North Korea Confidential ─ Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

North Korea is assumed to be a country where everyone worships a power-crazed dictator, where vitriolic disputes with neighboring South Korea frequently erupt into violence, where nuclear bombs are detonated with alarming regularity, and where most people are perpetually on the verge of starvation. But what is life in North Korea really like? Read this book and find out.

In seven fascinating chapters the authors explore what life is actually like in modern North Korea today for the ordinary oman and woman on the street.o They interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to bring a startling new insiderAs view of North Korean societyufrom members of PyongyangAs ruling families to defectors from different periods and regions, to diplomats and NGOs with years of experience in the country, to cross-border traders from neighboring China, and textual accounts appearing in English, Korean and Chinese sources.

This book reveals that ordinary North Koreans, poor and rich alike, enjoy listening to K-pop music and are addicted to South Korean TV dramasuin direct contravention of the governmentAs dictates. Pirated foreign movies and showsuAmerican, South Korean and Chineseuare often smuggled into the country, and sold as DVDs and more recently, USB memory sticks. Such snippets of information help the reader understand that North Korea is undergoing dynamic changes affecting the 24 million people who call it home.

Just as the 1950-53 Korean War created a new generation of South Korean over-achievers, the authors believe that the mid-1990s famine in North Korea has caused an important social and economic transformation in North Korea that will eventually spur its citizens to greater achievements.

Daniel Tudor is from Manchester, England, and graduated with a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University. He has lived in Seoul, Korea for a number of years, and served as The Economist's Korea Correspondent from 2010-2013. His first book, 'Korea: The Impossible Country' received strong praise and has also been translated into Korean, Chinese, Polish, and Thai. Daniel is a regular columnist for a Korean newspaper, the Joongang Ilbo, and has commented on Korea-related topics many times for the BBC, Al Jazeera, and others. He is also co-founder of The Booth, a small chain of craft beer pubs.

James Pearson holds a BA in Chinese and Korean from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master's of Philosophy in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. He currently serves as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Seoul, where he covers politics and general news in North and South Korea.