The Aquariums of Pyongyang
by Kang Chol-hwan
Sent to a labor camp at nine for what grandpa did.
you want to understand North Korea's prison camp system through someone who survived it as a child
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Kang's grandfather was a Korean-Japanese who returned to North Korea with idealistic hopes and fell afoul of the regime. The entire family was sent to Yodok concentration camp — including nine-year-old Kang. He spent ten years there. This is the first major memoir by a North Korean survivor of the camp system and it opened the world's eyes to what the gulags actually were. Not a political argument — a child's account of what happened to his body and his family. The most important North Korean dispatch on this shelf after Nothing to Envy.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- North Korea • East Asia
- Voice
- Written by a North Korean author
- Themes
- War & Displacement
