North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

Author(s): Daniel Tudor

Current Affairs & Politics

Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors. North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority. With this deeply anachronistic system eventually failed in the 1990s, it triggered a famine that decimated the countryside and obliterated the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people. However, it also changed life forever for those who survived. A lawless form of marketization came to replace the iron rice bowl of work in state companies, and the Orwellian mind control of the Korean Workers' Party was replaced for many by dreams of trade and profit. A new North Korea Society was born from the horrors of the era--one that is more susceptible to outside information than ever before with the advent of k-pop and video-carrying USB sticks. This is the North Korean society that is described in this book. In seven fascinating chapters the authors explore what life is actually like in modern North Korea today for the ordinary "man and woman on the street." They interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to bring a startling new insider's view of North Korean society--from members of Pyongyang's ruling families to defectors from different periods and regions, to diplomats and NGOs with years of experience in the country, to cross-border traders from neighboring China, and textual accounts appearing in English, Korean and Chinese sources. The resulting stories reveal the horror as well as the innovation and humor which abound in this fascinating country.

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"The book isn't just invaluable for expanding our view of North Korea beyond the cliche, soda-straw view of Pyongyang and showing us the gritty, anarchic country in which most North Koreans live, or at least survive. By explaining how thoroughly capitali

Daniel Tudor is from Manchester, England, and graduated with a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University. He has lived in Seoul, Korea for a number of years, and served as The Economist's Korea Correspondent from 2010-2013. His first book, 'Korea: The Impossible Country' received strong praise and has also been translated into Korean, Chinese, Polish, and Thai. Daniel is a regular columnist for a Korean newspaper, the "Joongang Ilbo," and has commented on Korea-related topics many times for the "BBC," "Al Jazeera," and others. He is also co-founder of The Booth, a small chain of craft beer pubs. James Pearson holds a BA in Chinese and Korean from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master's of Philosophy in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. He currently serves as a foreign correspondent for "Reuters" in Seoul, where he covers politics and general news in North and South Korea.

General Fields

  • : 9780804844581
  • : Tuttle Publishing
  • : Tuttle Publishing
  • : 0.397
  • : April 2015
  • : 203mm X 130mm X 0mm
  • : United States
  • : March 2015
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Daniel Tudor
  • : Hardback
  • : en
  • : 320.95193
  • : 192
  • : 16-pp colour insert of rarely seen images of North Korea