This book was really interesting. I enjoyed learning more about life in North Korea from people who lived there and defected. I liked the human interest stories that outlined the information about North Korea. It was a quick read. It taught me a lot about a relatively unknown country.

Knowing nothing about the history of consequences to North Korea after the Korean War I thought this was a thought provoking book.

I wish I could give it 4.5. It was great, and I really enjoyed it whenever I was able to listen, but it didn't have that pull that I really need to give it 5 stars.

What really hit me was that I had to keep reminding myself that this was in MY lifetime. I've gotten used to reading about harsh circumstances like this in the Great Depression, the Polish Ghettos, or German Occupied France (or Panem...) But the fact that people were starving to death a couple hundred miles from one of the wealthiest nations in the world is mind blowing.

One of the things that saddens me the most is that most North Koreans genuinely didn't think it would be much better anywhere else. Their government had cut them off from the world to the point that they didn't know that most of the world considers rice to be the cheap food for poor people.

Stunning and compelling, Barbara Demick interweaves the lives of six North Koreans and their individual journeys to the west. She manages to capture both the harsh realities of the regime, and the famine of the 90s, and the hope and optimism that her subjects now have.

It's both harrowing and uplifting, and a testament to both the the human spirit and human suffering and stupidity.

And the paralells between the NK regime and Orwell's 1984 are shocking - it's like they mistook a piece of fiction for an instruction manual...