Grab North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters And Defectors Conceived By Daniel Tudor Viewable As Hardcover

one of the best books ofby The Economist

Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors.


North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth, The country'smillion people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.


With this profoundly anachronistic system eventually failed in thes, it triggered a famine that decimated the countryside and obliterated the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people.
However, it also changed the lives of those who survived forever,

A lawless form of marketization came to replace the iron rice bowl of work in state companies, and the Orwellian mind control of the Korean Workers' Party was replaced for many by dreams of trade and profit.
A new North Korea Society was born from the horrors of the eraone that is more susceptible to outside information than ever before with the advent of kpop and videocarrying USB sticks.
This is the North Korean society that is described in this book,

In seven fascinating chapters, the authors explore what life is actually like in modern North Korea today for the ordinary "man and woman on the street.
" They interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to bring a startling new insider's view of North Korean societyfrom members of Pyongyang's ruling families to defectors from different periods and regions, to diplomats and NGOs with years of experience in the country, to crossborder traders from neighboring China, and textual accounts appearing in English, Korean and Chinese sources.
The resulting stories reveal the horror as well as the innovation and humor which abound in this fascinating country, Daniel Tudor and James Pearsons new book, North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors, seeks to investigate many of the popular misconceptions and myths that have sprung up around North Korea still one of the most reclusive countries on the planet.
One of their central goals is to cut through the usual hyperbole and rhetoric one often encounters when reading about North Korea to present more of a rounded picture of the actual daytoday life of ordinary citizens there.
In asking what life is generally like for regular North Korean citizens, they come to several surprising and illuminating conclusions, Their core argument is that the devastating famines experienced by the country during thes, coupled with the North Korean governments “Arduous March” policy and a significant decrease in aid from longterm benefactor Russia, led to a series of highly significant social and economic changes.
They reason that subsequent to the calamities of thes, during which time the North Korean government essentially relinquished responsibility for feeding its people, private informal markets began to emerge markets which now play an increasingly important role in the countrys social life.
They memorably liken this new style of private trade to Victorian Britains attitude towards sex: “While everybody does it, few publicly admit to its existence.
”
The book comprises seven fascinating chapters, each of which explore a specific aspect of contemporary Korean life, Each chapter is packed full of insightful analysis and compelling nuggets of information, from the popularity of South Koreanstyle eyelid surgery often performed by privately trained citizens!, to fashion styled after South Korean, the abundance of smuggled films and pornography stored on illegal flash drives, illegal cell phones that can call outside the country, the market for comic books, and many, many more.
Not since Barbara Demicks Nothing to Envy has there been such an effective street level view of life in the isolated country, Pearson and Tudors book is a highly rewarding read for anyone with even a passing interest in North Korea, To nie jest moja pierwsza książka związana z Koreą Północną i z całą odpowiedzialnością mogę powiedzieć, że to, póki co, najgorsza pozycja z jaką miałam styczność.


Nie uznaję trywializowania oraz wybielania sytuacji w Korei Północnej, Autor sprowadza wszystko do jeśli

masz pieniądze i dasz wystarczająco w łapę to wszystko załatwisz, Los ludzi jest potraktowany bardzo powierzchownie i na zasadzie "no da się żyć jak dobrze dasz w łapę", Nie jest problemem, że mieszkańcy tego kraju są inwigilowani, izolowani, tanią siłą roboczą, a obozy pracy to skuteczne narzędzie wywierania presji hej, przecież da się żyć, a jak, według ciebie, nie da się to granica z Chinami "jest nieszczelna" albo trzeba dać w łapę celowo powtarzam jak autor kwestię łapówkarska.


Szkoda, bo pojawiły się ciekawostki, które mogłyby być interesujące, gdyby nie skupienie się na bagatelizowaniu losów tych ludzi.
Nie polecam tej książki, Na rynku książkowym jest wiele książek o tym kraju, gdzie faktycznie tamtejsza sytuacja przedstawiona jest w sposób rzetelny, If you ask people who travel to North Korea frequently about the best book on the country this is the one they name.
It's wellresearched and nuanced and enables the reader to see beyond what is visible from the outside, It's also recent and uptodate on what is happening in the country, The only knock I can think of is its brevity: when I got to the end of it I wanted further information on this fascinating subject.
This is a very informative book that contains a lot of practical information on the state of things in North Korea circa, but it's really more of a textbook than a history or sociological book.
It's for people doing hard research, but not really anyone else, Mam problem z tą książką, Już na początku odniosłam wrażenie, że autorzy stawiają pewną tezę i tak dobierają tematy, żeby ją udowodnić, A jest to teza dość śmiała i kontrowersyjna, która w uproszczniu brzmi: "w tej Korei Północnej wcale nie jest tak źle, jak wszyscy myślą.
" A potem podają przykłady opierające się na poniższym uproszczonym wzorze:

państwo zabrania gt obywatel robi mimo zakazu gt daje łapówkę gt państwo przymyka oko

Chyba że:
nie ma na łapówkę
ma złe pochodzenie
w jego aktach jest zapis że X lat wczesniej powiedział, że matka Kim Dzon Una urodziła się w Japonii co jest prawdą
inny równie absurdalny powód w myśl zasady "daj mi człowieka, paragraf się znajdzie"

to wtedy mamy:

państwo zabrania gt obywatel robi mimo zakazu gt państwo dla przykładu wysyła do obozu pracy lub stosuje karę śmierci.


Przykładowe zakazy:
kobietom zabrania się jazdy na rowerze
obywatele nie mogą się swobodnie przemieszczać, nawet we własnym kraju zresztą, na auta ich nie stać, a pociągi z powodu częstych braków prądu jeżdżą z opóźnieniem bądź wcale
zabrania się farbowania włosów czy noszenia dżinsów
nie ma własności prywatnej możesz kupić mieszkanie, ale nie prawa do niego

Nie no, faktycznie, wcale nie jest tam tak źle.
. . It seems the information I had about North Korea has been very, very shallow, Here we learn a lot of interesting things, including the existence of a semilegal open market, a force in the government powerful enough for the Kim dynasty to be wary of it, the ways Koreans consume illegal popculture from their neighbours and so on.
While in some cases the information is presented in a relatively dry way, it shatters the image of North Koreans being only a race of robots who are either completely terrified or completely in love with their rulers.


Very eyeopening. .