I bought this book several years ago here on Amazon and I am happy to see the price has dropped considerably.

The book is on the escape of a North Korean from his country, into China and then onto South Korea. The conditions of North Korea were somehting I had read about many times but for me the most interesting part of the book was China.

This story is in part an expose on just how atrocious the Chinese government is towards escaping North Koreans. When caught, these escapees are sent back to North Korea and to certain death. A student of history will recall that the Chinese are responsible for the North Korean dictatorship, responsible for the creation of this volatile nuclear state, the gulag conditions and indirectly responsible for the death of many hundreds of thousands - maybe millions of Koreans.

There is another, excellent viable option for China. Send escaping North Koreans to South Korea! It would cost the Chinese nothing and would be a great humanitarian gesture. But then when did you ever hear of the Chinese communists ever being humanitarians?

When Viktor Kravchenko published `I Chose Freedom' in 1946, the world at large came to know about the atrocities of Communism for the first time. Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Mandelstam and Ginzburg followed and at least in academics, there was enough proof to establish that if not worse than, then Communism was at least as bad as Nazism. The dominance of the Left in universities has prevented the truth about Communism to percolate to the masses, but since the fall of the USSR, the flood of memoirs and the research resulting from the opening of the archives in Moscow has confirmed the doubts of the first dissidents.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang is another nail in the coffin of Communism. This time the blow comes from North Korea. The system of gulags and concentration camps developed later in North Korea, maturing only in the 70s, and is still continuing.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang tells the story of an emigrant Korean family which returned to North Korea form Japan after `the Revolution' in 1950s in search of a people's paradise.

His grandfather was a successful businessman in Japan and had his qualms about returning to North Korea. The dream was his grandmother's. The rest of the family followed.

The warnings began upon their arrival in North Korea. They were given a ramshackle house to live in and after donating all their property to the State they finally got some jobs. Though they were living better off than others, the contrast of the life in North Korea with the life in Japan was hard not to notice.

They all continued in a painful silence, until the grandfather got arrested on the charge of being `socially dangerous element'.

The whole family, including chidren, minus mother was sent to Yodok, one of the North Korean gulag. The book is for the most part the description of this gulag. Yodok had natural barriers of mountains and jungles on all sides except one which was fenced. The prisoners did try to escape but most failed and those who were caught were publicly executed, often stoned to death.

The description of one such public execution reminds the reader of stoning to death in Islam, a process which not only terrifies the would-be transgressors, but also fuels the hatred towards those who dare to oppose the totalitarian regime. One cannot help but make comparisons between the two inhuman ideologies.

Food rations, being typically gulag, were hardly above the starvation levels, and so the inmates were reduced to eat rats and live salamanders.

While the Soviet gulags had cold cells, North Korean ones have `sweat boxes' in which one is left to survive on cockroaches and other insects in a crouching position.

The book is an average account of a great tragedy, the still continuing North Korean gulags. The author is not a great artist and falls short of the great prison memoirists like Ginzburg and Solzhenitsyn. What makes the book remarkable is the immense human tragedy which speaks through the simple and direct words of the author.

Although the homage to George W. Bush in the preface and the warm view of Christian proselytizers spoils it a little bit. The title is also not very appropriate. The author used to keep an aquarium in his house in Pyongyang, which he took to the gulag as one thing to carry. The fishes kept dying until the last one died after some months into the gulag... hence the name. However the title gives a feeling as if the life in Pyongyang was what there was to desire against all the atrocities of Communism. Something related to eating rats and salamanders would have been a better choice.

When Viktor Kravchenko published `I Chose Freedom' in 1946, the world at large came to know about the atrocities of Communism for the first time. Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Mandelstam and Ginzburg followed and at least in academics, there was enough proof to establish that if not worse than, then Communism was at least as bad as Nazism. The dominance of the Left in universities has prevented the truth about Communism to percolate to the masses, but since the fall of the USSR, the flood of memoirs and the research resulting from the opening of the archives in Moscow has confirmed the doubts of the first dissidents.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang is another nail in the coffin of Communism. This time the blow comes from North Korea. The system of gulags and concentration camps developed later in North Korea, maturing only in the 70s, and is still continuing.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang tells the story of an emigrant Korean family which returned to North Korea form Japan after `the Revolution' in 1950s in search of a people's paradise.

