Review by New York Times Review
IS LEAVING THE world's most infamous dictatorship as easy as simply escaping? The answers - and there are more than one - are at the heart of Krys Lee's forceful debut novel. "How I Became a North Korean" begins simply, in chapters that alternate among three central characters. First we meet Yongju, the good son of elite North Korean parents, who comes home to find a strange man calmly burning their photographs and documents in the kitchen, a clear sign the family has been marked for erasure. Next up is Danny, a Christian Joseonjok from China's Korean ethnic minority, a closeted gay immigrant in the United States, a devout Christian and a good student - until his first crush brutally humiliates him. And finally there is Jangmi, a young woman from North Korea's rank and file, pregnant with a powerful man's child, who sells herself into marriage to a Joseonjok willing to pay the traffickers who arrange her escape to China, where she hopes to persuade her new husband the child is his. North Koreans typically travel north in order to go south, and so, despite these young people's three very different points of departure, they meet by chance in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Joseonjok territory, that slim knife of land on the Chinese side of the border. Yongju, separated from his mother and sister after being smuggled out of North Korea, has joined a refugee gang of boys and young men living in a mountain cave. He dreams of making his way to South Korea, imagining that he might be able to find his relatives there. But such a hopeful future seems increasingly remote. "I was starting to measure space," he remarks, "by the number of people it could hide." While out searching for supplies, Yongju encounters Danny, who has run away from his family in the United States, intent on living as a sort of ecstatic hermit in the place where he was born, alone with his push-ups, his prayers and his job at a restaurant, experiencing "the thrill of being out of my time line, in China, a body returning to the past to escape the past." When Yongju rescues him from a robbery, Danny falls in love with him and joins his gang. He sees Jangmi, who has been kicked out by her husband and his family, as a bitter rival and quickly comes to resent her. Like Yongju, she is determined to make her way to South Korea, which she imagines as a country where "scrawny women owned rooms heaped with clothes and cars with heated seats. A safe country." But she intends to start a new life there with her child, apart from all who ever knew her - especially Yongju. With this novel, Lee has returned to some of the territory covered in "Drifting House," her devastatingly cleareyed book of stories, set in contemporary South Korea Mustering a story writer's kinetic intensity, the novel seems distracting at first as it switches, chapter by chapter, among the characters, but the spare structure gains strength from their very different voices. Yongju is lyrical, perhaps a future poet. Danny is painfully blind to himself. Jangmi is heartbreakingly ruthless, by turns funny and salty. What emerges from their observations - of North and South Korea and China, the refugee and the immigrant, the gay Christian and the straight nonbeliever - is not just another simplistic indictment of a country in thrall to its Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, but a compelling vision of both North and South Korea. Lee finds other villains normally hidden in the landscape: the Christian aid workers who require refugees to convert in exchange for their freedom; the restaurant guests who, astonishing to a North Korean, leave behind partly eaten bowls of noodles; and, of course, those who insist they want to help North Korean refugees but won't let them forget where they came from. A perfect example of their predicament appears near the end, when Jangmi, having at last arrived in South Korea, assimilates so completely that she finds herself being lectured by an older woman, convinced she's too slender, on the value of food. "I have known all kinds of hunger," she tells us, "but I am tired of fighting. In my best standardized South Korean accent I just say, 'Halmeoni, you must have had a hard life.' In the steaming room I listen patiently as she begins sharing the stories she must have needed to tell." ALEXANDER CHEE'S most recent novel is "The Queen of the Night."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The Tumen River marking part of the geographical boundary between North Korea and China is only a couple of hundred feet at its narrowest point, but, metaphorically, it is a huge chasm dividing the seemingly dazzling glories of a promised free land from the severe oppression and deprivation at large in one of the world's most closed countries. It is this deep divide that two of Lee's (Drifting House, 2009) North Korean characters negotiate as they are compelled to reinvent new lives for themselves in China. Yongju is the scion of a high-class North Korean family, yet a reversal in fortunes has him seeking refuge. Pregnant Jangmi, from a lowly seongbun, or caste, knows her illegitimate child will have no future in North Korea, so she flees, too. After treacherous, independent journeys, their paths converge with Danny's, a Chinese American teenager who is running from his own troubles. Unfortunately, the three, each seeking freedom for some form of hunger, fall into a new kind of tyranny in which God replaces government. Lee doesn't shy away from exploring the horrors that surface when human beings are pushed up against the wall. This painful and profound story explores the will to live a life of grace against crushing odds.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"On nights like this, it feels as if we're the only people remaining on the planet," says Yongju, a young man whose family had been Pyongyang aristocracy until the Dear Leader decided otherwise and shot his father. But Jangmi, who crossed the border because she was pregnant with the baby of a comrade who was married to someone else, replies with a clarification: "No... it's more as if the entire world is elsewhere and we've been forced out." The two have recently met in a cave in China. And although they've made it that far, Jangmi and Yongju still have a long way to go. Lee (Drifting House) structures her novel across four successive parts, "Crossing," "The Border," "Safe," and "Freedom," as it follows the two, along with Danny, a Christian Korean-American teenager from Fresno, through each stage of their escapes. Though the three characters all start from very different places, geographically, economically, and emotionally, they meet in the cave. From there, each will then make his or her way across another border to South Korea, again finding themselves together in the home of a Christian minister with more nefarious inclinations than his generosity initially indicates. Their haunting stories reveal the darkness of life in North Korea as well as the enormous risk of escape, resulting in a vivid and harrowing read. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] After the brutal murder of his father and the wrenching separation from his mother and sister, Yongju must survive a new life of deprivation after his privileged upbringing as the only son of one of North Korea's power elite. Danny, a misfit immigrant teen in southern California, abandons his father to join his mother in China, only to run away, feeling she's betrayed his trust. Jangmi, desperate to protect her unborn child, escapes her North Korean village and becomes the purchased wife of a damaged Chinese man with a spoiled daughter. Through an unlikely combination of adversity and serendipity, the three young people will converge in a house of God-as victims of abuse and beneficiaries of benevolence. Drawing on her personal experiences working with North Korean refugees, Lee crafts an extraordinary narrative that is both contemporary testimony and literary achievement. Verdict Arriving five years after her exquisite short story collection debut, Drifting House, Lee's first novel should further elevate her reputation as one of the most elegant, impeccable voices of her youthful generation. Devotees of authors able to navigate effortlessly between short and longer forms, including Jhumpa Lahiri and Adam Johnson, will certainly be blessed to discover Lee's work. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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