The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

In this state survey, scholars Oh (whose parents fled North Korea) and Hassig (Oh's American-born husband), gather behind-the-curtain research to expose day-to-day life, and the powers that control it, in North Korea, a developed nation where meat is a luxury and the Internet doesn't exist for anyone but the dictator. Examining the history and present of the regime, the authors (2000's North Korea through the Looking Glass) provide a lucid guide to the mechanics by which Kim Jong Il's Soviet-style socialist totalitarianism has endured into this century. Much of their information has been available before (in their own work, David Hawk's comprehensive The Hidden Gulag, and elsewhere), but serious scholars of the region will find some new information, including the details of North Korea's transnational economy. The uninformed will find much that's fascinating and shocking: a nation of castes and concentration camps, replete with a politics of fear that rivals the worst Orwell could imagine. Though some topics are underreported-including the state ideology (religion by another name), Juche theory-Hassig and Oh provide a valuable catalog of oppression so deep that a hopeful conclusion-that Jong Il's regime is ultimately unsustainable-won't ameliorate the feeling of unease.
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And if you really wonder what life is like under Dear Leader, the team of Kongdan 'Katy' Oh and Ralph Hassig have produced the definitive work to date. (The Nelson Report)

An extraordinarily penetrating look behind the walls of North Korea's secretive society by two renowned specialists who identify the cracks developing in the ideological, economic, and political foundations of this totalitarian system. (Cohen, Roberta)

Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig—analysts of unique experience and depth—look behind North Korea's bluster, blasts, and missiles to the eroding country they hide. The authors shine a light on the country's people—from dictator Kim Jong-il and his privileged inner circle to the millions of Koreans who struggle through desperate lives of hunger, want, and fear. That this system has changed in recent years makes the book especially timely and invaluable for making sense of an inflammatory and unpredictable rogue state. (James A. Kelly)

Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh have opened a peephole through the locked door that is North Korea. They draw on their deep knowledge of the country and extensive interviewing of refugees to provide a rich and textured picture of the life of a people who are victims of their leaders’ megalomania. New insights and information spring from every page. (Bush, Richard C.)

As often as North Korea is in the news, we have little reliable information about what life is actually like in this 'hermit kingdom,' and that’s no accident. Husband-and-wife Korea experts Hassig and Oh begin this illuminating national portrait with a quote from its leader, Kim Jong-il: 'We must envelop our environment in a dense fog to prevent our enemies from learning anything about us.' . . . Hassig and Oh provide chilling information and haunting photographs that starkly delineate the crisis state of North Korea’s economy, agriculture, and health care; the abundance of political prisons; and the tyranny of perpetual surveillance. (Booklist)

A must-read for serious students of North Korea. The wealth of information peels back layers of mystique to provide a genuinely understandable glimpse of the inner workings of Kim Jong-il's North Korea. The chapter on the Kim family is absolutely essential to understanding why North Korea is the unique nation that it is. It should be required reading for American policymakers. (Ambassador Jack Pritchard)

Examining the history and present of the regime, the authors provide a lucid guide to the mechanics by which Kim Jong Il’s Soviet-style socialist totalitarianism has endured into this century. . . . [Readers] will find much that’s fascinating and shocking: a nation of castes and concentration camps, replete with a politics of fear that rivals the worst Orwell could imagine. . . . Hassig and Oh provide a valuable catalog of oppression. (Publishers Weekly)

It's particularly welcome then that Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh . . . have tried to penetrate [the North Korean government’s] fog to examine the daily lives of 23 million souls. . . . [The authors] provide a fascinating account of the political forces that have shaped the barriers between the Hermit Kingdom and the rest of the world. . . . It's in these tales of everyday life that the book makes its greatest contribution. . . . The North Korean people, long denied any voice in their society, will decide the fate of the nation, and as this book convincingly shows in preceding pages, they have finally turned their back on the regime. (Wall Street Journal)

Revealing the haunting details of daily life in an authoritarian state, the authors boldly declare that the current regime is unraveling despite its feverish attempts to hold on to power; even sprouts of capitalism are appearing in North Korean society. . . . Western readers will gain a rare view of the hidden world of North Korean citizens. Recommended for those interested in international affairs or inquisitive about this last remnant of the Communist world. (Library Journal)

Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh’s portrait of Mr. Kim’s hyper-sybaritic lifestyle is detailed and devastating. (The New York Times)

Hassig and Oh . . . offer a detailed picture of the lives of Kim Jong Il and the members of his entourage and a study of why and how defectors break for the outside. [They] show that the regime is under stress, but they also reveal the mechanisms by which, for the time being, it is holding tight. (Foreign Affairs)

In The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom, longtime Korea watchers Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh cover topics from the ruling Kims down to the struggles of ordinary North Koreans. In their view, buttressed by interviews with some 200 defectors, the state is fraying. . . . Experts have been predicting the endgame for the Kim regime for decades. These books—both of them important additions to the North Korea canon—suggest that the moment of change is approaching. (Time.Com)

As Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig note in their informative book, the apparatchiks are soon holding lectures warning that North Korea could go the way of the Warsaw Pact if Party functionaries can't stem the corrosive effects of entertainment from the outside world. (New York Review Of Books)

The Hidden People is important as the first comprehensive guide to a new, post-famine North Korean society made available to an English-speaking audience....I am often asked what I consider to be the best introduction for readers curious about the basics of North Korean life. From now on, The Hidden People will be my recommendation. (Pacific Affairs)