Download or read book Escaping North Korea written by Mike Kim and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010-05-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of its kind, this book provides a unique inside look into the hidden world of ordinary North Koreans. Mike Kim, who worked with refugees on the Chinese border for four years, recounts their experiences of enduring famine, sex-trafficking, and torture, as well as the inspirational stories of those who overcame tremendous adversity to escape the repressive regime of their homeland and make new lives. One of the few Americans granted entry into the secretive "Hermit Kingdom," Kim came to know theisolated country and its people intimately. His North Korean friends entrusted their secrets to him as they revealed the government's brainwashing tactics and confessed their true thoughts about the repressive regime that so rigidly controls their lives.Civilians and soldiers alike spoke of what North Koreans think of Americans and war with America. Children remembered the suffering they endured through the famine. Women and girls recalled their horrific experiences at the hands of sex-traffickers. Former political prisoners shared their memories of beatings, torture, and executions in the gulags. With the permission of these courageous individuals, Kim now shares their stories and recounts his dramatic experiences leading North Koreans to asylum through the six-thousand-mile modern-day underground railway through Asia. His unflinching narrative exposes the truth about North Korea, stripping away the last veils that still shroud this brutal dictatorship.

Download or read book Guns Guerillas and the Great Leader written by Benjamin R. Young and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.

Download or read book North Korea Like Nowhere Else written by Lindsey Miller and published by September Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first photographic exploration of North Korea, from a Westerner who lived in Pyongyang and explored the country beyond for nearly two years. What happens when you travel to a place where even basic truths are ambiguous? Where sometimes you can't trust your own eyes or feelings? Where the divide between real and imagined is never clear? For two years, Lindsey Miller lived in North Korea, long regarded as one of the most closed societies on earth. As one of Pyongyang's small community of resident foreigners, Lindsey was granted remarkable freedoms to experience the country without government minders. She had a front row seat as North Korea shot into the headlines during an unprecedented period of military tension with the US and the subsequent historic Singapore Summit. However, it was the connection with individuals and their families, and the day-to-day reality of control and repression, that delivered the real revelations of North Korean life, and which left Lindsey utterly changed from the woman who had nervously disembarked from her plane onto an empty runway just two years before. This is her extraordinary photographic account, a testament to the hidden humanity of North Korea. 'There was much of the North Koreans and their way of life that I liked and admired, and Lindsey Miller's book brought back those positive feelings. And if we don't acknowledge those we will never begin to understand the country.' Michael Palin Please note this is a fixed-format ebook with colour images and may not be well-suited for older e-readers.

Download or read book North Korea Undercover written by John Sweeney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea is like no other tyranny on earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation on earth. Big Brother is always watching: It is Orwell's 1984 made reality.Award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney is one of the few foreign journalists to have witnessed the devastating reality of life in the controversial and isolated nation of North Korea, having entered the country undercover, posing as a university professor with a group of students from the London School of Economics. Huge factories with no staff or electricity; hospitals with no patients; uniformed child soldiers; and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ—the DeMilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins—all framed by the relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line and the gulag awaits. State spies are everywhere, ready to punish disloyalty and the slightest sign of discontent.Drawing on his own experiences and his extensive interviews with defectors and other key witnesses, Sweeney's North Korea Undercover pulls back the curtain, providing a rare insight into life there today, examining the country's troubled history and addressing important questions about its uncertain future.

Download or read book Kim Jong Un and the Bomb written by Ankit Panda and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In September 2017, North Korea shocked the world by exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in 25 years. Months earlier, it had conducted the first test flight of a missile capable of ranging much of the United States. By the end of that year, Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state's ruler, declared that his nuclear deterrent was complete. Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile and ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow, presenting one of the most serious challenges to international security to date. Internal regime propaganda has called North Korea's nuclear forces the country's "treasured sword," underscoring the cherished place of these weapons in national strategy. Fiercely committed to self-reliance, Kim remains determined to avoid unilateral disarmament. Kim Jong Un and the Bomb tells the story of how North Korea-once derided in the 1970s as a "fourth-rate pipsqueak" of a country by President Richard Nixon-came to credibly threaten the American homeland by November 2017. Ankit Panda explores the contours of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the developmental history of its weapons programs, and the prospects for disarming or constraining Kim's arsenal. With no signs that North Korea's total disarmament is imminent over the next years or even decade, Panda explores the consequences of a nuclear-armed North Korea for the United States, South Korea, and the world.

