Stories like Otto’s are difficult for most of the world to comprehend.
His crime? He allegedly stole a propaganda poster from a wall in his hotel.
This decision came after 22-year old American college student Otto Warmbier died last month after being released from a 17-month stint in a North Korean hard labor prison. Just this week, the US banned all American travel to North Korea due to safety concerns for American citizens. At age 12, Sungju finds himself alone and homeless, and he forms a gang of other homeless boys in order to survive. On their own without government benefits, first Sungju’s father, then his mother, leave to find food and do not return.
They move to a much poorer area, Gyeong-Seong, where Sungju attends school and his parents try to find work. But when Sungju’s father falls out of favor with the North Korean government, his family is booted from the capital city of Pyongyang. (Sept.The son of a prominent military officer, Sungju Lee has plenty of food to eat, loving parents, and a nice bed to sleep in. A testament to resilience, Lee’s story pulls back the curtain on life in North Korea. The strongest section recounts Lee’s harrowing life on the streets as he banded together with friends, stealing, begging, borrowing, and fighting to subsist (“Maybe everything had been taken from us, but we still had our word, and that meant something”) deadening their pain with alcohol, smoke, and opium and mourning lost friends. Writing with McClelland ( Stars Between the Sun and Moon), Lee effectively describes his own trusting ignorance and how he began to understand the dire state of their exile. Lee enjoyed a privileged childhood in Pyongyang as the son of a respected military officer until his fate changed abruptly at age 10, when his family left for an extended “holiday” in a northern sea town where his parents were forced to work as laborers. The narrative begins with a brief history of 20th-century Korea that helps establish context. This affecting memoir starts slowly but gains momentum as it highlights a boy’s survival and eventual escape from North Korea.
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