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The Aquariums of Pyongyang

Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

The Aquariums of Pyongyang Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Chol-hwan Kang

By Pierre Rigoulot

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$17.99

Price

$22.99 CAD

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  1. Trade Paperback $17.99 $22.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)

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“Destined to become a classic” (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking), this harrowing memoir of life inside North Korea was the first account to emerge from the notoriously secretive country — and it remains one of the most terrifying.

Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for “re-education.”

Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.

Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man’s personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

Genre:

  • "The Aquariums of Pyongyang is one of the most terrifying memoirs I have ever read. As the first account to emerge from North Korea, it is destined to become a classic."
    Iris Chang, authorof The Rape of Nanking
  • "A triumph against silence."
    Financial Times
  • "A chilling testimony.... Freezes the heart and seizes the soul."
    Kirkus Reviews

On Sale
Aug 24, 2005
Page Count
272 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465011049

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Chol-hwan Kang

About the Author

Kang Chol-hwan lives and works in Seoul, where he is a staff writer for Chosun Ilbo, a daily newspaper in South Korea.

Learn more about this author

Pierre Rigoulot

About the Author

Pierre Rigoulot is a journalist, historian, and human rights activist living in Paris, France. He is the author of numerous books on the history of political repression and contributed the North Korean chapter to the best-selling The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press).

Learn more about this author