We see North Koreans as automatons, goose-steeping at parades, doing mass gymnastics with fixed smiles on their faces – but beneath all that, real life goes on with the same complexity of human emotion as anywhere else. Barbara Demick Read Quote
Over the years, so many exceptions and amendments were made to China’s one-child policy that it was hard to pinpoint a moment to pronounce it dead. Barbara Demick Read Quote
By 2022, China is expected to cede the dubious distinction of being the world’s most populous nation to India, according to the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Barbara Demick Read Quote
China’s one-child policy was born in 1980, after years of less severe measures to discourage births. The Communist Party promised that the policy would be temporary. Barbara Demick Read Quote
In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family’s second child, a boy. She died during the procedure. Barbara Demick Read Quote
North Korea, under its thirtysomething Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is no country for old men. The latest casualty in Kim’s ongoing purge of the senior military command was the defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, who reportedly committed the classic old man’s offense of falling asleep in a meeting. Barbara Demick Read Quote
Kim Jong-un’s style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein. Barbara Demick Read Quote
I agree with Kathi Zellweger that sanctions mostly punish the ordinary people who live at the edge of starvation. Barbara Demick Read Quote
When North Koreans cross the border into China, they are stunned to learn that the Chinese can afford to eat rice daily, sometimes for three meals daily. Barbara Demick Read Quote
One of the ways the North Korea regime has kept power is by keeping its people ignorant of the living standards in the outside world. That’s the underlying lie that supports the regime – not that their country is ‘normal’ but that they are better off. Barbara Demick Read Quote