Jia

I really enjoyed reading this book although the topic is painful. It's about a woman whose mother died in childbirth. The daughter had a father of the "lower class" and a mother of the North Korean elite. With help, she is given the opportunity to go to the capital city Pyongyang to live a less difficult life. She learns that, with her background, life will always be hard for her so she decides to make a break from North Korea to China.

I really know very little about North Korea and was fascinated to learn how people in North Korea are no different from others around the world. There are those whose life is easy due to birth situation, There are those who struggle because they are not born into wealth and power.

The most fascinating show more part of the book for me was seeing how North Korean refugees were treated in China. I don't know why I read topics such as this which are ultimately depressing, but I need to educate myself as to how humans are treated everywhere. I feel an especially high need for this kind of education at this time.

Even though the last part of the last part of the book seemed a bit of a stretch, I liked that the author made himself into a character. How nice!

The story is simple to read, but try to read between the lines to figure out its message. It's an important one. show less

A novel that is based on the life of a young woman met by the author during a one-year stay in China doing humanitarian work near the North Korean border. Having just read two harrowing memoirs about coming of age in North Korea, it seemed awkward to be reading a novel about similar circumstances, but I think it was because the voice of the narrator felt startling in comparison to the other two books, both by men. Jia is the daughter of a dancer of high-class NK pedigree (by NK standards) and a father who was considered a political reactionary and was eventually imprisoned. Because three generations of all family members are punished for the "crimes" of an individual, Jia's mother, who refused to divorce her father as the state advised, show more was removed along with her husband's parents to live in a restricted village, one that existed to serve the guards of the political prisoner's concentration camp nearby.

Jia grows up in a kind of isolated captivity. She catches the eye of a guardsman who once had a daughter her age, and with the grandparents' agreement, at the age of 7 she leaves with this fellow to find her maternal grandparents in Pyongyang in order to have a better life (though she knew little of this plan). She ends up in an orphanage, is eventually rejected by the grandparents, and because she had inherited her mother's talent for dance, becomes a dancer in the regime. Her lack of solid identity, however, continues to dog her, and her exposure to disappearances, cruelty in the name of the party, and impending betrayal by a right wing boyfriend lead her to cross the border to China. There she finds equal amounts of hardship and abuse and is rescued, still "untouched", from a brothel by a decent Korean-Chinese man who helps her become acclimated and starts her on a new life. There the novel ends abruptly.

The narrative is sometimes awkward in its attempt to give voice to another couple who suffered dearly, both in NK and in China, but this book adds to the growing narratives coming out of the brutal oppression, and offers a female voice in the mix. show less

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, so I'm nudging it up instead of down.

Confession: I really did buy this book because of the cover — all those young Korean girls playing too-large accordions. Yes, I'm partial to accordions (and play one, too). Also, I've been interested in reading more about North Korea ever since I read Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son.

I really enjoyed the entire book. I liked the voice and style well enough. But the story seemed to end far too abruptly, and on someone else's story, not Jia's. I wanted to know more about what happened between Jia and Jim, if anything. I wish the book could have followed their relationship, or at least Jia's life, a little further. Still, I liked it a lot.

Interesting Read

I think there is a lot to gain from this book, especially for somebody who would like to know about North Korea but would like the information presented in a story context. Personally, I think it could be an excellent introduction to young people who would like to know about North Korea.

As a person who reads quite a bit about North Korea, I found this book to be somewhat pedantic. Everything that happened to the characters was taken straight out of human rights reports and recent nonfiction books.

A compassionate storyteller, a compelling story and situation. The author sometimes struggles to keep sentimentality in check, because its wrenching material. The author is a globally-oriented South Korean (US Phd, living in Singapore, studied in China), writing about North Korean refugees in China. I found her approach compelling, and different than how a Western writer might have handled this, though I'm still trying to figure out why exactly.PS: Loved the cover photo by Kubota-sensei... been a long time since I've seen him also...

The beginning of this was good, reminded me a bit of Memoirs of a Geisha. And certainly it was a novelty reading a book set in North Korea. I mean, nobody knows anything about North Korea. I've heard that this is the only book in English that's set in modern-day North Korea.

However, as one professional review pointed out, the book reads like a first draft. It was like the author was trying to cram as many North Korea issues into the story as possible and she couldn't keep track of them all. So many plotlines were simply abandoned and there was basically no ending. Also, the business at the end with that nice guy suddenly deciding to rescue Jia from the brothel and pay for her to learn Chinese and everything for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON show more pretty much defines the term "deus ex machina." C-minus. show less