up and finally stopped exercising all together. The book chronicles the...