“His professional expertise—before defecting to South Korea in 2003—was managing a state-run global insurance fraud. It collected hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the world’s largest insurance companies on falsified claims for industrial accidents and natural disasters inside… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“Kwon Tae-jin, a specialist on North Korean agriculture at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, which is funded by the South Korean government, told me… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“Shin’s story of survival is different. His mother beat him, and he viewed her as a competitor for food. His father, who was allowed… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“Among the elite in Pyongyang, one of the most coveted signifiers of status is an electric rice cooker.” — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“About sixty percent of Shin’s class was assigned to the coal mines, where accidental death from cave-ins, explosions, and gas poisonings was common. Many… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“I am evolving from being an animal,' he said. 'But it is going very, very slowly. Sometime I try to cry and laugh like… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“Once the imperialist ideological and cultural poisoning is tolerated, even the faith unshakable before the threat of a bayonet will be bound to give… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“It is difficult to overstate the importance of rice in North Korean culture. It signifies wealth, evokes the closeness of family and sanctifies a… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“As contemporaries, Shin and Kim Jong Eun personify the antipodes of privilege and privation in North Korea, a nominally classless society where, in fact,… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“His teachers, as a result, could shape the minds and values of their students without contradiction from children who might know something of what… — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
“To identify and isolate his perceived political enemies, Kim Il Sung created a neofeudal, blood-based pecking order in 1957. The government classified and, to a considerable extent, segregated the entire North Korean population based on the perceived reliability of an individual’s parents and grandparents. North Korea called itself the Worker’s Paradise, but even as it professed allegiance to communist ideals… — Blaine Harden Copy Share
“Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.” — Blaine Harden Copy Share Image
