korea (north)

Yeonmi Park's family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was brutal and practically medieval. Regularly without food, Park was led to believe that Kim Jong II, the country's dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, the family was branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of society. Park and her mother were smuggled across the border into China after she suffered a botched appendectomy. By the time she and her mother made their way into South Korea two years later, Park had lost her childhood and nearly lost her life. Her father was dead and her sister was missing. Before this book, only her mother knew what really happened between the time they crossed the Yalu River into China and when they followed the stars through the frigid Gobi Desert to freedom. Park says "I convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. I taught myself to forget the rest.".

Based on the life of the authors' mother, this is the story of her escape from North Korea.

Learn about North Korea's history, government, major cities, land features, natural resources, culture, and more! The book closes with a facts page including North Korea's population, total area and official languages, as well as images of the country's flag and currency.

"Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his 'brothers'; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist"--.

Explores the history of the decades long conflict between North and South Korea, focusing on the events of World War II that led to the conflict of the Korean War and beyond.

Memoir of Eunsun Kim chronicling her escape from the totalitarian rule of North Korea, having nearly died of starvation like her grandparents. Her mother, sister, and she begin planning their escape after her grandparents' deaths, beginning a journey that would take them nine years to complete.

Discusses the history of the political climate in North and South Korea.

"From the bestselling author of Escape from Camp 14, the murderous rise of North Korea's founding dictator and the fighter pilot who faked him out In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception--and escape. As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theft--just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953--electrified the world and incited Kim's bloody vengeance. During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans. Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim's shadowy rise, as well as from never-before-released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the world's longest-lasting totalitarian state"--.

An introduction to North Korea, featuring photographs and information about the history, government, people, culture, holidays, and other aspects of the country, and including profiles of key figures, a recipe, and a craft.