almost didn't take this home, irritated with it for seeming flippant about a subject that is not in any way amusing particularly after I'd just finished accounts by sitelinkJang Jinsung and sitelinkSuki Kim that were emotional and difficult to read.
I flipped through to see the photos, of which there are many, and ended up checking it out just in case,
I'm glad I did, Thankfully, Wendy Simmons deserves more credit than I was giving her while there is humor in the book, it's the dark kind that we employ when we need help accepting an unacceptable situation.
Her memoir uses Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland as a framework, and the quotes that accompany each chapter and photo are surprisingly, upsettingly appropriate, It's an excellent, detailed personal account of what an American tourist experiences in North Korea,
Here's the weirdest thing about reading this book when I did: Having lived in the United States for the past two years, I was already familiar with the experience Simmons underwent.
Not that of having been to North Korea, and obviously that situation is many times more concentrated than our own, But that of reality unraveling, words being used regardless of their meaning, things being called "facts" that are one hundred percent not factual, people denying things they said only moments before, on video.
Looking around, reading the news, hearing people speak, and having to repeatedly question whether something that can clearly not be happening, but is in fact happening, is actually happening.
We have had only two years of it, but there are more coming, and in reading this book I was seeing where this could go if we don't stop it.
It's pretty fucking unsettling. This travel memoir was a great idea, and I picked it up because I'm fascinated by mysterious North Korea and an American woman's observations behind the veil seemed like an interesting read.
Unfortunately, there was a kind of immaturity in the style needing to argue sarcastically with the people who were showing her around and using a lot of profanity.
It's her interactions with the woman she calls Older Handler that seem to taint her story with a kind of edgy annoyance, She does have some funny descriptions, her photos are interesting and the allusions to Lewis Carroll's Wonderland are great, Kudos to her for being brave enough to travel alone to a dangerous country and to share her observations, But I also couldn't help feeling nervous about what this book could mean to the people who were kind while showing her around, There are lots of countries I don't know anything about, and I bet you could say the same, Most of them, though, don't hold the fascination of North Korea, partly because of its geopolitical significance, partly because they make such an effort to keep the truth a secret.
For this reason, books about North Korea, rare though they are, will always attract my attention, If you've read Nothing to Envy or The Orphan Master's Son you have gotten a good view of the repression and violence the cult of Kim must use to maintain its thus far unbreakable hold on power.
My Holiday in North Korea is a different take on it, The author, neither a North Korea expert nor a travel writer, describes herself as someone who loves to travel, and she booked herself on an individual tenday tour of North Korea.
Ten days booked solid with all the attractions the government wanted her to see, accompanied during all her waking hours with two handlers and a driver,
We don't see the prison camps, we don't see the starving peasants, we don't see the kidnapped Japanese, In fact, Simmons's gift is to show us the absurdity of NoKo's as she likes to put it efforts to put their best face forward, boasting of technological marvels and industrial productivity in visits, up to ten or more a day, to sites that are clearly intended to be the best North Korea has to offer, and yet lack such basic amenities as toilet paper and running water, and where burnedout light bulbs are left unchanged for days.
And how is the facade maintained The most common tactic adopted by the handlers and guides is simplicity itself: lie, Lie when you make your presentations, Lie when you answer questions, Lie when things don't go according to plan, When the handlers run out of lies they switch to evasion, The humor in My Holiday in North Korea is derived mainly from the very absurdity of the lies, which even the handlers can't reasonably expect anyone to believe.
A quotation will illustrate her narrative approach:
"Glass case after glass case meant to showcase North Korea's engineering and manufacturing prowess displayed objects so mindnumbingly boring, anachronistic, and quotidian I truly felt like they were fucking with me.
Polyester brown pants with a matching brown shirt hung proudly in one case, Another case held a few cans of food, and another housed electronics so old, I honestly had to ask what some were one answer, "to make light shine on wall," did little to clarify.
I kept having the same thought I'd had so many times before during my visit: Is this really the best they can do If a stuffed animal behind glass is NoKo putting its best foot forward to impress foreigners, then they really need to rethink their strategy.
Understand, too, that in this same hall of manufacturing masterpieces, there is no running water in the bathroom, "
If you're like me, and if you have a tremendous curiosity about life in North Korea, My Holiday in North Korea is a great addition to your collection.
The author is like a compilation of American tourist stereotypes in a human suit, Despite being wealthy enough to travel extensively for a living, she's apparently not wealthy enough to buy a book, because prior to visiting North Korea which she dubs NoKo for no reason she obviously did no research on the country's history, culture, politics, or language.
This is a woman who takes a vacation in a country with the worst human rights record in the world and active concentration camps and she spends most of the time complaining about how ugly her accomodations are and how mean people are being to her.
Later she says that she's super smart and super empathic and that's why she decided to make her notes into a book, Honestly I do not know how this book was published by a real publisher, and recieved real reviews, because it reads like a poorlyedited blog post, complete with copious cursing, poor formatting and grammar, and no overarching narrative except that she had a miserable time.
The cover is the best thing about the book, This was a book that I found to be quite entertaining to read, I laughed out loud, a lot, It was witty and humorous , but also, heartwarming, You could tell how much empathy the author felt for the North Korean people, It is well written and flows well, I loved all the pictures, They gave you some sense of what North Korea is like, They seem to live on a different plane of existence, You really have to read this book to get a good sense of what I am talking about, I really enjoyed how she used quotes from Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, at the beginning of each chapter, They kind of captured how surreal of a place North Korea is, I truly enjoyed this book, I recommend everyone read it, True entertainment and I learned a lot that I did not know,
Thank you to Kelly Leonard , Digital Marketing Strategist, for allowing me the privilege of this gift of a book,
Although the author provides quotes from Alice in Wonderland throughout the book, North Korea strikes me far more as what would happen if someone used Orwell'sas the blueprint for building a country.
