Review by New York Times Review
In North Korea, the framed portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in each home are worshiped as sacred objects and dusted with a special cloth. When Eunsun Kim is 11, her mother, facing starvation, dismantles the frames to sell them, thus committing a crime punishable by death. For Eunsun, her mother and sister, wading through an icy river is the start of their nine-year ordeal, mostly in China, dominated by their sale to an abusive Chinese farmer. China does not recognize North Korean refugees. When Eunsun and her mother are caught, they are repatriated to a jail in their homeland. Through sheer luck, they slip back over the border, but then return to the farmer. After they finally abscond, years of hard labor secure the next leg of their journey: three terrifying hours stumbling through the Gobi Desert to a Mongolian detention center and eventual resettlement in South Korea. The power of this survival story is blunted by its simplistic prose, with its dearth of metaphors: chilling proof, if any were needed, of the success of the North Korean system in stifling the imagination.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 29, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
At 11, Kim, with her mother and sister, attempted to escape North Korea. During the next nine years, they were homeless. When they reached China, they were sold to a farmer who impregnated their unwilling mother, beaten repeatedly, and sent back to North Korea. They escaped again, suffered again with the farmer, ran away to the city, became separated as one sister opted to remain in China, while the other fled on foot in the desert to South Korea and finally navigated the obstacles to prove both were not North Korean spies and could be accepted into South Korea's society and receive support from its government. As she narrates her ordeal, Kim explains to readers how North Koreans are indoctrinated from birth to embrace the government's propaganda about life in the socialist paradise. Her father starved to death, extended family abandoned them to save themselves, and her mother sacrificed everything. There's a lot to learn here about the two Koreas, but for all the journey's drama, readers will find the author's delivery rather flat. Kim shares harrowing events, but how her family members felt remains beyond the narrative's scope. It's an impressive story, regardless, just not as inspiring as one might expect.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The United States harbors a fascination with North Korea that was rekindled with the change of leadership in late 2011; the death of Kim Jong-il and the ascension of his son Kim Jong-un resulted in extensive media attention. Joseph Kim's Under the Same Sky and Eunsun Kim's A Thousand Miles to Freedom (no relation between the authors) add to this wave of recent consideration by detailing the complexities of life as North Korean defectors. Both authors enjoyed their early childhoods in North Korea and reminisce frequently about school and memories of treats such as ice cream and candy. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, both writers faced difficult times, eventually sneaking across the guarded North Korean border into China, where they hid from authorities before traveling to the United States and South Korea, respectively. In spite of the similar story lines, the memoirs are substantially different. A Thousand Miles to Freedom speaks out against the North Korean regime and is interspersed with political commentary. As an abundance of writings on this topic currently exist, Eunsun Kim's observations add little to the conversation and occasionally distract from the actual story, which vividly depicts family life in the region and is unique in its detailing of existing as a refugee in China, where Eunsun's mother was essentially sold to a farmer with whom the family was sent to live. The descriptions of time spent in China, the escape to Mongolia, and subsequent move to South Korea are fascinating and will certainly interest many readers. Under the Same Sky's subtitle may mislead readers into assuming this narrative is anti-North Korea; however, Joseph Kim primarily focuses on his family, experience on the streets surviving as a thief, and subsequent time spent in jail. The cultural insights, such as mentions of Kim's favorite foods, school, dating, and burial rites, make the book enjoyable to read. This account differentiates itself by focusing on the author's private life, not the government. VERDICT Both volumes put a human face to an often misunderstood country and will appeal to a wide range of readers. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/15.]-Casey Watters, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sobering account of survival of the fittest in North Korea by a young woman on the run for nearly a decade. Translated originally from the French edition and reading like a slender, exciting, first-person French novel, this chronicle by Eunsun Kim (a nom de plume) re-creates in immediate-feeling detail the horrific conditions of starvation that prompted her mother to flee with the author and her sister across the Tumen River bordering China in the winter of 1998. The author, then 11 years old but appearing much younger due to her blighted growth caused by malnutrition, had been fairly oblivious to the increasingly dire conditions in North Korea as the famine gripped the country and food rations were cut back. Having lost the family's beloved father, then the grandparents, the author's mother nearly lost all hope, until she resolved to defect to China and become a traitor to her countryknowing little about the outside world and how hoodwinked the regimes of presidents Kim Il-sung (d. 1994) and his son Kim Jong-il kept the North Korean residents. Rejected by relatives when they showed up at an aunt's house, the mother and two daughters lived on the streets in Rajin until the Tumen froze again and they could scurry across the river. Soon taken advantage of by a hardened procuress and forced into marriage with a Chinese peasant, the author's mother had to bear a son in order to gain some freedom. The women dispersed into teeming Chinese cities to find jobs and gain false papers. It took years to make the necessary fortune required to pay smugglers to take them over the Mongolian border, at incredible risk and danger. Yet the welcome South Korea tendered toward the family was heartening, even if the South Koreans tended to look down on these poor refugees. An urgent cry for compassion for the author's fellow North Koreans, trapped and strangled of liberty and life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
