In 1997 the author, aged 17, escaped North Korea for China. Her mother's first words over the telephone to her lost daughter were "don't come back". The reprisals for all of them would have been lethal. Twelve years later she returned to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea in a very costly and dangerous journey. This eloquent book offers the first credible account of ordinary life in North...

"From a desperately poor village in northeast China, to a career that took him across the world, this is the incredible story of Li Cunxin -- a story that almost vanished, like so many other peasants' lives, amid revolution and chaos. At age eleven, Li was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange,...

The long-running "Ask a North Korean" column produced by NK News in Washington D.C. invites readers to ask questions of recent North Korean defectors about everyday issues that are not generally discussed in the media. Various aspects of life in North Korea are discussed in this book through a series of interviews . These interviews show that even in the world's most authoritarian regime, there is still a degree of normality and continuity.

Drama based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin. At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.