North Korean Memoirs

Journey into the life of a renegade American who decided to defect to the most reclusive and oppressive nation in modern history: North Korea. An American idealist defects to North Korea in the 1970's only to discover the true horrors of this Stalinist state. What happens next would shock even those familiar with authoritarian regimes.</P><P>The author an American Foreign Service worker in china meets a man by the name of David. David entrusts the author with his diary and makes the author promise him that the diary will be shown to the world as evidence of what North Korea is really like. Following this encounter the author never sees David again.</P><P>The author discovers that within the pages of this diary lies an incredible story of defection survival and an eventual escape by the man he knows only as David. After staying up and reading the entire diary the author is convinced that David's story must be told to the world.</P><P>The diary details David's life from his fairly comfortable upbringings through his rebellious youth and into his extraordinary decision to defect to North Korea. At first David enjoys an elevated status in North Korea as a hero and a patriot of the socialist cause.</P><P>During two decades as an English professor at the most prestigious North Korean University David experiences love seduction betrayal and violence.</P>