November 2013 Host:  Jennie

 

  Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea by
                                  Barbara Demick

 

Summary

 

This book follows six North Koreans through their lives in the 1990s and gives the reader insight into what it is like to live there on a daily basis.  We become privy to details such as their modest housing, the lack of heat in the wintertime, the many ways they came up with to avoid starvation (such as milling bark and grasses), and how they had to watch what they said around government officials or else be sent to a work camp.  When the Korean peninsula was split after WWII, Stalin installed a like-minded leader in North Korea, Kim ll-Sung, who eradicates religion and replaces it by his own cult of personality and achieves a god status in his country through constant propaganda.   Upon his death, many North Koreans committed suicide.  When the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off their aid of food and oil to North Korea, they were unable to maintain their electrical grid (on the first page we see a picture of the Korean peninsula at night, South Korea has thousands of twinkling lights and North Korea is pitch black) and millions starved to death (the army took for themselves the aid sent by the US and UN).  The majority of the country still suffers malnutrition, evident in their physical attributes such as being shorter than their relatives in South Korea and having heads disproportionately large to their body size.  This book is informative and will fill the reader with disbelief and a renewed gratefulness for their circumstances; we highly recommend it.

 

Menu

 

Hot Toddies

 

Appetizers

 

San Francisco Salad

 

Mashed Potatoes

 

Barbecued Pork, Chicken, and Sausage

 

Pumpkin Pie

 

Chocolate Cake