An amazing, unforgettable book about North Korea. Barbara Demick explores the most closed-off society in the world through the stories of six "ordinary" North Koreans who defect to South Korea beginning in the late 1990s. Through their stories, Demick covers a bit of everything (the pathological weirdness that was/is Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il and the cult of worship - and fear of reprisal - that made people cry harder at the former's death than they ever had in their lives, the role of a total More...

If you thought that George Orwell's satires Animal Farm and 1984 are just works of fiction, think again. Look at a map and find North Korea. That's a present-day, real-life Animal Farm.

Barbara Demick's book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, gives us a peek of a spot of hell here on Earth. Based mostly on interviews with 6 North Koreans who defected to South Korea and from the author's own experience, this book takes the reader into an often difficult read of how North Koreans are More...

"Some see the truth the proof only when the liar dies." - rapper C Ray Walz

"If you kill the head vampire then all half vampires return to normal." - Corey Haim in The Lost Boys. If only that were true, my brother.

"Why doesn't the government just leave us alone to live our lives?" (Women at the market were said to grumble this. They were bad ass women because they were illegally making money on the black market AND criticizing the government. In public, no less!)

Korea was free from thirty-five y More...

On December seventeenth in 2011, Kim Jong-il has died. Known to the world as the supreme leader of the world's most closed society, the "hermit kingdom" which encompasses the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, he has received the posthumous titles of the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission. His death has been mourned by the population in a dramatic and uncontrolled way, with people crying helplessly and expressing t More...

Some links I've come across that are helping me understand and digest this book better:

Vice on Youtube:
Inside North Korea
North Korea Film Madness
North Korean Labor Camps

Photos/Commentary:
The Big Picture - A Glimpse of North Korea - August/September, 2011
Seeing, Hearing and Speaking No Evil: On the Propaganda Tour in North Korea - July, 2012
"North Korea Experts Can See a Lot in a Hemline" - July, 2012
The Big Picture - Revealing More of North Korea - September, 2012
Photostream on Flickr I discover More...

This is an incredible book! I rarely cry for books though am a greedy reader. "Nothing to Envy" makes me cry many times. I can't stop reading it.

I never try to understand North Korea, for Chinese people like me, North Korea is ignored. We are proud of our market and economy, meanwhile making jokes of North Korea partner. But I don't know North Korea people live in such a condition in 1990s, when I was a troubled teenager.

Some of the stories sound familiar, yes, it happened in China and CCCP bef More...

This book was simultaneously a page-turner and hard as hell to read. I had trouble falling asleep last night because of it, and when I did I had some unsettling nightmares. This isn't a book I can read, write an "oh that's nice, that definitely added to my life" type of review and go about my day. This is some seriously skillful nonfiction. It calls to mind being fourteen and reading Wild Swans. There's a similar structure to both works; history of a country to get the big picture, and memoirs o More...

There are few books like this written today: concise, well-researched, plainly yet effectively written, and free of hyperbole. This book is a very personal account of six lives in the failed state of North Korea. The level of deprivation and humiliation these people endure is heartbreaking. The book reads more like an outstanding piece of social anthropology than it does cut and dried journalism. The author is to be commended for her ability to get inside both the hearts and minds of the people More...

I'm not too sure how it started, but my mother is on a North Korea kick at the moment, reading books such as Escape from Camp 14. She asked me to find her a new one to read and after some research, I came across Nothing to Envy. After reading a few reviews saying that interviews were written as a narrative, and that it was a compelling account of 'what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet' and More...

Barbara Demick has based her book on many years of conversations with North Korean defectors, while working as a correspondent in Seoul. The stories of six North Koreans of different backgrounds and ages include information about the separation of both Koreas, the brainwashing propaganda in the North and the gradual disillusionment with the regime. The collapse of the communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union contributed to the rapid downfall of the economy. Food was scarce and rationed a More...