Download or read book The World Is Bigger Now written by Euna Lee and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-09-28 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, Euna Lee—the young wife, mother, and film editor detained in North Korea—tells a harrowing, but ultimately inspiring, story of survival and faith in one of the most isolated parts of the world. On March 17, 2009, Lee and her Current TV colleague Laura Ling were working on a documentary about the desperate lives of North Koreans fleeing their homeland for a chance at freedom when they were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers. For nearly five months they remained detained while friends and family in the United States were given little information about their status or conditions. For Lee, detention would prove especially harrowing. Imprisoned just 112 miles from where she was born and where her parents still live in Seoul, South Korea, she was branded as a betrayer of her Korean blood by her North Korean captors. After representing herself in her trial before North Korea’s highest court, she received a sentence of twelve years of hard labor in the country’s notorious prison camps, leading her to fear she might not ever see her husband and daughter again. The World Is Bigger Now draws us deep into Euna Lee’s life before and after this experience: what led to her arrival in North Korea, her efforts to survive the agonizing months of detainment, and how she and her fellow captive, Ling, were finally released thanks to the efforts of many individuals, including Bill Clinton. Lee explains in unforgettable detail what it was like to lose, and then miraculously regain, life as she knew it. The World Is Bigger Now is the story of faith and love and Euna Lee’s personal conviction that God will sustain and protect us, even in our darkest hours.

Download or read book Nuclear North Korea written by Victor D. Cha and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang’s Nuclear North Korea was first published in 2003 amid the outbreak of a lasting crisis over the North Korean nuclear program. It promptly became a landmark of an ongoing debate in academic and policy circles about whether to engage or contain North Korea. Fifteen years later, as North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and the U.S. president angrily refers to Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,” Nuclear North Korea remains an essential guide to the difficult choices we face. Coming from different perspectives—Kang believes the threat posed by Pyongyang has been inflated and endorses a more open approach, while Cha is more skeptical and advocates harsher measures, though both believe that some form of engagement is necessary—the authors together present authoritative analysis of one of the world’s thorniest challenges. They refute a number of misconceptions and challenge the faulty thinking that surrounds the discussion of North Korea, particularly the idea that North Korea is an irrational actor. Cha and Kang look at the implications of a nuclear North Korea, assess recent and current approaches to sanctions and engagement, and provide a functional framework for constructive policy. With a new chapter on the way forward for the international community in light of continued nuclear tensions, this book is of lasting relevance to understanding the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula.

Download or read book My Holiday in North Korea written by Wendy E. Simmons and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You remember Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun? Yeah, this really isn’t like those. It’s better” (San Francisco Chronicle). Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in. In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more. Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and ninety-two never-before-published color photographs of North Korea, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself. “Much of the humor and poignancy comes from the absurdity of a fun-loving free spirit taking a vacation that’s more rigidly scripted and controlled than a presidential motorcade . . . Simmons’ photos—including an eerie image of a classroom full of schoolgirls playing accordions—further illustrate the bizarre nature of a country that, whether for good or bad, has been carefully controlled for generations.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An irresistible read . . . A rare and fascinating look at the tourist’s North Korea in a work that is humorous, appalling, and very sad. A highly recommended and revealing glimpse into a secretive land.” —Library Journal

Download or read book North Korea s Hidden Revolution written by Jieun Baek and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A crisp, dramatic examination of how technology and human ingenuity are undermining North Korea’s secretive dictatorship.”—Kirkus Reviews One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government’s sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea’s information underground—the network of citizens who take extraordinary risks by circulating illicit content such as foreign films, television shows, soap operas, books, and encyclopedias. By fostering an awareness of life outside North Korea and enhancing cultural knowledge, the materials these citizens disseminate are affecting the social and political consciousness of a people, as well as their everyday lives. “A fine primer on the country, based on extensive interviews with defectors.”—Times Literary Supplement “A fascinating book.”—The New York Times “[A] timely and cogent book.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “A fascinating and intelligent overview of the ways that information is liberating North Koreans’ minds.”—Robert S. Boynton, author of The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project “A fascinating, important, and vivid account of how unofficial information is increasingly seeping into the North and chipping away at the regime’s myths—and hence its control of North Korean society.”—Sue Mi Terry, former CIA analyst and senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University

Download or read book Nuclear Showdown written by Gordon G. Chang and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuclear Showdown published by Asia expert, Gordon Chang, was of the first books to exploire the full extent of the North Korean nuclear threat, its origins, international implications, and solutions. The United States is the mightiest nation in history, yet for six decades one of the world's weakest states has challenged the superpower and kept it at bay. Today, that country also threatens to change the course of human events with an act of unimaginable devastation. Nuclear Showdown analyses the failed society that has become the gravest threat to America and international order: North Korea. Chang's insightful book reveals the full horror of the crisis threatening to turn Asia into the world's next battleground. How can North Korea be stopped? No one seems to have an answer. For more than half a century, policymakers have failed when it comes to subjugating Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. Nuclear Showdown proposes a solution that can defuse the standoff once and for all.

Download or read book North Korea written by Paul Moorcraft and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist and military historian’s in-depth look at the reclusive rogue nation, its ruling dynasty, and the ongoing threat it presents. Created in 1945 when Korea was partitioned, North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, remains the world’s most secretive nation. Even the few permitted visitors are closely monitored by minders, so accounts of those who have escaped are the main source of information on conditions within the country. What is not in doubt is the totalitarian control over the population exercised by the ruling dynasty. Kim Jong-un is the grandson of the first dictator, Kim Il-sung. Until the development of a credible nuclear arsenal, it was possible to ignore North Korean posturing. But that is no longer an option as test firing proved that not only were other Asian nations directly threatened but the United States as well. While President Trump and Kim Jong-un met in Singapore in June 2018, there remains distrust and dangerous uncertainty. In this book, longtime foreign correspondent and military historian Paul Moorcraft traces the history of this small rogue nation that represents a major threat to world peace—and examines the situation’s political and military implications.

