Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea

Witness to Transformation is an enormously important book in that it marks the first methodical study of public opinion among North Koreans. ... The leading scholars of the North Korea famine of the 1990s, Haggard and Noland find a decade later a populace focused on trying to feed themselves through their own market activity, ignoring the regime's attempts to restore the socialist system. Although the North Koreans surveyed were reluctant to criticize Kim Jong Il, ... the majority listened to foreign media and resisted in their own quiet way....

Witness to Transformation breaks new ground in presenting the first comprehensive portrait of North Korea based on the experiences and views of the growing number of defectors who have fled the country. They describe an inhuman system that is steadily eroding, and a population that is beginning to awaken from a long night of totalitarianism. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the suffering of the people of North Korea and the prospect for peace on the divided Korean peninsula.

Witness to Transformation casts a unique window onto the changing dynamics of the world's most brutalized country, North Korea. Haggard and Noland make brilliant use of interviews with the growing ranks of refugees to extend our understanding of the human rights and humanitarian catastrophe that is North Korea, and to expose its mounting corruption, citizen disaffection, and popular willingness to consider political alternatives. Both for its stunning research findings and its forceful policy recommendations, this book is indispensable.

Human rights and the protection of refugees is not a concern of left or right, or of the US only; it is an issue of importance to all Koreans, and indeed all countries. Haggard and Noland provide compelling evidence of the ongoing transformation of North Korean society and offer thoughtful proposals as to how the outside world might facilitate peaceful evolution.