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Escaping North Korea: Defiance And Hope In The World's Most Repressive Country (2008)

by Mike Kim(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0742556204 (ISBN13: 9780742556201)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

review 1: Wonderful anecdotes giving an almost tactile sense to the struggles North Koreans face (or at least faced when Kim Jong-il was alive, I can only assume the son is as vile as his father) on a daily basis, making most of North Korea into a ghost town with the ghosts being truly haunting and emaciated figures. However, Mike Kim does push his faith on the refugees - something that is all-together wrong in my opinion. I highly recommend the book for it's testimonials from the rescued citizens, but the rest of the book leaves something to be desired when it seems the author almost makes it about religious persecution. He is saving lives and I will never attempt to minimize that accomplishment, but this shouldn't be so much about the author as much as it is about the vic... moretims.
review 2: Mike Kim is the Korean-American who founded Crossing Borders Ministries, a non-governmental organization dedicated to helping refugees escaping from North Korea. Those who make it past the border into China are still not secure because China's official policy is to return any refugees to North Korea, where they will certainly be imprisoned and may be executed for treason.Crossing Borders shelters and feeds those who make it to China, relying on its network of small Christian churches (which are themselves clandestine) to help most refugees undertake a treacherous 6,000 mile journey to one of several other countries where they can settle or seek asylum in a South Korean embassy.The network is referred to as an Underground Railroad, equivalent to the one in 19th-century America. But it's continuing to happen right now.Kim devotes many chapters to North Korea's living conditions and government policies that repress any free exchange of ideas, contributed to a terrible famine ten years ago, and persecuted Christians. Most of this is told through testimonies of refugees, and in places it is hard reading. His narration of his actual experiences traveling the escape routes are vivid and grabbing. less

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