Asian Trips - North of the Dmz: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea
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List Price: $39.95
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Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.93043
EAN: 9780786428397
ISBN: 0786428392
Label: McFarland & Company
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 358
Publication Date: 2007-04-24
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Studio: McFarland & Company
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea for over 60 years. Most of that period has found the country suffering under mature Stalinism characterized by manipulation, brutality and tight social control. Nevertheless, some citizens of Kim Jong Il's regime manage to transcend his tyranny in their daily existence.
This book describes that difficult but determined existence and the world that the North Koreans have created for themselves in the face of oppression. Many features of this world are unique and even bizarre. But they have been created by the citizens to reflect their own ideas and values, in sharp contrast to the world forced upon them by a totalitarian system.
Opening chapters introduce the political system and the extent to which it permeates citizens' daily lives, from the personal status badges they wear to the nationalized distribution of the food they eat. Chapters discussing the schools, the economic system, and family life dispel the myth of the workers' paradise that North Korea attempts to perpetuate. In these chapters the intricacies of daily life in a totalitarian dictatorship are seen through the eyes of defectors whose anecdotes constitute an important portion of the material. The closing chapter treats at length the significant changes that have taken place in North Korea over the last decade, concluding that these changes will lead to the quiet but inevitable death of North Korean Stalinism.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Most fascinating essays
Comment: Most talking heads, or indeed all talking heads, especially those you see on TV or read from articles, can only pretend to know anything about North Korea, and then only superficially, and even that is from the speculations of others who themselves in turn, for lack of real knowledge, only imagine what life is like in North Korea, based on whatever meager rumors and arrogant and erroneous hearsay they picked up from places they don't remember, and necessarily supplemented and twisted using their own unfortunately totally unrelated life experience. All, that is, except Andrei Lankov.
It's amazing to realize how little we Westerners know about communism after 50 years and hundreds of billions of dollars fighting and analyzing it, let alone a far eastern version of it, let alone one that's pushed to the extreme.
North Korea is almost a make-believe world.
Andrei Lankov grew up in the communist USSR and spent two(?) years in the Kim Il-Sung university in the DPRK, and is now a lecturer/processor in a university in South Korea. His essays about life in the DPRK have run on the Korea Times website for some time, and have been some of the most sought-after articles. Now collected in book form, they tell of the daily life in DPRK from an insider's point of view, with profound understanding of how communism really works. They make a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the bizarre but logical in its own way world of communism. The writing style is particular cozy and fun. Enjoy a few of these essays, and you can probably talk more intelligently or at least correctly about the DPRK than 90% of the talking heads who are too busy projecting opinions and making money to have any time left to understand something as difficult as communism or the DPRK.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a real eye-opener on north korea
Comment: For years now, Western observers of North Korea have tended to use absolutes in describing the country. It is, for example, said to be the last Stalinist nation on earth and the world's most secretive, isolated, autarkic society, while its leader (Kim Chong-il) is characterized and caricatured as odd and ruthless in the extreme. None of these descriptors is necessarily wrong, but individually and collectively they tend to obscure the fact that a great deal has changed over the past several decades.
Riding to the rescue, so to speak, is the distinguished Russian scholar Andrei Lankov, who has gathered together in "North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea" articles originally printed in the "Korea Times" and "Asia Times." Lankov brings to his musings and this book exceptional skills and credentials: he writes beautifully, has a fine sense of humor, attended Kim Il-song University several decades ago, knows South Korea as well as its northern counterpart, and has personally experienced growing up in a Communist country. The resulting book is a delight to read and certainly one of the most valuable primers ever published on North Korea, with its 100-plus essays at once both anecdotal in tone and exceptionally well-researched.
Lankov's main focus in "North of the DMZ" is the life of everyday North Koreans, and in this regard the essays cover everything from the arts, media, social structure, and recreation to love and marriage, transportation, education, and food supplies. Another large portion of the essays cover policies and control systems that the government has tried to impose, with the emphasis here on how poorly these are actually working. The essays were not written with the intent of answering strategic questions about the viability of the North Korean state, and the book does not address the perspectives of those who rule or such issues as the role of nuclear weapons in ensuring the survival of North Korea. Nonetheless, "North of the DMZ" paints a compelling picture of a society and economy in flux. This society bears little resemblance to the tightly-controlled and idealized country described in official propaganda, and anyone seeking to answer strategic questions about North Korea's future will want to factor in the tactical ground truth uncovered by Lankov.
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