Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

Yet another gratuitous cruelty: the killer targets the most innocent, the people who would never steal food, lie, cheat, break the law, or betray a friend. It was a phenomenon that the Italian writer Primo Levi identified after emerging from Auschwitz, when he wrote that he and his fellow survivors never wanted to see one another again after the war because they had all done something of which they were ashamed.

it was the “simple and kindhearted people who did what they were told—they were the first to die.”

“A lot of people felt if you had one life to give, you would give it to get rid of this terrible regime, but then you’re not the only one getting punished. Your family would go through hell,”

Guilt and shame are the common denominators among North Korean defectors; many hate themselves for what they had to do in order to survive.