Korea Memoir

“I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” —Yeonmi Park “One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard—and one of the most inspiring.” —The Bookseller In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into...

The Korean Peninsula today is divided into two, but there was a time when this peninsula was divided into many states. Over the course of time, and besieged by expansive transient dynasties outside of this modest piece of land, many clans and tribes overran their lands. Of all those malicious and greedy potential overlords, none managed to prevail.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

In this brilliant narrative of America's first limited war, Toland lets both the events and the participants speak for themselves, employing scrupulous archival research and interviews as the bases for the drama and accuracy of his writing. In Mortal Combat reveals Mao's prediction of the date and place of MacArthur's Inchon landing, Russia's indifference to the war, Mao's secret leadership of the North Korean military, and the true nature of both sides' treatment and repatriation of POWs.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and bestselling author of In Order to Live sounds the alarm on the culture wars, identity politics, and authoritarian tendencies tearing America apart. After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in...

THE STORY THEY COULDN'T HACK: In this international bestseller, a high-ranking counterintelligence agent describes his life as a former poet laureate to Kim Jong-il and his breathtaking escape to freedom. As North Korea’s State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food...

When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, Otto Apel was a surgical resident living in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and three young children. A year later he was chief surgeon of the 8076th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, constantly near the front lines in Korea. Immediately upon arriving in camp, Apel performed 80 hours of surgery. His feet swelled so badly, he had to cut his boots off, and he saw more surgical cases in those three and a half days than he would have in a year back in Cleveland.

True stories inspired by one of the most iconic, beloved, bestselling books of our time In the ten years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of readers to set out on paths they never thought possible, in...

A fascinating personal memoir of underwater combat in World War II, told by a man who played a major role in those dangerous operations. Frank and beautifully written, this book will be of lasting value as a submarine history by an expert and as an enduring military and political analysis.

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

Winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction A beautiful and haunting memoir of kinship and culture rediscovered. Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the former national security advisor and secretary of state comes a “sharp and penetrating . . . reminder that foreign-policy choices facing the United States are complex and difficult, with no easy solutions” (The Washington Post). A native of...

A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland...

The million-copy internationally bestselling life guide about how to stop comparing yourself to others—especially on social media—and how to find the strength to be yourself In a world where it can seem impossible to feel that you are ever good enough, and where it’s easy to judge yourself...

The weekly column Ask a North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these fascinating interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic firsthand testimonies about what is happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." This book sheds critical light on all aspects of North Korean politics and society and shows that even in the world's most authoritarian regime, life goes on in ways that are very different from what you may think.

In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).

Twice: The Story of K-Pop’s Greatest Girl Group tells the amazing story behind one of the most loved groups of our time. Covering their triumphs and setbacks, the making of everyone’s favourite tracks - including ‘Like Ooh-Aah’, ‘Cheer Up’ and ‘Likey’ - and their unique sense of style, this in-depth, unofficial guide is perfect for any Twice fan.

The focus of the United States during the Cold War was to prevent the spread of communism. The soldiers who served then were the wall that protected the world from that threat. None were in harm's way more than those who patrolled inside the DMZ in Korea. This book covers the history for the years following the "Second Korean War". No longer an official combat zone, it was still one of the most dangerous places in the world. This book documents the history of the DMZ from the perspective of the soldiers who were actually there, facing that threat each day.

Even as a boy growing up amid the green hills of rural Pennsylvania, Robert W. Black knew he was destined to become a Ranger. With their three-hundred-year history of peerless courage and independence of spirit, Rangers are a uniquely American brand of soldier, one foot in the military, one in...

Geography dealt Korea a fateful role. Sandwiched between China and Japan, and within easy reach of Russia, Korea has suffered five major foreign occupations-by China, Mongolia, Japan, and after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union. It was in that tiny peninsula I was born when Korea was under the heel of Japan, when we were forced to take Japanese names and speak Japanese. With the end of World War II came the liberation, which was soon followed by the Korean War.