I want to say I recommend it with all my heart. But I must add serious warnings. This book goes deeper than any I have read so far into the disgusting and nauseating. If you are not prepared to have discussed before you the details of people eating people, for example, I suggest you read something a little lighter.

Philippe Grangereau was Hyok's assistant in writing this story. His preface serves as a preview of the book. I quote in part:

"The young man (Hyok) told me how he had survived famine in North Korea: tree-bark soups, rat hunts with his friends, hours spent digging coal in the galleries of the mine, night-time raids on state farms; the weakening, then death of several of his schoolfriends... Hyok related these episodes casually, as though he were talking to me about just another ordinary day. What he had seen with his child's eyes some years previously, millions of North Koreans had also experienced every day of their lives- and continue to do so today. Because even now, in 2005, famine still rages in North Korea..."

I feel especially weak this morning. So frustrated. So helpless. The "old" man wants to rise up and punch someone, and say, "You can't do that! Let these people eat! Lay your weapons down and buy food! No one is trying to hurt you! The whole civilized world is trying to help you!"

But all my shouting and finger-pointing at the well-fed government in the middle of the famine will be to no avail. God will repay. Vengeance is His. And when something significant is done for Korea, no man will be able to take credit. For it is "not by might, not by power, but BY MY SPIRIT, says the Lord!"