In her new book Nothing to Envy – Real Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick uncovers the secrets of the world’s most secretive country, through the stories of six North Koreans. Covering illicit love affairs, party loyalty and crippling poverty, the stories are the result of tenacious investigations and interviews in a country not connected … [Read More]
Category: Books on DPRK (page 4)
Bamboo and Blood: Inspector O is back on form
James Church: Bamboo and Blood St Martin’s Press, 2008 After Inspector O’s slightly disappointing second outing, James Church is back on form with the third novel in the series, Bamboo and Blood. In another fast-paced story, set against the backdrop of the North Korean 1997 famine and the US-DPRK talks in Geneva, Inspector O is … [Read More]
Book review: The Reluctant Communist
Charles Robert Jenkins: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea University of California Press, 2008 “Our choices are what makes us who we are. Nobody knows that better than me.” So ends the autobiography of Charles Robert Jenkins, the only American to spend most of his life in North Korea … [Read More]
Why North Korea is unlikely ever to produce a Solzhenitsyn
Christian Oliver reviews “Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor” in the weekend FT #. He observes: It is not uncommon for South Korean missionaries to meet defectors as soon as they flee into China, and for memoirs by penal camp survivors to end with the authors turning to Christianity. But Kim’s … [Read More]
Escaping North Korea book launch
At the book launch of Escaping North Korea last week, author Mike Kim explained that he wanted the book to be “inspirational”. Having seen the huge obstacles faced by North Korean escapees, he found hope in each of their stories: “If the North Koreans can overcome their mountains, I can overcome my hill”, is the … [Read More]
Korea Yearbook 2008
Korea Yearbook 2008 Eds Rüdiger Frank, James E Hoare, Patrick Köllner, Susan Pares Brill, 2009 The 2008 Korea Yearbook – Politics, Economy and Society does many of the things that a reader might expect: it contains a collection of papers which review the key developments in its chosen subject areas for the past year. At … [Read More]
James Church: Hidden Moon
(Thomas Dunne Books, 2007) After A Corpse in the Koryo, the rip-roaring start to the Inspector O series, Hidden Moon comes as a bit of a disappointment. Maybe the freshness of the debut is a tough act to follow, but somehow the first time round Inspector O had more character. He’s still got his quirky … [Read More]
A border-crosser’s tale (a brief review of Hyejin Kim’s novel, Jia)
Hyejin Kim: Jia – a novel of North Korea Cleis Press, 2007 A novel about a talented dancer from the wrong family background who finds she needs to escape across the border to China. Those who have shown an interest in the reports from Amnesty International and Christian Solidarity Worldwide will not be surprised at … [Read More]
New books for the Spring
Three recent publications: First, a new book in the Korean Spirit and Culture series, produced by the aptly named Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project. This is their fourth, and is the first of two to explore Fifty Wonders of Korea. This volume covers Culture and Art, while the next one will cover Science and … [Read More]
Pyongyang – the view from Europe
Glyn Ford (with Kwon Soyoung): North Korea on the Brink (Pluto Press, 2008) Books on North Korea tend to blur in to one another. There are seemingly countless volumes either describing life under the Kims or analysing the history of diplomatic and undiplomatic engagement between the DPRK and the rest of the world, particularly the … [Read More]
Book review: James Church — A Corpse in the Koryo
James Church: A Corpse in the Koryo Thomas Dunne Books, 2006 Inspector O is a maverick. No respecter of authority, he answers back to his boss, he drives the departmental car without permission, and even, horror of horrors, refuses to wear his Kim Il-sung badge. Not another cliché cop, you might groan. Well, he doesn’t … [Read More]
Charlie Crane: Welcome to Pyongyang
Chris Boot, 2007 The new photo book on Pyongyang can be appreciated on a number of levels. Firstly, there’s the literal level: it’s a collection of well-taken photos, with captions provided by the North Korean Tourist Board. But like it or not, whenever you see anything in which the North Koreans have had a hand, … [Read More]
New and upcoming books
Tom Coyner and Jang Song-hyon have just brought out Mastering Business in Korea – A Practical Guide. The ad in Seoul Magazine reads as follows: In an engaging and easy-to-read format, two experienced business consultants explain the ins and outs of contemporary Korean business culture, etiquette, work rules, and marketing to the Korean consumer. Pick … [Read More]
Guy Delisle: Pyongyang – A Journey in North Korea
Guy Delisle: Pyongyang – A Journey in North Korea Jonathan Cape, 2006 An account of a three-month work stint in Pyongyang at around the start of the Bush presidency, this book is neither particularly topical (it’s taken some time to be translated from the original French) nor well-titled. But it sure is original. We’ve read … [Read More]
Andrew Holloway: A Year in Pyongyang
(Aidan FC’s website, 1988) Amid the pile of available reading material on the DPRK, is there room for an unpublished memoir, getting on for 20 years old, recording the experiences of a lowly “raiser” — someone who converts Konglish into English — in late 1980s Pyongyang? Definitely yes. Though obviously not state of the art, … [Read More]
Paul French: North Korea – the paranoid peninsula
(Zed, 2005) Highly readable and wide-ranging book on North Korea. Describes clearly some of the eccentricities of the regime, such as the Sinuiju economic zone, and describes clearly for the benefit of non-economists how it is that a rigid centrally-planned economy is doomed to fail. Links: Buy North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula at Amazon [Read More]