Customer Reviews

Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author responded to an ad in Britain and found himself working for the North Korean government, polishing the English of their propaganda output. At the beginning of his employment, the author was incredibly naive, knowing nothing about North Korea yet taking a paycheck from its government. During his seven years in Pyongyang, 1987-1994, the author gradually became less naive while gaining a fondness for the North Korean people and its government. Eventually he realized that his love of North Korea was strictly a one-way street and that he would never be totally accepted. Yet even after leaving North Korea and learning how the rest of the world regards it, he is still excessively sympathetic toward its government.

The author describes what it is like to be an ex-pat working for the North Korean government - his daily life and his relationships with both Koreans and other foreigners. Some readers will regard the author as a communist dupe or stooge, while others will enjoy learning how the world looks from a North Korean perspective. Nonetheless, this is a readable and entertaining book for anyone interested in Korea.

Harrold's personal story intrigued me on so many levels. I worked as an English teacher on the southern half of the Korean penninsula during almost the same exact period he was in the North (1987-1993 for me). Much of the xenophobic experiences that he attributes to ideology and politics, is rooted a culture that values much that the West does not: tradition, stability, respect for authority, hierarchical relationships, conformity and consensus. Of course, the DPRK's strident self-reliant communism, coupled with its constant search for "positive strokes" from outsiders greatly exacerbated the author's experiences, relative to my own.

It was especially fascinating to read how Harrold and North Koreans digested many of the incidences from that era--the South Korean "radical" who went illegally to North Korea; the visits to the North by Billy Graham and Rev. Moon; the drama surrounding the 1988 Olympics, and what, if any, role the North might have. These and other anacdotes had me thumbing through the pages late into several nights--a true testament considering that we have three young children in the house!

Some have complained that Comrades and Strangers is thin on actual information. However, part of Harrold's thesis is that a foreigner could be intelligent, observant, easy-going, willing to give up many personal liberties, and gain a working knowledge of North Korea's language, culture, history, and political workings, and still--after seven years--come out having barely scratched the surface. Those who want details might do better reading Bradley Martin's "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader." However, this diary gives you an insider's feel for the North that Martin cannot match, despite his 800+ pages.

Having praised the content of Harrold's offering, a few minor issues. The book comes across as a diary that's been organized for publication. As such, it is occasionally uneven, sometimes a seeming collection of "random thoughts," and somewhat overabundant in mundane personal details. While I enjoyed the work for its personal first-hand information and story-telling, I'm wondering if more revision and editing might have improved this effort. Another concern--Comrades has a very narrow audience niche. Those interested in things Korean, and in the particularly intriguing system that permeates the North--as learned and told by an expatriot with limited Korean language skills will likely prove few indeed.

Bottom-line: I loved this book--but mostly because I could relate to so much of it. The writing is anecdotal, very personal, and it covers the enigma of North Korea from the perspective of a British national, employed by an official foreign language organ of the regime. The mass market appeal for this work may be limited, by I personal thank Michael Harrold for giving me some truly enjoyable and thought-provoking reading.

As someone who spent seven years living inside North Korea, the most hermetically sealed society on earth, Michael Harrold had the opportunity to gain an insider's view of a land most of us will never know. COMRADES AND STRANGERS is the result and, although the book is easy reading and somewhat interesting, it leaves a reader with a strangely empty taste at the end.

Harrold is best when he describes his day to day interactions with North Korean citizens. As most books and articles on the country focus, not surprisingly, on the political structure of the country and those within that structure, COMRADES AND STRANGERS is interesting in that it takes us down to the street level. We read first hand accounts of North Koreans' friendliness mixed with their well known and acute xenophobia. Harrold's interactions with a mix of people provides us with a picture usually not taken and even more rarely shown.

If only Harrold had stopped there. Alas, everything in North Korea is about politics, with the issues of reunification with South Korea and hatred of the imperialist Americans providing daily feed for the grind. Harrold cannot help but interject his thoughts on these issues and, to be blunt about it, despite seven years in North Korea, he seems ridiculously naive about the world in which he lives.

