Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

I'm surprised to read some of these critiques and find that individuals feel the need to discount this book for literary shortcomings and typos. The story itself is a strong one and I was more than willing to forgive this man for misspelling "kidnapings" in exchange for his horrific tale of the years lost in a North Korean concentration camp. It amazes me that some disregard these pages as "really nothing new" -- a very inhumane response to a very vivid and compelling account of abominable human rights injustices. This isn't fiction here; this REALLY happened and deserves the understanding that this man is sharing HIS story and not trying to write the next "War and Peace."
Kang Chol-Hwan has shared his amazing journey from one world to another. In order to share the reality of life under a loathsome, hateful regime that does nothing but systematically starve and kill its people, he risks the well-being of himself and loved ones. I read his story and was deeply moved. Being half a world away, it's difficult to fathom that such horrid injustices occur in our modern society.
I am a Korean-American and live a much more sheltered and protected life than many on this earth. I am deeply appreciative to my parent's for coming to the U.S. in order to give their children a better life. They were only children during the Korean War and had their fair share of hunger and hardships. They walked the long, death-ridden highway with the masses towards hopefully a better life in the South. They were among the fortunate. Many saw their families torn apart and kidnapped back to the North.
Reunification is inevitable. This seems to be the sentiments of many. It's only a matter of time before the North just can't hang on any longer without the help of its affluent sister in the south.
A great many thank you's to Mr. Kang for sharing his life.

Other reviewers have already noted the importance of this book in documenting the pervasive pattern and Kafkaesque quality of human rights violations in North Korea, so I shall concentrate instead on what other help this book offers for penetrating the veil of secrecy in which P'yongyang wraps itself.
In the past decade or so, there has been an explosion of Western interest in North Korea that has contributed substantially to a better understanding of P'yongyang's policy priorities and problems. Of particular note in this regard are two publications: "North Korea: Through the Looking Glass," an elegant and balanced study published by the Brookings Institute, and "Kim Il-song's North Korea," which presents the meticulously- detailed research undertaken by Helen Louise Hunter while she was still with the CIA. Both of these publications benefitted from the exploitation of defector information, but their homogenized findings still lack a sense of ground truth, and it is in this regards that Kang Chol-hwan's account of his life in North Korea is so valuable apart from its obvious importance on the human rights front.
"Aquariums of Pyongyang" provides a considerable body of anecdotal information that documents several trends which, North Korean government pronouncements make clear, are of increasing concern to the central government. These trends are rising hooliganism, especially on the part of youth gangs; rampant corruption and bribery in nearly all sectors of society; and a surprising underground use of currency (not always North Korean) in an economy that has traditionally been described as non-monetarized. Neither collectively nor individually are these trends underwriting an organized opposition, but they have substantially eroded both government control of the citizenry and public faith in the regime's relevancy and attractiveness. Also answered by "Aquariums of Pyongyang" are such questions as what happens to the goods and cash that the Japanese send to relatives in North Korea; how North Koreans manage escapes to China; and how the lives of the privileged few differ from those of the multitudes. "Aquariums" is especially well-paired with Hunter's book, which defines the vocabulary of everyday life in North Korea.

Aquariums of Pyongyang is the story of one man's life through ten years of captivity in a North Korean gulag....an incredible story of struggle against man's inhumanity to man. Many who read this book will probably view his family as highly naive for leaving Japan for North Korea and in believing North Korean propaganda over what they heard firsthand from people who had been there. On the docks before leaving, they were warned about going back and about the conditions to be found in North Korea. But, the elder family members were ardent supporters of Kim Il-Sung, and believed the propaganda put out on a daily basis. Little did they know they were putting their kids into a deathtrap from which they would have to endure many years of beatings and privation at the hands of the guards. The reeducation lessons are particularly noteworthy, as readers can gain valuable insight into how this regime works. Even dead people were not immune from being used to inculcate hate.....the picture of the prisoners being forced to throw rocks at the people hanging on the gallows (because they were enemies of the state no less!) until they were unrecognizable is one of the most chilling things I have ever read. All in the name of propping up one of the worst ideologies the world has ever known.

It should be noted that while Yodok was (and is) a terribly inhumane place, it is by the author's account, one of the lesser concentration camps in terms of harsh brutality. This being the case, I could not imagine even a short life in one of the more harsh gulags.

This is a book of required reading for anyone who thinks gulags and concentration camps went away with the demise of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

As a recent amateur student of North Korea, I have read several of the popular autobiographies by people who have escaped this ultra-restrictive nation. "Aquariums" is an EXCELLENT book, reads easily and quickly, and conveys a considerable amount of background/history of the North Korean society. The parallels between this bizarre society and that portrayed in Orwell's "1984" are SOOOO pronounced as to be almost scary; it's almost as if Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il used it as a roadmap.
This book should be required reading for every high school student. In our modern American culture where our freedoms are not only taken for granted but not even recognized for their uniqueness in the world, I suspect most readers would think "Aquariums" to be a work of fiction rather than chilling modern day experience.
I encourage everyone to read this fine narrative.

I purchased this book to help me understand the life of a North Korean; by one of their own who could verify the horrors I had heard existed. It is not a lengthy, in detail, or novel like story. It is a cold, stark, very glad I don't live, there type of story. It indeed sustantiates the inhumanity and horrors of living under a failed communist state.

