Stars Between the Sun and Moon

June 29, 2015
The most effective element in Jang’s often tragic, thought-provoking memoir documenting her life in 1970s North Korea is the conversational, anecdotal mode in which it is told, akin to an oral history. Jang, recounting her story to Amnesty International Media Award–winning journalist McClelland, spares no detail of her harrowing upbringing in North Korea during a decade of famine, when she was often starving and was locked inside the house by her grandmother during the day. Jang attempts to better her circumstances by crossing over to China illegally, which results in her arrest, and marries an abusive man who, with Jang’s mother’s aid, sells her son, Sungmin, to a couple who live on a naval base. Subsequently, Jang is bedridden, “receiving no rations... after a week I had to return to work.” Lamenting the loss of her son and rejecting offers from other suitors—“I didn’t want another man. I wanted Sungmin”—she sets out to find him on the naval base, but the search proves fruitless. Her escape is suspenseful as she becomes a refugee in Mongolia and, ultimately, Toronto.

August 15, 2015
One woman's life in, and desperate escape from, North Korea. North Korea is so removed from the commerce of the digital age that when a story emerges from behind the candied gloss of government-produced video clips, the world eagerly pays attention. Hence the recent spate of memoirs from those brave souls who have escaped the restrictive country. Here, with the help of award-winning journalist McClelland, Jang (the name she later chose when safely in Canada) reveals the trials of growing up in 1970s Chosun (another term for North Korea) for one born into a family out of favor with the regime. At a young age, Jang learned that her mother's grandfather and uncle had committed the worst atrocity possible by sympathizing with Americans during the war and fleeing to the south afterward. This action banned subsequent generations from ever joining the party and relegated them to harsh living conditions. Jang repeatedly describes the widespread poverty and starvation that were constants of daily life in this caste society. Her hunger was so deep that at one point she swallowed a handful of uncooked rice she stole to supplement a diet of weeds. In fact, scarcity of food was one of the main contributing factors that impelled Jang to slip back and forth to China to trade seafood for other staples to help support her family. And yet, when Kim Il-sung died, Jang and her mother didn't think twice about taking earnings from a day's sale of hard-boiled eggs to purchase chrysanthemums to honor his passing. Such ironies of North Korean life blaze through this refugee's memoir. Despite being a survivor's tale of unimagined affliction involving human trafficking, rape, imprisonment, the loss of a child, and exile, it is riddled with regime-inspired themes of guilt and self-deprecation. The book includes a translator's note and an afterword by Korea-Pacific Studies professor Stephan Haggard. A courageous tale of physical and mental endurance sure to bring to further light conditions in North Korea.

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Starred review from July 1, 2015

In this collaboration, refugee Jang and journalist McClelland (coauthor, The Bite of the Mango) tell the fascinating story of Jang's life in North Korea. In childhood, Jang faced social and sexual discrimination. Her first marriage ended because her husband was abusive. Compounding her misery, Jang's mother and ex-husband sold her infant son, whom she never saw again. Soon thereafter, former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung died and the famine of the 1990s began; in the process Jang became obsessed with the constant search for food. During these years she twice moved to China to secure provisions for her family and was twice caught and imprisoned. Pregnant and incarcerated for the second time, Jang was temporarily released and told she would be reimprisoned and her child killed after she gave birth. In learning this, her parents arranged to have her and her infant son smuggled out of North Korea permanently. VERDICT An emotional and engrossing work that sheds light on daily life in this opaque country. Highly recommended for readers interested in North Korea as well as those who enjoy inspirational stories. Fans of Barbara Demick's Nothing To Envy will especially appreciate this work.--Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

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