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    How I Became a North Korean: A Novel
    Unavailable
    How I Became a North Korean: A Novel
    Unavailable
    How I Became a North Korean: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    How I Became a North Korean: A Novel

    Written by Krys Lee

    Narrated by Janet Song, Ewan Chung and Raymond Lee

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese American teenager of North Korean descent whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast in his California high school.

    These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea - Danny, to visit his mother, who is working as a missionary there, after a humiliating incident keeps him out of school; Yongju, to escape persecution after his father is killed at the hands of the Dear Leader himself; and Jangmi, to protect her unborn child.

    As they struggle to survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, they come to form a kind of adopted family. But will Yongju, Jangmi, and Danny find their way to the better lives they risked everything for?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJul 2, 2018
    ISBN9781974904846
    Unavailable
    How I Became a North Korean: A Novel

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    Reviews for How I Became a North Korean

    3.5/5

    22 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Granted this fed my North Korea obsession, but I found it a supremely satisfying read. It alternates between three characters who tell their own stories -- all three have distinct voices and don't blend into each other as sometimes happen in books with rotating viewpoints. A slim but powerful read.
    • 4/5
      "China's the worst part-everyone says that. We will get out. We will."By sally tarbox on 11 November 2017Format: Kindle EditionA very well-written and exciting account of three young people who come together in China, just over the border from N Korea. There's Yongju, an academic boy from a highly privileged background; his parents are associates of the Dear Leader. Then they fall from favour and there's a panicking escape...For working-class Jangmi, the realisation that she's pregnant decides her to cross the river for the sake of her unborn child.And Danny, an American youth of Korean ancestry, is a troubled (autistic?) albeit bright kid. Bullied at school, gay, in an awkward relationship with his emotionally stunted father, he's sent to stay in China with his mother, who's over there doing missionary work. But when problems ensue, he ends up living rough with the other two...Brings to life the horrors of N Korea's regime and the trauma of being an illegal immigrant to China. Human trafficking, brutality, betrayal - even living a 'safe' life is not always easy.Convincingly written, apart from Danny's adventures. From a plausible first few chapters following him through school and summer camp, his personality well delineated, I became unsure that this boy would have chosen to stay with the street kids of China, despite his issues at home.But still couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      I hadn't heard of this book before I stumbled on it at the library, looking for books for #koreanmarch. I have been reading quite a few stories set in South Korea lately, so I was hoping this would give me more of a North Korean perspective, but it turns out this book is more about being a North Korean refugee.This book gave me a LOT of feelings. Sometimes it came across to me as book club trauma porn, but at the same time it felt so plausible, and Lee has the red to probably know what she is talking about. I had a lot of fury, reading this, mostly at "Christian" missionaries "helping" North Korean refugees in China — but the west and our infinite appetite for trauma porn is heavily implicated here, too. A difficult book. Probably a good choice for book clubs, actually.
    • 2/5
      I should have appreciated this book, but I had the misfortune of attempting to read this right after finishing the excellent nonfiction work, “The Girl With Seven Names,” a true life account of a young woman’s escape from North Korea, first to China and later to South Korea. It’s a harrowing story of danger and sorrow. This novel, then, rings a bit hollow in comparison and I couldn’t help but make comparisons the entire time I was reading, which was unfair to Krys Lee, and I knew it, but I still couldn’t help it. Another point, the writing wasn’t linear, or at least didn’t start out that way, which threw me initially. I’m not an idiot. I’ve enjoyed postmodern writing over the years. William Burroughs remains one of my favorites. It’s not that I can’t follow nonlinear writing. It’s just that I prefer linear writing, on the whole, unless I know I’ll be reading a postmodern work, which this was not supposed to be. Flashbacks don’t tend to bother me too much. I just like to know what’s going on. Anyway, I had a hard time enjoying this book and I admit to bias – I had just read the real thing, albeit about someone who had just left North Korea. Why anyone would want to go TO North Korea who wasn’t from North Korea is beyond me. The reasons given ring a little hollow. The reasons given for people to return in the autobiography I just finished make sense. Whatever, two stars. Not recommended. If I were to have read this without having read The Girl With Seven Names immediately beforehand, my rating and recommendation might have been different and I readily acknowledge that and apologize to the author for having been influenced in this way. It’s just that the nonfiction book was simply that good.