"One dearly wishes therefore for a book that would offer us a dialogue between Kang, prisoner in the North Korean labour camp for 10 years, and Suh, political prisoner in South Korea for 19 years. When each can feel grief and outrage over the brutality and violence inflicted on the other, perhaps then Korea north and south will be able to move towards its democratic future, one without gulags of any kind."Professor McCormack's full review from an ABC Radio broadcast of Book Talk on March 1, 2003 can still be found here.
His equivocation of the two prison systems is elegantly simple, though likely far from accurate, even applying such to that mythical monicker,"Land of the Morning Calm."
"Choson, the Land of the Morning Calm,"
by Percival Lowell (1885)
Meanwhile, autodidact, William "Bill" Caraway, has some interesting insights on certain origins behind that particular nomenclature here. As Bill writes on the home page of his "Korea History Project,":
"History forgotten, never happened."
Yi Song-gye (aka, Taejo of Joseon) - Very Calm
Well, it certainly did happen . . . and does.
The book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, along with two others mentioned in the broadcast apparently, Unbroken Spirits, and Brotherhood of the Bomb, might yet remain pertinent and compelling reads.
Find a calm, quiet place.
Picture yourself in a land far, far away.
Now scream.
(Or keep reading.)
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