The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom |  | Authors: Ralph Hassig, Kongdan Oh
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
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as of 9/3/2010 17:14 CDT details
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Rating:  4 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 296
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0742567184
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.9305
EAN: 9780742567184
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Product Description
This unique book provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of life in North Korea today. Drawing on decades of insider knowledge and experience, noted experts Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh explore a world few outsiders can imagine. In vivid detail, the authors describe how the secretive and authoritarian government of Kim Jong-il shapes every aspect of its citizen's lives, how the command socialist economy has utterly failed, and how ordinary individuals struggle to survive through small-scale capitalism. North Koreans remain hungry and oppressed, yet the outside world is slowly filtering in, and the book concludes by urging the United States to flood North Korea with information so that its people can make decisions based on truth rather than their dictator's ubiquitous propaganda.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Authors Hassig and Oh hit it out of the park again: a must read on North Korea November 9, 2009
Merrily Baird (atlanta, ga USA)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
The ever-growing community of government officials, scholars, and ordinary citizens concerned about North Korea has cause to celebrate the issuance of "The Hidden People of North Korea" by Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh. A decade ago, in publishing "North Korea through the Looking Glass," this husband and wife team established themselves as leading observers of North Korea. "The Hidden People" reaffirms that status by showcasing their superb ability to synthesize a vast amount of information without policy bias. At the same time, the strengths of Hassig and Oh in sorting out signs of change and training a powerful light on the fault lines between illusion and reality provide the raw material for others to judge whether North Korea can long survive as we currently know it.
"The Hidden People" is divided into nine chapters. Chapters 2 through 8 focus on Kim Chong-il, his family, and his leadership style; the economic system as it operates in theory and is lived by people on an every day basis; the government's crumbling control of the information environment; human rights issues; and the growing number of defections. Neither the final chapter, "The End Comes Slowly," nor any other offers a significant focus on the strategic questions with which policymakers most often grapple. In this regard, there is very limited attention paid to the country's dependence on weapons of mass destruction, its willingness to proliferate WMD technology, and its inclination (or lack thereof) to abide by disarmament agreements. This matters little, however, because numerous other authors have addressed these issues.
Understanding a Closed Society February 15, 2010
Robert G. Rich, Jr. (Virginia, USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the most authoritative and complete report yet available outside the hermit kingdom on life in North Korea. I have known "Katy" Oh for some years as a top American analyst of Korean issues, and this husband and wife product is a tour de force indeed considering how difficult the subject. With this deeper understanding at hand, perhaps we will hear fewer simplistic assumptions about the North in the future. The Hassigs persuasively suggest that the foreign aid we and South Korea have provided actually served to help prolong the regime. As one of those who predicted Kim Chong-il's reign would be short after the death of the Great Leader, it is clear to me now why so many of us were wrong, and why this anachronistic closed totalitarianism may well even survive his own death. Highly readable, thorough, and well written.
A Reference Book February 2, 2010
Etienne ROLLAND-PIEGUE (Tokyo, Japan)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
North Korea comes to the world's attention only in connection with nuclear and missile programs and its recurring humanitarian crises. The rest of the time, thanks in large part to the Kim regime's policy of secrecy and isolation, North Korea is a hidden country.
The Hidden People of North Korea lifts the veil on the everyday life of ordinary citizens in this most secretive state. The two authors, as they make clear, are not welcomed in Pyongyang, and they have no sympathy for the Kim regime. But they are compassionate about the Korean people, and they believe the world should know more about their ordeal. They base their analysis on a vast array of written sources, quoting from books, articles, and weblog entries written in English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, French and German. The book's second author also conducted interviews with about two hundred North Korean defectors who made their way to South Korea since the late 1990s. They also quote frequently from domestic North Korean sources, as a mean of illustrating the information environment in which the North Korean people live.
The one reservation that I have about the wealth of information that went into this book is that the authors do not discriminate between sources. They quote equally from the draft manuscript written by Kim Jong-il's adopted daughter, who defected to France in 1992, or from the detailed accounts of Andrei Lankov, a respected Russian scholar trained at Kim Il-sung University, and from colorful characters who wrote popular accounts of their experience in North Korea with titles such as "I was Kim Jong-il's Bodyguard" or "The Most Revered General, Lover of Nukes and Women". For instance, the testimony of Kim's former Japanese cook, according to whom every grain of rice destined for the Great Leader's table is handpicked and inspected for quality and shape, must be taken with a pinch of salt. To be true, the authors are aware of some of these biases, and they note for instance that "because defectors are usually paid for giving interviews, they may be tempted to exaggerate their experiences in North Korea to make their testimony more marketable."
