Posted By: NCTA Work Projects
Posted On: June 18, 2019
Oliver Jia, NCTA Student Worker
Kang Chol-hwan's utterly powerful memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang has always been my first recommendation for defector stories from North Korea. It highlights the often-forgotten plight of Japanese Koreans who were essentially tricked into immigrating to North Korea following the conclusion of WWII. Led on by false promises and the hope for a better life, Kang’s family, like tens of thousands of other Koreans, believed that they would be given a prosperous existence upon arriving in Kim Il-sung’s “socialist paradise.” What they instead encountered was further discrimination, newfound poverty, and eventual imprisonment as part of North Korea’s oppressive system of collective punishment. Kang vividly describes his horrific experiences during his decade spent at Yodok Concentration Camp which eventually turns him into an unrelenting critic of the Kim regime.
I consider The Aquariums of Pyongyang to be in a similar vein to Elie Wiesel’s Night. The content is brutal and pulls no punches, but the historical value makes it an appropriate read from upper middle school (8th grade) to early high school (9th or 10th grade). It would be of good use in an Asian history course or any class with content related to North Korea. While defector stories are difficult to verify and rely primarily on firsthand accounts, the human rights situation in the DPRK is well-known and Kang is a respected figure so I think his account can be considered trustworthy. The book was originally written in French by author Pierre Rigoulot, but it does not read like a translation and is very easy to understand, despite the dense historical and political content.