North Korean Defectors in a New and Competitive Society

North Korean Defectors in a New and Competitive Society PDF

Author: Ahlam Lee

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-12-03

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0739192671

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Ongoing ideological or political conflicts in the modern world have led to appalling human rights violations against North Korean defectors who attempt to escape from their repressive country and seek freedom. Although some North Korean defectors have survived the life-threatening escape journey and arrived in free countries, their overwhelming challenges have not yet ended, as they now face a range of issues and challenges in resettlement, adjustment, and learning process in new and competitive societies. North Korean Defectors in a New and Competitive Society articulates several hurdles that North Korean defectors encounter, from their long journey of escape to assimilation in their new homes. This book seeks to raise international awareness of human rights violations against North Koreans, and to emphasize the importance of helping them overcome the substantial cultural gaps between North Korea and their new homes.

Ask A North Korean

Ask A North Korean PDF

Author: Daniel Tudor

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1462919863

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"In his new book, Ask a North Korean, Daniel Tudor--a former Economist journalist and current Korean beer entrepreneur-- wants people to understand the true lives of everyday North Koreans. Using translated essays written by defectors, the book covers topics from politics to pornography." -- The Boston Globe Understanding North Korean Through the Eyes of Defectors. The weekly column Ask A North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. Adapted from the long-running column, these fascinating interviews provide authentic firsthand testimonies about life in North Korea and what is really happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." North Korean contributors to this book include: "Seong" who went to South Korea after dropping out during his final year of university. He is now training to be an elementary school teacher. "Kang" who left North Korea in 2005. He now lives in London, England. "Cheol" who was from South Hamgyeong in North Korea and is now a second-year university student in Seoul. "Park" worked and studied in Pyongyang before defecting to the U.S. in 2011. He is now studying at a U.S. college. Ask A North Korean sheds critical light on all aspects of North Korean politics and society and shows that, even in the world's most authoritarian regime, life goes on in ways that are very different from what outsiders may think.

Interviews with North Korean Defectors

Interviews with North Korean Defectors PDF

Author: Lim Il

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-21

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1000401782

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Originally compiled and written by North Korean defector and author Lim Il, this English-language edition, thoroughly annotated by Dr. Adam Zulawnik, is a fascinating collection of 34 interviews with highly prominent North Korean defectors residing in South Korea, ranging from religious figures, to artists, politicians, North Korea experts, and even divers and subway train operators. The 33 interviews herein are listed chronologically according to the interviewees' date of arrival to South Korea and span almost 70 years. The book also includes six special columns addressing key issues pertaining to North Korean defectors and their lives in South Korea, such as the relationship between North Korean defectors and their South Korean counterparts (South Korean defectors to North Korea; nomenclature (how North Korean defectors have been referred to in South Korean society over time); arrival and settlement provisions from the South Korean government; the nuanced difference between defectors, defector-residents, and the displaced; North Korean defector-residents and their position in South Korean politics; and a short biography of five notable North Korean defector-residents who were not interviewed. The English translation also contains an exclusive 34th interview with Lim Il, the source text author which was carried out towards the end of the project in October 2020. The book is a valuable testament to North Korean defector-residents and unique in that it provides a candid account of each individual’s experience. It will prove to be especially useful to students and scholars seeking to understand the complex dynamics of North Korean society and the status of exiles in South Korea, and a vital resource for students of Korean Studies.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader PDF

Author: Bradley K. Martin

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 880

ISBN-13: 9781429906999

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Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa. The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.

The Real North Korea

The Real North Korea PDF

Author: Andrei Lankov

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0199390037

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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

Nothing to Envy

Nothing to Envy PDF

Author: Barbara Demick

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2009-12-29

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0385529619

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An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

North Korea's Hidden Revolution

North Korea's Hidden Revolution PDF

Author: Jieun Baek

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0300224478

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“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

A Capitalist in North Korea

A Capitalist in North Korea PDF

Author: Felix Abt

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2017-10-31

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780804849678

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Business in North Korea: a paradoxical and fascinating situation is interpreted by a true insider. In 2002, the Swiss power company ABB appointed Felix Abt its country director for North Korea. The Swiss Entrepreneur lived and worked in North Korea for seven years, one of the few foreign businessmen there. After the experience, Abt felt compelled to write A Capitalist in North Korea to describe the multifaceted society he encountered. North Korea, at the time, was heavily sanctioned by the UN which made it extremely difficult to do business. Yet he discovered that it was a place where plastic surgery and South Korean TV dramas were wildly popular and where he rarely needed to walk more than a block to grab a quick hamburger. He was closely monitored and once faced accusations of spying, yet he learned that young North Koreans are hopeful—signing up for business courses in anticipation of a brighter, more open, future. In A Capitalist in North Korea, Abt shares these and many other unusual facts and insights about one of the world's most secretive nations.

State, Society and Markets in North Korea

State, Society and Markets in North Korea PDF

Author: Andrew Yeo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-11-04

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1108897428

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Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has experienced growing economic markets, an emerging 'nouveau riche,' and modest levels of urban development. To what extent is North Korean politics and society changing? How has the growth of markets transformed state-society relations? This Element evaluates the shifting relationship between state, society, and markets in a deeply authoritarian context. If the regime implements controlled economic measures, extracts rent, and subsumes the market economy into its ideology, the state will likely retain strong authoritarian control. Conversely, if it fails to incorporate markets into its legitimating message, as private actors build informal trust networks, share information, and collude with state bureaucrats, more fundamental changes in state-society relations are in order. By opening the 'black box' of North Korea, this Element reveals how the country manages to teeter forward, and where its domestic future may lie.