This Is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood

The stories from his North Korean childhood are amazing. We see the propaganda, the harsh school life, the struggle to find food. His resilience and his natural skepticism is so potent and intriguing that it makes for fantastic reading. Stories of catching rats and how to survive the devastating famine still lingers in my mind. The things that really struck me about his memories are the excerpts from his school textbooks, the self criticism sessions and his life outside of NK. The school material is both hilarious and chilling. They are taught math, history and spelling all with references to the imperialist american bastards and the south korean puppets. I don't think I would be able to handle the criticism and self-critiscism sessions, especially as a child. The mistrust and unpleasantness it inspires in horrible. But what really made me hurt was his reality once he escaped to South Korea. The bullying, the gang affiliation, the lack of romantic attention and the derision of a people so far removed from each other, it would be like going to school with an alien. It is a long long walk to get to freedom and happiness for the Korean people. Wonderfully written, so easy and accessible that it was a joy to acquaint myself with. Would absolutely reccommend to a novice North Korean scholar.

Quite simply I'm very glad I made the decision to read this book. I am aware of what little coverage the suffering of North Koreans get in the media and even disgusted at the mockery that is made of their terrible situation. I did read this knowing a fair bit about the North through watching documentaries of undercover reporters secretly filming in and around the country. But even so, I learnt so much from this book. At parts, it seemed so extreme for a moment you forget it's real. Yet it is and that's why it's important the world reads this fascinating account for itself. Other reviews did not rate this book, and some could argue that 'lost in translation' is the case (as is in any translated story) but I've read a multitude of accounts since (the television programs are most shocking), all of which claim very similar experiences under the strict North Korean regime. A compelling read and a must have for anyone who has any care for humanity.

Insightful and interesting with a straighforward look at North Korea citizens during the famine of the 90's.

Whilst I have read much about N Korea this book, written from the perspective of a young boy, is chilling. Very readable: it exposes the awfulness of daily life in N Korea and to what extent the population is in ignorance of the outside world. The hypocrisy of the overfed leaders - look at the new one - contrasts with the day to day misery of most citizens At the end of the book when the author gets to South Korea it is interesting to see that the northerners are looked down on and seen as troublemakers in many cases This book and others (+ the internet) will,I hope, be a help in putting an end to this dreadful régime. Worth the read.

An eye opening read, the author has described his families struggles through sometimes heart wrenching hardship. We can only begin to imagine what day to day life was like under this regime. Recommended read for people who don't know how lucky they are.

Unputdownable- it's so good that this word deserves to be added to the dictionary. My only gripe is that I didn't write it.

I like it, but I was hoping for more of a story. It's pretty much like reading some sort of history book. Really interesting and everything, but not what I'm looking for.

Very enlightening book. It explained so much about life in North Korea that I would never have understood. Very good book

certainly paradise is not in North Korea a chilling account of a Childhood in the most reclusive and secretive country on the face of the planet no emotions like hate of anger come to the front when the author recounts his childhood in this opressive state that controlls everything including your thoughts, no emotions just facts and the stone cold truth about how it is lo life in a country where a word spoken at the wrong time can spell the end of not only you but your entire family, even your entire clan of village i bought this out of curriosity and it was perfectly sated this should be on the readinglist of schools all over the world

This is a great book! It takes us out of our protected world and shows us on a personal basis how challenging life can be in other countries.

This book is absolutely fascinating, brilliantly informative and desperately depressing, I couldn't put it down! The book illustrates more clearly than any other I've read about how far humanity can fall under North Korea's despicable regime, and the impact on the human body and psyche. For those interested in the mysterious world behind this country, this book is a neccessity.

Das Buch ist sehr gut geschrieben, habe es super schnell durchgelesen, da die Geschichte auch sehr spannend ist. Traurig, dass sie auch auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht. Die beschriebenen Vorfälle ähneln denen aus Büchern anderer Nordkorea-Flüchtigen oft. Die Zeichnungen des Autors geben dem Buch eine besondere Note.

I probably would have prefered a more biographical chronology since the book jumped around a bit, covering issues and experiences more topically than chronologically at least in the first half of the book. But it wasn't that much of a drawback. Not as strong as "Aquariums of Pyonyang" or "Nothing to Envy," this book nonetheless deserves its place in the growing library of survivor's literature on North Korea. The horrors of daily life under the psychotic Kim dynasty comes to life in this volume. The authors did a good job bringing out detail and experience from a young subject, a North Korean refugee who was probably barely in his teens at the time the book was compiled. One certainly comes away with a very clear picture of the depressing reality of daily life, if one can call existence there a life. Particularly stark are the stories of survival and what it takes just to keep from starving to death in a country that seems to have plenty of money to spend on its military and on nuclear weapons, but not enough resources to feed its own people. It's depressing to see in the book just how animalistic people become in a situation of famine like this, transforming as the authors show into selfishness and concern only for one's own survival in just eeking out enough calories to stay barely alive. This manifests itself to the extreme of parents abandoning children so they can keep themselves alive. Far from judging these poor souls, I found myself questions how I would act in a similar situation. The book also presents evidence of the craven, wholesale theft of foreign food aid by North Korean party hacks. It also shows how inspectors are regularly fooled by the North Korean regime as they roam the country to verify food is getting where it should be going--and how the food is instantly removed out of the peoples' hands as soon as the inspectors leave. Several other interesting tidbits emerge that have not been presented in other defector's tales on North Korea, including the fact that North Korean guards patrolling the Sino-North Korean border do not have live rounds in their guns at the demand of the Chinese government. This after North Korea soliders made raids into China for food that resulted in the shooting deaths of Chinese citizens. I haven't before read this in other books on North Korea. Also, the extent to which the famine has impacted the North Korean Army is presented here as well, something barely hinted at in other books I've read. The strongest and most engrossing part of the book is the last half with the story of the young boy's family's escape to China. This is a truly harrowing account of desperation and will to survive, including the terrifying imprisonment of the father of the family by North Korean police due to an earlier foray into China for food. The young boy's long and dangerous journey out of China through Southeast Asia with a cousin, leaving his family behind in Manchuria, to try to obtain refuge in South Korea is also intriguing. Much like other books I've read on the subject, this book validates the tremendous problem of refugee assimilation into South Korea. The South Koreans do a good job getting the hapless North Koreans out of danger and into South Korea. But they do a lousy job of helping them fit in. The South Korean government definitely needs to work with their people on being more tolerant and accepting of their long-suffering Korean siblings who make it to their shores. While I would have preferred a more biographical structure than the somewhat disjointed first half of the book, it was nevertheless a very insightful book that was hard to put down. Definitely finds its place among the other books on life in North Korea that are increasingly being published.