His grandfather was a successful businessman in Japan and had his qualms about returning to North Korea. The dream was his grandmother's. The rest of the family followed.

The warnings began upon their arrival in North Korea. They were given a ramshackle house to live in and after donating all their property to the State they finally got some jobs. Though they were living better off than others, the contrast of the life in North Korea with the life in Japan was hard not to notice.

They all continued in a painful silence, until he grandfather got arrested on the charge of being `socially dangerous element'.

The whole family, including chidren, minus mother was sent to Yodok, one of the North Korean gulag. The book is for the most part the description of this gulag. Yodok had natural barriers of mountains and jungles on all sides except one which was fenced. The prisoners did try to escape but most failed and those who were caught were publicly executed, often stoned to death.

The description of one such public execution reminds the reader of stoning to death in Islam, a process which not only terrifies the would-be transgressors, but also fuels the hatred towards those who dare to oppose the totalitarian regime. One cannot help but make comparisons between the two inhuman ideologies.

Food rations, being typically gulag, were hardly above the starvation levels, and so the inmates were reduced to eat rats and live salamanders.

While the Soviet gulags had cold cells, North Korean ones have `sweat boxes' in which one is left to survive on cockroaches and other insects in a crouching position.

The book is an average account of a great tragedy, the still continuing North Korean gulags. The author is not a great artist and falls short of the great prison memoirists like Ginzburg and Solzhenitsyn. What makes the book remarkable is the immense human tragedy which speaks through the simple and direct words of the author.

Although the homage to George W. Bush in the preface and the warm view of Christian proselytizers spoils it a little bit. The title is also not very appropriate. The author used to keep an aquarium in his house in Pyongyang, which he took to the gulag as one thing to carry. The fishes kept dying until the last one died after some months into the gulag... hence the name. However the title gives a feeling as if the life in Pyongyang was what there was to desire against all the atrocities of Communism. Something related to eating rats and salamanders would have been a better choice.

I deduct one star from my review because of the narrative lacunae and not because of the content. The content deserves ten stars! This is a damning review of the evil ideology of Communism.

As a person who is interested in both the Korean Peninsula (my sister-in-law is Korean)and the history of communism, this book provided valuable insights. I came to the book with a basic, working knowledge of life in communist countries and life in concentration/hard labor camps; this book adds to that knowledge by painting a vivid picture of life in "The Hermit Kingdom". While other reviewers have criticized the flow of the story, the language/syntax, the author's difficulty in adjusting to life in the South (as if it would be easy to go from living in a Stalinist regime to a democracy) and the fact that the book isn't a comprehensive expose of the North Korean camp system (maybe he could have done this if he had stuck around to get arrested for listening to South Korean radio broadcasts), the strength of this work is its readability, the descriptions of life in Pyongyang before the arrest, the ordeal at Yodok, the escape from the North and travels through China before arriving in Seoul, and the author's heartfelt concern for his family and the country that he had to leave behind in order to tell his story to the world. I don't think the author's intention was to win a Pulitzer Prize, but rather to alert the world of the human tragedy taking place north of the 38th Parallel.

When only nine years old, the author (Kang Chol-Hwan), along with members of his family, was sent to political labor camp Yodok (Camp 15) in 1982 where he lived, studied, worked, and suffered daily abuse (beatings, near starvation, long hours and hard labor) for ten years. Originally Kang and his family surmised the reason for their imprisonment was his grandfather's often angry statements about North Korean management practices; later they learned it more likely was due to his grandfather having been associated with the losing side in a dispute between rival Japanese-Korean groups seeking support from Great Leader Kim Il Sung. Kang's "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" summarizes his life until his escape from North Korea and resettlement in South Korea. Kang's primary purpose is to describe the brutal treatment the North Korean government imposes on citizens it considers disloyal. Eventually Kang was invited into the White House to spend about 40 minutes with President Bush relating his experiences.

