Escape from North Korea : the untold story of Asia's underground railroad

Title:

Author:

Kirkpatrick, Melanie.

ISBN:

9781594036330

Publication Information:

New York ; London : Encounter Books, c2012.

Physical Description:

xi, 350 p. : ill., photographs ; 24 cm.

General Note:

Map on lining papers.

Contents:

"I am a man among men" -- Escape. Crossing the river -- Look for a building with a cross on it -- Defectors -- In hiding. Brides for sale -- Half-and-half children -- Siberia's last gulag -- Old soldiers -- Hunted. Hunted -- Jesus on the border -- The journey out of China -- Stockholders. Let my people go -- Be the voice -- Learning to be free. Almost safe -- Unification dumplings -- Left behind -- The future. Invading North Korea -- Conclusion: One free Korea.

Subject Term:

Refugees -- Korea (North)

Refugees -- Government policy -- China.

Missionaries -- Korea (North)

Missionaries -- China.

Church work with refugees -- Korea (North)

Church work with refugees -- China

Undocumented immigrants -- China.

Repatriation -- Korea (North)

Repatriation -- China.

Geographic Term:

Korea (North) -- Emigration and immigration.

Summary:

Chronicles the harrowing stories of people who have successfully escaped North Korea, via first China then Southeast Asia or Mongolia and finally to South Korea, the United States and other free countries.

Holds:

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	305.906914 KIR	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

From the world's most repressive state comes rare good news: the escape to freedom of a small number of its people. It is a crime to leave North Korea. Yet increasing numbers of North Koreans dare to flee. They go first to neighboring China, which rejects them as criminals, then on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia, and finally to South Korea, the United States, and other free countries. They travel along a secret route known as the new underground railroad.

With a journalist's grasp of events and a novelist's ear for narrative, Melanie Kirkpatrick tells the story of the North Koreans' quest for liberty. Travelers on the new underground railroad include women bound to Chinese men who purchased them as brides, defectors carrying state secrets, and POWs from the Korean War held captive in the North for more than half a century. Their conductors are brokers who are in it for the money as well as Christians who are in it to serve God. The Christians see their mission as the liberation of North Korea one person at a time.

Just as escaped slaves from the American South educated Americans about the evils of slavery, the North Korean fugitives are informing the world about the secretive country they fled. Escape from North Korea describes how they also are sowing the seeds for change within North Korea itself. Once they reach sanctuary, the escapees channel news back to those they left behind. In doing so, they are helping to open their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual groundwork for the transformation of the totalitarian regime that keeps their fellow citizens in chains.

Author Notes

Melanie Kirkpatrick is a journalist, writer, and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She was deputy editor of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal , where she was a longtime member of the editorial board and op-ed editor. She lives in rural Connecticut with her husband, Jack David.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Tales of escape from the brutal Kim dynasty moved former Wall Street Journal staffer Kirkpatrick to create this vivid account of North Koreans who dared to make the leap for liberty. The author writes that "Sixty years of political oppression have not dulled North Koreans' appetite for freedom;" indeed, since 1953, roughly 24,000 of the 24 million people living in North Korea have fled to South Korea, Europe, or North America. The famine of the 1990s compelled many to seek food in China, where perhaps tens of thousands live in hiding or are married to Chinese nationals. But if caught and repatriated, they face "persecution and severe punishment." Meanwhile, corps of for-profit smugglers and humanitarian groups comprising dedicated Christian missionaries and Korean-Americans are quietly at work to lead people to safety: Helping Hands Korea, a group founded in 1996, used America's Underground Railroad, which funneled slaves from the South to the free North, as a model for their organization. In addition to her analysis of the political climate of the country and the international community's response to its plight, Kirkpatrick presents harrowing testimonies from dozens of North Korean refugees to produce a timely portrait of a people desperate for freedom-Kim Cheol-woong, a classically trained pianist, remarked that "One of the hardest things I have experienced since leaving North Korea is having to choose what to play." (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Kirkpatrick (former editorial page deputy editor, Wall Street Journal) extensively interviewed North Koreans who left their families and risked forbidden travel in order to escape the world's last Stalinist dictatorship. Although the comparison is sometimes strained, Kirkpatrick quotes pre-Civil War American slave letters and abolitionist speeches to equate them with present-day brave North Koreans. The Korean "underground railway" runs from North Korea through North China, and many of the "conductors" are Chinese or Korean Christians. Some of the escapees died on the way, some made their way to freedom, and some were taken into virtual slavery as prostitutes or sold as wives. Though she does supplement the interviews with other sources, Kirkpatrick offers little historical background, nor is the story, as the title claims, "untold," as it has been related, though in less detail, in, for instance, Barbara Demick's Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009). Verdict Recommended for readers who prefer the personal approach rather than abstract or policy analysis of North Korea.-Charles Hayford, Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

Introduction 'I Am a Man Among Men' In the spring of 1857, the anti-slavery Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia copied into its confidential Underground Railroad Record an excerpt from a letter it had received from Abram Harris, a former slave who had escaped from his master in Charles County, Maryland. Some weeks earlier, Harris had reached the Philadelphia station along the Underground Railroad that transported fugitive American slaves to safety in Canada. He traveled by night, barely eluding the slave catchers who were hot at his heels. The friend with whom he fled was not so lucky. He died along the journey, "the first instance of death on the Underground Rail Road in this region," the Record states. The Vigilance Committee kept meticulous notes on the slaves who passed through its territory and what happened to them after they departed Philadelphia. Harris, the Record notes, was "a man of medium size, tall, dark chestnut color." He "could read and write a little and was very intelligent." The Committee recorded that it fed and housed Harris before handing him over to another conductor and dispatching him farther north to the next depot on the Underground Railroad. The Record doesn't say how Harris reached his final destination in Canada. He could have hidden in a boat that sailed from the young metropolis of Buffalo, New York, across Lake Erie to a private dock on the Canadian shore. Or perhaps a New England abolitionist guided him at night over the sparsely guarded, wooded border in Vermont. However he achieved his freedom, Abram Harris expressed his relief and happiness. Written from the newfound safety of Canada, the former slave's letter sings with joy. "Give my love to Mr. _____ and family," he writes--the name of the Philadelphian who helped him was redacted in case the Record fell into the wrong hands--"and tell them I am in a land of liberty! I am a man among men!" Excerpted from Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad by Melanie Kirkpatrick All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Author's Note	p. vii
Introduction: "I Am a Man Among Men"	p. 1
Part I Escape
1 Crossing the River	p. 21
2 Look for a Building with a Cross on It	p. 39
3 Defectors	p. 55
Part II In Hiding
4 Brides for Sale	p. 75
5 Half-and-Half Children	p. 91
6 Siberia's Last Gulag	p. 105
7 Old Soldiers	p. 117
Part III Hunted
8 Hunted	p. 137
9 Jesus on the Border	p. 155
10 The Journey out of China	p. 173
Part IV Stockholders
11 Let My People Go	p. 191
12 Be the Voice	p. 209
Part V Learning to be Free
13 Almost Safe	p. 221
14 Unification Dumplings	p. 239
15 Left Behind	p. 253
Part VI The Future
16 Invading North Korea	p. 275
17 Conclusion: One Free Korea	p. 295
Acknowledgments	p. 309
How to Help	p. 315
Notes	p. 317
Index	p. 337

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Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Library Journal Review

Excerpts

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