The Aquariums of Pyongyang
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Park
About this listen
"Destined to become a classic" (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking), this harrowing memoir of life inside North Korea was the first account to emerge from the notoriously secretive country - and it remains one of the most terrifying.
Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education."
Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was 9 years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for 10 years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.
Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.
©2005 Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A chilling testimony....Freezes the heart and seizes the soul." (Kirkus Reviews)
"A triumph against silence." (Financial Times)
"The Aquariums of Pyongyang is one of the most terrifying memoirs I have ever read. As the first account to emerge from North Korea, it is destined to become a classic." (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking)
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Compelling Account
- By Simone on 04-23-15
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Wild Swans
- Three Daughters of China
- By: Jung Chang
- Narrated by: Joy Osmanski
- Length: 22 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.
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Accurate, moving and chilling
- By David on 12-15-12
By: Jung Chang
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Destined to Witness
- Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
- By: Hans Massaquoi
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.
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An important story, marred by lackluster writing.
- By Christopher on 03-04-15
By: Hans Massaquoi
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
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A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
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A Promise at Sobibor
- A Jewish Boy's Story of Revolt and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland
- By: Philip "Fiszel" Bialowitz, Joseph Bialowitz
- Narrated by: Jim Tedder
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A Promise at Sobibór is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibór in occupied Poland. Sobibór was not a transit camp or work camp: Its sole purpose was efficient mass murder. On October 14, 1943, approximately half of the 650 or so prisoners still alive at Sobibór undertook a daring and precisely planned revolt, killing SS officers and fleeing through minefields and machine-gun fire.
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Another Prisoner's Insight of Nazi Death Camp Sobibor
- By Polar Bear on 06-01-24
By: Philip "Fiszel" Bialowitz, and others
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Always Remember Your Name
- A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz
- By: Andra Bucci, Tatiana Bucci
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 28, 1944, six-year-old Tati and her four-year-old sister, Andra, were roused from their sleep and arrested. Along with their mother, Mira, their aunt, and cousin Sergio, they were deported to Auschwitz. Over 230,000 children were deported to the camp, where Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, performed deadly experiments on them. Only a few dozen children survived, Tati and Andra among them.
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Important read!
- By Holly Thomas on 02-24-22
By: Andra Bucci, and others
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Dreams in a Time of War
- A Childhood Memoir
- By: Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae-Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....
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An escape through education
- By Tango on 06-17-12
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Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
- Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War
- By: Zhuqing Li
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Scions of a once-great southern Chinese family that produced the tutor of the last emperor, Jun and Hong were each other’s best friends until, in their twenties, they were separated at the end of the Chinese Civil War. One became a model Communist, the other a model capitalist. On Taiwan, Jun married a Nationalist general, established a trading company, and emigrated to the United States. On the Communist mainland, Hong built her medical career under a cloud of suspicion about her family and survived two waves of “re-education” before she was acclaimed for her achievements.
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Wonderful Story of a Family’s Survival Through Political Change…
- By Marie G. on 04-12-23
By: Zhuqing Li
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Born Survivors
- Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope
- By: Wendy Holden
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Eastern Europe, 1944: Three women believe they are pregnant, but are torn from their husbands before they can be certain. Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left-their lives, and those of their unborn babies.
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Just an incredible story!
- By PCF on 06-03-17
By: Wendy Holden
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Echoes from the Holocaust
- A Memoir
- By: Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
- Narrated by: Susan Marlowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home.
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4.5* - memoir of a survivor
- By Christine Newton on 06-09-17
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Death Is Hard Work
- A Novel
- By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price - translator
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is - after all - only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.
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The bleakness of living in a war-torn country!
- By Susan on 03-20-19
By: Khaled Khalifa, and others
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A Moonless, Starless Sky
- Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa
- By: Alexis Okeowo
- Narrated by: Kamali Minter
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.
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Amazing and Inspirational Stories
- By F L. on 01-01-18
By: Alexis Okeowo
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
- By: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
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Very interesting and well told
- By Tracy F. on 03-31-23
By: Tova Friedman, and others
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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Awful! And I don't mean the book . . .
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Escape from Camp 14
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North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
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heart breaking
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The Girl with Seven Names
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
- By Linda H. Andreae on 10-09-19
By: Hyeonseo Lee, and others
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Dear Leader
- Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look inside North Korea
- By: Jang Jin-sung
- Narrated by: Daniel York
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
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As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
- By Gotta Tellya on 09-29-14
By: Jang Jin-sung
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North Korea Undercover
- Inside the World's Most Secret State
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- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
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A River in Darkness
- One Man's Escape from North Korea
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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Awful! And I don't mean the book . . .
- By DJW on 01-03-18
By: Masaji Ishikawa, and others
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
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Escape from Camp 14
- One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
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North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
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heart breaking
- By The greatest human to ever live on 10-29-24
By: Blaine Harden
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The Girl with Seven Names
- A North Korean Defector’s Story
- By: Hyeonseo Lee, David John
- Narrated by: Josie Dunn
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
- By Linda H. Andreae on 10-09-19
By: Hyeonseo Lee, and others
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Dear Leader
- Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look inside North Korea
- By: Jang Jin-sung
- Narrated by: Daniel York
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
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As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
- By Gotta Tellya on 09-29-14
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North Korea Undercover
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
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Under the Same Sky
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Overall
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A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.
