Nothing to Envy Themes

In Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick investigates the lives of ordinary people who have defected from North Korea. Throughout the book, Demick shows how a constant stream of state propaganda has been used to deceive and control a population of over 25 million. By exploring the use of propaganda as a means of deception and control, Demick suggests that when the concept of objective truth is eradicated, people can be completely controlled by misinformation.

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North Korea’s isolationist government seeks to instill the ideal of juche—an untranslatable ethos that relates to self-reliance and total independence—in its people at every turn. Juche combines elements of Marxism, Confucianism, and nationalism in order to depict the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a separate, special, and even divinely-chosen state. In particular, Barbara Demick argues that the North Korean government uses the language of juche to convince its people that suffering is noble…

Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy explores the famine that struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, taking the lives of anywhere between 240,000 and 3.5 million people. As Demick interviews defectors about their experiences struggling to survive what the North Korean government termed the Arduous March, she paints a picture of physical, social, and mental starvation. By presenting painful and stark descriptions of a country wasting away, Demick ultimately argues that scarcity and starvation…

Over the last 20 years, for an increasing number of North Koreans, illegal escape into China, Mongolia, or South Korea has transformed from an unthinkable impossibility into an attainable—if highly dangerous—reality. Interviewing five defectors now living in South Korea’s bustling capital of Seoul to put together narratives about ordinary life in North Korea, Barbara Demick highlights the fear, uncertainty, and instability that follow these refugees as they make new lives for themselves in other countries…