From personal knowledge, the North Korean government is very controlling and only wants its citizens to know what the government what them to know. One thing interesting in the book that relates to the North Korean government is that they have their own radio station. While most of the radio can be purchased from the government, they are very expensive; therefore, many North Koreans that have some money and are not starving will purchase a radio from China. Those of which are purchased from China have access to all radio stations located close around. This lets the North Koreans who purchased radio from China listen to knew that is not bias towards the totalitarian society in North Korea, but instead any news related to North Korea said on the radio could be against it. When the government found it told its people that if caught using or owning a radio that it would be punished.
Secondly, an interesting, but gruesome and sad stories told in the book by Shin was all the torture that they put him through to try and get him to talk about why his mother and brother tried to escape. Starting with abuse, by hitting and punching
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One reason this is interesting is because they are all going through the same situation. The life of each and every prisoner would be so much greater if everyone respected each other and did not go and tell the guards every little bad thing about each other. Additionally, if a guard tells a group of prisoners to beat or slap one person, everyone of them hit or do the exact motion the guard demonstrated with; however, if one person showed empathy towards a person when hitting the other it could start a change of events leading to everyone showing empathy and respect to each other. Sadly, this never happened because of the animal-like qualities that the North Korean government instilled in the prisoners from day