Kang was born in Japan to the descendants of Koreans who had emigrated there for a better life. His father and grandfather were highly successful (casinos and other ventures), but lured into leaving for North Korea by false claims, the allure of helping the new nation get established, and Kang's mother - an ardent Japanese-Korean Communist Party member and advocate. Immediately upon arriving, they realized their mistake, but it was too late.

Nonetheless, the initial years were good for Kang. Children received new shoes and a school uniform every three years, courtesy of The Great Leader. His family lived in a four-bedroom Pyongyang apartment with his little sister, paternal grandparents, and one uncle, and had a refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, Japanese color TV and a Volvo they'd brought from Japan. At school, each class had a 'political leader' and a 'delegate' - appointed by the teacher and confirmed by a vote of the pupils. Kang was a delegate - until busted for leading about 14 others to skip school and go to the zoo. Top priority at school was given to learning the history of Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong-il. Everyone also signed up for the Pupil's Red Army - activities mainly consisted of marching with fake machine guns while singing.

Then one day his grandfather disappeared despite having given his beloved Volvo, TV and most other riches to the state, and three months later the police were at Kang's house. All except Kang's mother were given a short time to pack a few things and loaded into a truck. Kang managed to take one of his prize fish tanks, but the fish soon died. Arriving at Yodok they found no faucets (water was about ten minutes away), mud floors and walls, and no heating/cooking fuel. Medical supplies and services were virtually non-existent. The work-day was dawn to dusk felling trees, tilling soil and mining gold, school began at 6 A.M. and was limited to the 'redeemables' that eventually would be released. About 70% at the prison were 'irredeemables' (eg. former land-holding families) who would never get out - their children received no education. Adult rations were 500 gms., and the food consisted largely of corn. Obtaining extra food (rats, snakes, berries, frogs, stolen corn, bugs, and rabbits) was essential for survival. Snitches abounded. Punishments included beatings, extra work, executions (Kang was forced to witness 15 executions, mostly for attempted escape) and possibly worst of all - the sweatbox. Those sent to the sweatbox (eg. withholding information) were forced to kneel inside for three months and had five years added to their unknown sentences. Clothes and shoes were poor quality and quickly fell apart - rags wrapped around one's body and feet often were the only protection against the snow and below-zero cold. Saturdays began with a two-hour criticism session.

After ten years Kang and the rest of his family's names were unexpectedly read off - they were ready for release. The likely rationale - their grandfather had died in another camp. Kang took a job as a deliveryman, and made considerably more on the side selling goods otherwise unavailable in one area or another. His youngest uncle went on to complete a PhD. in chemistry. Unfortunately, about five years after being released, two of Kang's supposed friends reported him and another for listening to South Korean radio. Faced with returning to prison, the two escaped to China, and helped by several Koreans legally living in China, they were smuggled out and made it to South Korea. (Remaining in China is dangerous - China actively cooperates with North Korea in seeking out and repatriating North Korean escapees found in its territory.) Six months of interrogation and supervision later, they were allowed to live among the general population. Kang still worries about the fate of his mother, uncle, and younger sister.

Clearly, conditions within and rationale for North Korea's political prisons are inhumane and unjustified, though it is hard to fully appreciate the day-to-day hopelessness and abuse from just reading "The Aquariums of Pyongyang." Only one person is believed to have escaped a North Korean prison camp. The North Korea government says they don't exist - Google maps show otherwise, and experts estimate 150,000 - 200,000 prisoners currently within them, with another 400,000 prisoner deaths within the past three decades. A former North Korean military attache to Beijing has testified, backed up by documents and other defectors, that Camp 22 tested suffocating gas and poisons on its inmates; a former guard there testified that those who killed attempted escapees received a college education - obviously a temptation for abuse. Others received water torture, forced abortions, etc.