Harrold seems to accept a ridiculous paradox in that he mixes a recognition that North Korea is a totalitarian state with an apparent willingness to believe almost anything that state has to say regarding its intentions with other nations of the world. The reader is treated again and again to examples of how North Korea extended its hand, however furtively, to the outside world only to have some other country rebuff it. That free states may recognize that North Korea's leaders are willing to lie in order to gain some tactical advantage does not seem to enter Harrold's scope of vision.

This is particularly funny (a relative term to be sure) in light of negotiations regarding North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Harrold was in the country during much of the time when a non-proliferation pact was negotiated and signed and there is nothing in Harrold's writing to indicate that maybe, just maybe, a totalitarian police state may not be a trustworthy signatory to such a pact. We now know that North Korea started breaking its promises almost immediately. No surprise to anyone familiar with how totalitarian states work, but apparently it would be a surprise to Harrold.

Further, in an attempt to be scrupulously fair, Harrold simply splits the difference between North Korea and free states on a wide variety of issues. But being fair does not necessarily mean going 50-50 every time. As one example, representative of many in the book, Harrold states that, while North Korea's poverty may be appalling, one can be equally appalled at the wealth discrepancies found in the capitalistic southern part of the peninsula. Really? Even if one were concerned with wealth discrepancy, can one really be equally appalled by a free society in which many people can work their way into at least a decent paying job, even if it does not make one a billionaire, and a society in which ten percent of its citizens have starved to death and people are eating bark off of trees? He compounds the problem with statements to the effect that other nations must put aside ideological differences in order to foster humanitarian aid. Yet the more obvious solution would be for North Korea, if its leaders were really concerned with the welfare of its citizens, to change its own purely ideological system that has a record of failure worldwide.

Even with respect to his interactions with citizens, Harrold often misses the big picture. Repeated references are made to North Korea's potential based on the character and opinions of its citizens. Yet the hallmark of a state such as North Korea is that the leaders do not care what its citizens think. It is a rather telling note that, after leaving North Korea, Harrold was invited back due in part to North Korean authorities being happy with interviews he gave about the country. No doubt they were.

One may argue, of course, that while Harrold spent seven years in North Korea, I have never even been to Asia. But others sure have, and they have also written books on North Korea that show more insight than this. Indeed, one need not be a political analyst. The graphic novel PYONGYANG by animator Guy Delisle shows an acute insight into North Korea, capturing the foibles of the society despite the book's light-hearted and humorous tone. Check that out instead.

Better choice: Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, Guy Delisle

I think it must be hard to write a book about North Korea that's not depressing, but somehow Micheal Harrold manages to do just that. Not many westerners have had the opportunity to live in North Korea, so his perspective is unique and interesting. He highlighted many of the problems of the country, but managed to give a certain humanity to his study of North Korea that is lacking in other books about the isolated nation.

This is a book by Michael Harrold about his life during his almost seven years in North Korea where he worked as a translations adviser.

First, let me say that a main reason that I bought this book was because of a few comments in the amazon.com product description:

"For seven years he lived in Pyongyang enjoying privileged access to the ruling classes and enjoying the confidence of the country's young elite. In this fascinating insight into the culture of North Korea he describes ... and many of the fascinating characters he met ... socialite friends. After seven years and having been caught passing South Korean music tapes to friends and going out without his minder to places forbidden to foreigners, he was asked to leave the country."

I think this description was a bit exaggerated and/or misleading. I was expecting to gain some insight into how the elite lived and thought; the author had little if any contact with the elite, and there was not much insight given there. He did drink a lot of beer while having some light chats with some North Koreans who could speak English, but no heavy weights from what I could see; even these people seemed to keep him at arms length most of the time, but then he was a foreigner and that is a problem there. On his being asked to leave, the music tape thing described happened a long time before he left it seems, and I am not at all sure that went to any forbidden places at all. That fight he got into in front of a hotel not long before he left seems to have had much more to do with his departure. BUT, then again, he was later asked to return to his old job.

In any case, I still liked the book. Harrold does relate many interesting anecdotes and also explains how the scene there and internationally was viewed from inside North Korea - or at least how he thought it was viewed there, as the North Koreans were not big on sharing their innermost thoughts I gathered. It is written with some attention to chronological order, but is also a little stream of consciousness (disorganized) at the same time, so be warned. I did think that he spent way too much time talking about his beer drinking and not enough on (other) local color and what it was really really like to live there on a day to day basis throughout the year(s).

