Pierre Rigoulot Books

"Destined to become a classic" (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking ), this harrowing memoir of life inside North Korea was the first account to emerge from the notoriously secretive country -- and it remains one of the most terrifying.Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education."Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

Nordkorea gehört zu den letzten kommunistischen Ländern der Erde. Nur wenige Informationen dringen aus dem Herrschaftsbereich des 'Lieben Führers' Kim Jong-Il. Seitdem Nordkorea die Existenz eines bislang geheimen atomaren Rüstungsprogramms zugegeben hat und die USA das Land offiziell zum 'Schurkenstaat' auf der 'Achse des Bösen' erklärt haben, zählt die Region zu den gefährlichsten Krisenherden der Welt. Pierre Rigoulot fasst die Geschichte der nordkoreanischen Diktatur zusammen, beschreibt die Unterdrückung durch Partei und Polizei und schildert den grauenhaften Alltag der Menschen, die nur noch einmal täglich essen und in den Krankenhäusern ohne Strom und Medikamente sterben.