Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

In 1993, writer and democracy activist Hwang Sok-yong was sentenced to five years in the Seoul Detention Center upon his return to South Korea from North Korea, the country he had fled with his family as a child at the start of the Korean War. Already a dissident writer well-known for his part in the democracy movement of the 1980s, Hwang's imprisonment forced him to consider the many prisons to which he was subject--of thought, of writing, of Cold War nations, of the heart.

In this capacious memoir, Hwang moves between his imprisonment and his life--as a boy in Pyongyang, as a young activist protesting South Korea's military dictatorships, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, as a dissident writer first traveling abroad--and in so doing, narrates the dramatic revolutions and transformations of one life and of Korean society during the twentieth century.

Hwang Sok-yong is an acclaimed Korean novelist and political activist and in this wide-ranging and comprehensive memoir he chronicles his life and work against the often tumultuous history of the Korean peninsula. In 1993 he was imprisoned for 5 years after his return from a visit to North Korea, the country from which he had fled with his family as a child at the start of Korean War. The memoir moves between his imprisonment and reminiscences of his life first as a boy in Pyongyang and Seoul, then his later life as a soldier in the Vietnam War, a time as a Buddhist monk, and then as a committed pro-democracy activist and prolific author. It’s a long and very detailed memoir and demands a great deal of investment in time and attention from the reader. The history and politics is complicated for anyone unfamiliar with the country, it jumps about in time and place, making it sometimes difficult to follow the chronology, plus Korean names are tricky for western readers – and Hwang cites a lot of people in the book – so that with so much detail to absorb, it’s certainly not an easy read. In fact I found it sometimes was just too dense and slow, and my concentration flagged. However, that said, it’s a fascinating insight into Korea’s history and repressive political regimes, and well worth persevering with.

This is an interesting memoir. Despite the title, it's more than simply a prison memoir--which gives it most of its power. I'll admit that as a reader, I had (and have) very little familiarity with Korean history. A reader with more knowledge would understand various aspects of it better than I did, I'm sure, but I felt that I learned quite a lot.

A very moving tale that adds to Korean voices coming forward with their experiences. All the best to the author.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Before picking up this book, I knew little about Hwang Sok-yong. Hwang’s autobiography was originally published in two volumes in South Korea, namely: The Prisoner 1: Across the Border and The Prisoner 2: Into the Fire. The decision to publish this edition in its entirety in one volume with some abridgement came largely from the translators, Anton Hur and Sora Kim-Russell and the publisher of the English edition with the author's consent. But I think it’s a good decision to publish the autobiography in a single volume as this book contains expansive thoughts on the divided Korean society in the twentieth century with the struggles to establish working democracy in South Korea.

In 1993, Hwang Sok-yong was arrested upon arrival in South Korea after his long exile in Germany and the US. His crime seemed unforgivable by the government at that time, that is to visit North Korea. There is a law called the National Security Act in South Korea that has been used to persecute many citizens, especially public intellectuals and writers for any action that constitutes praising and breach of security related to North Korea. Knowing that fact, Hwang remained unwavering in his decision to visit and stay in North Korea for quite a while after the ease of travel in 1989 that gave South Koreans more freedom to travel abroad.

In the first few chapters of this book, Hwang frequently compares the political situation in South Korea before 1989 to East Germany following his observation of life in Berlin during his exile. There was little freedom of speech for writers and the constant surveillance that followed to ensure the state's security. Other than that, South Koreans were also not allowed to travel abroad before 1989, something akin to the restriction of movement that was imposed on the citizens of countries in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. However, he also mentions that if the South Korean political landscape is similar to East Germany, then the situation in North Korea is even worse.

If you are a fan of Korean culture and want to know more about the Korean history of the twentieth century, this is a book to go to. Hwang Sok-yong recounts many parts of Korean history in this book with vivid description and detailed naming or historical dates, providing readers with perspectives on the history of Korea from his own experience starting from the division of the Korean peninsula after the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945 and the Korean War that followed. There is also an interesting description of his experience participating as part of the South Korean Marine Corps during the Vietnam War in 1966-1969 and the events leading to the Gwangju Democracy Movement in 1980 the year following the death of Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship.