Harrold has gotten some criticism for being too sympathetic to the North Korean viewpoint, but then to be fair, he is clear that things there are far from OK. It is true, as he points out, that things in South Korea are not all freedom and prosperity for all either. The Kim regime in the north has done some good things for the people, but then again, the bad has out-weighted the good for many many years at least. It is instructive to hear how the North Koreans themselves probably see things. But then, is their viewpoint based on less than complete information?

It was a little sad to see how much it appeared to have hurt Harrold when he apparently reached the conclusion that he had never really been accepted there after almost seven years.

The book is rather long (about 400 pages), but is pretty entertaining and should keep a reader interested. Is it the best one could have hoped for from someone who spent so long there? Well maybe not.

I starting reading this book after having finished the monolithic "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader." I saw this as a sort of light-read supplement to the opus that is "Under the Loving Care."

What this book provides is a very fascinating account of author Michael Harrold's experiences working as a translator within the North Korean government. His multi-year stay is surprisingly eventful, in part due to the author's willingness to experience life outside the set normalcy.

The author helps bring a human face to North Korea. The self-induced paranoia of the system, the quirks of the people, all come alive through his accounts. While some might find his perspective diminutive at times to the great wrongs committed by the North Korean government, I find it to be honest.

This was a solid book, that I would very much recommend to those interested in life behind an iron curtain.

This book was very easy to read, and the storyline fascinated me. It provides a unique perspective of a foreigner who had lived in North Korea for 7 years, and the author seems candid and forthright in his writing. I found it difficult to put this book down once I started reading it, this is why I give it 4 stars.

That said, there are aspects about the book which disturbed me quite a bit. The author worked as a editor of propaganda material for the NK regime. Considering the massive existence of political slave and death camps (as read through books such as The Aquariums of Pyongyang, The Eyes of the Tailess Animals, etc.), I suppose his job would be the equivalent of someone taking a job under Joseph Goebels during the regime of Nazi Germany. Though he doesn't seem malicious, I think he fails to grasp the nature of the true suffering which he was sheltered from. Also he seems to equate a certain degree of moral equivalences between the actions of the NK regime to the actions of the USA. While he does make some interesting and noteworthy points, I think his overall philosophy is deeply flawed. He was treated well by the regime (despite his adolescent complaining), so he thinks the regime will be forthright in political negotiations, etc. He is projecting his own experience and paradigm onto the world around him - when his own experienced was unique and not common amongst the people who live there.

Also, throughout the book, the author seems to look at everything from a completely self-centered and selfish point of view. When he criticizes others for their actions, such as when no one spoke up for him when he was being questioned by the police - he doesn't even consider the fact that if anyone did, they and their entire family would probably be sent to a gulag. Or when he takes offence as to why people won't answer the question "why", as if those people themselves formulate the policies of their government. I think this attitude, again, stemmed from his being sheltered from the reality that most people endure there. He was only exposed to the upper echelons of NK society, who wanted to put on their best face, and I don't think he had the desire to see the worst face of his employer.

I think he does do a good job, at articulating the personalities of the people that he met, as well as the thought process among many Koreans. I remember meeting in South Korea Korea a number of people who had deep seeded anti-American sentiments for the same reason the author writes among the North Koreans. Also, I know that many South Koreans share the same passionate desire to reunify with the North, and many blame the US for the conflict, etc. I felt some of the personalities the author was writing about from the North, could have easily been someone from the South. I thought the author did a good job at conveying the essense of this Korean thought process.

To sum up my observations from this book, the writer seems like some spoiled kid who went to NK from England to work as a propaganda editor for the NK regime. While the author is not a die hard communist, he has socialist tendancies and seems to conveniently overlook the true nature of his employer. In doing so, at times he seems to put the lives of others at risk, by projecting his own paradigm of the world onto others, without taking into consideration the full consequences they might have to endure as a result.

But I do admire the author for his candidness and honesty in his writing, and I am glad that he wrote this book and shared his experiences.

