91 Quotes by Barbara Demick

For the 1,300 years prior to the Japanese occupation, Korea had been a unified country governed by the Chosun dynasty, one of the longest-lived monarchies in world history.

Listening to South Korean television was like looking in the mirror for the first time in your life and realizing you were unattractive. North Koreans were always told theirs was the proudest country in the world, but the rest of the world considered it a pathetic, bankrupt regime.

Charity begins with a full stomach,” the North Koreans like to say; you can’t feed somebody else’s kids if your own are starving. When.

As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean.

Listening to South Korean television was like looking in the mirror for the first time in your life and realizing you were unattractive.

The night sky in North Korea is a sight to behold. It might be the most brilliant in Northeast Asia, the only place spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert sand, and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent. In the old days, North Korean factories contributed their share to the cloud cover, but no longer. No artificial lighting competes with the intensity of the stars etched into its sky.

The cadence of life is slower in North Korea. Nobody owned a watch.

Often children came in with minor colds or coughs or diarrhea and then suddenly, they were dead.

At first, they would walk in silence, then their voices.