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Jul 03, 2017miaone rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This is not an easy book to read and understand. The the stories are filled with minutiae of daily life in a manner that I have read before in books by people who succeeded in escaping from North Korea. I don't claim to be an expert by any means, but I think it is a literary style that we in the West are not accustomed to. That, combined with our own (or my own, anyway) unfamiliarity with daily life in Pyungyang makes for a bit of a challenge in comprehension. I know enough to understand the almost constant preoccupation on Communist Party membership -- getting it, or maintaining it. I know that a slip-up, even if it's only perceived, in behavior about things we would find trivial (not looking sad enough when Kim Jong-Il died, for example) can affect a person's level of membership. A negative report in such behavior, or at work, or anywhere at all affects not only the person being judged but also that person's whole family. It's a country filled with desperate people who do not dare show that they are desperate. The stories are worth reading, but I found them slow-going. And the pathos of the lives of the people depicted lingers in the reader's mind.