I really expected more from this book. The author doesn't bring much depth into his commentary on North Korean life. Too much of the book is given over to diarizing his workplace spats and drunken mooning over Korean barmaids. His apologetics for the North Korean government are distasteful in light of the atrocities that regime commits on its own people (see "Aquariums of Pyongyang"). Still, it was interesting enough to read of the reception that an "imperialist running dog" receives from the people of the DPRK's model city.

Michael Harrold worked in Pyongyang, North Korea for seven years from 1987-1994 revising the English translations of various works by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. During this time he lived in a guest house and was accompanied everywhere by a guide and often a driver as well. Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea has the promise of being an insider's tell-all, full of revelations about North Korea that no westerner would ever know, yet the book was a boring read which was bogged down by sentences that ran on far too long.

When I encounter such long sentences, interspersed with dashes and commas and clause after clause within, I always reread the passage in order to grasp what the author intended to convey. Thus I feel as though I read the whole book twice. An example of a typical sentence on any page:

"As for the claim that the purity of the ideology needed protection from pernicious outside influences, which had once made sense even though, as a pernicious outside influence myself, I, and hence my acquaintances, had been subjected to restrictions that in other societies would have been condemned as violations of our fundamental rights, it now looked like a desperate argument designed to delude an entire population into seeing the rest of the world as a sinister place best kept at arm's length, and to hide the unacceptable excesses of a regime from scrutiny by a world in which it had no place."

A book review might not usually focus on such features as typeface and font, however the commas in this case were so close in appearance to periods, it did not make for an easy read. I stopped all too often mid-sentence, thinking that Harrold's clauses had suddenly and thankfully come to an end. When I saw that the following words started with lowercase letters, I realized that the punctuation mark was not a period and that the sentence continued.

It took me three days to get through the first eighty pages of Comrades and Strangers, and I bemoaned that I had another 320 to get through. Although there might not be much to do in Pyongyang, one's description of such a state of inactivity does not itself have to be boring. Harrold does pick up the pace and although the sentences were still tedious affairs I eventually took an interest in his life in Pyongyang at around the same time he himself became comfortable living in the city.

Comrades and Strangers also suffers from an abundance of footnotes, which, in all cases, seem entirely unnecessary. Harrold could have forgone superfluous footnoting and explained his points in a short sentence incorporated into the main text. For example, on one page, he mentions the "demilitarised zone" that separates North and South Korea. Five lines later he mentions the "DMZ"--and assigns it a footnote, defining the abbreviation as "Demilitarised Zone" (note the mysterious lowercase used for this term in the main text and the capitalization in the footnote). Why is there a need to footnote the abbreviation?

Life in North Korea meant that for his own survival Harrold had to be in a state of constant vigilance. He had to be careful what he said and to whom he said it. He also had to sift through everything that he heard from others, piecing together truths from the granules that remained in the bottom of his gold pan:

"I'd quickly learned, we had to be guarded about everything we said and who we said it to. Philippe told me to watch what I said to Mr. Choe and Madame Beatrice; Madame Beatrice warned me to be careful about what I said to Mr. Choe; Mr. Choe claimed Philippe and Madame Beatrice repeated to him everything I told them. Philippe told me not to believe Mr. Choe if he claimed that he, Philippe, had told him something because he, Mr. Choe, was probably lying. Mr. Choe told me Philippe was a liar."

and:

"Surrounded as I was by minders, I was struggling to keep a grasp on reality; in a situation where everyone around me seemed to be lying, it was a challenge even to know what that reality was."

and:

"Naturally visitors were keen to find out what Pyongyang's long-term foreign residents knew and there was always the danger of letting your tongue run away with you. The trick, I'd worked out, was to nod a bit or shake my head during conversations with inquisitive outsiders. 'Yes, but from the work I do I can tell you the official line is...' was always a handy phrase that, while appearing to show a willingness to talk, led merely into a harmless repetition of the propaganda, while 'A lot of Western media reports aren't as accurate as they should be' allowed me to refer to critical comments made by someone else. The point was to appear open to debate, but without compromising myself in the event that someone was eavesdropping."

