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I already knew that North Korea was a crazy place, but this book underlines how its regime is both terrifying and utterly odd. I won’t even get into the logic of naming a man as President for eternity, four years after his death. In one of the most powerful images in the book, the author looks across the Yalu river one night. On one side is noisy, busy, lit-up China. Across the bank, North Korea is dark and silent - as North Koreans describe it, “calm as hell��.

Some interesting snippets of information I gained:

1. Most cars in South Korea are painted silver.

2. Traditionally, Koreans are born aged 1. They get a year older not on their birthdays, but every January 1st. However, this is no longer used officially in N. Korea.

3. When the author was a child, children in every class displayed a league table showing the physical strength of each child. Fights were then organised between the top-ranking students from different classes.

4. In the Confucian tradition, a woman who marries joins her husband’s family. Even if they then divorce, she still belongs to that family, and her own parents will probably reject her if she tries to return home. If the man marries again, he and his new wife have to live with the ex-wife.

5. The camp inmates were so desperate for clothes that if they were sent to bury someone, they would always strip the body naked first.

6. Teachers in the camp school were all armed, routinely referred to children using terms like “You son of a whore,�� and routinely beat and humiliated the students (a favourite punishment, for example, was making them spend the whole day standing naked in the courtyard). The author points out in an understated way that, “Trust between student and teacher was utterly impossible under such conditions.��

7. Each inmate was allotted one pair of socks to last a year. They ended up wrapping their feet in rat skins most of the time. However, the children have a special pair of socks given to them on Kim Il-sung’s birthday, which they can only wear when entering a room dedicated to him.

8. Before China and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992, accepted practice for ships travelling between the two countries was for them to bear Honduran flags.