Nothing to Envy

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009), by journalist Barbara Demick, chronicles the lives of ordinary people in the destitute, totalitarian environment of Chongjin, North Korea’s third-largest city. Although she interviewed over 100 defectors, she focuses on six, giving us a deeper understanding of a representative few and their heart-rending hardships over a number of years. This is the 1990s, when Kim Il-sung is the nation’s Supreme Leader, countless North Koreans are starving to death, and Kim Jong-il begins to fill his father’s merciless shoes. Since the country has remained largely impervious to change, and analysts suspect it has faced further severe food shortages since, Demick’s book doesn’t feel dated.

Every year, I visit a port town in Niigata, where I’ve often gazed out at the Sea of Japan and found it hard to believe that a country marked by such deprivation lies just across the water. Demick’s book is effective in giving a clearer picture of that suffering, its causes, and its short- and long-term impacts. You won’t look at North Korea and its people in quite the same way after reading it. It’s the kind of book that compels not just awareness, but action.