Superb in Every Way | Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

I had no idea | Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea | Barbara Demick

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	• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea Barbara Demick Spiegel & Grau, 2009 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 80 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A book as powerful and exciting as any novel I have ever read! I could not put this thing down!

I have been greatly interested in North Korea of late, having seen their soccer team at the World Cup and seeing B.R. Myers lecture on the subject (The Cleanest Race). I ended up buying this book instead and was so moved by it I could not put it down until I finished it. I found myself repeatedly thinking that North Korea was the model for Orwell's 1984, for this book is so powerful in its description of a totalitarian state ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator using power of the cult of personality. Stunning is the word that came to my mind over and over again as I read through the descriptions of the daily lives of North Koreans who escaped North Korea and lived to speak with the author about it. I kept expecting a torture room and 2+2=5 to be stated at some point - this book reads like incredible fiction and yet it is certainly not.

The story is so engrossing I found myself literally transfixed for hours on end until I had read through all 300 pages. Heartbreaking, exciting and absolutely riveting. And this from a work of non-fiction!

While, of course, I credit the author with writing with verve and giving an excellent narrative frame to the book, I also believe that the stories are so riveting that I often found myself believing that this was all made up, but apparently it isn't.

Highly recommended!

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Superb in Every Way

Whether you have an interest in world politics or just pick this book up for something different to read, you will not be disappointed. If you have a strong background in this area, you will find the factual information sound and the care with which the stories are fleshed out just perfect. If you know nothing about North Korea, you will soon care a lot about the people chronicled in this book, and the country as a whole.

I feel as if any review I write will not do this book justice. It is just amazing.

I had no idea

I had never given North Korea any thought at all, other than it being some strange little country under the sway of a madman. But I picked up this book because I'm always interested in people's stories of their ordinary lives.

Reading this book was a real eye-opener. It reads like a novel, and yet the truth of the situation made my hair stand on end. Since reading this book I have read 4 other books about North Korea. My fascinated horror is something like being an onlooker to a terrible accident, tempered with lots of sympathy for the people of the country. I simply can't imagine the mental state of the children who have grown up under this system.

Best book I have read in the past year. Hope to see more by this author in the future.

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A fascinating, thrlling tale of 'ordinary lives' that are anything but

Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy" is a fascinating book. I would almost go as far as to call it thrilling. More thrilling than any spy novel could hope to invent. In depicting the 'ordinary lives' led by a half dozen residents of the the far north city of Chongjin, Ms. Demick has constructed the most extraordinary of tales. That's because being an 'ordinary' North Korean during the increasingly desperate and dire days of the 1990s makes these lives anything but ordinary.

She meets each of the six in South Korea where she was serving as the Korean bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. [She's now serving the same role in Beijing.] In her role, she meets with a series of North Korean defectors, but she wisely decides on to focus on six from Chongjin. This is a smart choice for the development of the book. Life is quite a bit different outside of Pyongyang. When food gets short, those differences between the capital and this northern city become more pronounced. As the 90s pass, what passes for an 'ordinary live' consists of hunger, joblessness, starvation, desperation and - increasingly - death. Each of the six loses family members from a famine that - during its three-year peak - is estimated to have killed as many as two million.

Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il are merely backdrop in Demick's reconstruction of her protagonists' lives in North Korea. In fact, what strikes you is the sheer lack of information, direction and leadership that come from these two as the country quickly collapses and falls into itself. The citizens are left to fend for themselves. During this time, the Kims still practiced the fear-mongering, absolute control, hysteria and brinkmanship that are the hallmarks of their regime. But in terms of guiding its ordinary citizens, forget it. They're left to fend for themselves.

What unites the defectors - indeed, why they are defectors - is that they either found out or otherwise surmised that the party line they're fed by their leaders - they have 'nothing to envy in this world' - is entirely untrue. In one case, it's the discovery that Chinese dogs eat better than North Korean people. In another, it's a picture glimpsed of an 'ordinary' South Korean - the sharp NK observer spots a ballpoint pen and a zipper...unheard of luxuries in Chongjin. In yet another case, it's a look at an automated rice cooker....or a simple American nail-clipper. In each case, that little hint tells these individuals what they've no doubt feared in their hearts: that the equality of their country, that they have 'nothing to envy,' is not reality.

Not all the defectors have met with success and happiness in South Korea. And who can blame them? Who amongst us wouldn't be overwhelmed from such a jarring transition, going from the 'Hermit Kingdom' to one of the world's most technologically advanced societies? In some of the cases, Demick's tale is a bittersweet one. But the overall effect is still one of triumph, both in Ms. Demick's superb retelling and in the strength of these survivors.

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Important read

As the title says, this book follows the lives of several individuals living in the most repressive country in the East. I will never forget the story of the bowl of white rice the Dr. found on the ground, and how it put all of her life in perspective (and much of ours also). Beyond the politics, it shows us the struggles of ordinary people just trying to survive, which in their case meant simply not starving to death, and what it was like to watch millions do exactly that, while living in a country that executed people just for making a politically unacceptable joke or offhand remark. Do not turn yourself away from the truth of North Korea today. Read this book and know and care about what is happening to a whole nation suffering there today.

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A remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years?a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today?an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects?average North Korean citizens?fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.

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