A Perspective on North Korea

By Carol Van Why, Library Committee Cochair

Reporting on human smuggling took Laura Ling and a colleague to the China-North Korea border area back in 2009. Straying too close to the border got them captured and held captive in North Korea for 140 days. Their ordeal was later chronicled in Somewhere Inside by Laura and her sister Lisa Ling.
 
The Soviet Union and Communist China had propped up Kim dynasty dictatorships with exports of food and various manufactured goods for years. But by the mid-‘90s China and Soviet Union/Russia’s support had waned.

What imported food there was went primarily to the ruling class in Pyonyang.
Famines and starvation made people desperate. More and more ordinary North Koreans were willing to undertake dangerous escapes. Learn more by reading the following books:

• The Evening Hero: A Novel by Marie Myung-Oklee
• The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee
• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
• The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
• ​Somewhere Inside…. by Laura and Lisa Ling

 
You can find The Orphan Master’s Son in the Coffman Library’s fiction section. The other titles can be borrowed from either the Ramsey County or the St Paul Public library systems.