Korea Memoir

Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.

In the glorious chronicles of the US Marine Corps, no name is more revered than that of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. The only fighting man to receive the Navy Cross five separate times - a military honor second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor - he was the epitome of a professional warrior.

Hutton has now written a fascinating full biography of Sergeant Reckless, who earned two Purple Hearts for her heroic efforts, among other military decorations. Hutton has spoken with the marines who fought alongside Reckless and tells the complete and captivating tale of how a would-be Korean racehorse became one of the greatest Marine Corps wartime heroes. Sgt. Reckless brings the legend back to life more than half a century later.

Nicole Chung was born premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up, she wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth.

It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, was inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, the affable flier and the tempestuous left fielder soared into North Korea, creating a death-defying bond.

In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

My Korean Mom is a bittersweet love letter from Mary H. K. Choi to her mother that hopes to convey the frustration, shame, loyalty, and searing adoration that's part and parcel of being the kid of an immigrant. It's not as if she could tell her mother to her face how much she loves her. That's just not how it's done.

In this brilliant narrative of America's first limited war, Toland lets both the events and the participants speak for themselves, employing scrupulous archival research and interviews as the bases for the drama and accuracy of his writing. In Mortal Combat reveals Mao's prediction of the date and place of MacArthur's Inchon landing, Russia's indifference to the war, Mao's secret leadership of the North Korean military, and the true nature of both sides' treatment and repatriation of POWs.

Woodward, the number-one international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.

『그렇게 몽땅 떠났습니다』는 오랜 시간 투병하던 저자의 어머니가 세상을 떠나자 저자와 그의 아버지, 또 저자의 여섯 살 아들까지 함께 떠난 미국 서부 여행기를 담은 책이다. 언뜻 그저 평범해 보이는 이 '삼대'는 우연인 듯 필연처럼 훌쩍 떠나며 여행사의 도움 없이 오롯이 가족을 위한 일정을 구상했다. 그토록 뜨거운 미국 서부 사막보다 더욱 뜨거운 시간을 함께 보낸 뒤 다시 현실로 돌아온 그들만의 이야기는 그러나 전혀 범상치 않다. 한 번 더 경험할 수 있을까 싶은, 그 마법 같은 시간에 대한 기록. 가장 소중한 사람을 잘 잊기 위하여, 그리고 남은 가족들이 보다 잘 살아내기 위하여 떠난 여행. 그 여행에서 얻고 또 잃게 된 것들에 대한 이야기가 미소를 짓게 될 만큼 유쾌하다. 또한 그 이야기는 바로 우리가 경험하게 될 또 다른 여행에 대한 질문이기도 하다.

손열음의 이번 책은 타 클래식 입문서와는 다른 세 가지의 차별점이 있다. 첫째, 클래식 매니아뿐만 아니라 음악을 사랑하는 사람이라면 누구나 읽을 수 있는 쉬우면서도 밀도 높은 글이라는 점. 둘째, 청중의 눈을 포함해서 연주자의 눈으로 음악을 바라보는 방법에 대해 소개하고 있다는 점. 그리고 마지막으로 대중들이 평소 궁금해했던 비밀스러운 영역인 '연주자의 삶'을 진솔하고 담백하게 고백하고 있다는 점이다.

이 책의 서두에서 메리 트럼프는 이렇게 밝히고 있다. '천재'와 '괴짜' 사이에서 아슬아슬하게 줄타기를 하고 있는 제45대 미국 대통령 도널드 트럼프의 '진짜 민낯'을 파헤치기 위해서다. 그 진짜 민낯은 다음과 같다. "역사, 헌법 원칙, 지정학, 외교에 대한 이해가 전무할 뿐 아니라, 그와 관련된 지식을 보여줘야 한다는 압박을 단 한 번도 받은 적이 없었던 삼촌은 자신의 아버지에게 배운 그대로 '돈의 프리즘'을 통해서만 미국의 모든 동맹국과 사회 정책을 평가하고 있다." 요컨대 트럼프 대통령의 기행을 곧이곧대로 받아들이기 전에, 그 근본적인 배경을 가족사와 심리분석을 통해 정리해야 한다는 것이다. 이 책에 담긴 내용은 지구상에서 가장 강력한 '살아 있는 권력'에 관한 이야기이며, 동시에 그를 성장시킨 '세상에서 가장 불행한 가문'의 이야기다. 그리고 우리는 이를 통해 괴팍한 아버지로부터 인정받기 위해 몸부림치며 거짓말과 과장을 생존방식으로 습득한 인간 '도널드 트럼프'를 이해할 수 있다.

'대한민국 법조 1번지'라는, 몹시 거창하고 유난스러운 별칭을 가진 서초동. 365일 우울하고 시끌벅적한 이곳에 의뢰인들과 매일 지지고 볶고 옥신각신, 이 법원 저 법원 기웃거리면서 재판 다니는 한 남자가 있다. 수만 명에 달하는 이 땅의 변호사 중 하찮은 1인으로서 냉혹한 바닥의 생존 경쟁에 치여 살다 보니 어느새 원활한 생계 유지가 인생 제1목표이자 제1관심사가 되어버린 자칭 '생계형 변호사'. 이 책은 '오늘도 별 탈 없이 수습해서 다행이야'를 되뇌며 나름의 유쾌함과 해학으로 매일을 '존버'하는, 그저 그런 변호사의 파란만장한 일상과 단상을 담은 에세이다.

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'?

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.

As a United States general, he had an unparalleled genius for military strategy, and it was under his leadership that Japan was rebuilt into a democratic ally after World War II. But MacArthur carried out his zero-sum philosophy both on and off the battlefield. During the Korean War, in defiance of President Harry S. Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he pushed for an aggressive confrontation with Communist China - a position intended to provoke a wider war, regardless of the cost or consequences.

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.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal.