"NOTHING TO ENVY"

LA Times reporter Barbara Demick's new book gets a nice review from her own newspaper. I haven't read the book yet (it is on my ever growing list of "must reads") but it sounds like gripping reading. A snippet from the review:

A doctor named Kim Ji-eun, another of Demick's primary sources, dealt with famine victims firsthand and provided testimony eerily paralleling Mi-ran's: As a 28-year-old pediatrician at a small district hospital, Kim noticed severe wasting (in which the body eats its own muscle tissue) among many of the children. "They would look at me with accusing eyes. Even four-year-olds knew they were dying and that I wasn't doing anything to help them," Kim told Demick. "All I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers over the bodies afterward." Her hospital became so strapped that it remained unheated, bandages were fashioned from cut-up bedding, and beer bottles substituted for IV pouches.

I wish I knew the best way (or any way) to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people, particularly those who are unlucky enough to have a bad sôngbun.