Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a 2009 nonfiction book by Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick, based on interviews with North Korean refugees from the city of Chongjin who had escaped North Korea. In 2010, the book was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010. The title comes from the children's theme song of the 1970 North Korean film We Have Nothing to Envy in the World (Korean: 세상에 부럼 없어라; RR: Sesang-e burom opsora).Demick interviewed more than 100 defectors and chose to focus on Chongjin because it is likely to be more representative than the capital Pyongyang. Demick briefly discusses the examination of one of the female interviewees into a position of Kippumjo. The events covered include the famine of the 1990s, with the final chapters describing the route that the …
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a 2009 nonfiction book by Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick, based on interviews with North Korean refugees from the city of Chongjin who had escaped North Korea. In 2010, the book was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010. The title comes from the children's theme song of the 1970 North Korean film We Have Nothing to Envy in the World (Korean: 세상에 부럼 없어라; RR: Sesang-e burom opsora).Demick interviewed more than 100 defectors and chose to focus on Chongjin because it is likely to be more representative than the capital Pyongyang. Demick briefly discusses the examination of one of the female interviewees into a position of Kippumjo. The events covered include the famine of the 1990s, with the final chapters describing the route that the main subjects of the book took in order to reach Seoul, South Korea, followed by an epilogue describing the effects of the November 30, 2009 currency reform.
Insightful and horrifying look at NK
This is an ethnography, in a sense, of North Korean defectors and the lives they led while still in under the Kim regimes. If you don’t know much about NK, especially daily life in the totalitarian dystopia, read this.
Chapter 1 opens with a haunting photograph: a night satellite photo contrasting North and South Korea. Much as we first-worlders bemoan light pollution, the alternative is so horrifyingly worse.
This is a sobering book. There are other basket-case countries around -- Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, ... -- but there's just something special about North Korea. Demick transports us there, using the words and thoughts of escapees to paint a bleakness that none of us will ever really be able to understand.
I particularly enjoyed the chronological layout of the book: instead of short bios of each character, we move with them over time, through bad times and worse ones. That was a good decision: it really helps the reader develop a sense for conditions in the country.
