Deanetra

“Because Pyongyang is the only North Korean city frequented by foreigners, the regime goes to great lengths to ensure that its inhabitants make a good impression with their appearance and are ideologically sound.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Her younger son, twenty, was assigned to a factory that made railroad equipment, but since it provided no salary he was actually paying his workplace three dollars per month so he could stay home to help his mother with the pigs and moonshine.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Afterward she wondered what had happened to the man. Could he have died of hunger? Despite the fact that nobody had quite enough food these days and even the government had acknowledged a food crisis after the floods of the previous summer, Mi-ran had never heard of anybody starving to death in North Korea. That happened in Africa or in China. Indeed, the older people talked of all the Chinese who died during the 1950s and 1960s because of Mao’s disastrous economic policies. “We’re so lucky to have Kim Il-sung,” they would say.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“In North Korea, you don’t own your own home; you are merely awarded the right to live there.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea