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Rating: 
Summary: Oh wow.
Review: It's hard to say that a book like this is good. Perhaps HORRIBLY informative is a better way to put it.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: Since I've recently been very interested in North Korea I bought this book as part of my own informal research. It is a very fast read and is mostly a series of horrific anecdotes; it concludes with the author adopting Christianity (which somehow seems to provide divine justification and compensation in the author's eyes for her years of misery). I *DO* acknowledge and understand the very real and *incredible* suffering of 100,000's of North Korean prisoners but this book seems rife with what can only be characterized as exaggeration and embellishment. Situations that are described are often reduced to stereotypical morality plays: the author endures trials that would fell a titan, surviving them with horrible and permanent bodily injuries that frequently seem to vanish by the next chapter. She cites knocked out teeth, numerous experiences of being partially paralyzed and lamed by injurious punishments, and apparently countless episodes of being knocked unconscious, but seems to repeatedly recuperate totally. The book's pencil sketches of the author during her imprisonment generally portray a spry visage that is inconsistent with the text. I have NO doubts that countless innocent victims DO suffer and die in North Korean prisons but the cause of exposing this situation and bringing that government to justice is not promoted by embellishment that can't help but call into question the credibility of the underlying situation. I say as kindly as I can that I can't help but wonder if such exaggeration isn't somehow cultural -- the curious can find laughably extreme rhetoric in the stories posted by the offical North Korean news agency (...); their own words speak terrifying volumes. I generally liked this book, but the reader is advised to bring a skeptical eye for the author's specific tales while at the same time hopefully absorbing the underlying tragic saga that is today's North Korea.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and Informative
Review: The purpose of this novel is not only to reveal the atrocities that occur in the prison camps in North Korea, but also to explain the mentality of the North Koreans that enforce these crimes.
The author explains that because all organized religion is banned in North Korea, the cult of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il takes the place of religion. The North Koreans have no concept of God, and instead, they worship a man and consider his state policies to be the divine word: "...Several books of anecdotes illustrating the infinite wisdom and love for the people of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung ... are like books of stories about Jesus ... Obviously it aims at binding the hearts of the people to their leader to obtain their unquestioning loyalty and obedience and unite them in a common faith. The quasi-religious element has been explicitly acknowledged."**
Soon Ok Lee's goal is not to explain her suffering in graphic detail, but to show what can happen in a society in which the morals of a mad-man are worshiped: Torture becomes acceptable, brutality becomes the norm, and no human life has value, except for those of the "Great Leader" and the "Dear Leader." [...]
The author believes that the only way to combat the ignorance of the brainwashed North Korean people is to bombard them with bibles, for it will teach them to question the status of their "godly" leaders, while it will also instill in them a respect for humanity.[...]The author lived through this, we did not, and she offers insight, ideas, and solutions to human rights violations in North Korea -- [...]**Quoted from "A Year in Pyongyang," : http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang_p.html
Rating:
Summary: My eyes read, but my mind screamed..
Review: This book is a wake-up call to those of us in free nations: an icy bucket of water to help us open our eyes and appreciate the freedoms we have.Soon Ok Lee was living the easy, ordered life of a Communist party worker in North Korea. She was able to travel some in her job as a procurer of goods. However, when one official requested more than his share, Soon Ok told him no, making an enemy for life, and an enemy that cost her the life she had known. Set up on false charges, she was sent to prison camp. She was told at the gate to forget that she was human if she was to have any hope of survival. Her story is graphic in its details and shocking at the total lack of value given to human lives in North Korea. Singled out for some of the worse treatment in the prison were people of one group: Christians. The so called "heaven people" (for it was illegal to mention God) were treated even worse than the general prison population. Soon Ok couldn't understand why these people refused to deny their God and save their lives. She was even more surprised that these believers would willingly take the punishment of others on themselves, sometimes even to the point of giving their lives for another prisoner. Miraculously, Soon Ok survived the prison. She was released and returned home only to find that her husband had disappeared. With her son, she determined that she could no longer live in a country that promised equality for all people and then treated so many as "tailless animals." This narrative goes quickly, but will stay with the reader, haunting with its descriptions and with the thought of what is still going on in North Korea. May it drive us to prayer for those still under the boot of oppression in North Korea.
Rating:
Summary: Oh wow.
Review: This book opened my eyes about the true intentions behind the North Korean regime. This reclusive regime thought it could keep its political prisons secret to the world. However, thanks to such courageous survivors as Ms. Lee we now know what is really going on in the hermetic North. Those interested in human justice must read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: This book opened my eyes about the true intentions behind the North Korean regime. This reclusive regime thought it could keep its political prisons secret to the world. However, thanks to such courageous survivors as Ms. Lee we now know what is really going on in the hermetic North. Those interested in human justice must read this book.
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