Magnus Bärtås

An interesting book about a group trip to North Korea. I am very fascinated by the country, even though I know extremely little about it. I think my lack of base knowledge may have made the book harder to follow at times: sometimes I didn't understand why they were going on about japanese movies or I kept confusing events with each other.

But it was still pretty well-written, and we get to follow two parallell stories: the story of the actual trip taken by the authors, and the story about two kidnapped South Korean movie directors and their time spent in the country, between 1967 and 1986. Both are very interesting, although I guess in different ways.

(Not to mention that the tourist group keeps breaking the rules set up by their guide. They mention that "we have nothing to fear, but the guide may end up in a labour camp if he can't control his group". How lovely of them to not give a crap if that dude and his family ends up in those horrible camps as long as they get a cool picture. Really.)… (altro)