Book Review: Real Lives in North Korea - nothing to envy

Since interning at Granta Books last year I’ve been enjoying articles and books that bring across the story of how people are living in tough places. One such book is Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea – which won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010 and which I highly recommend.

Based on accounts of those who managed to escape North Korea, the book gives a sense of what it was like living during different stages of the rigidly controlled Communist regime which continues there to this day. It is incredible to read how fully indoctrinated people were (and I guess, still are) into at times ludicrously harsh or downright unhealthy rules and routines, and the “informing” culture, believed to be essential to “North Korean security”, as well as the personality cult around the leader Kim Il-sung, which had men and women finding their worth in the leader more than in any other relationship. It’s revealing to read about the impact of Kim Il-sung’s death on different groups of people – a patriotic house-wife, broken by the news, whose husband descends into deep depression, a teacher from a lower-class background, a student struggling to bear the weight of the mourning which was expected of him.

This is a well-written history of the last 2 decades, as much as the author, a reporter based in South Korea, has been able to find out, containing surprising detail of the way people saw the world outside through a veil of widely accepted lies, as well as how they saw each other and how they provided for each other in tougher times.

Particularly touching in the midst of all the carefully recorded information about rations and hardworking routines is the story of a young couple, Mi-ran and Jun-sung, secretly visiting each other at night to go walking and talk. A complex and highly restrictive class system prevented them meeting in daylight. It’s revealing and rather sad that despite these episodes one fled the country without trusting the secret to the other.

Another moving episode tells of how Mi-ran, at this point a teacher, watches her children coming to classes exhausted due to starvation in the famine which lasted for many long years in the nineties there. As she notes the missing pupils in her class, she sees her favourite pupil stops coming in and she presumes this is because the child is now dead.

In fact some of the details here and about the hospital in the province made me so sad I stopped reading this book for a while. When I returned, my outrage only increased as I learned of a 16-year-old whose home was taken by other occupants when his father became a beggar, and who was caught trading across the border for food and tortured and imprisoned along with adult inmates! The details here reveal a world of injustice, courage and despair, and above all left me feeling: something must be done.

If like me you feel this way – find out more. Today I was reading a shocking magazine from Release International which talks about the problems facing Christians in North Korea. When it is discovered there is a Christian or a Bible in a household, it’s not unknown for the whole family to be taken to away to brutal labour camps. One man who was in a camp for 5 years tells of how he was treated, at one point tortured by being made to sit on burning coals. Even fleeing North Korea can cause new problems as you are then illegal members of China. Escaping women particularly are preyed on and sold into prostitution and trafficked illegally – your heart just breaks to hear of things like this.

Release International are just at the beginning of their campaign to call for justice and release for imprisoned Christians in the country. Sadly there isn’t that much to read on their website yet – but you can sign their petition at this link. Do it! And do more than this. Find some way of telling someone who could make a difference. Ask leaders. Ask God. Seek more for the people there.

Persecution and breakfast

After a week of taking in lots of information from various staff at my new workplace, I spent part of the morning lying in, finally getting to making a lazy man’s breakfast, mainly involving toast – and picked up the Open Doors magazine I was sent recently. I was quickly struck by the gap between my relaxed Saturday morning existence and the people who are living in danger and difficulty because of their faith in Christ and the political or societal situations around them, so I thought I’d share some details.

For instance, a Pakistani Christian woman is the first woman in the country to be sentenced to death for a charge of “blasphemy” – an observer says this verdict was given under pressure from a “mob outside the courtroom”. Outrageously, the woman, Asia Bibi, held in isolation since June 2009, and her family, who are in hiding, are in danger for their lives from hard-line Islamic groups, who want to take the law into their own hands.

Another article talks about some young boys in Orisso, India, who Open Doors have provided beds for at Ladruma Boys Home. Many of these abandoned children are traumatised from anti-Christian violence in the area in 2008, when the home became a target – during which time the caregivers were taken away because of the danger! So different to the UK where a lack of sufficient care for vulnerable kids will rightly cause an uproar.

What conditions to be trying to live in, to be trying to learn in or grow in or form relationships or work and earn a living. What a poor situation many fellow believers are in!


I need to grasp just how much opposition to Jesus and his people is out there in the world, and recognise that some people are paying a high price to be identified with the Lord Jesus – because they know what a privilege they have to know Him.

If you do, how do you remember to read about and pray for less fortunate people?

