Full name: This is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood

Authors: Hyok Kang, Philippe Grangereau Year: 2004 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, Memoirs, History Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780349118659 0349118655

Hyok Kang was eighteen when he escaped from North Korea, a country locked away from the outside world. This personal, illustrated account of school days in a rigidly communist institution and everyday life with his family and community provides a rare glimpse of this secretive nation. His shocking and moving portrayal bears witness to this spirited young boy's resilience and survival in a society forced to operate under the shadow of labour camps, public executions and the deception of UN representatives by Korean officials. When the famine comes so too does death by starvation of friends and close ones, and Hyok Kang watches as his classmates drop out of school one by one, too weak to attend. All this is normal. After all, the propaganda North Koreans are fed by their government insists that compared to the rest of the world, this is paradise! Hyok Kang's childhood and courageous escape through China Vietnam and Cambodia to South Korea is a remarkable story that goes to the heart of a nation living under a disturbing delusion of 'paradise'. Similar books: The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Chol-hwan Kang Under the Same Sky by Joseph Kim In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park A Thousand Miles to Freedom by Eunsun Kim A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden Dear Leader by Jang Jin-sung Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim North Korea Undercover by John Sweeney Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner Upstairs at the White House by J. B. West Highest Duty by Chesley B. Sullenberger Having Our Say by Sarah L. Delany Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann Nigger by Dick Gregory Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane The Translator by Daoud Hari