You are here in paradise!

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You are here in paradise! (Original title: Ici, c'est le paradis! ) Is a report published in 2005 by Kang Hyok about his childhood in North Korea and about his escape via China and Southeast Asia to South Korea . The book is co-authored by the French journalist Philippe Grangereau.

action

Kang Hyok, born in 1986 in Onsong , North Korea, grew up in a climate of fear of war, lack and mistrust. He tells of the work in the fields after school, of daily drill and parade exercises, of weekly self-criticism and denunciations , of the constant propaganda and of the lack of everything necessary for life. “You are here in paradise!” He hears this slogan every day in school and in the state propaganda booming from the loudspeakers. At the age of nine he experienced his first public execution . In the mid-1990s, a famine broke out in North Korea , which also affected Kang Hyok's family. He tells how he is losing some of his classmates; others beg or steal from the Onsong market. Kang Hyok reports on soups made from tree bark, hunting rats for food and thefts on the state collective fields. He was twelve years old when his family fled with him over the icy Tumen River to China . But he cannot find peace there either, because the Chinese police regularly conduct raids to catch refugees and send them back. On an escape through Myanmar , Cambodia , Vietnam and Thailand , they end up in a Protestant foundation that helps North Korean refugees. On the plane that takes them from Bangkok to Seoul , they are met by employees of angibu , the South Korean state security . It is only after arriving in South Korea that Kang Hyok realizes that he has really escaped hell.

literature

  • “You are here in paradise! My childhood in North Korea ”, Kang Hyok, Goldmann, 2005, ISBN 3-442-15346-8