I became quite fascinated with what is happening *inside* North Korea while reading A Kim Jong-Il Production for a bookclub. Given that it was a book about movies and I generally look up photos and facts while reading, I soon found myself watching bits of Shin Sang-Ok's movies (including Pulgasari) and Kim Jong Il's propaganda films, which led to the Arirang Games, which led to the BBC documentary about child performers, which led to half a dozen documentaries, which led to several nonfiction works and memoirs, including this one. 
 Like all but one of the books I've read so far, it is written by a westerner and through a very Western perspective, from the allusions to star-crossed lovers to the assumptions about the North Koreans' desires and goals. Perhaps it is my newfound familiarity with the subject, but I was less riveted by the portrayal of the defectors' lives before they fled. The author weaves in a love story and the commonplace into the horrors of the Arduous March, but I never lost the sense of a story told by a parially-uncomprehending outsider. 
 However, I was fascinated by their lives as defectors. Despite the author's trumpeting of newfound freedoms, she finds herself admitting that most of the defectors regret their choice to some degree. A sobering thought. The same has been true of most of the other defectors I've read about so far, something I still find shocking and difficult to grasp. 
 According to the fount of knowledge that is Wikipedia, much of this is due to PTSD, culture shock, etc. But by putting "blame" for unhappiness squarely on defectors, I wonder if we miss something important. And that, I think, is what I found so interesting about the book: reading between the lines, there is also a critique of uncaring capitalism and false promises of meritocracy. We have so many blessings--freedom of thought and expression foremost amongst them--but it's still interesting to consider the flaws that the experiences of those from an utterly alien culture cast into sharp relief.