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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick

Start date: October 31, 2020

Finish date: December 1, 2020

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Why we're reading this: October 2020 selection for Migration Theme
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What Members Thought

Mar 26, 2021 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics, craziness, korean-war, non-fiction

This one grabs you and holds you right from the start. Demick tells the back story of a half-dozen people who fled horrendous living conditions in the north for a better life in South Korea. It's hard to believe that such wretched living conditions can exist on the planet: while progressive nations are exploring space, people in North Korea seldom have electricity or food. Imagine stealing the neighbour's dog to have a bit of food to put on the table!

I'm happy for the people who managed to get o ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Feb 27, 2011 Jen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lives-of-people, non-fiction, other-realms, twisted, history, dystopia, sociology, scary, z-2013-read, asia-other

A fascinating, harrowing, and compelling read. You'd think you were reading a retelling of Orwell's 1984, but this is non-fiction. What's most effective about this book is the author tells the stories of everyday citizens of North Korea; well, ex-citizens since Demick interviewed them after they'd defected to South Korea, the only way she could get open communication about life in North Korea. We see via their day-to-day lives what it's like to live in an extreme totalitarian state, and as a cit ...more

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Jul 09, 2024 Rachel Shields Ebersole rated it really liked it

Thorough, engaging narrative of the life of several North Koreans during the 80s and 90s. I really enjoyed the depiction of everyday life and relationships. It would have been nice to have a broader context (for instance, noting the role of international sanctions and more information about the Communist bloc falling apart), but I also recognize that the author was intentionally focusing on individuals' day-to-day experience. I wish there was an update for what has happened since the book was pu ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Kimberly rated it it was amazing

Shelves: land-of-the-morning-calm-the-two

This book was very readable and it was a great introduction to North Korean history and culture. It has a personal feel since it is structured around the stories of a number of North Korea defectors. This book helped shape my understanding of the lives of ordinary North Koreans, although it does not cover much about North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-Il.

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Aug 28, 2011 mstan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, src-winter-2011-12

This non-fiction book about the lives of some ordinary North Koreans - who are able to tell their stories only after they have defected from North Korea and moved to South Korea - is easy to read but difficult to stomach.

North Korea is rather physically close to Singapore, and is the other half/neighbour of the country - South Korea - which many Singaporean teenagers are obsessed with, in terms of soft culture. Our school even had to cancel an immersion trip to Korea last year because North Kore This non-fiction book about the lives of some ordinary North Koreans - who are able to tell their stories only after they have defected from North Korea and moved to South Korea - is easy to read but difficult to stomach.

North Korea is rather physically close to Singapore, and is the other half/neighbour of the country - South Korea - which many Singaporean teenagers are obsessed with, in terms of soft culture. Our school even had to cancel an immersion trip to Korea last year because North Korea had made a show of military aggression. Yet we hardly know about this cloistered world, nor do we really make the effort to educate our children about it. Demick's book highlights the complacency and ignorance of the first world, and for me, this strikes particularly close to home.

I won't go through all the amazing and shocking facts that Demick reveals in her very readable book, but I cannot resist jotting down these notes, partly to remind myself of the horror I felt upon reading this book:

- A huge power outage took place in North Korea; even now there is hardly any electricity for most people.

- A huge famine ('The Arduous March') occurred as recently as the 90s, during which 2 million North Koreans died of starvation and parents and grandparents deprived themselves of food in order to keep their stunted children alive. (And during this time, the citizens dried out animal dung in order to pick out half-digested food to re-consume.)

3. The accordion is the North Korean instrument of choice, because it's portable and can be used to play patriotic music while one is working on the collective farm.

Yet amidst such horror love can grow, and Demick describes, quite movingly, the chaste courtship between Mi-ran and Jun-Sang, who met as teenagers in a cinema (such places are no longer in existence in North Korea) and continued their relationship even when Jun-Sang went to college in Pyongyang and Mi-ran remained to become a school-teacher in Chongjin.

The other real people include the cynical Oak-hee, who shed no tears upon the death of Kim Il-Sung (but whose mother is a great believer); the nationalistic Dr Sung, a divorced female doctor who couldn't see her own son but slaved away from 7.30 in the morning to the evening in service of other children; the orphan Kim-Hyuck, who wandered about black markets as an emaciated 'swallow', stealing food to survive.

Demick's love for her subject and compassion for the fate of North Koreans (even after they move to South Korea, they experience various problems) is evident in her writing. I gave this four stars instead of five only because the lack of solutions in this book is so bleak a gap. Demick herself says that North Korea remains more of a curiosity than a tragedy in most people's minds - but while she goes some way in ameliorating this, I thought her book should make us feel more culpable somehow, for not providing a greater glimmer of hope to North Korea. As it is, the country still seems mired in poverty, fear and despair, with aid being siphoned off by the military and few politicians being able to penetrate Kim Jong-Il's stonewalling. Good news is often undermined by bad. ...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Katie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, female-author, ___asia

A really good account of what life is like for many in North Korea. Much of it was so horrific, I couldn't believe that it was actually happening. It seemed more like a dystopian novel, as Becky said. I would recommend it, although parts were quite depressing. ...more

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