The story of an escapee from North Korea. Kim Yong starts off as an orphan, but ends up as part of the elite of North Korea. He lives in Pyong Yang and is part of the shadow pirate economy that collects foreign exchange through illegal cash trading on international markets to finance the elite's life style. He is completely swallowed up in the machine. Through some counterrevolutionary family connections that come out at one point, he ends up in the work camp/death camp system that operated some of the basic economy, such as coal mining. He then escapes to China, and eventually South Korea.
A surprising story. You get a look at the Land of Oz that is Pyong Yang in an otherwise desperate country. You get a look at the desperate conditions of the work camp system. What you don't get is any view, any understanding of the life of the average peasant or worker outside of Pyong Yang. It is as if he never even saw the rest of the country - and yet there are stories of him driving all over the country to procure items for export. As if he is completely blinded by the ideology, the privileges, the social gulf between rulers and ruled.
Another thing is, in spite of the harsh end to his life in North Korea, he emerges with all his inculcated propaganda intact, even in prison never having questioned the nature of the state and its messages. Strange.
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