The year is 1998 and American twin sisters Soo min and Jenna must for the first time be separated. Soo-min travels to South Korea to study and Jenna goes to Washington DC. While in South Korea Soo min disappears without a trace from a beach where she spent the day with her boyfriend. Their belongings are left on the beach. Have they drowned or what happened to them?
In 2010 Jenna is a professor at a university in Washington DC. She has never recovered from her sister’s disappearance and has since unsuccessfully tried to burry herself in work to overcome her grief. Jenna left university top of her class and CIA has covertly been following her. They now want to recruit her because of her extensive knowledge of North and South Korea. She hesitatingly accepts the offer.
Proof suddenly turns up that Soo min is alive in North Korea and that she was abducted by the North Koreans in 1998. Jenna will now do anything to save her sister, but how does she do that when her sister is locked up in hermitically closed North Korea?
At the same time, we follow ordinary North Korean Mrs. Moon and her daily struggle to make ends meet. She is an elderly woman who every morning is picked up by a truck to do back breaking field work for many hours. The poor peasants are starving and so is she and her husband. In her search to find eatable roots and berries in the wood she suddenly discovers a balloon from South Korea. She takes the chocolate pies and woolen socks in the attached bag of the balloon even if this is a serious crime. However, she does not want to starve and decides to take the items to the local market to sell them.
In the capital Pyongyang the privileged live and the young military officer Cho Sang-ho is selected to go to New York City to blackmail the Americans to pay up large sums of money if they don’t want the North Koreans to speed up their rocket and nuclear programs. Cho Sang-ho is soon captured in a true nightmare set up by the regime and he starts seriously to doubt and defy the great leader’s supreme leadership.
The lives of these people happen to be interwoven with each other and they do the unthinkable which is to revolt against the incredibly brutal regime.
Star of the North is simply put it an excellent book. It is well written; it is a tense thriller, and it is very informative. The author really nails the North Korean dictatorship, and he has clearly done his homework. The stories we are represented with are beyond terrible.
I strongly recommend Star of the North. Do yourself a favor and read it. You will not regret it.
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