Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad by Melanie Kirkpatrick [Book Review]

For a state considered a charter member of the so-called “Axis of Evil”, North Korea never seems to remain the center of global attention for long. It is one of the places that the average person (or indeed, almost anyone) really knows nothing about: we don’t know how its government makes decisions, we don’t know the motivations of its leaders or, perhaps most importantly, how its people really live.

Melanie Kirkpatrick, through her newest book Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad, attempts to shed some light on North Korea, or at least North Koreans, by focusing on the ones who have escaped, and the network that helps them along the way. It is an escape fraught with risk and danger: China has a policy of repatriating all North Korean refugees, and escapees are punished severely on their return. To evade capture in China, North Koreans are helped by a small number of committed private individuals and groups that shelter refugees, provide for their welfare and provide an avenue to escape to a third country.

This is an excerpt from a review of Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad by Melanie Kirkpatrick, originally published in the Asian Review of Books on February 7th, 2013. The full review can be accessed here.