Barbara Demick

An exploration of life in North Korea between the 1980s and roughly 2010, through a group biography of six people from the city of Chongjin who survived the famine and managed to escape to South Korea. It's an engrossing read which shows just how much an already hardscrabble life became ever more brutal as the North Korean economy spiralled ever further downwards in the '90s. There are moments of great brutality and also humanity here, as people sometimes help one another and something hurt show more one another.

The closed nature of North Korean society means that Barbara Demick has limited capacity to verify the accounts of her subjects, and of course it's questionable how much these interviewees—who are atypical in many ways as people with the drive and connections to get themselves over the border; far fewer people are able to defect each year from the North than were for example from East to West Germany—are representative of more general Northern Korean attitudes towards the Kim regime. I'd be fascinated to read an updated edition of this book with a follow up look at the six subjects and what life is like under Kim Jong Un. show less

I thought I knew a little about what life was like in North Korea before reading this. Many years ago I saw photos of a super highway with no cars on it, and a poster advertising the government permitted hairstyles. I had no idea that this was merely scratching the surface, and that most of the country remains in abject poverty. Like the years of the famine in the 1990s (2 million people died - I had no idea), as of 2010 people were still hiking out to the countryside to find grass and weeds show more to eat, with most people living in a constant state of starvation.

Having finished the book, my head is still trying to get around this, and moreover that the Western world allows this to go on. I wonder would things be different if it was a country rich in oil reserves...

North Korea, the ultimate closed state, was always going to be an interesting read, but I think Barbara Demick did a fantastic job with this book. By taking the lives of 6 defectors, she brought a human narrative to a non-fiction subject, and these 6 people became fascinating real life protagonists, with love stories and personal tragedies.

It's sad there's no happy ending to this book, and that if anything the country is declining further backwards.

4 stars for a fascinating and shocking read. show less

"Nothing to Envy" is the most depressing book in the world.

Following the lives of six ex-pat North Koreans who, through luck and perseverance, managed to get out through China and to South Korea (where they are automatically citizens), "Nothing to Envy" chronicles the rise and fall of the last Soviet Communist State who has managed, somehow, to hang on when dictators world over are falling. At first, Kim Il-Jong's make-believe Communist Paradise, established in 1958 and propped up by the show more Russians, looked like a Korean Miracle. Built on top of left behind Japanese trains, electrical lines, factories, and roads, the Communist experiment looked, from the outside, to actually work: the per capita of those in North Korea was higher than South Korea as South Korea went through its post-Korean War growing pangs. Sure everyone in North Korea was pigeon-holed based on the allegiances of their grandparents and their opportunities in life granted or removed based on some superficial caste almost as harsh as found in India, but the people were fed, everyone had health care, people had jobs and school, and the trains ran on time.

Then three things happened: the Soviet Union fell, Kim Il-Jong died, and Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms in China caused China's economy to rapidly expand. North Korea never was anything more than a puppet state; it never made or sold anything itself. The moment the money dried up and North Korea's allies became more interested in money than a Communist experiment, North Korea began to starve. Everyone starved. Hundreds of thousands died. And the government never relented to feed its people, all for ideology.

The six very personal stories chronicles the period of intense starvation and the re-discovery of capitalist markets in North Korea from 1991 to the present day. All of the people featured in the book, some young and some old enough to remember the Korean War, are all survivors, tough enough to survive the famines, cross the border into China, and sneak all the way to South Korea. "Nothing to Envy" chronicles extreme poverty under crushing 1984 conditions where, even while starving, a stray word against the government meant a trip to the Gulag. Televisions are fixed to only one TV station, radios only get the North Korean State station (but easy to hack), cellphones banned, no computers, and the people are sealed in a hermetic bubble. It doesn't matter, though: electricity is so rare people steal the copper out of the power lines to sell for black market rice. The electricity hasn't been on in twenty years. Cities crumble, trains die on the tracks, and the factories sit idle. There aren't any cars. North Korea is a wasteland.

After reading this book, it's unclear how reunification would work. North Korea is a poverty-stricken nation stuck in the 1960s and reunification would mean retraining some 23 million people in how to exist in the 21st century. Estimates are between $800 billion and $1.3 trillion to rebuild North Korea to a livable, workable standard. It's not the de-brainwashing as much as the sheer rebuilding.

"Nothing to Envy" is a very sad book about a very sad place run by a madman who would rather his country be ideologically pure than his people eat. It's unlikely North Korea will survive another change of hands considering how China is leaking in over the northern border and running North Korea's black markets -- the only source of food they have. But when it does happen, it will be a real mess. North Korea is a humanitarian disaster.

Recommended for anyone interested in what life is like in North Korea. show less

If you're like me, you see the title of a book about North Korea that reads "Nothing to Envy" and you think, "I'll say. Their lives really are nothing to envy." After all, these are people who spent the years 1989-1994 in a state of starvation while at the same time idolizing their leader Kim Il-Sung, whose policies brought the situation about. But if that's what you think is meant by the title, you'd be wrong. The laugh would be on you because "Nothing to Envy" is taken from the title of an show more anthem that every North Korean kindergarten student leans by heart:

"Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world.
Our house is within the embrace of the Worker's Party.
We are all brothers and sisters.
Even if a sea of fire comes toward us, sweet children do not need to be afraid,
Our father is here.
We have nothing to envy in the world."

Lovely Korean songs like this, or possibly a little ditty entitled 'Shoot the Yankee Bastards,'were part of a kindergartner's school curriculum.

Barbara Demick reveals the story of modern life in North Korea since the end of the Korean War by following the lives of several North Korean defectors. She gets into specifics that stun you into the realization that a country this backward is still in existence; a country where the people are actually gathering weeds and grass to eat because they have nothing else; where they must display a picture of Kim Il-Sung and his son, present ruler Kim Jong-Il on a wall in their home where nothing else is displayed except perhaps the state-provided cloth with which to wipe the frame; where children may not celebrate their own birthdays but, instead, must celebrate the birthdays of their illustrious leader and his son; and on and on. A people persecuted by the state, yet they continue to love their leaders. How to explain this?? They're not aware that anything better exists and that is just the way the state intends to keep it.

Heartbreaking, fascinating, frustrating, maddening, you'll find yourself cheering for these persecuted people whose human spirit triumphs over overwhelming adversity. Very highly recommended. show less