By Cameron Woodhead
How I Became A North Korean
KRYS LEE
FABER & FABER, $29.99
How I Became a North Korean, by Krys Lee
Krys Lee, who has worked with North Korean refugees, explores their plight in her debut novel following three teenagers thrust into the labyrinth of suffering and paranoia that sits on the Chinese/Korean border. Yongju is a scion of the North Korean elite, forced to flee after Kim Jong Il murders his father at a banquet; Jangmi is a poor and pregnant young woman coerced into sexual slavery. The third wheel is Danny – a smart, eccentric Chinese-American who loses his passport on a quest to find his Christian missionary mother, and falls in with the others in a bid to survive a place where exploitation, deprivation and corruption are rife, and no one, it seems, can be trusted. This brave and eye-opening novel shines light on the world's strangest rogue state, and the adversity those who try to escape it endure.