Barbara Demick

"Nothing to Envy" follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years--a chaotic period that saw the unchallenged rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Nothing to Envy

Gavin

Horrible portrait of a deluded and brutalised country. You’ve probably already imagined the political religion, the incompetence and manipulation of the cadres: here are some of the only first-person accounts. The dozen defectors she interviews agree on enough to lend some confidence. 

She repeats entire sentences verbatim at various parts of the book, and runs out of ways to reflect somberly on collective madness and individual caprice (fair enough). It’s hard to see a country in which 10% of the population die of state-caused starvation ever rising up. No

This was different from any book I’ve read before, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I used to have a very general, limited, and dismal view of all life in North Korea; this book allowed me to understand their stories and the people as unique individuals. The way this book is written is great because it’s informative, narrative, and yet is always telling you a story that you can actually picture clearly in your head. I learned so much about their culture, their struggle, and their incredible resilience. Each story of the individuals in the book was incredible and moving.

Grace Mekkes

An incredible read. The amount of research and fieldwork that went into this is truly amazing.

I always knew that things were bad in North Korea but direct information about the 90s was quite eye-opening. If you have any interest about North Korea at all this is a must-read.

Kyle Sawatsky

An incredible read. The amount of research and fieldwork that went into this is truly amazing.

I always knew that things were bad in North Korea but direct information about the 90s was quite eye-opening. If you have any interest about North Korea at all this is a must-read.

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea North Korea is Orwell ́s 1984 made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. After the death of the country ́s great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, famine descended: people stumbled over dead bodies in the street and ate tree bark to survive. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea ́s third largest city. From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country.

Real Lives in North Korea

Alex grey

Nothing to envy- ordinary lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

Just finished the book
This has been a long amazing journey with the lives of North Koreans. It was not only some stories from North Korea, but more of a long historical journey from the Korean war till 2009. It went deep into people’s lives, the political, sociological, and economic situations, through the war, the stable-ish life, the starvation, till the defection and afterwards; through very personal stories.
My favorite part was the description of moments of realization, and how each person had their own unique story with their unique way to actually realize how bad North Korea was. It was an emotional roller coaster. Great book and amazing author. Totally love it and recommend it. 10/10

Ri Liu

alina s

well written and immediately captivating. I’m very skeptical about some of the accounts/statistics since she seems so pro westernization and South Korea but overall an incredibly educational and fascinating read

Rachel Kwon

I read this book on the subway this week. I cried, laughed, furrowed my brow, etc. The plight of the North Korean people is one of the greatest human rights injustices in the world, but when poverty and oppression happen at such a large scale, it's easy to forget the individual lives and stories, and Demick brings it back to the micro level.

Martin Lukanov

This is the third book about North Korea I read in the last two weeks or so and is most probably the best written and most engaging one I’ve read on the subject in a long time. 

Rather than the whole of North Korea, the book centers only on the lives of North Korean defectors who lived around Chongjin, an industrial city in the northeastern part of the country. I guess there are a few reasons why she chose to concentrate on this town. One of them is the fact that it was initially one of the wealthiest and most developed parts of the country but as later hit especially hard during the famine decade. Moreover, the city’s location seems to be an essential factor. The city is located relatively close to both China and Russia, which makes it a major hub both for international trade, legal and illegal and for leaving the Hermit Kingdom.
The history of the region, and to an extension of North Korea as a whole, is given through the different life stories of North Korean defectors interviewed by the writer in the span of seven years.

What makes the book especially fascinating, apart from being thoroughly researched and amazingly written, is the fact that all of the people in the book seem like entirely different and unique individuals, not like a bunch of automatons, as some other books represent North Korean citizens. Even more, not all of the characters are fervent believers in the North Korean brand of communism, some of them even hate it. 

If I have a gripe with the book, it is that the author says very little about the life of the defectors in South Korea. I would’ve liked to see how they coped with the vastly different life in South Korea, did they try to go back to North Korea, did they become parts of North Korean groups and other similar things. 

The book is written very well, it sometimes even feels very similar to a novel. All of the stories are very interesting and engaging, and make you feel with them and root for them and their wellbeing. It is a great book and one I would wholeheartedly suggest to anyone who wants an engaging and easy to read introduction to North Korea.