Bottom Line: President Bush's statement "I loathe Kim Jong-Il" may have been impolitic; however, it was certainly justified.

I read this book years ago. It's very easy to read, and it can easily be read in one day.

Kang Chul-Hwan has become a famous advocate for North Korean rights and a diligent critic of the North Korean goverment's brutal treatment of its citizens. That he hailed from a family of pro-Workers' Party Koreans makes his story all the more ironic.

His detailed description of the hardships of life in the camps - extremely dirty inmates, eating rats - will provide insight into a level of brutality that the western world believed gone after the fall of the Soviet Union and the abolishment of the gulags; a type of cruelty that most westerners thought would never be repeated after the liberation of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Dachau.

North Korea-related news have been frequent in American prime time news over recent years - the North Korean nuclear tests, the six-party talks, etc. But an oft-forgotten aspect is the hellish suffering imposed upon an estimated 200,000 civilians who have been consigned to miserable existences in these camps. "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" will horrify you, but it will remind you of the limitless capacity of man to bestow unspeakable cruelty on his own kind.

This is a well written, first person account of life of a North Korean (DPRK) boy who grew up as the son of ethnic Koreans who moved to North Korea from Japan after World War II. The boy's grandfather makes an unknown mistake and the entire family is condemned to life at Yodok - a DPRK re-education or work camp. The grim stories of this young man struggling to survive and while surrounded by death and suffering gives the reader a first hand account of North Korean-style communism.

The author, since his escape, has studied and become a journalist in South Korea, writing for the Choson Ilbo newspaper. You can find some fragments of this book in a few of his articles.

I recommend this book for readers, students, and researchers interested in North Korea, human rights, communist ideology, history, or government. It may also be of interest to ethnic Koreans living outside Korea to understand the conditions of life in North Korea.

Having been deployed to South Korea, I thought I had heard and read almost everything there is about North Korea. Yet, what westerners, even South Koreans don't know about the North Korean labor camp system can literally fill a book. I don't know how the author was able to account for his experience in such detail (keeping in mind that he was simply trying to survive the daily torture, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and disease in the camp), but the book will leave you speechless. It's as if you're reading about someone's worst nightmare, and proves that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Recommend this to anyone of a mature age that needs a newfound perspective on life. Not to make light of the book, but if you think you have problems...

Book Review: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten years in the North Korean gulag, by Kang Chol-Hwan

I thought this book might be a hard read. The Aquariums of Pyongyang chronicles the life of the author as a boy who, at the age of nine, was wrongfully imprisoned with his family in a North Korean concentration camp. Not exactly most people's choice for summer reading. I picked it up mostly because of those two American women journalists who had just been released from a North Korean prison a couple days before, and I thought it would be, at the very least, relevant to world events. I thought, well, maybe I'll educate myself on the basics and then skim the details. I didn't. I read each page enthralled by this man's heroism and resolve during this time of horrific injustice.

I was drawn in by what I found most unexpected, and couldn't help being fascinated by the author's amazing struggle for survival. What struck me most was that this family weren't anti-communists, weren't revolutionaries who were bent on overthrowing the government. Instead, they were communists, originally North Korean, but drawn back from settling in Japan with the hope of an even better life in North Korea. They chose North Korea based on the images that Kim Sung-Il projected to the world of a thriving communist lifestyle. What they found there shocked them. It was nothing of the sort. A country of severe poverty and militarism, they were slowly and systematically stripped of their possessions. Then one day the police stormed their house, and placed all the family, except the author's mother, in the Yodok prison in the wilderness and mountains for a ten-year sentence, facing brutal treatment, inhumane living conditions, and severe malnutrition. His terrible ordeals were well written, but told in such a way that it made it not too burdensome or gruesome for the reader to bear. Thankfully. I breathed relief every time he triumphed over each adversity.

