The Last Exiles - Book Review
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Korean-Canadian filmmaker
Ann Shin plunges headlong into the market for fiction with her debut novel about North Korean defectors.
Shin, who had previously worked as a journalist for
CBC Radio before venturing into documentary films, is also an accomplished poet.
The Last Thing Standing and
The Family China were poetry books previously published under her name. Following the success of her documentary film
The Defector: Escape from North Korea , Shin forged ahead with her debut novel
The Last Exiles dealing with the same subject.
The Last Exiles depicts the arduous journey faced by a young North Korean couple as they make the painful decision to leave their beloved country behind and slip across the Chinese border in search of a better life after encountering unspeakable hardship back home. Being set during the final days of
Kim Jong Il 's time in office adds a stronger touch of realism. The main characters are Suja, a student journalist at
Kim Il Sung University whose father is a senior figure at
Rodong , the country's official newspaper; and Jin, a poor student from
Kanggye in the country's north who is attending the university on a scholarship. Following an incident, while Jin is on vacation in his hometown, he gets arrested and sent to the infamous
Yodok concentration camp , separating him from Suja. However, he manages to escape and slip across the Chinese border by wading across the icy
Tumen river , which spurs Suja to defect via the same route. Life as illegal immigrants in China is tough, not to mention risky. However, the couple are soon reunited and, by a stroke of luck, make it out of Chinese soil into a refugee camp in Thailand. Whilst there, they consider making the move to Seoul just as Kim Jong Il's funeral is taking place in Pyongyang.
The trials and tribulations faced by Jin and Suja are highly plausible and are nothing new to many North Korean defectors. Ann Shin interviewed many Koreans in China in order to retrace their footsteps from North Korea as part of her research for
The Last Exiles. It can easily be said that this book tells the life story of the majority of North Koreans who defected. It also offers a glimpse at everyday life in different parts of the reclusive state.
Above all,
The Last Exiles lays bare the Workers' Party government in Pyongyang for what it truly is: a despotic regime that steals food from starving citizens, leaving them with no choice but to search for a better life abroad. Unfortunately, the only way to do so is to sneak out illegally into China, whose leaders have no qualms sending them back to face an unimaginable fate as enemies of the state.
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83715 - 2023-06-11 06:44:58