Norfolk holiday thoughts, part 2

Here’s something else I learned from my holiday in Norfolk: I really love to seek out good design, or art, or things to look at – and often this can absorb me more than meeting new people. Not sure if this is good or bad, really…

Either way, I’ve decided to include some shots of the beach at Winterton, which was so sandy and had so much space, we went there twice. Check out the old-world seafront buildings at Great Yarmouth too, and the castle in the centre of Norwich, built in the 11th century at the command of William I with stones carted over from Normandy. There was an amazing piece of modern art in their gallery as well – a giant jigsaw of the local area made up of pieces from lots of different commercial jigsaws and fitted together into one new image. Got to admire the dedication in that and the creative way it has been composed.

Holidays are a great time for taking stock too. I had plenty of moments to realise just how much I have to be thankful for, during trips out and about, and when chilling out right at the end of some full, fun days out.

In times in the Bible recently, I have again realised how influential my time with Dave Anthony in Ephesians 1 and 2 was during UCCF’s training programme “Relay”: Particularly in seeing what I was, and would be, without Jesus, and what incredible grace has been given me, and what an awesome position I now have – all this still really helps me grasp God’s goodness in a real way.

I am only what I am now because of Jesus’ goodness. May I rely on him for strength to live well, and take every opportunity – by his power, and not trying to do it alone – to grow in becoming like Him.
Thinking about what prayer is has been helpful too – and praying big prayers for change in people’s lives. It is God’s world, after all. May I see each day as a chance to bring friends and family and churches and work situations to God in prayer, seeking his blessing – because he is good and faithful.


There is much to be thankful for – I hope I remember this now I’m back at work!

(We also visited somewhere called California too - it had a narrow beach, and by it, here, is my brother Tim.)

Sailing & meeting different species (in Norfolk)

Without any airs or graces, my parents, on holiday in Norfolk, rented a longboat to sail on for a day. It was a fun time of just being “me” and taking time out with my family.

There were plenty of moments of fun piloting, working out routes and enjoying the feel of cruising along. We saw the houses of the rich, and admired the buildings, and saw herons standing stock still in the water, and ducks pushing themselves ahead out of our way at the last minute, silly things.

I enjoyed letting creation speak to us of our powerful, artistic, meticulously inventive and providential creator. At a brilliant wildlife place, check out how close I got to the tiger - and the gibbons, crocs, alligators, peacocks and hornbills too!
Sadly the bizarre “red panda” was photo-shy, and I only saw a glimpse of the whole thing walking along a branch high in a tree, before the pair retreated further into the foliage.

How do we respond to such marvellous creatures? Fragile and cute, elusive and elegant, majestic and proud, bold and playful - they seem to have personalities all their own. I guess really that’s us trying to make them more familiar and comfortable…

And I guess we tend to respond by sharing the joy with one another we get when we see these creatures recognise us, or, when we see them living in happiness and comfort and interacting with their fellow creatures. Or we become curious wanting to understand all about their alien way of life.

Or we take more pictures!

More tomorrow – and I managed to finish a poem I’ve been working on so that will be posted here soon, too.

Observations

The last seven days or so have been full of things which made me feel weak and out of control, but much that makes me thankful to God as well.

Positively, it’s been a time of rest, doing things with family, writing long emails, and mixing light reading and watching Death Note (a fun anime series exploring the nature of justice), 24 and Little Miss Sunshine with trying to thrash out what some of the New Word Alive teaching means for me (next week I aim to blog a few thoughts that came out of the excellent Engagement with Culture talks).

It has also been a time of being thrown a scattering of suggestions for future employment while suddenly being dropped from one call centre job and offered another. No more work for that unnamed department store – the less said about their computer systems the better, and the same for some of their customers! People can be so unreasonable, seeming so ready to believe the worst of you, when you are doing what you can to help. I’m not whining at anyone in particular, but just at human nature I guess. One good thing is: I’m learning to be more confident in what I can do, and let the rest go. We will see how the new job goes…

Finally the last few days have been a chance to hear about the situation on the ground in Italy after the recent earthquake, and to seek God’s help for those there in prayer. Hundreds are homeless, many more scared, or without a workplace or university to go to. CU life and church life continues, so please pray for their strength.

On that: I’m hoping to start making posts beginning with “Praise God for…” – as I want to learn to see everything good as coming from God, and want to grow in my gratefulness to Him. So, as we have reflected on the earthquake, realising many have had to flee for their lives, we can praise God for keeping back His day of wrath, out of love for many, when there will be no place to hide for many who have not come to Jesus for salvation. As believers we can too realise that, as Psalm 46 says, God is our true refuge in times of great trouble. Once we believe in Jesus, our souls are safe in Him, and our bodies will be delivered when Jesus returns, too. God really is our strong fortress. Praise Him!

And, as I have been reading today in A Few Good Men by Richard Coekin, we can trust in our God who, though invisible to us now, is near in whatever we are going through (Heb 11:27). What an encouragement to keep going with Him.