Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

You can leave but never completely escape the terror that is North Korea. The fear is pervasive. It shadows you from behind, a dark shape around the corner, a startling noise, and it clings to North Korean defectors forever.

“The Kim cult combined images of Confucian familism with Stalinism, elements of Japanese emperor worship, and overtones of Christianity. Confucian familism, and particularly the virtue of filial piety (hyo), was perhaps the most distinctly Korean element of this ‘cult.’