Curiosity connects North Koreans with the outside world, and Jieun Baek's wonderful book North Korea's Hidden Revolution shows how creative, clever, and ingenious they are in satisfying their curiosity. The games of hide-and-seek under tight control mechanisms help the North Koreans improvise, as the penalty for information access is often very harsh and cruel, including death. Yet they go back to their safe zones and immerse themselves in movies, dramas, and K-pop. Baek describes this underground information revolution in North Korea with balance, warmth, and rigor.
Popular books on North Korea can be categorized into defectors’ stories and autobiographies, visitors’ rare glimpses into the closed society, introductions to the country's society and history, and fiction. Baek's book is path-breaking because it focuses on the uncharted territory of the information revolution while drawing on defectors’ narratives. It thus goes beyond the gut-wrenching horrors of refugee testimonies and cut-and-dried policy analysis. Another...