Melody Izard

North Korea is trapped in some sticky bug catching time zone and propaganda booms forth all day if the electricity is working. Some people decide that the information they are getting is all lies and they are tired of being hungry and work out a complicated, dangerous plan to escape only to find out they were happier starving in their homeland. Life is unexplainable.

Dave Konopka

Not the most uplifting material but this book does an impressive job telling personal stories from a world of isolation.

Omar Fernandez

Amazing, eye opening book about North Korea as told by defectors.

Jade Flynn

"It was the simple and kindhearted people who did what they were told-- they were the first to die.” 

Harrowing. Mrs. Song's story particularly resonated with me. Admirable readability.

Yoomi

I had read an excerpt in The Paris Review earlier this year and couldn't get it out of my head. And once I started reading the book, I couldn't stop. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion - horrific. But at the same time, there is always hope that things have to change, the country can't possibly continue under this regime. At least that is what I hope. The individual stories are heartbreaking but compelling and it lingers long after I read the last page. Barbara Demick does a wonderful job of writing objectively yet compassionately.

Magdalene Lim

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

When I read life stories such as these, it comes to a point where it feels like a story because it's difficult to empathize with something that only exists as a story for a large part of the world. Yet, Demick presents these biographies in such a personable and relatable manner that even someone who dislikes history (yes, me)enjoyed this read. 

This book is the result of years of research, relationship building and a lot of hard work, I would imagine. Thank you Demick for this refreshingly different read, a peek into the lives of people I would probably never have the chance to see.

Jeni Enjaian

I found myself fascinated by this book from the outset. I love telling history from personal stories, gathering evidence, and telling difficult stories. After a while though, it felt drawn out and without direction. I knew it had direction though but the ultimate culmination took too long, hence the three stars rather than four.
That being said, I do still recommend this book. People need to know these stories.

Lloyd Dalton

I've read dozens of articles about the DPRK. None of the descriptions and explanations made any fundamental sense. This book makes actual, terrible sense.

Nico J

Stunning, and I'm left with a broken heart. The lives of these six people that Barbara Demick follows are forever altered and create rippling effects to the generations thereafter, which holds a lot of promise as well as danger considering the tight-knit tendencies of many Asian cultures. It is written carrying the pain and hope of the escapees, the survivors, and most noticeably, the betrayed - those who believed in their country and government for all it was worth, only to be strung along and abused, forced to learn a grim truth. I don't have a lot of words, but I will say I am extremely glad I bought this book.

Adam

With the Olympics in South Korea this year, and us visiting southeast Asia, I wanted to learn more about the history of North Korea and it's people. I've heard the horror stories in the news over the last decade of labor camps, extreme hunger and the systematic approach to lying to the people, but this book goes deeper than that - by focusing on actual stories from North Korean defectors.

Some of the stories they tell are warm, like when talking about family and young love. Most are haunting, talking about the physical effects of extreme hunger or carts of corpses being removed from trains that died of hunger the previous night.

The escape process and the integration back into South Korean life is not easy either, and both have their own drawbacks which are explored in this book.

Ajay Kannan

Anita

Aileen 

WINNER OF THE 2010 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION What if the world imagined by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-four was real? What if everything around you was black and white except for the red letters on propaganda signs? Where spies like Orwell's thought Police studied your facial expressions during political rallies to make sure you were sincere in your expressions and your thoughts? If you couldn't turn the dials of your radio away from the government station?In fact, there is such a place: North Korea, the only country not connected to the Internet by choice. Ruled over by a dictator, visible only in carefully controlled images, it's a mysterious, even sinister country. But it's also a place where 22 million people live, work, and dream of a different life.Journalist Barbara Demick spent a decade covering North Korea's strange politics and regulations. then one day she met a young woman defector, Mi-ran, who told her about growing up there; about the cinema she used to go to when the country still had electricity, and about the teenage romance which blossomed there.through Mi-ran's story Demick glimpsed another, more human side of North Korea.In Nothing to Envy, Demick re-traces the life of Mi-ran and of five other North Koreans, taking us into the heart of an elusive society. We see her subjects fall in love, nurture ambitions, and struggle with survival and betrayal. their stories form a haunting portrait of a bizarre society and the cost it exacts on its citizens.

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea

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