I kept having to set my book down for a minute and grasp the fact that this wasn't a story from the 1940's, with lessons of history learned from the Holocaust, but that it was the 1980's and 90's. That it was real. I think of where I was during this same time. I had no idea. And that this very thing occurs today I can't fully comprehend. This book serves its purpose well in bringing attention to the oppression and isolation to North Koreans, and gives a voice to a nation of people whose voice has been taken away from them by a ruthless dictatorship.

I have only read half of the book. I bought it for the long flight from SFO to ICN a few weeks ago. I didn't read much of it during the flight. But while I was abroad, I began it and could scarcely put it down, even though my itinerary left little time for other activities. Now that I am home, I will soon complete the book.

As I said, I could scarcely put the book down; it is an engrossing account of a family's suffering at the hands of the brutal North Korean regime. It is a tale of hopes and expectations, of fears and revelations, of degradation and emancipation. It is an expose of the mind and operations of one third of G. Bush's "Axis of Evil," a fitting appellation for a government that keeps its own population deprived, not only of the truth of its own malevalence and the truth of the world at large, but of life's most basic necessities, not to mention the simple human desire for freedom of thought and movement.

I read a review downplaying the author's writing style as "wanting." Nevertheless, I found it rather powerful and poignant. It's certainly not Solzhenytsin's "Gulag Archipalego," but it is a worthy work in its own right and well worth the read.

I may add to this review once I have finished the book. But suffice it to say that I am glad to have found it; it has earned a permanent place on my shelf.

It's hard to believe that there is a place like North Korean prison camps on this planet. I had no idea...but this book provided me with a great insight. I hope one of the Hollywood movie producers use this book to make a movie.
Congratulations for this monumental achievement!

North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has been in the news from time to time over its nuclear program. But due to North Korea's secretive regime, we don't often get a glimpse about what life was and still is like on the ground there. This books gives us that perspective. After reading this and other stories of North Korean exiles, I can only conclude that North Korea probably has the worst human rights record in the world right now. The only emotions going through my mind while reading this was shock, horror and disgust. The author was separated from his mother and put in a concentration camp at the age of 9, and not released until several years later. He describes a perfect police state, where the slightest criticism of the communist government an result in a fate much worse than his own imprisonment in a gulag. The author was actually quite lucky to have only been imprisoned (and to have been released later on). He wasn't even criticizing the government. His grandfather supposedly did (or so the government said), and for that, his entire family (except his mother) was sent to a gulag, where he vividly describes the conditions there. This is still happening today. Radios and TVs are formatted to receive only internal broadcasts from government-approved stations, although the author managed to tamper with his so that he could get broadcasts from South Korea, which encouraged him to leave. Poverty is widespread, and medical standards are now very poor. Don't even think about owning a Bible or any kind of western literature. Only in Pyongyang, the capital, are things somewhat better, but only certain people have the privilege of living there (the elderly and handicapped are excluded since they "make the country look bad"). Thank God the poor author was able to escape to South Korea after he was released from the gulag. I hope more North Koreans manage to make it out too, but more importantly, I sincerely hope the regime in Pyongyang crumbles sooner rather than later.

This book is a "must read" for anyone conerned about personal freedoms and human rights. What the author has endured is unspeakable in any kind of civilized society. The detailed description of the concentration camp and it's workings will mesmerize the reader and then numb the senses. Why do the the Korean people tolerate this treatment of their citizens? Truly, Stalinism is alive and well in north Korea.

