North Korea

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE BOOK BEHIND THE HIT CHANNEL 5 DOCUMENTARY A glimpse of life inside the world’s most secretive country, as told by Britain’s best-loved travel writer. In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the...

The harrowing story of a woman who escaped famine and terror in North Korea, not once but twice. ‘A gripping, suspenseful and cathartic memoir that tells a story of pain and perseverance and makes the moral case for asylum.’ David Lammy MP North Korea is an open-air prison from which there...

Korea has a long, riveting history—it is also a divided nation. South Korea is a vibrant democracy, the tenth largest economy, and is home to a world-renowned culture. North Korea is ruled by the most authoritarian regime in the world, a poor country in a rich region, and is best known for the cult of personality surrounding the ruling Kim family. But both Koreas share a unique common history. Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo draw on decades of research to explore the history of modern Korea, from the late nineteenth century, Japanese occupation, and Cold War division to the present day.

To say that the so-called Supreme Commanders of North Korea have been sticklers for submission would trivialize the more-than-troubling state of affairs that has plagued this precarious place for decades. The fearsome Kim regime, though relatively fresh in comparison to powerful dynasties that lasted for centuries, has become one of history's most controversial bloodlines, and not without cause.

The Korean Peninsula today is divided into two, but there was a time when this peninsula was divided into many states. Over the course of time, and besieged by expansive transient dynasties outside of this modest piece of land, many clans and tribes overran their lands. Of all those malicious and greedy potential overlords, none managed to prevail.

For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea's attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes listeners to the front lines of nuclear negotiations and to fierce policy debates and secret diplomatic gambits, recounting how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation.

In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it's never been seen before. Even though it's the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy's initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of A Kim Jong-Il Production, by Paul Fischer, read by Stephen Park. Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's film industry. He directed every film made in the country but knew they were...

A "close-up look at the cloistered country" (USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea--an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim...

Bloomsbury presents North Korea: A History by Michael J. Seth, read by John Sackville. North Korea is perhaps the most intriguing, infamous and enigmatic nation of our modern world. Yet how many of us know its full history, and how it came to be? How can we understand such a strange, isolated...

Bloomsbury presents Korea: War Without End by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman, read by Mark Elstob A ground-breaking history of this global conflict including the errors and miscalculations made on both sides. Korea: War Without End examines the stand-off between East and West in Korea that...

In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).

‘Explosive . . . a ground-breaking and revealing new book’ – Daily Mail ‘In explaining the rise to power of Kim Yo Jong, Lee displays his deep knowledge and understanding of North Korea’s extreme, ruthless and self-obsessed dynastic autocracy, the creators and rulers of a de-facto...

A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without...

Interested in learning about the history of Korea? This insightful book takes you on a journey through the political, economic, and cultural development of both North and South Korea.

Jack Steele survived the first Gulf War, Bosnia, and his time as a UN peacekeeper. As a captain and tank commander, he saw the dark side of war. Two UN officials have gone missing. They were last seen in the Tumen Triangle. A 324-mile river that borders Russia, China, and North Korea, it’s a place few Westerners have heard of or understand. It would be a prize-winning story if he could crack it. Sometimes fate puts a person where they need to be - and then he saw the child fall beneath the ice. When Steele rescued the boy, it was the first domino to fall.