Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

by Blaine Harden

The army is “the people, the state, and the party,” says the government, which no longer describes itself as a communist state. Its guiding principle, according to the constitution, is “military first.”

South Korean soaps—which display the fast cars, opulent houses, and surging confidence of South Korea—are classified as “impure recorded visual materials” and are illegal to watch in North Korea. But they have developed a huge following in Pyongyang and other cities, where police officers assigned to confiscate the videos are reportedly watching them and where teenagers imitate the silky intonations of the Korean language as it is spoken by upper-crust stars in Seoul.3

This reader recently finished watching a South Korean television series, CRASH LANDING ON YOU, in which one sub-plot was of a North Korean soldier who was hooked on South Korean soap operas.