"You people don't deserve to live, but the Party and our Great Leader have given you a chance to redeem yourselves. Don't squander it and disappoint him." So says a guard in Yodok, the place which is featured in this book. It was identified as "Border Patrol of the Korean People, unit 2915," however, as the North Korean regime sought to disguise it's real purpose. Kang Chol-Hwan arrived at its gate at age nine, along with his sister, father, and grandmother. As the author states herein, "We weren't sent to the camp as criminals but as relatives of a criminal." That so-called"criminal" was his grandfather and the charge leveled against his grandfather was "a crime of high treason." The real reason that Kang Chol-Hwan's grandfather was arrested, however, was that the North Korean police state, having duped his grandfather into returning to Korea with the fortune he accumulated in Japan, no longer had any need of him once they had got their hands on his wealth. This book is replete with examples of many other well-off Koreans, also inspired by revolutionary propaganda, who likewise left comfortable lives in Japan hoping to contribute to building communism in Kim Il-sung's Korea, but who, instead, were fleeced of their assets and wound up spending time in places like Yodok, one of the "Aquariums of Pyongyang."

The author, though, tells us almost nothing about any concentration/work camp/slave labor camp other than Yodok, the place where he was imprisoned for ten years. So the book is really about one "Aquarium" (and he utilizes the term because he actually brought his fish bowl with him to this prison, as well as attempting to coin a Korean phrase reminiscent of the Gulag Archipelago).

The first 148 pages of this rather brief book concerns the author's first 8 years at Yodok. He discusses how he was forced to trap rats for food, how his fellow political prisoners were kept in rags, denied adequate food; how they were worked to exhaustion. He also describes the execution of some prisoners: "The Party was willing to forgive this criminal. It gave him the chance here at Yodak to right himself. He chose to betray the Party's trust, and for that he merits execution." The man supposedly betrayed the state by trying to escape from his slave-labor camp. Moments later the commanding officer directed his guards thusly: "Aim at the traitor of the Fatherland...Fire!" So much for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

After telling us about his first 8 years in the camp, the author admits this: "As the years passed, another feeling began to disturb my daily existence: the feeling of injustice, which grew sharper when I considered the discrepancy between everything I had been taught and all that I was living." The writing herein, unfortunately, is a lot like this; not particularly personal and bereft of much emotion. (Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the author told his story to a French journalist---whose name appears on the cover of this book---and the book was originally published in French, perhaps having lost something through two translations.)

The final two years the author spent in Yodok's labor prison are glossed over in 6 pages, then his escape to South Korea, via China, is addressed in the final 40 or so pages. In total the book only numbers 238 (rather large print) pages and there's no index. I wish there was a lot more to this book; more about how many places such as Yodok exist in North Korea, how many people might be incarcerated in them and the like, and more of the minute detail of goings-on in such places (as opposed to the broader brush strokes offered by our author herein) so as to be better able to "feel" what it must have been like for the author to survive 10 years in such a ghastly place. (07Dec) Cheers

This and Google Earth are pretty much your only looks into North Korea. A country we should all know more about with its nuclear weapons, and with the hard-to-understand reactor construction in Syria. Connections to Pakistan's nuclear program? There's a lot that would be good to understand. This book might help us a bit.

Abject stories of horror are difficult to take in. We sometimes turn aside when reading the horror because our minds find it hard to digest the bleak facts.

While this book is filled with horrors -- families torn asunder, abuse of pregnant women, torture by prison guards, among many other recountings -- the story is still told with humanity and grace, and ultimately ends with hope, if not happiness.

The story of such regimes as North Korea must be told. And because we are inclined to forget, the story must be told over and over, so that we are not fooled by the lies of the North, the excuses made by the North's apologists, and the occasional public smiles of Kim Jong-il.

This is a well-written, engaging story. I don't easily rate an item with 5 stars, but this deserves the 5 and more.

A story about how things went from good to bad, and ultimately the worst in North Korea right after their war of independence. A truly evil government is exposed in this book. All governments on earth are evil one way or the other, but the North Korean one is one of those that take home the evilness trophies.

