The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

Inside, I’m assaulted by the evening propaganda broadcasts coming over the apartment’s hardwired loudspeaker. There’s one in every apartment and factory floor in Pyongyang

Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.

All of North Korea is a jail.

North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world.

I felt like a frog that had just come out of its pit, from which it had contemplated the circle of sky outlined by the rim, and taken it for the whole of the world. I had passed through to the other side of the mirror. (162)