Download or read book The North Korean Revolution 1945 1950 written by Charles K. Armstrong and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea's strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history.North Korea is one of the last redoubts of "unreformed" Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique "indigenization" of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong's account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author's argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come.

Download or read book Tyranny of the Weak written by Charles K. Armstrong and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To much of the world, North Korea is an impenetrable mystery, its inner workings unknown and its actions toward the outside unpredictable and frequently provocative. Tyranny of the Weak reveals for the first time the motivations, processes, and effects of North Korea’s foreign relations during the Cold War era. Drawing on extensive research in the archives of North Korea’s present and former communist allies, including the Soviet Union, China, and East Germany, Charles K. Armstrong tells in vivid detail how North Korea managed its alliances with fellow communist states, maintained a precarious independence in the Sino-Soviet split, attempted to reach out to the capitalist West and present itself as a model for Third World development, and confronted and engaged with its archenemies, the United States and South Korea. From the invasion that set off the Korean War in June 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tyranny of the Weak shows how—despite its objective weakness—North Korea has managed for much of its history to deal with the outside world to its maximum advantage. Insisting on a path of "self-reliance" since the 1950s, North Korea has continually resisted pressure to change from enemies and allies alike. A worldview formed in the crucible of the Korean War and Cold War still maintains a powerful hold on North Korea in the twenty-first century, and understanding those historical forces is as urgent today as it was sixty years ago.

Download or read book North Korea in Transition written by Kyung-Ae Park and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the death of Kim Jong Il, North Korea has entered a period of profound transformation laden with uncertainty. This authoritative book brings together the world's leading North Korea experts to analyze both the challenges and prospects the country is facing. Drawing on the contributors' expertise across a range of disciplines, the book examines North Korea's political, economic, social, and foreign policy concerns. Considering the implications for Pyongyang's transition, it focuses especially on the transformation of ideology, the Worker's Party of Korea, the military, effects of the Arab Spring, the emerging merchant class, cultural infiltration from the South, Western aid, and global economic integration. The contributors also assess the impact of North Korea's new policies on China, South Korea, the United States, and the rest of the world. Comprehensive and deeply knowledgeable, their analysis is especially crucial given the power consolidation efforts of the new leadership underway in Pyongyang and the implications for both domestic and international politics. Contributions by: Nicholas Anderson, Charles Armstrong, Bradley Babson, Victor Cha, Bruce Cumings, Nicholas Eberstadt, Ken Gause, David Kang, Andrei Lankov, Woo Young Lee, Liu Ming, Haksoon Paik, Kyung-Ae Park, Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Scott Snyder.

Download or read book A Most Enterprising Country written by Justin V. Hastings and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War, massive famine, numerous regional crises, punishing sanctions, and international stigma. In A Most Enterprising Country, Justin V. Hastings explores the puzzle of how the most politically isolated state in the world nonetheless sustains itself in large part by international trade and integration into the global economy. The world's last Stalinist state is also one of the most enterprising, as Hastings shows through in-depth examinations of North Korea’s import and export efforts, with a particular focus on restaurants, the weapons trade, and drug trafficking. Tracing the development of trade networks inside and outside North Korea through the famine of the 1990s and the onset of sanctions in the mid-2000s, Hastings argues that the North Korean state and North Korean citizens have proved pragmatic and adaptable, exploiting market niches and making creative use of brokers and commercial methods to access the global economy.North Korean trade networks—which include private citizens as well as the Kim family and high-ranking elites—accept high levels of risk and have become experts at operating in the blurred zones between licit and illicit, state and nonstate, and formal and informal trade. This entrepreneurialism has allowed North Korea to survive; but it has also caused problems for foreign firms investing in the country, emboldens the North Korean state in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and may continue to shape the economy in the future.

Download or read book Friend written by Paek Nam-nyong and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists’ past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge’s own marital troubles. A best-seller in North Korea, where Paek continues to live and write, Friend illuminates a side of life in the DPRK that Western readers have never before encountered. Far from being a propagandistic screed in praise of the Great Leader, Friend describes the lives of people who struggle with everyday problems such as marital woes and workplace conflicts. Instead of socialist-realist stock figures, Paek depicts complex characters who wrestle with universal questions of individual identity, the split between public and private selves, the unpredictability of existence, and the never-ending labor of maintaining a relationship. This groundbreaking translation of one of North Korea’s most popular writers offers English-language readers a page-turner full of psychological tension as well as a revealing portrait of a society that is typically seen as closed to the outside world.

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive