Kim Yong was a lieutenant colonel in the North Korean National Security Agency and a career military officer earning foreign currency until he was suddenly sent to a labor camp in 1993. After six years he escaped through China to South Korea and then, in 2003, came to the United States. He now resides in Seoul, Korea. Kim Suk-Young is a professor at the School of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (Columbia, 2014).

Kim gives us a marvelously unsympathetic portrait of a brain-washed apparatchik. -- Christian Oliver Financial Times [Kim's] dispassionate account of how one man endured the unendurable offers a clue as to how such extreme inhumanity can occur. -- Donald Richie Japan Times A reminder of the brutality of the North Korean regime. -- John Feffer Korean Quarterly

• Preface Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction, by Kim Suk-Young 1. Coming of Age 2. Living for the Great Leader 3. Downfall of a Model Citizen 4. In the Mouth of Death 5. Escape 6. Across the Continent Afterword: Unfinished Story Notes

Kim Yong was a lieutenant colonel in the North Korean National Security Agency and a career military officer earning foreign currency until he was suddenly sent to a labor camp in 1993. After six years he escaped through China to South Korea and then, in 2003, came to the United States. He now resides in Seoul, Korea. Kim Suk-Young is a professor at the School of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (Columbia, 2014).

Kim gives us a marvelously unsympathetic portrait of a brain-washed apparatchik. -- Christian Oliver Financial Times [Kim's] dispassionate account of how one man endured the unendurable offers a clue as to how such extreme inhumanity can occur. -- Donald Richie Japan Times A reminder of the brutality of the North Korean regime. -- John Feffer Korean Quarterly

• Preface Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction, by Kim Suk-Young 1. Coming of Age 2. Living for the Great Leader 3. Downfall of a Model Citizen 4. In the Mouth of Death 5. Escape 6. Across the Continent Afterword: Unfinished Story Notes

Kim Yong was a lieutenant colonel in the North Korean National Security Agency and a career military officer earning foreign currency until he was suddenly sent to a labor camp in 1993. After six years he escaped through China to South Korea and then, in 2003, came to the United States. He now resides in Seoul, Korea. Kim Suk-Young is a professor at the School of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (Columbia, 2014).

Kim gives us a marvelously unsympathetic portrait of a brain-washed apparatchik. -- Christian Oliver Financial Times [Kim's] dispassionate account of how one man endured the unendurable offers a clue as to how such extreme inhumanity can occur. -- Donald Richie Japan Times A reminder of the brutality of the North Korean regime. -- John Feffer Korean Quarterly

• Preface Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction, by Kim Suk-Young 1. Coming of Age 2. Living for the Great Leader 3. Downfall of a Model Citizen 4. In the Mouth of Death 5. Escape 6. Across the Continent Afterword: Unfinished Story Notes