Name: This is Paradise!
ISBN: 9780316729666

Philippe Grangereau

Hyŏk Kang

A glimpse of North Korea under the leadership of Kim Jong-il. Told through the eyes of Hyok Kang who tells of his schooldays in a rigidly communist instution, the everyday life of his family and community, and his escape from the country at age thirteen.

My North Korean Childhood

This is Paradise!

Hyok Kang

The author describes everyday life in North Korea and his migration to China to seek asylum.

Christina Hufford

Don't take the three stars as a lack of enthusiasm -- I enjoyed reading this book a lot. Or, I guess 'enjoyed' isn't the right word. I'm glad I read this book. 

The storytelling is a little sparse and dry, and I think I prefer the book I read prior to this about North Korea, Escape From Camp 14. Written by a biographer, that book was more detailed and more of an emotional punch in the gut. But, This Is Paradise! served its purpose well, and I'm glad I read the two books close together -- they provided two very different economical (societal?) perspectives of the same cultural horrrors.

 In Escape, Shin was a prisoner in a North Korean prison camp, where he was starving and lived in an environment of suspicion and violence. Seen as non-citizens, non-humans even, there was no effort by the government to educate (brainwash) the prisoners about the Kim dynasty. In this book, the author's family was fairly affluent in Korean society, and so the indoctrination was in full swing. But even though they were slightly freer, slightly better off, they were still starving. Still entrenched in the atmosphere of mistrust and constant fear. So, reading the books together was a good lesson; though their financial and ofher circumstances might have been different, the two boys shared the same goal: getting the hell out. 

What's going on in North Korea is terrible, and it's a travesty that more in the western world don't know, or worse, are willfully ignorant out of sheer apathy. When I would tell people I was reading this book, their reactions were always "Oh, yeah, North Korea. They're crazy." And that was it. No further comment. When I tried to explain the real atrocities taking place, my dad even said impatiently "We can't do anything about it, so..." I don't like that. People need to care. They should want to do something, get frustrated, get angry, and even if all they do is pass on books like this and insist the truth be shared, at least that's something. At least it's one more eye opened.

Both a shocking and moving portrayal of scenes of every day life in North Korea, a secretive and brutal nation. Hyok Kang writes of the public executions, of the labour camps and mines, the punishment for 'anti-social behaviour', the secret watching of Beijing television, and the spies everywhere who help enforce the regime by denouncing any deviations from the rigidly patrolled norm. And when the famine comes so too does death by starvation of friends and close ones, cannibalism, and political purge. All this is normal for Hyok Kang. After all, the propaganda North Koreans are fed by their government insists that compared to the rest of the world, this is paradise! Woven into this portrayal is the individual story of a boy who likes to draw - some of his accomplished illustrations are included in the book - and of his migration to China as an asylum seeker.

This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood

Reviews

Highlights