As both a writer and a democracy activist, Hwang Sok-yong deserves praise for composing an autobiography that proves his consistencies in improving the political landscape and freedom of expression for artists and writers in South Korea. He is not ashamed to mention his failures and shortcomings here and there in this book to provide readers with as much objectivity as possible, although I might not know if there are any omissions since I’m not familiar enough with the history of South Korea to be able to judge this book fully. However, there are two things that I particularly like about this book. First, it gives a new perspective on the nature of North Korean society. Hwang tries to provide an objective opinion on Kim Il-sung as instrumental in his resistance against Japanese occupation that is commonly downplayed in South Korea. Second, it also gives a detailed description of how living in South Korea was like for both common citizens and political activists before 1998.

There is a lot this book offers, and not just about the man who is telling the story about himself. There is a story about a country split into two, people who want it to be whole again, those who like the way it is, there are stories about literature and artists, about books and poetry and all that the man saw and experienced during his travels - both to North Korea and beyond. He was imprisoned, tortured, questioned several times.

In this book he goes through in detail about the life he led, the paths he took and the dreams he tried to materialize as an adult and sometimes failed as an older adult. Its heartbreaking in several parts with things he and his family go through. However amidst all this chaos, he has brilliantly produced multitudes of fictional material.

<i>Thank you to Netgalley and Verso books for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review. </i>

So, for a point of view of one of the reunification activists and one of the few outsiders to have been to North Korea and a political prisoner in South Korea, this book is incredibly choice, and a little bit over half of this book covers these topics, along with the Candlelight Protests against Park Gyun-He (look them up for what we could’ve done to get Trump out if we’d actually committed to protesting). These bits are incredibly well written, and highly recommended. The problem is that the other half of the book is a stealth memoir that is so dryly written and self centered that it came close to putting me to sleep while reading it, which almost never happens to me. I don’t know if this is the fault of the translation or if it’s just the way that the original writer wrote it. This is a low four/five because I can only really recommend half the book, but was still a fun exercise.

If I had to describe this book in one word, I'd say tedious. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it and the way in which the chapters are formatted is my only major complaint. This book is over 600 pages and there were only 14 chapters and an epilogue. This makes it dense and slow to get through. Another gripe that I have is that Hwang throws so may names out at any given time and it can be confusing. That being said, I really enjoyed learning about South Korea in the aftermath of the Korean War. As an outsider looking in South Korea has always looked like a well put together country that was thriving. It was very weird to find out that it wasn't even close. Hwang's account of life is fascinating and something that I, as an American, have never seen before. I'm very glad he wrote an autobiography and shared his story with the world. Everyone should go read this. Jus be warned that it is a dense and long journey.

I read this over a week at a slower than normal pace but it did keep my attention and is a very informative account. Doesn't set the world on fire but worth a read .

This really wasn't for me. I found the story wasn't put together well so it seemed disjointed. I am always one who loves memoirs however this just seemed off for me.

It was interesting as I learned a bit about the culture other than that it left me cold.

Hwang Sok-yong is a very well-known author in Korea. I've not read any of his work, but if this work is anything to go by, it would be interesting to read, albeit a bit splintered.

> I was never tortured. I was arrested several times during the Yushin dictatorship of the 1970s and once jailed for disobeying martial law declared after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, but I never got so much as a slap across the face. Was I lucky, or were my stunts too tame to make it worthwhile? My fellow writer friends used to joke that one of these days my luck would run out and I would get my comeuppance. Thinking back, luck had something to do with it, but it probably helped that I was also a famous young novelist with a large, mainstream following, one who had serialized a saga titled Jang Gil-san every day for the past ten years in the pages of a daily. When I was first arrested at the airport and dragged, blindfolded, to this underground room, the anti-Communism investigators tried to intimidate me by shoving me into a corner and having a phalanx of investigators bark questions at me. A skinny man with piercing eyes cursed at me as he swung his fists. I had readied myself for this. I ducked the blows, pushed him away, and tore off my shirt. —What, the law isn’t enough for you? Fine, torture me. Hit me! The investigators tried to calm the other man down and pulled him away, calling him “Siljangnim,” which allowed me to guess that he was the section chief. I still remember what he said to me before he left. —You bastard, you think the world has changed? You think all you got to do is bullshit a little and we’ll let you go? We’re gonna flay the skin off your ass!