The greatest crime of the West has been to stand by while brutal regimes by Kim Il Sung and others flourish. If there is any charge to level against liberalism in general, it is that as a movement, it has never thought to take brutal and swift action against the Sungs, Mao Tse Tungs, and Stalins of the world. In fact they have have always mocked conservatives for wanting to do so. Liberals always wait for the hammer to fall and then they act. Things are not evil to most liberal politicians until they happen to Americans. This lack of species loyalty is what characterizes the American liberal (again speaking generally. Their ire falls mainly on conservative or fascist regimes.

This book is a first-person account of Kang Chol-Hwan's experience of life in DPRK, 10 yearsof horrific existence in a prison camp, his subsequent adjustment to post-release, and lastly his escape from DPRK. The book is a simple, easy to read narrative (I read it on a lazy Sunday afternoon).

I had high expectations of this book because of a number of Discovery Channel-related documentaries on the subject of the "Hermit Kingdom" with detailed interviews, images, accounts, drawings, and secret cameras, focused mostly on the every-day (yet repressive) life. I suppose that I was expecting the same but this time from the POV of the gulag experience.

I said initially that this is a good, quick, easy read... a large part of that is because of how it was written. It felt like a very abridged (possibly rushed) narrative that would provide very interesting facts and experiences at one moment, and then jump to a different topic. I felt that there were certain sections that left me wanting more, such as detailed experiences on the process of indoctrination into the Kim Il-Sung cult of personality, through education, social activities, etc, but perhaps that was not the purpose of this particular book. In addition, I could understand how some emotion or feeling may be "lost in translation" (this book was originally transcribed from Kang's Korean interviews to French, and now the English version which I read).

A pet peeve of mine that I found throughout the book is the difficulty in establishing a sense of timeframes/timelines. The author uses time references inconsistently (lots of reminiscing and jumping back and forth with vague time references), but even in retrospect, I couldn't tell you the date that he and his family were actually imprisoned! Some of this information is inferred by doing your own math and noting dates used here and there throughout the book. Though, to his credit, I could imagine that keeping track of time may be difficult to do in a North Korean Gulag.

All that being said, the book is an excellent easy primer for life in a North Korean gulag and insight into life under the Kim Il-Sung regime. I think that Kang conveys as much as he can, but may leave the reader wanting more detail. For further insight, I highly recommend keeping an eye on any Discovery documentaries re. the Hermit Kingdowm. One new revelation that I did walk away with was tht not all North Koreans are brainwashed stooges (contrary to popular thought).

"The Aquariums of Pyongyang" by Kang Chol-Hwan is a great book even if you have no specific interest in Korea. The book's universal appeal is its story of a person who survives a disastrous early life to escape by guile and fortitude to a better world he wasn't even sure existed.
Kang also provides a rare view inside the most secretive society of the contemporary era. He reveals a North Korea [DPRK] that is more accurately described as a criminal conspiracy rather than the most pure communist state in history. Communism serves as more a pseudo-religious enabling device for Kim Il-Song, his successor Kim Jong-Il, and their henchmen in this hyper-fascist state. To this end, communism worked better than the old style Hitler/Mussolini fascism if you were at the top. For the masses either system was a catastrophe. Kang provides vast evidence of this. Kang is also proof positive that the people of the North are not purely the brainwashed victims of communism that the rest of us have been led to believe.
The DPRK will go down in history as serving no useful purpose other than as a warning of the depths of depravity people are capable of, [while most of the world looks the other way].
Other reviewers note similarities to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" [a.k.a. the literary tombstone of the USSR] and I agree. I add, and recommend, "MiG Pilot" by John Barron & "Anthem" by Ayn Rand as related books. "MiG Pilot" tells the true story of another disenchanted communist, Viktor Belenko. "Anthem" is more a nightmare version of a pure-communist future society. The struggles and ultimate personal victories portrayed in "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" and "MiG Pilot" may prevent the rest of us from living in the world of "Anthem".

A tremendous look inside "The Hermit Nation".

Chol-Hwan and his editor bring to life the hell on earth that is North Korea and it's brutal prison camps. The discriptive passages bring NK to life and his excellent use of imagery make you feel as if you're there with him, trying to keep warm through the long winters, or scratching for insects to nourish himself.

The book outlines his Grandparents path from Japan to NK through his internment, to his escape to China and ultimately life in South Korea.

I finished this book in three sittings and could barely put it down. One of the most compelling books I've ever read. Can't recommend it highly enough.

This story gives us an inside view of the horrors of prison life, and life on the "outside," in the DPRK (North Korea). In spite of a slightly unpolished translation, the writing is clearly understandable, and I found the story entrancing. It is not at all like wading through scholarly journals to get the same information, as one less-than-enthusiastic reviewer has written. I have studied North Korea for over ten years, and would recommend this book as a good introduction to the brutality of the regime.

There are two oddities. The title refers to the author's boyhood fish collection, and I am not sure why that title was chosen. The cover has a picture of a large assemblage of weeping and tearful children, all in unform. It looks like a mass mourning organized upon the death of Kim Il-Sung, but nowhere is there a credit or a reference to this picture, so a reader without previous knowledge might be puzzled by it.