The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad
"Her account is as captivating as a thriller, but unlike a thriller it is morally compelling." -- novelist Mark Helprin, author of In Sunlight and In Shadow
North Korea is hell on earth--ranking at the bottom of every international measure of freedom. Food is scarce. Religion is banned. Jails are abundant. Two hundred thousand men, women and children are incarcerated in political prisons. Their crimes? Possessing a Bible or disrespecting a photograph of Kim John Il.
"Her account is as captivating as a thriller, but unlike a thriller it is morally compelling." -- novelist Mark Helprin, author of In Sunlight and In Shadow
North Korea is hell on earth--ranking at the bottom of every international measure of freedom. Food is scarce. Religion is banned. Jails are abundant. Two hundred thousand men, women and children are incarcerated in political prisons. Their crimes? Possessing a Bible or disrespecting a photograph of Kim John Il.
It is a crime to leave the country. And for those who dare to flee, there is another circle of hell: life on the run in China. In Escape from North Korea, Melanie Kirkpatrick tells the riveting story of the North Koreans escaping to liberty. With a journalist's grasp of events and a novelist's ear for narrative, Kirkpatrick traces their harrowing passage along a secret route through China, which rejects them as criminals, on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia and, finally, to the sanctuary of South Korea and sometimes the U.S. They travel on a new "underground railroad," operated by brokers who are in it for the money and Christians who are in it to serve God.
Just as escaped slaves from the American South educated Americans about the evils of slavery, the North Korean fugitives are informing the world about the evil country they fled. Escape from North Korea describes how these heroic escapees are also sowing the seeds for change within North Korea by channeling news back to those they left behind. In doing so, they are helping to open their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual groundwork for transforming the totalitarian regime that keeps an entire nation in chains.
Christianity Today calls Escape from North Korea "a rare book that puts human faces on the numbers, a lamentation over policies and duplicities that have haunted a people terribly divided." Richard Land says "Melanie Kirkpatrick has done humanity a great service by telling this compelling story." Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun writes, "Her story reminds us all of why communist regimes so fear religion."
Surprises revealed in Escape from North Korea:
Escape from North Korea was published by Encounter Books on September 18, 2012. Melanie Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Just as escaped slaves from the American South educated Americans about the evils of slavery, the North Korean fugitives are informing the world about the evil country they fled. Escape from North Korea describes how these heroic escapees are also sowing the seeds for change within North Korea by channeling news back to those they left behind. In doing so, they are helping to open their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual groundwork for transforming the totalitarian regime that keeps an entire nation in chains.
Christianity Today calls Escape from North Korea "a rare book that puts human faces on the numbers, a lamentation over policies and duplicities that have haunted a people terribly divided." Richard Land says "Melanie Kirkpatrick has done humanity a great service by telling this compelling story." Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun writes, "Her story reminds us all of why communist regimes so fear religion."
Surprises revealed in Escape from North Korea:
- North Korean exiles feed information into North Korea with forbidden cell phones, MP3 players, DVDs, flash drives.
- Chinese men place orders for "brides" from North Korea
- North Korea is the world's worst persecutor of Christians, yet Christianity is growing there.
- American Christians have gone to jail in China for the "crime" of helping North Koreans.
- A secret network extracts South Korean POWs from North Korea
Escape from North Korea was published by Encounter Books on September 18, 2012. Melanie Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page.
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