This is one of the few books that I was compelled to read through in one sitting. His personal accounts of the life in Yoduk concentration camp are vivid and almost too surreal to believe. Sadly the story didn't end with his release from Yoduk concentration camp or his subsequent flight to South Korea via China. There are still millions people suffering in various prison camps. In fact, the entire state of North Korea is a big prison camp.
The worst part of the reality is that there are still people (though minority) who sympathize with North Korean regime. Unbelievably, there are still some people in the world who either idealize the North Korean government or help sustain the current regime. This book should help dispell any illusions associated with North Korea and compel us to help the suffering people there.

I read Mr. Chol-Hwan's story late last year. Recently, I was discussing NK with someone and I recommended this book. President Bush has been pilloried by many on the left for his labeling of this evil regime as part of the "Axis of Evil"---and trust me, when you read Mr. Chol-Hwan's account, you will agree. What I find most curious about those who criticized the president, is their almost universal regard for similar dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela---dictators cut from the same Leninist-Stalinist cloth.
Mr. Chol-Hwan's suffering, and the suffering of his family should not be ignored, nor should his steadfast determination to desire and ultimately achieve freedom.
A little reality goes a long way---there is evil in this world, much as the left would have us believe otherwise---and Mr. Chol-Hwan's account serves to place an exclamation point on the notion. A must read, highly recommended.

"Aquariums of Pyongyang" details the experiences of a young man and his family in North Korea's gulag system. It is one of several recent biographies that show the violence and aburdity in North Korea. Considering what Kang Chol-Hwan has been through, it is a wonder that he is adjusting to life outside the prisons.

My reading of human-rights literature is a little slender, but THE AQUARIUMS OF PYONGYANG ranks as one of the best I've thus far discovered.

The symbolism of the title is one of the only real literary devices on display here (and it is both apt and effectively used); otherwise this very straightforward account of a family and a childhood turned inside out by the absolute moral corruption of the North Korean regime is a dry, devastating and informative read. Kang's writing successfully balances between the matter-of-fact and a conversational informality that manages do almost accomplish the impossible: to have not experienced the politics and controls of North Korea, I don't think any of us could truly see the world through his eyes, but he does manage to get close enough to make this a scary piece of literature, and an enraging one for anyone who cares about the state of human rights, which would hopefully be all of us.

Throughout, I was reminded specifically of the late Dr. Haing Ngor's A CAMBODIAN ODYSSEY. Dr. Ngor survived the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia, only to subsequently gain fame in the west through the film "The Killing Fields;" a powerful film greatly overshadowed by the grim detail of his own autobiographical account. THE AQUARIUMS OF PYONGYANG is very similar - both in the undeniability of Ngor and Kang's repective insistence upon levels of human dignity that most of us take for granted, and in the parallels between the two nations. The current state of affairs in North Korea inspires very little hope; this updated edition of this book provides a link to the website of the NGO organized by Kang, and this resource is valuable - this must-read book is only the beginning, in many ways.

I will state that I am a cynic and a skeptic about just about everything that I read and hear; and I came away from this book firmly convinced that it's author is one of today's more heroic figures, and that this book is absolutely essential.

-David Alston

Anyone who doubts that North Korea is an "Axis of Evil" needs to read this book. Kang gives a straightforward first-person account of his life inside an aquarium called North Korea, where there is only fear, propaganda, corruption, prisons, hard labor and starvation. He gives us his memoir of enduring all these hardships and his astonishment at the freedoms of South Korea, which present him with new challenges. If you want to know the truth about North Korea, it doesn't come much closer than this first-hand experience.

Anyone who doubts that North Korea is an "Axis of Evil" needs to read this book. Kang gives a straightforward first-person account of his life inside an aquarium called North Korea, where there is only fear, propaganda, corruption, prisons, hard labor and starvation. He gives us his memoir of enduring all these hardships and his astonishment at the freedoms of South Korea, which present him with new challenges. If you want to know the truth about North Korea, it doesn't come much closer than this first-hand experience.

This book is must reading for those who do not believe and those who believe all of these horror stories coming out of North Korea. The book is written in great detail about the harsh conditions present in this North Korean concentration camp.