The writing is not always the best. Sometimes it was tricky to figure out what she meant. She does not spend a lot of time on her childhood in North Korea. The majority of the book is about her time as a fugitive in China. It is a story people need to here. The situation of the North Korean who are trying to escape and flee is very important. ( )

Eunsun Kim’s memoir about growing up in North Korea, going through the famine of the 1990s, and leaving for a better life. She, her mother, and her sister overcame many obstacles to eventually escape. Unfortunately, it reads like a report. There is little reflection or analysis. She is a young person who has endured many hardships, so I do not want to be too critical. Her goal is to raise awareness about the human rights abuses in North Korea, and in this, she succeeds. Stories like this one are important to the international community. ( )

Eunsun clearly has no flair for storytelling and this is a fairly boring from a narrative standpoint; there's never any dramatic tension. It only merits three stars writing-wise but since she wrote the book as a sort of "fuck you" to the North Korean regime, I'm giving her a bonus star just to be supportive. ( )

A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape From North Korea by Eunsun Kim (5.5 hours, audio book). There may be a variety of reasons why, but this is one of least readable books I’ve read in the last couple years. Possibly that is the fault of the translation/translator, or maybe it was just really poor writing. The story lacks what I think are important details, ones that would’ve made its different parts cohere, includes unexplained leaps of time & distance, and is rife with details that strain credulity. This subject (North Korea generally plus defection) is one that can fascinate, so it was extremely disappointing to find little to like about this woman’s story. The detail is so spare that I began to doubt the authenticity of the story. Needless to say, buying this book was a mistake. ( )

This is Eunsun Kim's brief recounting of her childhood in North Korea, escape through China, and life in South Korea. The book moves very quickly with few details, giving a casual reader what they want to know, but leaving an academic wanting.

As with all memoirs from North Koreans, there are many harrowing and depressing events. Kim starts the book off describing what she believed were her final days, starving to death in an apartment while her sister and mother visited a neighboring city to scavenge for food. For the first one-hundred pages, Kim discusses, albeit briefly, North Korea. She describes a trip to Pyongyang with her father who died of a starvation related illness, a few episodes in school, and her eventual dropping out due to the need to survive.

The second one-hundred pages discuss Kim's life in China. Kim, her mother, and her sister, end up in the hands of traffickers who turn them over to a cruel farmer near the North Korean border. They live under the constant threat of forced repatriation to North Korea. They also live under tremendous social and emotional pressure from the farmer and his family, which eventually causes them to leave for larger cities. During this time, Kim's teens and early twenties, she is still prevented from attending school and remains distant from Chinese culture and society.

While her sister stays behind with her family in China, Kim and her mother eventually reach South Korea where they go through a repatriation program. This is described in the final few chapters. An afterward gives details about Kim's current celebrity, which includes publishing her memoir in various languages and doing promotional tours that raise consciousness about the situation of North Koreans both in and out of the country.

Kim's book is a memoir. It is not intended to give tremendous insight or depth into the workings of North Korea. There is little political reflection; however, there is incredible emotional color in this piece of literature. As such, it is a valuable tool in the marketplace of ideas. ( )