April 19, 2024
Evergreen

Famine survivors used humor to cope – Interview

Academic who talked with defectors finds many feel ambivalent about N. Korean government

North Koreans defectors who survived the famine of the 1990s were not brainwashed puppets of the regime prior to the crisis, and the experience didn’t necessarily leave them embittered toward the state after it took place.

So said Sandra Fahy of Sophia University in Tokyo, whose book Marching through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea, will hit bookshelves in March next year. Fahy said she has been interested in North Korea since 1998, about the time she finished her undergraduate degree.

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