But again, strange things happen in North Korea, and dispatches from the local media range from the frightening to the bizarre. Consider the following:
- "On the seventh anniversary of Kim's death in 2001, 'three beautiful birds' landed on the windows of an apartment in the port city of Nampo and perched there for one hour and forty minutes, blinking at the wall portrait of Kim Il-sung."
- When forest fires threatened trees covered with slogans carved by Kim Il-sung's band of revolutionary fighters back in the 1930s and 1940s, "seventeen soldiers did not hesitate to throw themselves into the fire, in the flower of their youth, to protect a slogan tree that is the treasure of the years to come."
- Newsprints with photographs of the Kims must never be torn or crumpled. In October 1997, North Koreans discovered a copy of Nodong Sinmun with a photograph of Kim Il-sung in the wastebasket of a dormitory where South Korean workers were staying while building the KEDO lightwater nuclear reactor; as a consequence, they were confined to their quarters for several days.
The book is especially strong at analyzing the information environment, defined as the "range of information available to North Koreans and how that information challenges and shapes their beliefs". Information processing involves selective exposure, selective attention, selective understanding, and selective remembering. As the country opens itself slightly to foreigners, it has erected a mosquito net of censorship to let some information in while preventing unwanted influences from turning people's heads.
The authors' policy recommendation is to work on this information environment by targeting the North Korean people with information about their government and the outside world, and to let them choose how to act on that information. They suggest that humanitarian aid should be offered to the North Korean government contingent on its acceptance of strict foreign monitoring, preferably by Korean-speaking aid workers, and clear labeling of the aid's origin. In this way the foreign aid will become part of the foreign information program.
It will be hard for this book to find its public. Government officials won't find a discussion on ongoing diplomatic negotiations under the framework of the six-party talks. Intelligence people are, one hopes so, already familiar with the information contained in the book, or they don't deal with North Korea. Business people are invited to follow the "first rule of investing in North Korea": don't. Human right activists often prefer to turn their attention away rather than deal squarely with the last remnants of the communist ideology on earth.
In fact, the problem is that very few people want to know more about North Korea. The country comes in the spotlight only intermittently and only in conjunction with international developments. It may not always be the same. So my advice to busy people is that they don't need to read this book now. Put it on the shelf, save it for the future. And next time North Korea hits the news and people start asking questions, go back to it, and use it as a reference.
 Interesting anecdotes, but filled with lots of vague numbers May 14, 2010
B. Wei (Seattle, WA USA)
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I thought I would have a read as I work in applied economics. I have to say I hardly write reviews. The Hidden People of North Korea book had so many generalizations and was so one sided that I could not not write a review ....
Quite a few of the numbers are vague and without reference ' 'arms exports contribute tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year as well...'' (p90) and the passages where like from a story book and not a non-fiction book 'One of the largest cases of North Korean smuggling was revealed on a and stormy night in April 2003..." (p91). Tens of millions as in 20M to hundreds of millions as in 900M, 20M to 900M that is a huge magnitude. There is no reference to a source even to ground their estimation in. 'Stormy night' is a cliche that broke away from the tone of the book. The more I read the more painful it was. "... North Korean presents the appearance of a large cult..." (p190) or "The members of the privileged class of three million (the upper half of the core class) appear to support the regime actively on the premise that they would not otherwise have a good a life". I find it hard to look at the book as a soundly researched, academic work with hard facts and a balanced view of North Korea after off handed comments like that. You can't just call a country a cult or say just because 3M people (where did this 3M come from) 'have a good life' they support regime (maybe you could say 3M are members of the party, actively registered in pro regime activities, or a host of other things, but just say on the basis that they are living well they support the regime is hard to connect the dots on that assumption). I thought this book needed more balance...
To be fair, I did find some interesting anecdotes about individuals in North Korea.
Harvard Political Review has written a review on the book as well.
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