I could not put this one down; normally when I read non-fiction I intersperse my evening reading with fluffy memoirs or popcorn fiction but despite the difficult subject matter I read this one in two nights. Barbara Demick spent numerous years in Seoul covering both Koreas for American articles; in that time she formed relationships with North Korean defectors and began piecing together what eventually became Nothing to Envy.
Six defectors are interviewed and their stories are woven together to create a multi-dimensional picture of North Korea. I constantly had to remind myself that a majority of the time Demick focused on was 1990-2001. I just don’t think of widespread famine as a 21st century problem but that comes from North American privilege. Unfortunately, to survive North Korea during the food shortage one had to shut off their human emotions; children starved on the streets and people stopped taking their sick loved ones to the hospitals because they weren’t able to provide medicine or even food.
It is strange to think, in a modern world, how someone like Kim Il-Sung was able to brain wash his subjects into thinking the poverty stricken country they were living in was the best place in the world. Even though he was revered as a God, Kim Il-Sung passed away. His son, Kim Jong- Il, took over but things did not improve- if anything they got worse. Government workers were selling the rice they received as humanitarian aid to people who were starving on the street. People died in train stations and on buses, the young and old were the first to go, and people simply walked around them. Despite a strict communist economy the famine cause a lot of ingenuity on North Korean’s part which was interesting to learn about. Even though some people were able to make do, the desperate conditions led many to defect which in turn created a sense of guilt in those who made it to the promised land of South Korea.
Even though they made it to South Korea, some defectors found their new lives as a hard adjustment. One defector, a middle aged doctor, had to reapply for med school because her North Korean education wasn’t recognized. Others naivity was taken advantage of, they often lost the money the South Korean government gave them to build a new life; this made it difficult to start over.
I would love to read Demick’s thoughts on the current state of North Korea (this book was published 5 years ago when Kim Jung-Il was still alive and in power). Either way, this is easily one of the best book I’ve read this year.
