The Aquariums Of Pyongyang Summary

The Aquariums of Pyongyang written by Kang Rigoulot and Kang Chol-Hwan is the account of Kang’s early life spent inside of a North Korean prison camp with his family for ten years; Kang also describes the developments that take place after his release such as departure from North Korea, his voyage into China, and finding the means to finally arrive at South Korea. Kang will depart from both North Korea’s authoritarian state and the ideology he was forced to embrace from as early on in life as a child.
Life for Kang in the prison camps started when he was a child because his grandfather was accused of speaking too harshly of the North Korean regime. Kang often notes that whether you are in the prison camps or free of them that speaking negatively of the North Korean communist government or Kim Il-sung has very negative repercussions. From the time that he …show more content…
He notes that because of the famine people had to begin farming for themselves and their families at night, which created some level of private property where the regime wants people to have none. Furthermore, North Korea had to reluctantly allow it because of the millions who were dying of starvation as well as the amount of people who were disobeying the regime trying to feed themselves. Kang writes that “though the Party was fervently opposed to private land use, the peasant movement grew so strong that the Party had no choice but to give ground. It never changed its laws, but it grudgingly accepts the practice, and is content merely to remind the peasants that in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea no land belongs to a single owner.” He notices that one of the biggest differences in South Korea is money and acquiring as much of it as possible is the normal, but in comparison the people in the North are concerned with acquiring enough just to