North Korea Today: What is Fact and What is Fiction?

This program will look at two portraits of North Korea today: first through the eyes of the best-selling fiction book The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, and second through the eyes of the award-winning non-fiction book Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. Reports from people who have grown up in North Korea and escaped depict an Orwellian society where tens of thousands of Koreans are imprisoned and routinely beaten, neighbor turns against neighbor, and people are imprisoned almost by whim. What can we really say is true based on first person accounts and recent newspaper reports? Leslie Ashmore will discuss these issues. Ms. Ashmore has read about North Korea, written a book review of  The Orphan Master’s Son, and spoken to Adam Johnson about his recent visit to this troubled and troubling nation.