North Korea English

Korea has a long, riveting history—it is also a divided nation. South Korea is a vibrant democracy, the tenth largest economy, and is home to a world-renowned culture. North Korea is ruled by the most authoritarian regime in the world, a poor country in a rich region, and is best known for the cult of personality surrounding the ruling Kim family. But both Koreas share a unique common history. Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo draw on decades of research to explore the history of modern Korea, from the late nineteenth century, Japanese occupation, and Cold War division to the present day.

North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.

Ruled by a maniacal dictator and cut off from the outside world, the citizens of North Korea are living in a darkness that has nearly destroyed them. Famine, malnourishment, and poverty are rampant as the North Korean government spends fortunes on nuclear weapons testing. Christians inside the closed nation face brutal persecution to ensure the underground church survives. But hope is not completely lost. Everyday, brave men and women put their lives on the line to bring light into the darkness. “Braving North Korea” is a collection of their covert stories of rescue, aid, and ...

Imagine if you were told where to live and work, that your country's leader was an all-powerful god, and that if a relative did something wrong, your whole family would be punished. That is life in North Korea. In our story, after tragedy steals 14-year-old Dae's parents away, he tries to escape to freedom. Experience the challenges and adventures through his eyes in this unforgettable story of hope.The Survival Series that celebrates the awesome history of us. Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature winner Ellie Crowe and bestselling children's author Scott Peters tell this ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and bestselling author of In Order to Live sounds the alarm on the culture wars, identity politics, and authoritarian tendencies tearing America apart. After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in...

Braving North Korea Vol. 2 continues the eye-opening journey of Volume 1 by bringing to light the courageous personal accounts of those who dare undercover ministry against North Korea's oppressive regime. Through this captivating read, you will be exposed to the daily struggles, atrocities and horrors faced by North Koreans as well as the missionary efforts that attempt to bring hope and relief for those trapped within the oppressive closed-country. Through firsthand accounts and harrowing narratives, this book exposes the hardships imposed upon North Korean citizens by their government as...

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

"Destined to become a classic" (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking), this harrowing memoir of life inside North Korea was the first account to emerge from the notoriously secretive country -- and it remains one of the most terrifying. Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and...

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States is an exciting piece of "speculative fiction." The novel posits that there was a nuclear attack against the US on March 21, 2020 by North Korea, and that a national bipartisan commission was created to investigate what and how it happened. It's pretty scary stuff.

“I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” —Yeonmi Park “One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard—and one of the most inspiring.” —The Bookseller In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into...

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?

A powerful, character-driven narrative of the Korean War from the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who helped uncover some of its longest-held and darkest secrets. The war that broke out in Korea on a Sunday morning seventy years ago has come to be recognized as a critical turning point in modern...

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.

A landmark history of North Korea, told through the rise of the Kim dynasty and its surprising ties to American Christianity—a spectacular, penetrating account of a world like no other North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom. For nearly eight decades, it has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking...

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.

Surviving Book I: The Adventures of John Harris - a Post - Apocalyptic Survival novel . John Harris is an ex-Special Forces soldier, survival expert and serious prepper, believing that one day the world as he knows it will cease to exist. When he and a group of friends stumble upon a drug-running operation with ties to rogue US Government officials while on a hunting trip. John saves a woman whom the cartel tried to kill, and they quickly form a bond. But drug-running cartels are the least of John’s worries when his worst fears are realized. A group of rogue government officials conspires...

The Korean Peninsula today is divided into two, but there was a time when this peninsula was divided into many states. Over the course of time, and besieged by expansive transient dynasties outside of this modest piece of land, many clans and tribes overran their lands. Of all those malicious and greedy potential overlords, none managed to prevail.

In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it's never been seen before. Even though it's the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy's initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia.

The weekly column Ask a North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these fascinating interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic firsthand testimonies about what is happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." This book 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 you may think.