The author compiled stories from North Korean defectors and used their experiences to create a picture of life in the most closed country in the world. The stories were heartbreaking as people lived with extreme hunger and desperation while a broke government had no resources to change course in a post-Cold War world without dismantling the vision of North Korea as an all-powerful country. The result is that tens of thousands of people died of hunger. The government continued to feed the populat More...

A physician, possessing numerous years of education and selfless service to her people, comes upon a isolated farm in a dark field at twilight. The doctor is starving, malnourished and ravenous. She seeks crumbs, maybe a scrap of corn to eat. Slowly, she makes her way into a barn, musty with the odor of hay and equipment. She has not seen more than a handful worth of white rice in years. Indeed, white rice is a rare luxury in the world she comes from.

Suddenly, she sees in the dark of the barn a More...

Far be it from me to quote George W, who labeled North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" but I think, after reading this book, it may be one of the few accurate statements that he made during his presidency. This book was a haunting introduction into the totalitarianism country of North Korea. The author detailed the real life experiences of 6 refugees who fled poverty, famine, persecution, rape, and probable death, crossing the border into either China or South Korea. The most striking and ups More...

Are you interested in one or more of the following?
- Crazy stories?
- Stories about life under a totalitarian regime?
- Information about the special case of North Korea?

Then this book is for you. By far the most elaborate tale I've read, or seen, about North Korea. No matter if you know nothing, a little, or "some", about the country, I'm sure you'll get something out of it. In short, the book tells the life stories of six North Koreans who, walking different paths to it, end up in South Kore More...

Riveting nonfiction account about daily life in a totalitarian state - it reads almost like post-apocalyptic or alternate history fiction. I cannot recommend this enough if you like nonfiction journalism or social science. The author follows six people in North Korea through their lives and eventual defections (the only North Koreans journalists have unfettered access to are defectors.) This chronicle spans a really interesting period of North Korean history - the collapse of Korea's ally the US More...

This is an incredible work of narrative reporting. It’s also a vital document that gives voice to the citizens of a nation that’s committed probably the worst repression of free will in modern history--a nation that keeps its people believing they have “nothing to envy” and that things are much worse in the rest of the world. It’s assembled from a series of interviews with a handful of North Koreans who defected to South Korea at enormous risk, and their stories give a deeply human dimension to More...

She delivered all her children by herself without even the help of a midwife. One was born on the side of the road--Mrs, Song had been walking home with a basket of laundry. With the first birth, her mother-in-law cooked her a soup with slimy ribbons of seaweed, a traditional Korean recipe to help a new mother recover her iron. The next time her mother-in-law--disappointed by the birth of another girl--threw the seaweed at Mrs. Song to make the soup herself. After the third girl, she stopped spe More...

I really enjoyed this book. I was suprised at how much I didn't know about the history of North Korea. Reading about the famine and kindergardeners that were dying from hunger was very hard...sobering. And I thought it was very interesting that even when the main people portrayed in the book made it to South Korea, their lives were still hard. Transitioning to a modern society and leaving behind their loved ones. The author did an amazing job at capturing all the emotions as their lives progress More...

Cheguei a sonhar que estava inserido na história deste livro durante a sua leitura, é assim tão poderoso, tem um valor humano surreal que nos arrebata e arrepia enquanto vamos desbravando páginas querendo saber mais e mais sobre a vida das pessoas que acompanha-mos.
Esta obra é um relato real, segue a vida de dois adolescentes apaixonados na Koreia do Norte o regime mais totalitarista do mundo e de todos os seus irmão pais e avós numa jornada ao longo de 50 anos, até aos dias de hoje a salvo na K More...

I am grateful to my local librarian who keeps stocking the new fiction and nonfiction shelves with exactly the books I've been wanting to read...

This is as eye-opening, amazing, as I'd thought it would be: a fascinating window into a little-known regime...Demick follows six individuals, each of whom eventually escapes, and we see them from childhood on into adulthood and defection. The horrors of the 'most repressive regime in the world' are legion and the chronic undernourishment of its citizen More...