Simmons gives us a travelogue like no otherthere are photos, asides, and observations galoreall featuring a frightening part of the world that very few of us will visit, or even want to.
The author has a big heart that infuses the pages with compassion in spite of her cold and dismal surroundings, See those reviews in which readers talk about how horrible this author is toward to the country, culture, and people of North Korea
They're not wrong,
This is definitely written by a white woman who can afford to travel the world and does so at will, Her writing is a little tongueincheek and a lot pompous, She doesn't take much seriously which is both charming and a hindrance to understanding this culture so foreign to our own,
is what I would have said last year,
However, North Korea's social structure may not so foreign anymore,
Then I prayed for all the North Korean people because, let's face it, there but for the grace of God go I, Introduction
Only, it seems that the grace of God has perhaps left us all because some of these stories sounded too close to what I'm reading in the news these days.
The fake news, that is,
Like Alice, I've fallen through a rabbit hole into a world full of strange and nonsensical events, where normal is surreal, lying is widespread, and the ruler has a penchant for demanding "Off with her head!"
Again, those are things I've been feeling for the past six weeks, or so, and I'm not in North Korea.
Maybe this is a good primer for what's to come, what we can expect to see in our near futures, I'm not actually joking this time, Maybe I'm a little hyperbolic, but maybe you should read this and see if any of it sounds familiar,
As for the content, itself, it's mediocre, I think I had expected the standard American culture shock that turned into curiosity that morphed into an appreciation for a place so radically different from what the author is used to.
Maybe the author feels she accomplished just that but it doesn't come across that way, at least not to this reader,
For instance, the empathy of which she brags never seems to manifest,
Here's what I do know:
, I have great instincts, high emotional intelligence, and a tremendous amount of empathy,
. I tend to get what's going on, even when no one else around me does,
. I have been all over the world really traveled and explored it and I've learned that the more you travel, the more patterns you recognize,
. I've been managing people my entire career, I know when people are lying to me,
. Everybody lies.
I'm going to take that tenth point as her disclaimer so I can assume she's lying on those first two points because that empathy of which she speaks, her deep emotional intelligence and all, it doesn't show in her writing.
She's not skilled enough to be poignant in her flippancy but, instead, comes across as morally superior and selfinvolved which is unfortunate because that tone creates a barrier for the reader who hopes to get an insightful look at North Korea.
Driver was like an avuncular yakuza with bad manners, But for some reason I liked him from the moment we were introduced in the airport parking lot, He spoke no English. Or he was fluent and faking it, But what would be the point
He was either in his late sixties or early forties, I honestly cannot remember which, I do, however, remember being really surprised by how old or how young he looked when Older Handler told me his age, His visage had a sort of timeless oldness to it, Like alcoholics who live where there's nothing but sun,
He had a gold tooth or two, spiky hair, and a generally gruff exterior, He was slight and not particularly tall, but he had the air of somebody who could and would viciously tear any enemy apart, regardless of whether or not it was deserved.
I always felt bad for having these feelings about him, because he was probably a decent man, I was judging a book by its cover, a man by his looks,
Except he did violently stomp to death an innocent bug that I had painstakingly rescued from our car just mere seconds ago, . . while he watched.
And yet, the social commentary is there if you just stop paying attention to her words and I did actually enjoy this, probably because of my own travels.
I'm sure my journal entries are just as assholey and unaware, In fact, I rummaged through my photo albums, trying to find my pictures of the DMZ, I wanted to do a sidebyside, her picture and mine, of the room where the line is drawn between the two countries, I thought that would be cute, Sadly, I have no idea where those pictures are, If I find them someday, I will post them here, If you want to see her pictures, you can see them on sitelinkthe My Holiday in North Korea's website,
I can tell you a story, though,
So on our way to visit the DMZ, from the South Korean side, we were lectured on the bus and given a long list of rules and we had to sign all sorts of paperwork and we were warned about land mines.
One of the warnings that were reiterated was not to smile when looking at the north's side and not to take pictures of their half of the base because they'd take our picture and use it as propaganda.
We were told we'd be portrayed as white people happy to be so close to North Korea, longing to live there, ourselves,
That was weird.
Once we got there, though, the anthemy sounding music blasting from old speakers atop tall poles just across the border was even weirder,
I was only there for an hour or two, We toured the base, we didn't smile at the North Koreans, we didn't take pictures of their barracks, We shook hands with our soldiers, we may have flirted a bit because it's what you do when in a war zone, and we constantly heard the scratchy, pipedin music in the distance.
Those memories came rushing back as I read this book, I did not doubt the level of propaganda this author was fed during her time in North Korea, However, there's also been plenty of anti"NoKo" propaganda spread throughout the US and South Korea in the past, whatyears I'd have liked and examination of our preconceived views on the country to have been a little more frontandcenter but, again, that's not what the author was in
for.
She wanted to share her impressions of a hardtovisit country and did so in fairly typical American fashion,
It's worth the read and the pictures are both delightful and bizarre, just make sure you go in with some grains of salt, .