The Aquariums of Pyongyang Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

When President George W. Bush sought to understand the grim realities of human rights abuses in North Korea, he and his closest advisers turned to Kang Chol-hwan's harrowing memoir of growing up in a North Korean concentration camp. When he was nine years old, the author-along with members of his family-was sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok, where for ten years he observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations. He eventually escaped to South Korea and now, working as a journalist, gives testimony to the atrocities endured by an estimated two hundred thousand North Korean citizens who are still detained in the gulags. Part horror story, part memoir, part political tract, this story of one man's extraordinary personal suffering offers eyewitness proof of the shocking and ongoing abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime. In a new preface, the author reflects on human rights violations under Kim Jong-il and the ongoing nuclear crisis in North Korea, as well his historic meeting with George W. Bush in the Oval Office in June 2005. Book jacket.

Kang Chol-hwan lives and works in Seoul, where he is a staff writer for Chosun Ilbo, a daily newspaper in South Korea. Pierre Rigoulot is a journalist, historian, and human rights activist living in Paris, France. He is the author of numerous books on the history of political repression and contributed the North Korean chapter to the best-selling The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press).