I was pleased that Harrold was objective about the North and that he often refuted rumours and long-standing propaganda from western sources. There is a theme throughout the book, told in personal diary entries, of a verboten romance he had with a North Korean woman. He even gave serious thought to marrying her and leaving his life in England behind. Harrold stays calm and focussed about his appreciation for the North Korean regime and its people even after he gets kicked out of the country. While I wouldn't say that Harrold was a North Korean sympathizer, I do see how his views about the regime could be softened after living so long among the people that the regime is alleged to repress.

Frustrating as it was for Harrold and his colleagues to deal with North Korean bureaucracy, it was funny for the reader, and I was treated to sitcom moments throughout the book such as this:

"Carol, when she left after a largely unhappy year spent revising propaganda condemning her own country, discovered that she hadn't been American at all, but Irish. She had an Irish passport as well as an American one and when she left she was told she would be put on a plane to Dublin. She argued that she lived in New York, had never been to Ireland and wanted to be flown home, but this carried no weight with the vast bureaucracy that had determined that she couldn't possibly be American. So she had to pay the rest of her way home, from Dublin to New York."

Harrold's colleague Carol obviously had chosen to use her Irish passport instead of her American one when travelling to North Korea. It didn't work out well for her in the end, however another American colleague, Miles, learned how to disguise his citizenship in a way that I understand is used by many of my southern neighbours when they travel abroad:

"Miles didn't tell people he was American. Whenever he was asked he said he was Canadian."

Comrades and Strangers wasn't as engaging as I had hoped it would be, and all too often a slog to get through, but it was a rare first-hand account of a westerner's experiences living and working among the North Korean people.

When visiting a library at any prestigious academic institution abroad, go to the section devoted to East Asia and you will likely find them. The Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works occupy an entire shelf with hefty volumes bound in royal blue, and they are available in the local language, be it French, German, Spanish or Arabic.

From 1987 to 1993, Michael Harrold's job was to make these volumes available in English. He was not a translator: even at the end of his stay, he knew very little Korean, and as a foreigner he couldn't be trusted with interpreting the thoughts of the statesman North Koreans designate as their Great Leader. Rather his task was to edit and polish the drafts provided by professional translators into flawless British English--his employers could not contemplate even the possibility of American English coming from the Great Leader's mouth or pen. Although a cog in the propaganda machine, his political role was limited: his task consisted largely of editing speeches and essays almost a decade out of date that were to be included in the latest volume of the Works. Other foreign language editors were working and living alongside him in a guest house under constant surveillance.

Harrold's extended stay began with a faux pas: asked upon arrival what he knew about North Korea, he confessed half-jokingly that he didn't even know where it was located on the map, causing consternation among his hosts. His knowledge hadn't improve much upon his departure. As he recalls, "for seven years I was shielded from the North Korean reality. I learnt the language up to a point and I had friends, but still I barely scratched the surface of what North Korea was all about."

The reason for his ignorance was not lack of curiosity, but is to be found in the isolation in which the 'foreign friends' working as language editors were kept within this most isolated country. His was a life of immense boredom, punctuated by petty restrictions, the monitoring of his movements, official invasions of his privacy, and a ban on mixing with locals. His diplomatic skills were found wanting more than once, but overall he was obedient and respectful, and he tried to make the best of the situation.

As a self-respecting Briton, he couldn't contemplate a Friday or a Saturday evening without going for a drink at the local pub. Most places were off-limits to foreigners, and Pyongyang didn't have much of a nightlife anyway, but he found solace in the watering holes and restaurants of international hotels. There, he was able to socialize with and to befriend English-speaking barmaids, Korean translators, local businessmen, and the tiny foreign community that formed the international social scene in Pyongyang. He even contemplated the possibility of making a lifelong commitment in North Korea, before pulling out and pursuing an international career as a journalist, first in Beijing and then in Warsaw. He wrote these memoirs ten years after leaving Pyongyang.

At first I didn't think that I could find much interest in the reflections of a young man who believes that international problems could be best resolved by ordinary people over a pint or two of beer. But Comrades and Strangers proved a pleasant if somewhat lengthy read, and despite the obvious limitations, Harrold was able to gather first-hand observations about a country the world knows so little about.