Well then ... wow ... and seriously ... there is really a land like North Korea that really really exists yet today? Really? Nothing to Envy is most certainly THE most captivating read I have ever read. My biggest question has to be, "where have I been?" especially during the North Korean famine of the 1990s. It truly can be mind boggling realizing that there is a whole country full of people who are the most oppressed of oppressed. What a day it will be when Korea is Korea.

What a moving book. I wouldn't have started this if not for all the reviews claiming it was very readable non-fiction. Those reviews were right. I'd read the Pyongyang graphic novel at the urging of a friend. That was really my first view into how remarkably different North Korea is from the rest of the world. This book by Demick allows an outsider to see North Korea from the perspective of native people who eventually found their way out of the country. North Korea as it continues to exist toda More...

Another book that makes me wish I listened more in History class. Throughout this book I had to keep reminding myself this is happening in the 90's not 70 years ago. The writer did an amazing job at allowing you to empathize with each character and see this troubled Country through their eyes. I was amazed to learn about South Koreas laws allowing the North Koreans citizenship, with money, & a program to help them transition. Sad to hear of the struggles they still had adapting in such a dif More...

I've always been curious about North Korea. I find it fascinating that anything like it can exist in the modern world, yet there it is. It refuses fuel relief, its language and technology is 50 years old, it lies to itself and everyone else about any news going on within and outside of its borders. When Google Maps finally released its satellite information on the nation, I had to pore over it to discover what could be seen.

But I still knew nothing about the people. I had theories that they must More...

Having studied taekwondo - a Korean martial art - for several years it has been with great interest that I've been following the current events that are happening in North Korea in the news. I wanted to know more about this mysterious country and so I found this book and boy am I glad that I did.

We are told the stories of several people who managed to defect from this country. We learn about the country's regime and how they were brainwashed into thinking that they were living the best lives the More...

My attention was drawn to this book by Hugh Howey, author of Wool (and other novels). I recently attended a talk by Howey, at which was asked what dystopian fiction influenced him. He replied that he read and was influenced more by non-fiction, and mentioned Nothing to Envy.

Based on interviews with hundreds of defectors from North Korea, and years of research, this book is an edifying account of the lives of ordinary people living in a disintegrating – yet still tightly controlled and isolated – More...

This book was captivating. I find true stories more intriguing than fiction. The ironic title, "Nothing to Envy" is a part of a patriotic song that all North Koreans learn as children. How much they have to envy! The overriding theme for me was HUNGER. Reading their accounts certainly made me grateful for my life and country. It was interesting to read how the "Great Leader" was a god-like figure in their lives. Although religion was banned, a religious worship and loyalty were expected towards More...

This is the best narrative non-fiction I've read in a long time. It tells the story of six North Koreans--how they fell in love, how they were educated, how they worked, how they were proud of their country and passionate about their Great Leader and his son, and then how their lives fell apart. Demick interweaves Korean history with these personal narratives so skillfully that she makes it possible to understand how many North Koreans sincerely mourned the death of Kim Il-Sung even while they w More...

This is one of those books that I greatly enjoyed but finished while traveling and as a result, won't be able to review to my satisfaction. Demick, a journalist, writes about conditions in North Korea through the eyes of several families of defectors who had different experiences during the 1990s famine. She shows how families living around the large but very isolated and depressed city of Chongjin, at different points on the social ladder and with diverse skills and personality traits, weathere More...

LOVE it! - No, nobody in the right mind would love this book, for although it is well-written, it cannot fail to inspire a sense of contempt towards North Korea, an utterly inhuman regime. In this book, we learn about all kinds of outrageous acts that are beyond comprehension. Electric rice cookers are banned because they use electricity (can't waste precious electricity). White rice is banned because the Party does not have surplus white rice to hand out (any white rice must therefore be smuggl More...