The most recommended North Korea books

A humorous travel book that visits a bunch of places I’ve been to, including Pyongyang, Jerusalem, and…Thetford! Yes, please! If you’ve lived a life like Fletcher’s or mine, you’ve got no need for fiction because you know that people putting themselves out there in the real world delivers story-fuel beyond compare. The ‘quest’ here is to ‘lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places.’ Okay, it’s a little ethereal and refers to some of his relationship woes—but those words give you a perfect insight into the novel way in which the author sees the planet around him. Oh, and having also landed up basing myself in a Germanic country, I can relate to his experience of having a Teutonic girlfriend too!

James Church is the pseudonym of a former intelligence officer, who specialized in North Korea. 

His many mysteries (as well as articles published in 38 North), involving a laconic, solitary, but brilliant North Korean investigator (Inspector O), expertly capture North Korea’s sense of danger, menace, and survival – but also humanity – in a totalitarian world, where a wrong action or word can have devastating consequences.

In this, his first novel, the author explores a series of unusual events and cold cases, drawing Inspector O into investigations, espionage, and danger in a world where nothing is as it appears on the surface. In an early chapter, an intelligence officer interrogates Inspector O, telling him, “Just a nice narrative, a bedtime story.

Clean and simple. I don’t need anything too Oriental.” But Church’s novel is intricate and full of ambiguity – nothing is clean or simple.

Starting in the 1970s, several dozen Japanese civilians – everyday people – were abducted by North Korean commandos and sent to detention centers known as Invitation-Only Zones, where the Kim regime attempted to brainwash and turn them into spies in their service. When that failed, the abductees were turned into teachers instead, to teach North Korean agents how to live undercover in Japanese society. It’s the kind of thing so crazy a lot of people don’t even believe it can be true – Kim Jong-Il only admitted to some of the abductions in 2002, and even then only to thirteen of them – and Boynton tells it meticulously and captivatingly.

Economics does not always make easy reading, so stories are best told by listening to how privation is felt in everyday life. Sandra Fahy’s book is a terrific recent addition. An anthropologist, Fahy interviews famine refugees, who tell their tales. A common theme was that they worked hard and many believed at least to some extent in the regime. But they became disillusioned and defected not only because of economic conditions but for professional reasons; that they were prevented from putting their expertise and skills to use.

The true story of two men (one I knew), a son of a poor Mississippi sharecropper Jessie Brown and Thomas Hudner. Brown was the Navy’s first black pilot, and Hudner was a Medal of Honor recipient in his squadron who tried to rescue him when he was shot down at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.

I loved this work!  And its realism truly frightened me. 

James Lawler, a legendary CIA officer, has followed his brilliant debut novel (Living Lies: A Novel of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program) with a very frightening and all-too-contemporary thriller about bioweapons. This is not science fiction, and the fields of bioweapons and neuro weapons - think ‘Havana Syndrome’ or lethal viruses such as COVID and EBOLA - have been extensively studied by America’s adversaries.

Jim has told a gripping, taut, and exciting tale of Russia’s and North Korea’s collaboration in the development of such bioweapons. The characters are fascinating and believable, as is the plot line.  Lawler’s novel combines espionage, mystery, and science fiction – or not! – in a terrifying, real-world, 21st-century mystery thriller.

Imagine for a moment that you receive an email that states the following: “Liquidate everything and return immediately.” Now imagine you are a North Korean spy who has lived in South Korea for almost twenty years, and after your handler disappeared more than a decade ago, you’ve heard nothing. Until this email. Is it real? Or has the South Korean CIA found you out and is trying to trick you? What about your wife and your daughter, both completely unaware of your true identity? Your Republic Is Calling You takes place entirely in a single day of this unfortunate spy’s life, and now you’ll have to read it to see how it ends: does he stay or does he go?

A wonderful book! James Church is former intelligence officer, and in Bamboo and Blood, he weaves a tale of murder and missile deals, set in the context of North Korea's famine. 

With its evocation of cold, snow, and death, Inspector O encounters a giggling Israeli agent; a solitary, lonely North Korean general; a former colleague from a failed mission; a bevy of North Korean diplomats; and a Swiss counterintelligence officer. The tale ends with Inspector O's caveat to the Israeli agent: "Belief is easy. It's doubting that causes difficulties." 

Inspector O survives the famine, and another winter, as does North Korea. This novel by Church, like his debut spy thriller/mystery, A Corpse in the Koryo: An Inspector O Novel, is one to be savored.

This book splits public opinion right down the middle it seems from hateful 1-star reviews to glowing 5-star ones. Well, for me it was a crystal clear five stars! Our protagonist Gi and her friend IL-sun escape North Korea and end up in a horrific sex trafficking ring, eventually finding themselves in America. Even now, years on since I turned that last page, I feel Gi. I visualised with ease every step she took, every breath, every torment and heartache she endured. The book is beautifully written. I'm confused how anyone can give this book a poor rating other than accepting the simple fact not all books are for all readers! I couldn't put it down and cancelled two business appointments having to reschedule them as I wasn't leaving the house. Get the tissues at the ready.

In The Guest we hear the voices of the victims of a massacre that took place shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, a massacre blamed on the UN (mostly American) military but actually perpetrated by Koreans on Koreans. To allow us access to the stories of these victims the author uses a ritual in which a practitioner of native Korean spirituality channels the voices of those who have died an unnatural or premature death and who continue to wander in the ether until they are able to communicate their stories to those of us still living. Only then can they find closure and settle in the hereafter.