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I'm glad you got a chance to read those. Really interesting material. I discovered it after the whole series had ended and I guess it had a similar effect on me because I finished of it in one sitting because it was so compelling. It's also an account (or series of accounts) that I recommend to people when they have read all the more popular kwan-li-so and kya-hwa-so stories like The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Eyes of the Tailless Animals, Long Road Home, and a book I used to put on that list Escape from Camp 14. I think everyone knows why I have a hard time recommending it.

For anyone looking for even more information about the camps, a hugely valuable resource would be The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of "Those Who are Sent to the Mountains" (heads up: this is a PDF link) which was researched and written by David Hawk who is a former Executive Director
of Amnesty International USA, and a former United Nations human rights official. He has worked on documenting the Khmer Rouge atrocities, the genocidal massacres in Rwanda, and now most recently the topic of North Korea. He is a man I have actively tried to get in touch with to request an AMA for our subscribers to no avail, but I would have been surprised if he actually had time for it. We mods are also actively trying to locate Lee Jun Ha to come on for an AMA. Actually we have been quite busy behind the scenes for the last few weeks trying to bring the subscribers quite a few AMAs, some return guests and some new. So we are hoping to have a busy sub for the rest of the year and top it all off with another LiNK fundraiser. So stay tuned.

One of the most interesting chapters I've read from Victor Cha's book The Impossible State talked about the Rason Industrial Area and the role that the little throwaway gift of a choco pie played in screwing up one major industrial venture.

Incidentally, if you're at all interested in North Korean history, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's incredibly broad, and written exceptionally well.

Former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios mentioned this in his book about the great famine in the 90s. People would cut down trees on hillsides to grow crops, but this just resulted in massive land slides that would bury infrastructure and fill in river beds, leading to numerous floods. I really recommend the book, as it goes into the intricacies of what happened in North Korean infrastructure and agriculture after the fall of the USSR.

I feel like sending them The Interview would be counter-intuitive. Send them something like this or something similar.

This book - Dear Leader - really explained it well to me through the eyes of a defector who had actually met Kim Jong-Il and was his poet laureate.

It was fascinating how he went from believing the propaganda to seeing the truth.

Did you read Lankov's recent book? Good stuff.

I don't remember where exactly I read that. Probably in either Nothing to Envy or The Impossible state.

I highly recommend both books (though I thought that Cha came off as a bit defensive at times) for general reading on the DPRK.

Someone needs to make sure every young Chinese students finds out they are not allowed to read http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0231147465?pc_redir=1406819869&robot_redir=1

this is cheaper

this is more in my price range

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912

obviously the numbers aren't 100% accurate but the comment is reasonable per this book

I've read similar synopsis of propaganda in this book, interesting read www.amazon.com/The-Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves/dp/1935554344

Andrei Lankov, in The Real North Korea published this year, argues the opposite: that any sort of reform in North Korea threatens the stability of the regime and thus the life of the North Korean elite, and thus that the Chinese way to reform is not viable for North Korea.

Has anybody read Jang Jin-sung's book, Dear Leader? It came out a couple months ago. He's a good source of information on the regime, but at the same time a bad source of information on the regime...

Have you read his book? How is it?

Soon Ok-lee witnessed two incidents of testing of chemical agents while she was a prisoner/accountant at the semi urban Kaechon kwaliso (concentration camp for political prisoners) which she described in her Senate testimony and in her book "Eyes of the Tailless Animals". (excerpt can be read here in this article Vinalon, the DPRK, and Chemical Weapons Precursors

An article I read a very long time ago on kimsoft.com, a website that is no longer online, also described the history of the DPRK chemical weapons program and described reports of chemical testing on human beings.

It may be possible to find it and read it via archive.org's "wayback machine"

> Hitler was able to build a booming economy off the back of large internal deficits. He leveraged a strong manufacturing sector to build a self sufficient state.

That's not really true

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

> What does this book say that is different than what has gone before? Heaps. In recent years it has become clear that Germany lost the second world war because the Soviet Union was able to out produce them in the making of armored vehicles. Britain and the United States were able to produce huge numbers more aircraft. The conclusion has been that Hitler's gamble in invading the Soviet Union was the key behind the loss of the war.
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> What this book suggests is that Germany had lost the war before it invaded the Soviet union and its success up to 1941 had been a lucky break. The author even suggests that Britain alone had some chance of over time developing a preponderance of military force. It also puts paid to what must be now seen as the myth of Munich. Previously it was thought that Britain and France failed to re-arm in time to fight Hitler effectively. What this book shows is that by 1940 Britain and France had armies that were superior in both numbers and equipment. Their navies were vastly superior to Germany's and their air forces at least equal. When France fell, although Britain lost its field army its air force was equivalent to the German in numbers and quality and its Navy vastly superior to anything the Germans and Italians could put to sea. More over the British were able to out produce the Germans in aircraft even prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
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> The success of the German armies in 1940 was due to the allied command failing to respond to the German strategy. If the allies had been a bit more aggressive they could have fought it out to at least a draw and Germany did not have the resources to fight anything more than a short war. The idea of blitzkrieg was an invention of allied generals seeking to rationalize their defeat rather than a meaningful analysis of what happened. The French never even fully committed their air force to the struggle and most of it was captured on the ground.
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> The problem was that although Germany had access to the industrial plant of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. The reasons are complex but relate to the patterns of European trade and the success of the European blockade. If we take aircraft for example the French production which flowed to Germany was miniscule. France had access to manufacturing plant and supplies of bauxite but it was not able to produce. The reason was that it used to import coal from Britain for its electricity production. With the British blockade the main source of coal became Germany. However Germany was not able to increase its production sufficiently to overcome the short fall. In addition the amount of food produced in Europe fell. Previously the production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark had been dependant on the import of grain and stock feed from South America. That was not available and the amount of food available for the dairy industry collapsed as did food production. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Apart from the issues of the blockade huge amounts of the chemicals used for fertilizer production was diverted to the making of explosives. In addition to the fact that French workers were moved on to subsistence rations and there was no power available the country had been dependant on motorized transportation. Again most of its oil imports came from abroad. With the outbreak of the war the only available oil products came from Romania or from synthetic oil made in Germany. This was barely enough for the needs of the armed forces (there was in reality not enough to keep the Italian Navy operational) and France reverted to a pre-petroleum transport economy.
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> It is this economic background that gave rise to Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had the natural resources that would enable European industry to out produce Britain and America. Rather than rashly starting a two front war Hitler knew that he could never develop the naval might necessary to conquer Britain simply by the occupation of Western Europe. The conquest of the Soviets was a key step in Hitler's strategy and not irrational. Of course none of the German general staff thought that the Soviets could stand up to an invasion of over 3 million men. However the Soviets were able to do so and then they were better able to marshal their resources so that they could outlast the Germans.
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> This is a very good book which will force everyone to re-think their attitudes to not only the second world war but the historical run up to it. It is unusual to have a book which is of such significance.