To say that we’ve been hearing a lot about North Korea lately would be the grossest of understatements.  Every day, it seems, our existence is further imperiled by North Korea.

But the more these stories come out, the more North Korea sounds like a boogeyman, or a classic movie monster, lumbering around and menacing all and sundry.  The more we hear about North Korea, or see its leading examining a bomb, or see a parade of missiles, the easier and easier it is to forget that North Korea isn’t a cinematic villain, but a place.  A place where people live.  People who are made of the same basic matter that we are.  People who love their families, who enjoy sunny days, who get hungry, and people who worry about what tomorrow might bring.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is the official title of the country is question, is an extraordinarily secretive and secluded country into which very few people manage to enter or exit safely.  As a result, it’s difficult for us, outside of the Korean peninsula, to understand what life is really like there.  It’s difficult, at times, to remember that this is a nation of human beings like us.

And that is why reading is so critically important–today, perhaps more than ever.  Books help us learn the truth behind the screaming headlines, or the reality behind the rhetoric.  But more importantly, reading–and reading fiction, especially–helps us be more empathetic people.  It’s harder to see someone as inhuman, or subhuman, or unhuman, when you have had a chance to see the world through their eyes.

Needless to say, there isn’t a great deal of first-hand information coming out of North Korea, in either fiction or non-fiction.  But that makes the sources and stories that we do have that much more important, and that much more vital to helping us understand what life is like on this other side of this violent divide.  So here are a few titles that are available at the library now that can shed some light on life in North Korea, and, hopefully, provide you with some insight into life there:

The Accusation: This book is one of the most dangerous out there right now.  Written in secret between 1989 and 1995 and smuggled out of the country in 2013, these short works offer powerful insights into a world within the high and restrictive borders of North Korea.  The Guardian published a fascinating piece on the origin of the stories and their author, who was–or perhaps is–employed by the nation’s official writer’s association.  It took years, and a coalition of brave people, to get these stories out of North Korea, but the results absolutely justify that work.  In each of these seven tales, industrious North Koreans, “innocent people whose lives consisted of doing as they were told”, accidentally into the clutches of the state’s real, and deadly power. Some are jailed, some escape, die, or go mad, but the real culmination of each story occurs in that instant of revelation, when they understand that, despite everything they have always been told, the state is malign.  The Chinese human rights worker, Do Hee-yun, who spearheaded the efforts to rescue this manuscript, has said she hasn’t heard from the person known as Bandi for months.  What the ramifications of sending his manuscript into the world instead of trying to leave, we cannot know.  But it makes these stories that must more precious, and that much more necessary.

Without You There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite: Suki Kim is a Korean-American teacher who worked as a visiting English instructor at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011.  This memoir describes not only her experiences with her students, whose education in technology is severely hampered by the limitations the government imposes on the internet and computer programming.  It also talks about her experiences adjusting–or not adjusting–to life under a military dictatorship.  The patriotic songs, the parades, the constant enforcement of party loyalty–all of it is chilling to read.  But there are glimpses of hope in these pages, even in an act we might take for granted, like logging onto the Internet; watching a Harry Potter film; the thought-provoking questions from her students.  And these human interactions are what make this memoir such a memorable and such a human one.

Under the Same Sky: from starvation in North Korea to salvation in America: As a child, Joseph Kim survived North Korea’s Great Famine (which lasted, approximately from 1994 to 1998), which sent most of his family searching for food and aid along the Chinese border.  Joseph was left alone to starve, until he made the decision to cross the border, as well.  He was fortunate enough to be taken in, given shelter, and eventually, through the help of a number of humanitarians, he was brought to the US, without knowing a word of English, or having any connections on which he could rely.  This book is Joseph’s harrowing experiences of growing up during some of the darkest days in North Korea’s modern history (a period about which we still know tragically little), and his very challenging immigrant experience.  But is also a story of hope, survival, faith and endurance, told with insight, brutal honesty, and impressive narrative form.  Publisher’s Weekly’s glowing review noted, “Told with poise and dignity, Kim’s story…provides vivid documentation of a remarkable life. It also offers an important account of atrocities committed within North Korea that have been hidden from the West—and indeed, most of the rest of the world. A courageous and inspiring memoir.”