Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books) FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD WINNER OF WINNERS AWARD In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

With the Olympics in South Korea this year, and us visiting southeast Asia, I wanted to learn more about the history of North Korea and it's people. I've heard the horror stories in the news over the last decade of labor camps, extreme hunger and the systematic approach to lying to the people, but this book goes deeper than that - by focusing on actual stories from North Korean defectors.

Some of the stories they tell are warm, like when talking about family and young love. Most are haunting, talking about the physical effects of extreme hunger or carts of corpses being removed from trains that died of hunger the previous night.

The escape process and the integration back into South Korean life is not easy either, and both have their own drawbacks which are explored in this book.

Reading this book felt eerily similar to reading books about the Holocaust. Not in content, necessarily, (although there are overlaps), but in the emotions it brought out of me and the depth at which I felt them.

Absolutely fantastic book.

Chapter 1 opens with a haunting photograph: a night satellite photo contrasting North and South Korea. Much as we first-worlders bemoan light pollution, the alternative is so horrifyingly worse.

This is a sobering book. There are other basket-case countries around – Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, ... – but there's just something special about North Korea. Demick transports us there, using the words and thoughts of escapees to paint a bleakness that none of us will ever really be able to understand.

I particularly enjoyed the chronological layout of the book: instead of short bios of each character, we move with them over time, through bad times and worse ones. That was a good decision: it really helps the reader develop a sense for conditions in the country.

[b:Nothing to Envy 6178648 Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320449375s/6178648.jpg 6358552] is a surreal peek behind the curtain of the lives of six North Korean defectors and their families. Rather than a dry report of the crimes behind the regime, this novel discusses the day-to-day of ordinary citizens and the trials they face. An absolute staple for any reader interested in North Korea.???Dr. Kim couldn???t remember the last time she???d seen a bowl of pure white rice. What was the bowl of rice doing there, just sitting on the ground? She figured it out just before she heard the dog???s bark??? she couldn???t deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.???[b:Nothing to Envy 6178648 Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320449375s/6178648.jpg 6358552] is simply fantastic, and I flew through this novel so fast I forgot to take any notes. Unfortunately, I find myself struggling to encompass the impact this novel has in a few short paragraphs. How do you condense the suffering and terror people face in North Korea, both then and now? When we look at the mystique and secrecy of North Korea, often we get caught up in the outlandish propaganda, in the plastic smiles of the selectively placed North Koreans during a well-staged tour, and the rundown 1970s-esque buildings. Whispers of starvation, of malnutrition, and concentration camps go unacknowledged in the face of awe. But what does all that mean? Often we hear about these realities and separate them from ourselves. It's easy to read those words and yet, not fully understand such horror. What [b:Nothing to Envy 6178648 Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320449375s/6178648.jpg 6358552] does so effectively is bring these realities to the forefront, forcing us to confront in stark black-and-white what all of those things truly mean, and how they affect ordinary people like you and me.Though [a:Barbara Demick 785914 Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1325069453p2/785914.jpg] obviously walks us through the history of the regime, touching briefly on its origins (as brief as one can be), we mainly see the regime and its actions through the lens of our six North Korean defectors, moving with them through Kim II-sung???s death, the following ???Arduous March???, Kim Jung il???s succession, and the escapes all six made. None were without sacrifice, and [a:Barbara Demick 785914 Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1325069453p2/785914.jpg] steps aside for you to feel their pain, their anger, their sadness, their joy. This brings home a lot of what many of us take for granted - the quality food we eat, our ability to travel freely, our warm beds, and the support of our government.[b:Nothing to Envy 6178648 Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea Barbara Demick https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320449375s/6178648.jpg 6358552] is many things at once, but most importantly, it is a reality check. While we may be caught up in the fascination of this closed off world, we must also understand that the horrors written in this novel are still ongoing, and no amount of fake smiles or polite diplomatic meetings should conceal that.