The Aquariums of Pyongyang PDF Download

Author: Chol-hwan Kang
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465011047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history.

Author: Kang Chol-Hwan
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
ISBN: 0857895389
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
'I beseech you to read this account' - Christopher Hitchens A magnificent, harrowing testimony to the voiceless victims of North Korea. Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of a North Korean concentration camp to escape the 'hermit kingdom' and tell his story to the world. This memoir reveals the human suffering in his camp, with its forced labour, frequent public executions and near-starvation rations. Kang eventually escaped to South Korea via China to give testimony to the hardships and atrocities that constitute the lives of the thousands of people still detained in the gulags today. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this story of one young man's personal suffering finally gives eye-witness proof to this neglected chapter of modern history.

Author: Everest Media
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN: 1669350827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In the 1960s, North Korea’s disaster was not yet on the horizon. In economic terms, the country was neck and neck with the South, and in Pyongyang, the regime’s privileged showcase, it seemed the Party’s talk of triumph and promise might actually be true. #2 I had fond memories of my time at the School of the People, a grammar school in Pyongyang. Despite their adherence to communist educational methods, almost all the teachers were attentive and patient with their pupils. #3 In North Korea, the education of the revolution’s soldiers was a top priority. We were taught about the morals of communism and the history of the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il regime. We were never asked to do anything too difficult. #4 My family was better off than most, living in a newly built neighborhood that was exceptionally quiet and verdant. We had a refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and a color television set.

Author: Sungju Lee
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 161312340X
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Written for a young audience, this intense memoir explores the harsh realities of life on the streets in contemporary North Korea. Every Falling Star is the memoir of Sungju Lee, who at the age of twelve was forced to live on the streets of North Korea and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, “his brothers,” to daily be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.

Author: Andrei Lankov
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199390037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
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

Author: Jang Jin-Sung
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1846044219
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER Dear Leader contains astonishing new insights about North Korea which could only be revealed by someone working high up in the regime. It is also the gripping story of how a member of the inner circle of this enigmatic country became its most courageous, outspoken critic. Jang Jin-sung held one of the most senior ranks in North Korea's propaganda machine, helping tighten the regime's grip over its people. Among his tasks were developing the founding myth of North Korea, posing undercover as a South Korean intellectual and writing epic poems in support of the dictator, Kim Jong-il. Young and ambitious, his patriotic work secured him a bizarre audience with Kim Jong-il himself, thus granting him special status as one of the 'Admitted'. This meant special food provisions, a travel pass and immunity from prosecution and harm. He was privy to state secrets, including military and diplomatic policies, how the devastating 'Scrutiny' was effected, and the real position of one of the country's most powerful, elusive men, Im Tong-ok. Because he was praised by the Dear Leader himself, he had every reason to feel satisfied with his lot and safe. Yet he could not ignore his conscience, or the disparity between his life and that of those he saw starving on the street. After breaking security rules, Jang Jin-sung, together with a close friend, was forced to flee for his life: away from lies and deceit, towards truth and freedom.

Author: Joseph Kim
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544373170
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
An inspirational memoir chronicling the life of Joseph Kim, who not only survived and escaped the devastating famine in North Korea as an abandoned young boy, but made it to the United States and is now thriving in college here.

Author: Robbie Waisman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1547606010
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
It was 1945 and Romek Wajsman had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a brutal concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured, and had no idea where his family was-let alone if they were alive. Along with 472 other boys, including Elie Wiesel, these teens were dubbed “The Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting, and struggling for power. Everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation Romek Wajsman, now Robbie Waisman, humanitarian and Canadian governor general award recipient, shares his remarkable story of transforming pain into resiliency and overcoming incredible loss to find incredible joy. Finalist for the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction Winner of the 2022 the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize

Author: Michael J. Seth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742567139
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This comprehensive and balanced history of modern Korea explores the social, economic, and political issues it has faced since being catapulted into the wider world at the end of the nineteenth century. Placing this formerly insular society in a global context, Michael J. Seth describes how this ancient, culturally and ethnically homogeneous society first fell victim to Japanese imperialist expansionism, and then was arbitrarily divided in half after World War II. Seth traces the postwar paths of the two Koreas with different political and social systems and different geopolitical orientations as they evolved into sharply contrasting societies. South Korea, after an unpromising start, became one of the few postcolonial developing states to enter the ranks of the first world, with a globally competitive economy, a democratic political system, and a cosmopolitan and dynamic culture. By contrast, North Korea became one of the world's most totalitarian and isolated societies, a nuclear power with an impoverished and famine-stricken population. Considering the radically different and historically unprecedented trajectories of the two Koreas, Seth assesses the insights they offer for understanding not only modern Korea but the broader perspective of world history."

Author: Paul Fischer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250054281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)—South Korea's most famous actress—and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader's dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated." After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty. Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader's film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il's trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, author Paul Fischer's A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.