North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors
By: Daniel Tudor, James Pearson / Narrated By: Derek Perkins
Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
A HIGHly respectful look at what we don’t know about North Korea
So I’ve got an entire arsenal of audiobooks about North Korea from defectors of the country; and all of it makes the place sound one step away from HELL. I do not exaggerate—some are pretty good, and some are like someone just chucked a tape recorder and asked the defector to think of the absolute worst experiences in their entire lives, did some minimal editing, got an atrocious narrator, and put the story on the market. Seriously, we’re talking that the populace are a bunch of automatons living in fear and stripping bark from trees as they die of starvation.
And certainly the authors of North Korea Confidential plumb the depths of the famine of the 90s that killed at best? Several hundred thousand. At worst? A few million. They posit that EVERYthing North Korea is today stems from that event as the people turned away from trusting their government to provide for them and began looking to their own smarts and efforts to survive, to thrive. To perhaps not—to die. An entire market and economy was built upon that, a gray market, where one does what one can to make ends meet. Illegal? Mmmm… yes. But more often than not, a blind eye is turned and people are left to do what they need to do. Trading via smuggling? Mmmm… yes. But hey! That’s how today’s young North Korean woman gets her Skinny Jeans, today’s young North Korean man gets his black (Blue stands out too much!) jeans.
So while everything we’ve heard about the country is kinda sorta true, it kinda sorta isn’t. Yep, there’s state sanctioned TV, but people are watching South Korean and Chinese programming when nobody’s looking. Romances are in high demand, as are stories of the underdog saving the day and winning it all. Cell phones? FROWNED upon, but they can be had for a pretty price, tho’ minutes afterward come pretty cheap. Lives of dry drudgery? Possibly, but karaoke is pretty gosh darned popular.
Though the authors obviously did a huge amount of research, they’re still only going by second hand sources as one is still unable to ask The Man on the Street what he thinks of his country’s leader, his country’s policies. This place continues to have one of the most brutal penal systems on the planet with as many as 70-120 thousand individuals living in prison work camps with hard labor and starvation rations. But alas, one can only get info on them from Google Earth pics. But they acknowledge their limitations, and they write respectfully of the people. Indeed, I didn’t find myself chortling in a most self-conscious manner about horrific-things-told-humorously like I did when I listened to John Sweeney’s North Korea Undercover. That book had a woeful disregard for the sensibilities of the people which, yeh I chuckled, but really, I felt bad.
Then too, that book was narrated by the wildly irreverent Gildart Jackson, whereas here? Yes, gimme MORE: Derek Perkins, folks! I love Perkins dearly as he brings a gravitas to his performance even as he delivers a deft one-liner in a playful manner. (Besides which, he narrated my favorite: The Forgotten Soldier. …need I say more…?). I have nothing but respect for the man, and I greet each new audiobook he narrates like I’m running to an old friend.
I’m not sure how optimistic I am about future relations with North Korea; at least I’m not as optimistic as the authors appear to be at book’s end. But the book did indeed give me plenty to think about. It was informative and challenged my complacent ideas about the place. Still, the country is about as corrupt as they come (And coming from the U.S., that’s saying a LOT), and I, unlike the authors, don’t feel that Kim Jong Un is a totally well-balanced, highly rational individual. I guess that could just be me and my biases, but there you go.
Still, an engaging book, challenging, entertaining.
And Derek PERKINS!!!!
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