Volume 55, Number 13 · August 14, 2008
The Other North Korea
By Christian Caryl
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
Jia: A Novel of North Korea
by Hyejin Kim
Midnight Editions, 246 pp., $14.95 (paper)
North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea
by Andrei Lankov
McFarland, 346 pp., $39.95 (paper)
A Corpse in the Koryo
by James Church
Thomas Dunne, 280 pp., $23.95
Hidden Moon
by James Church
Thomas Dunne, 293 pp., $23.95
Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country
by Mike Kim
Rowman and Littlefield,239 pp., $24.95
The short version is easily told. North Korea is one of the world's most closed societies, a tightly run police state wedded to a rigid totalitarian ideology. Obedience is enforced by an all-encompassing system of surveillance and control; the merest deviation can land not only the guilty individual but his entire family in a concentration camp. The militarization of life is broad and deep: a population of 23 million supports a 1.2 million–man army, one of the world's largest, and uniforms are common even for non-military professions. Kim Jong Il, the nation's ruler, is the object of a surreal personality cult. The message of unquestioning fealty to him is hammered into the population day and night through an array of state media. Radios in the country are manufactured so that they can receive only government-approved stations—just one more way the regime strives to ensure that its subjects know only what it wants them to.
Review, 4286 words
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