Nothing to Envy

This was the first book I read on North Korea.

North Korea is a combination of the Soviet Gulag and Auschwitz. Under the reign of the three Kims (grandfather, father, and son), North Koreans have endured malnourishment and starvation since the 1990s. Most of this would been avoidable if the government hadn’t had ridiculous economic policies forbidding private enterprise, and also imprisoned anyone who criticized the Kims’ rule. 

Remick is a journalist who introduces North Korea to a general audience by interviewing six refugees.  I “assigned” this book to one of my ladies’ book clubs and they found it very… show more.

I met Barbara at an international conference on human rights called Oslo Freedom Forum, in Norway, where we were both speakers at that conference. After talking to her, I read her book and learned more about the heart-breaking situation in North Korea. It was a real eye-opener for me and inspired me to see the courage of North Korean refugees who escaped the atrocities and speak out for their own homeland. 

Demick is a journalist whose book is based on interviews with over 100 North Korean refugees, all of whom have fled the city of Chongjin, in the north of the country. Chongjin is North Korea’s third-largest city and relatively close to the Chinese border; it’s also on the sea. As a result, the book paints the most representative and human portrait of what it’s actually like to live under the Kim regime – up to 2009. It’s gripping, eye-opening, and profoundly moving.

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans, over fifteen years, as they come to the realization that their government has betrayed them. Based on interviews, the book meticulously recreates the struggles these North Koreans endured. She focuses on the story of Mi Ran and Jung San, two teenagers in love. But despite their devotion to each other, each keeps his or her plans to escape from North Korea a secret from the other. By the time they meet again in South Korea, it is too late. Every story Demick tells is emotional and humane. A masterpiece of… show more.