Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea [Paperback]

Once I started reading 'Nothing to Envy' I couldn't put it down. I've read several books on North Korea but this is probably the broadest and most human book I have read. It gives us fascinating insights into all of the strangest and cruellest aspects of the regime: the gulags, the cult of personality, the military, the class structure, the difficulties in integrating into a different country and an extremely disturbing and heartbreaking account of the famine. The stories come from a collection of 6 different North Koreans who eventually fled and defected to South Korea; amongst them are two young lovers - one an academic and one an elementary school teacher; a doctor; an orphaned boy; and a faithful communist and seemingly unwavering "believer" in the regime. One of the more interesting angles in the book are that all of the characters live and work in the North Eastern city of Chongjin (North Korea's 3rd largest city) which gives us a greater insight into the "real" North Korea that exists outside the show capital of Pyongyang. I'd definitely recommend this book to anybody interested in North Korea and it would also be a great starting point for those who don't know too much about the regime but are interested to learn as it is very broad and covers many aspects of what it is like for North Koreans. And to top it all of Barbara Demick's writing is beautiful - there are many memorable lines and images that she creates.

I bought this book after reading an article on BBC News on how it had won an award. I became interested in North Korea when I decided to write my A Level History coursework on the totalitarian regime there, but ultimately gave up and switched to Germany due to just how difficult it is finding information on this secretive country - a country where foriegners are only allowed to visit the capital, Pyongyang, accompanied by two minders to make sure they don't see anything the state doesn't want them to see. A country where most ordinary citizens are not even allowed to visit their own capital, with only party members or promising academics allowed to live there.

This book not only offers an insight into the real lives of six North Koreans, and puts human names and faces on the statistics, but taught me several things I didn't even know. I knew there had been a famine in North Korea in the 90s, but I did not know how severe it actually was. This is possibly due in part to my age - I was born in '89, so I was too young to pay attention to any news broadcasts about it we may have had at the time. I didn't know that people were reduced to eating husks and the bark off of trees, with grass to create the illusion of vegetables. I didn't know that North Korea ended up losing most aid that was given, as it would only show the healthiest children when aid agencies came to see the extent of the famine, who then had to conclude they didn't need as much aid as they thought, and that the aid they did get was mostly confiscated by the military and sold for profit on the black market instead of being properly distributed.
I didn't know that it was so bad teachers would watch their students starve while eating their own lunches down to the last kernal of corn - it may be difficult to grasp for us, how they would not share their food with starving children - but they had to switch off, to stop themselves caring - "it was either that or go insane." I didn't know that it became commonplace to walk around bodies in the street, or that doctors were expected to donate their own skin to give skin grafts to patients.
I didn't know that the country has virtually no electricity - a satellite photo at the start of the book shows South Korea blazing with light, and to the north, just a black expanse, except for one small glow that is Pyongyang, the only place that has electricity around the clock.
I didn't know that people were executed for stealing copper wire from electricty pylons to swap for food.

North Korea is a country that still has Gulag style prison camps, secret police, and public executions. It encourages it's citizens to tell people in authority if they suspect their neighbours have been criticising the regime - similar to Nazi Germany. Each neighbourhood has an imimban (kind of like a community leader), whose job it is to report even the slightest thing to a party official. Newspapers even print stories about "heroic" children who reported their own parents. It is a country that starts brainwashing it's citizens from birth, and children sing songs in school about how they will "kill the American bastards".

It's a fantastic, and yet horrifying, book, and is a great insight into North Korea.

This book really does give you a glimpse as to what daily life is like within North Korea. It also gives accurate and compelling accounts on the process or 'defection' and what North Koreans have to go though to actually escape this repressive regime.

I don't read many books and I recommend even fewer, although this by far would be my recommendation for the year! It is a humbling and fascinating eye opener into the world of North Korea and to read about the depravity that these poor people have to life through daily.

I was sad to reach the end of this book as I wanted to continue reading what happens to these peoples lives in the long run. It appears to be superbly researched and accurate (as can be) on detail. It couldn't put this book down while reading it and I hope to read it again soon. I would not hesitate for once second to recommend this book to anybody.