Children Quote by Blaine Harden

“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

“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

“Among the elite in Pyongyang, one of the most coveted signifiers of status is an electric rice cooker.”

— Blaine Harden

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Freedom, in Shin's mind, was just another word for grilled meat.”

— Blaine Harden

“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

“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…

— Blaine Harden

“Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.”

— Blaine Harden

“There are six camps, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency and human rights groups. The biggest is thirty-one miles long and twenty-five miles wide,…

— Blaine Harden