Hwang tells many tales, both from his activist and dissident life, and also from interpersonal experience with other people throughout the globe.

> I was a country bumpkin on his first overseas trip, and as the Europeans I met kept asking “Who are you?” I naturally began asking myself the same question. Who was I? I was forty-two. I had written four novellas and a volume of plays and had just published the tenth volume of my popular novel Jang Gil-san, which I had serialized since 1974. My work, however, did not exist outside of Korea. I promised myself on the plane that I wouldn’t even bother mentioning literature: I would only talk to as many people as possible about the plight of the citizens of Gwangju and our democracy movement.

The book jumps back and forth through time, through places, marriage and not, while painting a stark picture of a human being trying to exist under the thumb of a very authoritative government, with all that entails.

> “I am not a communist.” This was the first thing Yun I-sang said to me after shaking my hand. I was taken aback. “You don’t have to worry about that with me,” I replied. After he was arrested in 1967, someone had written about him saying how he couldn’t possibly be a communist because his music was too modern. The Soviets and the Eastern Bloc had believed any modernist music or experimental art to be reactionary.

> West Berlin in 1985 was like a desert island in the middle of East Germany. In essence, it was a city under occupation by the forces that had won World War II. No one could imagine that the wall looming over Berlin’s gloomy, peaceful cityscape would fall in a few years. Whenever I visited Berlin afterward, I would always find it odd that there was still no direct flight between Seoul and the German capital, and remember the grey walls towering above.

This book is almost 700 pages long, and I feel it should have been shortened. In my mind, it would have felt better if tightened-up, but that's just my own sentiments, and I've read an uncorrected advance proof of the book. Still, the structure and length of the book has nothing to do with translation.

Altogether, this book says a lot about both Hwang and the daily life of an artist when threatened with censorship, imprisonment and torture.

This book was surprisingly informative of wars and torture I was interested in this for the expiernece, and went in almost in blind. I do not know of this part in korean history, I am not even from Asia. And I am not familiar with the author’s previous work. I knew only of the long-rising tension between South and North Korea, and that this was a memoir of a man tortured and imprisoned for getting in between.
I was astonished and educated throughout the entirety of the novel. It’s interesting how things started off innocently enough, and then began to get worse and worse for the author. It shows the true nature of censorship, how it influences artists and stunts creativity. It’s both a memoir and a warning.

TL;DR: If you’re interested in the Korean Peninsula, I highly recommend you read this book (not K-pop, but history, literature, and politics).



Before I picked up this book, I knew little of Hwang Sok-yong. I was aware that he had visited North Korea and that he had been a political prisoner in South Korea, but that was <i>it</i>. Turns out, Hwang has been involved in many aspects of South Korea’s history – he's been <i>so</i> involved that I am utterly confused as to why I have never stumbled upon his name when reading about inter-Korean relations. Perhaps his involvement was just an inconsequential contribution to whatever was to happen (or, not happen, as it is always the case in Korea), but it was a fascinating read.

In the Prisoner, Hwang jumps around his life and related his involvement (he is often <I>not</i> just a mere spectator) in many historical events in the peninsula: the pre-Korean war division of the peninsula, the Korean war, Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War, the Cold War (when South Korea went through dictatorships and everyone was on the look-out for “North Korean spies”), the inter-Korean reunification talks that happened before Kim Dae-jung's time, and even the candlelight protest in 2016. He is also very well acquainted with almost every writer and poet Korea has ever produced to a point some chapters seemed to be some sort of “address book” indicating where he had met each author (many of them, he met in prison).

