BATB score: 10/10 📕‼🔺 well-written 👏 the different lives of North Koreans: the selected Pyongyang elite, the starving Chongjin shameful caste, the defectors, the loyalist, the real tears and the saliva ones Best to: the best introduction to North Korea's communism rule, dictatorship regime, 360 propaganda, blinded loyalty, flawed management, starvation, hopeless deaths, and survival act of defectors Best for: politics and human rights aside; North Korea's Kim-family dictat

BATB score: 8/10 🔥 The Kim's regime in North Korea is a perfectly executed marketing propaganda yet one that is difficult to keep when the new generations start seeing otherwise; likeas any monarchy's blinded loyalty and religious miracle tell-tales, nothing can withstand time. Best to: North Korea's anecdotes and defector's escape stories continues to amaze me; it has been 30+ years of starvation, I really want to know how this would end. The answer can only be an internal-

BATB score: 7/10 🌺 “There I was, a spy of sorts, hoping not to plant bombs but to plant ideas.” Best to: Suki Kim in an ultimate mid-life crisis (a broken heart obviously) and meaning-of-life quest by disguising as a missionary English teacher for the sole elite male school in Pyongyang Best for: anyone with an obsession and fascination for North Korea who has read >3 fight or flight flee stories; this book is another POV of a volunteered teacher BATB tips: the best North Ko

BATB score: 8/10 🇰🇵🇰🇷 The other stuff about North Korea beyond the typical authors on defectors, starvation, reunification, and Kims. Best as: a thorough interview style qualitative research on North Korea; discussion of a capitalist movement in a communist country Best for: curious minds on/of North Korea - have you ever wondered where North Korean bought make-up? What kind of sanitary pads they are using? Do they watch porn? Best to: know that the grass is always greene

BATB score: 7/10 😱 reader discretion advised: not for the faint-hearted; painful tales of children born in North Korea concentration camps Best as: from reading so many North Korea escapee stories, this one stands out as he had to escape from the concentration camps first and only then escaped from North Korea like the other escapee stories Best for: North Korea stories enthusiast Best to: scarier than North Korea is today’s genocide in Gaza; scarier because this is globally