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Tugs at the heart strings
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Without You, There Is No Us
- My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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The King and I meets Mary Poppins
- By Michael on 02-22-15
By: Suki Kim
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Korea
- A New History of South and North
- By: Victor Cha, Ramon Pacheco Pardo
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Korea has a long, riveting history—it is also a divided nation. South Korea is a vibrant democracy, the tenth largest economy, and is home to a world-renowned culture. North Korea is ruled by the most authoritarian regime in the world, a poor country in a rich region, and is best known for the cult of personality surrounding the ruling Kim family. But both Koreas share a unique common history. Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo draw on decades of research to explore the history of modern Korea, from the late nineteenth century, Japanese occupation, and Cold War division to the present day.
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Good but Offers Little New Insight
- By Michael Allan Dawson on 10-19-24
By: Victor Cha, and others
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The Real North Korea
- Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
- By: Andrei Lankov
- Narrated by: Steven Roy Grimsley
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Overall
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Story
Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.
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Broad and nuanced account of North Korea
- By Neuron on 07-29-15
By: Andrei Lankov
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The Sister
- North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World
- By: Sung-Yoon Lee
- Narrated by: Dexter Galang
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The first woman ever to issue the threat of a nuclear weapons strike is not even officially a head of state. Kim Yo Jong is the sister of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and, as their murderous regime’s chief propagandist, internal administrator, and foreign policymaker, she is the most powerful woman in North Korean history. Cruel but charming, she threatens and insults foreign leaders with sardonic wit, issuing proclamations and denunciations in her own name, a first for any woman in the Korean royal family.
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Great read, a little long
- By petey.80 on 10-15-24
By: Sung-Yoon Lee
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
What listeners say about The Aquariums of Pyongyang
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Josh
- 12-24-22
Great book.
The story is well told and give a insider experience of a horrible place. Highly recommended
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- Lara
- 12-31-21
Must read
Chilling. Extremely well told. A reality of communism every freedom loving individual should know. Communism only survives at the expense of freedom.
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- JohnsonJohnson
- 04-27-21
Highly recommended
Imagine spending 10 years of your childhood in a gulag.. I recommend this book to anyone in interested in the human condition and wanting to learn more about North Korea. There is somewhat of a good ending for the author as well.
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- gypsyreader
- 01-30-22
Stories from North Korea must be heard.
Read this.
I had read this book years ago, having been stationed in the US military in Seoul, fascinated then to learn more about the isolated north.
Americans and South Koreans are Free to express and tell our histories, but we need to realize what Kang Chol-hwan tells us, that It is important to try and express to the refugee how difficult it is for the free to understand how challenging it is for those from the north to transition after a life of indoctrination and isolation.
Park's reading is compassionate and clear. His English is impeccable with enough accent to add depth to Kang's story.
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- AmazonExplorer
- 07-14-20
North Korea is a true Hunger Games world
scary stuff, especially since its all real and occuring right now. someone needs to enlighten these leaders and educate them to the current world.... or just, u know, get rid of them.
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- Dr Pickles
- 12-30-21
Heart Wrenching
An excellent example of the dangers of communism, the way it extracts all hope from its unwilling adherents, and why indeed it is important to oppose it in any way possible. Exciting, tear jerking, truly a masterfully composed piece.
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- mkaties
- 04-26-21
A Masterpiece
I am having a hard time remembering reading another book that was as meaningful to me as this one. it is really easy to dismiss N Korea as a bad place without giving it a second thought, but this dives deeply into what day to day life is like in N Korea and the Gulags, no spoilers, but the ending is wonderful, and ultimate triumph of good v evil.
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- Danielle Gerlisky
- 12-30-23
Eye opening and informative
I can only imagine what was in the unedited version.
I know this was a piece of literature that was actually banned in some countries. This story was given to my mom as a foreign exchange student when she visited Australia. If it hadn’t have been recommended to me, I would’ve remained ignorant. It is a reminder of the horrors that exist in our world and a cry to change.
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- Tom
- 11-14-21
An appalling account of sheer terror told by a survivor
Authentic description of the rule of terror under the North Korean dictatorship
A vivid account of how anyone can be thrown from the frying pan into the fire indefinitely —all based on the whim of the Party, without any explanation
This book is not for everyone. The beatings, systematic starvation, and brain washing of young children is hard to bear. You cannot complete this story without retaining an indelible picture of the destitution, constant state of fear, and consummate hopelessness under which the vast majority of these people live.
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- Kathy
- 07-15-21
Cannot describe my feelings
I can’t describe to a would be listener how much this book has impacted me. The atrocities these people endured day after day, month after month, and year after year are unimaginable. It leaves a pit in my stomach, feeling unable to do something, anything, to help the North Korean people. I can’t believe our government will not rally the international community to bring about a regime change and subsequent freedom for these people. Very sad indeed. Our government appears to be as afraid of Kim Jong il as much as his country is. This is a very eye opening book.
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