Washoe County Library System

An extraordinary insight into the life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to escape.

The memoir of a twelve-year-old boy who grew up in North Korea looks at how he was forced to live on the streets, fend for himself, and live with a gang after his parents disappeared. “Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who was forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. Dedicating his book to those he left behind...

The harrowing true story of one mans life inand subsequent escape fromNorth Korea, one of the worlds most brutal totalitarian regimes. 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,...

"An incredible memoir of North Korea by a woman who defied the government to keep her family alive. Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household--her parents worked in the factories and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. Nightly, she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. But it was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine resulting in more than a million deaths. In this harsh time, Jang...