North Korea is today one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Its leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party regime, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this record of one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history.
The Aquariums of Pyongyang
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From Publishers Weekly
North Korea is among the most opaque nations on earth, its regime noted for repression and for the personality cult of its father and son leaders, the late Kim Il Sung and his successor, Kim Jong Il. Kang Chol-hwan draws from firsthand experience in explaining the repression. After the division of North and South Korea, Kang's family returned to North Korea from Japan, where his grandparents had emigrated in the 1930s and where his grandfather had amassed a fortune and his grandmother became a committed Communist. They were fired with idealism and committed to building an edenic nation. Instead, the family was removed without trial to a remote concentration camp, apparently because the grandfather was suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Kang Chol-hwan was nine years old when imprisoned at the Yodok camp in 1977. Over the next ten years, he endured inhumane conditions and deprivations, including an inadequate diet (supplemented by frogs and rats), regular beatings, humiliations and hard labor. Inexplicably released in 1987, the author states that the only lesson his imprisonment had "pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity to be vicious." Kang's memoir is notable not for its literary qualities, but for the immediacy and drama of the personal testimony. The writing, as translated by Reiner, is unadorned but serviceable, a style suited to presenting one man's account of a brutalized childhood. Kang now lives in South Korea, where he is a journalist; his co-author Rigoulot was a contributor to The Black Book of Communism. Together, they have added a chapter to the tales of horror that have come out of Asia in recent years.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From Library Journal
Most readers know of the politically bleak and economically disastrous history of North Korea. This affecting and directly written memoir will help make that history personal and specific. Kang, who escaped from North Korea in 1992 and now lives in Seoul, writes with the help of Rigoulot, editor of The Black Book of Communism (LJ 11/1/99). They tell the story of the Kang family, who became prosperous members of the Korean community in Japan in the 1930s but returned to North Korea out of sympathy in the 1960s. At first they lived comparatively well, but soon they ran afoul of paranoid political repression and became one of the many victims of the Korean prison work camps. The details of the gulag are depressingly familiar from memoirs of other Stalinist regimes, but this work is nonetheless important to record and witness. Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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In the 1960s, North Korea's disaster was not yet on the horizon. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Paul
Format:Paperback
This book will stun you. A previous reviewer made mention of the Wild Boar and he's right some of the tales about the Wild Boar will make you laugh. But this book is not a comedy. This book is a story of a family who viewed North Korea as the paradise destination. Ethnic Koreans who lived and prospered in Japan they were inticed back to Pyongyang, to return 'home'.
The wild boar is not a animal with four legs. He is an human animal,the nickname prison guard in the hell that the family found themselves. His particular cruelty to the family and anyone else is rooted in a love of the (now deceased) Great Leader.
To hear people so desperate to escape the country that they would leave their own families behind to face the consequences. Cannibalism, the death, the dulling of human senses. Its an amazing story.
This book is not horror show. Its not a gory death book with minutia details of pain. Rather it tells an awful story but it is in fact a story of how the human being can overcome. incredible adversity. You will admire this man and his story. You will also appreciate where you live. This book is well worth the money.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An absolutely excellent book. Could not put it down. Like reading Orwell's 1984, but the real life version.
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4.6 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read!
An essential book on understanding life, politics and ideology in North Korea. While quite gruesome at times, this autobiography sheds light on an otherwise unknown subject:... Read more
Published 24 months ago by G. Perlman
5.0 out of 5 stars
I agree. Required Reading
I came across this book after reading Tears of My Soul. I have to say that this book is absolutely captivating. It is a very quick read, but the impact will last forever. Read more
Published on July 8 2004 by Everett Littles
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading
In my opinion this book is on par with Alan Patton's "Cry the Beloved Country." It powerfully conveys the plight of foreign oppression with both empathy and clarity. Read more
Published on April 10 2004
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important testimony
This is a must-read, an important testimony of life under an absolutist regime. It is part of a steady stream of testimonials that are finally appearing about what the... Read more
Published on Feb 10 2004 by u+iv
4.0 out of 5 stars
Aquariums of Pyongyang
I had the chance to meet with the author, Kang Chol Hwan, this past summer in Seoul. Having spent ten years in a gulag for a crime his grandfather committed, he is among the lucky... Read more
Published on Jan 17 2004 by Jennifer Y.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent expose of this Orwellian nightmare society.
As a recent amateur student of North Korea, I have read several of the popular autobiographies by people who have escaped this ultra-restrictive nation. Read more
Published on Sep 17 2003 by J. A. Edwards
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the very best resources on North Korea. Essential
I have read Aquariums several times and each time I think I have gained some new insight from it. It's not a deep work of insight so much as a very human true account of life in a... Read more
Published on Sep 3 2003
5.0 out of 5 stars
a must-read for an understanding of north korea
Other reviewers have already noted the importance of this book in documenting the pervasive pattern and Kafkaesque quality of human rights violations in North Korea, so I shall... Read more
Published on Jun 11 2003 by Merrily Baird
4.0 out of 5 stars
Heart rending memoir
Kang displayed unique courage in sharing this bitter and horrific memoir with the world. Revealing one's past as candidly and with such heartfelt generosity of spirit is a rare... Read more
Published on April 26 2003 by David R. Bannon, Ph.D.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Growing up in the North Korean Gulag
If one reads accounts by survivors of the Soviet gulag, as well as its earnest imitations in China and North Korea, the similarities are impossible to miss. Mr. Read more
Published on April 3 2003 by Mark Ross
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