Summary of Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today - an Orwellian world in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, a country that is by choice not connected to the Internet, a society in which outward displays of affection are punished, and a police state that rewards informants and where an offhanded remark can send a citizen to the gulag for life. Demick's subjects - a middle-aged party loyalist and her rebellious daughter, an idealistic female doctor, an orphan, and two young lovers - all hail from the same provincial city in the farthest-flung northern reaches of the country. One by one, we witness the moments of revelation, when each realizes that they have been betrayed by the Fatherland and that their suffering is not a global condition but is uniquely theirs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jan 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638151869

IRB Media

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Summary

of

Barbara Demick’s

Nothing to Envy

Table of Contents

Overview

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Important People

Author’s Style

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Overview

Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy (2009) traces the lives of six North Korean defectors from Chongjin, a city in northeastern North Korea in North Hamgyong Province. The narrative examines their daily lives and occupations. Through this study of their lives, the narrative contradicts a famous North Korean song that assures North Koreans that they have nothing to envy from the outside world.

The death of North Korea’s Great Leader Kim Il-sung in 1994 coincided with a nationwide famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Starving, desperate, and impeded from surviving through independent means, many began to realize that the regime was actively repressing them. More than ever before, North Koreans had to live by their wits in order to survive this nationwide catastrophe. As the famine grew worse, many began to entertain the possibility of defecting, though such a decision came at great risk to both them and their potentially unwitting family members. Failed attempts to cross the border could result in lifetime incarceration in a prison camp. The six defectors Demick profiles hailed from