I’d been putting off reading this for a bit because I felt like it was going to be stressful, but as part of my effort to work through the piles sitting around my house, I finally picked it up again (I had started at one point last year and got about three pages in). I’m glad I did, as this was a good look at the horrific journeys that people escaping from North Korea must go through. This is like the graphic novel version of one of those novels in prose that I liked so much as a kid. It follows two children, Yunho and Myunghee, as they try to get to freedom and undergo the long, arduous, multi-country trip, constantly in fear of being deported back to North Korea. Anyone who is caught and sent back ends up in a prison camp, as well as their family and anyone who knew about their attempted escape, where they’re worked to death, and anyone born in those camps and their descendants are never allowed to leave, so it’s a real fate worse than death scenario that adds to the terror that infuses the book.
This is a subject that I know a fair amount about and thought that Cho and Lee did an amazing job at making the material understandable for the age group (8-12 according to the back cover) while maintaining a high amount of realism and showing the terrible things that can happen along the way — slavery, forced labor, starvation, illness, near shootings, and danger from animals and nature in general, just to name a few. It’s not a light book for obvious reasons, but it is an important one. Lee’s art is incredible as usual (I’m a big fan of theirs), and they have such a unique and interesting style that gets across the beauty and the terror that the characters are going through. The colors are especially well done, shifting depending on the location and the mood.
I’m glad I finally took the plunge and gave this a shot. It feels especially necessary to tell the story of why we should welcome refugees right now, and the courage and strength that they have to put forth to get here. Definitely recommended — it would be intense for a younger child due to the subject matter.
