Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea
Witness to Transformation is an enormously important book in that it marks the first methodical study of public opinion among North Koreans. This of course is practically  impossible given the level of repression in North Korea, but Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland have nevertheless mined gold from surveys of refugees who've fled  to China and South Korea. The leading scholars of the North Korea famine of the 1990s, Haggard and Noland find a decade later a populace focused on trying to  feed themselves through their own market activity, ignoring the regime's attempts to restore the socialist system. Although the North Koreans surveyed were reluctant to criticize Kim Jong Il, or even to make jokes, the majority listened to foreign media and resisted in their own quiet way -- by living their own lives with as little interference as possible from the regime. --Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North KoreaWitness to Transformation breaks new ground in presenting the first comprehensive portrait of North Korea based on the experiences and views of the growing number of defectors who have fled the country. They describe an inhuman system that is steadily eroding, and a population that is beginning to awaken from a long night of totalitarianism. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the suffering of the people of North Korea and the prospect for peace on the divided Korean peninsula. --Carl Gershman, President, National Endowment for Democracy