Text Review- Every Falling Star

The book I am presenting to all of you, is a book my Korean literature class read entitled Every Falling Star, which is the real life story of the author Sungju Lee’s life in North Korea until he was able to escape. The story starts with him living life as a loyal citizen to the regime in Pyongyang, the capital and richest city in North Korea, until his father loses his high ranking job and his family has to move out to the country. Sungju, who is a child during this story, faces extreme hardships as he finds out that life for majority of North Koreans is terrible. After his parents leave him all alone to try to make money in China, Sungju is forced to fight and steal food with a group of boys his age in order to survive. In this story, it is clear to see that the people who live in the city are the Ones while everyone else is Other. When Sungju shows up to his new school for the first time, everyone was amazed by him because of where he came from, but Sungju felt like an Other being in this new environment until he slowly became like them as well. As soon as his family lost their money, they were forced to the same injustices as the rest of the population. He became a street boy with a gang, who would then go to neighboring villages to find new people to steal from, but in order to do so, they would have to fight the gangs that were already there. If they won, the gang there would have to submit to the new gang, and if they lost, they were forced to submit to them. It was important to win, as it gave the winning gang power over the other boys. Girls also suffered in the country side, having to steal for food, starving if they couldn’t. But with this intersectionality between class and gender, they had to use their bodies or were r**ped. None of the people, children included were protected by the police or the government, instead they chased them down and would send them to poorly kept jails where many died. I believe the author wants readers to take away the idea of how bad it truly is in North Korea, because for the first decade or so of his life, it was hammered into his head that North Korea was this perfect place. I think that this work inspires many conversations regarding power and injustice considering the type of government they are subjected to and how people adapt to the injustices they face in order to survive, even creating some of their own in the process.

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