The most interesting chapters to me where the ones where he recounts meeting Kim Il-sung, his exile, and his teenage years when he discovered his vocation as a writer. His reflections on the inter-Korean back-and-forth were very interesting. He mentions how ironic it is that conservative South Korean political parties strive for North Korean human rights while the liberals ignore them, or how when Koreans are okay that is when they look for another reason to pick a fight with each other. Moreover, Hwang kept mentioning places and events that I had never heard about and I would be falling in rabbit holes every three pages.

While I had read Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-yong a few years ago and I didn’t care for the book, I am looking forward to reading the works mentioned in this one (The Guest and Princess Bari, specially, though I’m curious about Jang Gilsang an whether it has been translated). In short, this is a thick memoir, which is always intimidating, and it totally paid off – I may even re-read a few bits, if not the entire thing, in the future.

Hwang Sok-yong is a very well-known author in Korea. I've not read any of his work, but if this work is anything to go by, it would be interesting to read, albeit a bit splintered.

> I was never tortured. I was arrested several times during the Yushin dictatorship of the 1970s and once jailed for disobeying martial law declared after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, but I never got so much as a slap across the face. Was I lucky, or were my stunts too tame to make it worthwhile? My fellow writer friends used to joke that one of these days my luck would run out and I would get my comeuppance. Thinking back, luck had something to do with it, but it probably helped that I was also a famous young novelist with a large, mainstream following, one who had serialized a saga titled Jang Gil-san every day for the past ten years in the pages of a daily. When I was first arrested at the airport and dragged, blindfolded, to this underground room, the anti-Communism investigators tried to intimidate me by shoving me into a corner and having a phalanx of investigators bark questions at me. A skinny man with piercing eyes cursed at me as he swung his fists. I had readied myself for this. I ducked the blows, pushed him away, and tore off my shirt. —What, the law isn’t enough for you? Fine, torture me. Hit me! The investigators tried to calm the other man down and pulled him away, calling him “Siljangnim,” which allowed me to guess that he was the section chief. I still remember what he said to me before he left. —You bastard, you think the world has changed? You think all you got to do is bullshit a little and we’ll let you go? We’re gonna flay the skin off your ass!

Hwang tells many tales, both from his activist and dissident life, and also from interpersonal experience with other people throughout the globe.

> I was a country bumpkin on his first overseas trip, and as the Europeans I met kept asking “Who are you?” I naturally began asking myself the same question. Who was I? I was forty-two. I had written four novellas and a volume of plays and had just published the tenth volume of my popular novel Jang Gil-san, which I had serialized since 1974. My work, however, did not exist outside of Korea. I promised myself on the plane that I wouldn’t even bother mentioning literature: I would only talk to as many people as possible about the plight of the citizens of Gwangju and our democracy movement.

The book jumps back and forth through time, through places, marriage and not, while painting a stark picture of a human being trying to exist under the thumb of a very authoritative government, with all that entails.

> “I am not a communist.” This was the first thing Yun I-sang said to me after shaking my hand. I was taken aback. “You don’t have to worry about that with me,” I replied. After he was arrested in 1967, someone had written about him saying how he couldn’t possibly be a communist because his music was too modern. The Soviets and the Eastern Bloc had believed any modernist music or experimental art to be reactionary.

> West Berlin in 1985 was like a desert island in the middle of East Germany. In essence, it was a city under occupation by the forces that had won World War II. No one could imagine that the wall looming over Berlin’s gloomy, peaceful cityscape would fall in a few years. Whenever I visited Berlin afterward, I would always find it odd that there was still no direct flight between Seoul and the German capital, and remember the grey walls towering above.

This book is almost 700 pages long, and I feel it should have been shortened. In my mind, it would have felt better if tightened-up, but that's just my own sentiments, and I've read an uncorrected advance proof of the book. Still, the structure and length of the book has nothing to do with translation.

Altogether, this book says a lot about both Hwang and the daily life of an artist when threatened with censorship, imprisonment and torture.