Synopses & Reviews
North Korea today is one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Until recently, no one ever managed to leave the country. No organized, active opposition movement exists, either at home or abroad. Western historians and researchers have had little access to information about North Korea apart from official Party documents and propaganda. This book marks the first time that a victim of the regime, a survivor and escapee, has provided a personal and documented insight into the labor camps, the organized famine, the farcical trials, the repression, and the political conditioning within this "hermit kingdom."Kang Chol-Hwan was arrested at the age of nine along with other members of his family when his grandfather made remarks about life in a capitalist country that were judged to be too complimentary. He grew up in the camps and has escaped to South Korea to document his personal life as a testimonial to the hardships and atrocities that constitute the lives of some several hundred thousand people living in the gulag today. Kang's account of his internment reveals the life-and-death conditions of the camp, the relentless forced labor, and the mental repression that drove the two hours of daily "political training" that followed twelve hours of backbreaking work. His memoir documents the political bartering of food and the "ideological" uses of malnutrition. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history.
Review
"The Aquariums of Pyongyang is one of the most terrifying memoirs I have ever read. As the first such account to emerge from North Korea, it is destined to become a classic." Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking
Review
"A chilling testimony...[It] freezes the heart and seizes the soul." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
North Korea is today one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Its leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party regime, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this record of one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history.