Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea (Atria, 2015) by Jang Jin-sung, a rare account from the elite perspective of a poet laureate to Kim Jong-il.
Every Falling Star* (Amulet Books, 2016) by Sungju Lee and Susan Elizabeth McClelland, a young adult memoir of a boy, born into a privileged family, who spent five years scrounging on the streets as a “flower swallow” before escaping to South Korea.
The Girl with Seven Names (William Collins, 2015) by Hyeonseo Lee, a richly detailed memoir of growing up in a high-status, relatively affluent family and crossing the border into China as a willful teenager, an unwitting defector. (Ms. Lee, now an activist on behalf of North Korean defectors, has a popular 2013 TED talk*: https://www.ted.com/talks/hyeonseo_lee_my_escape_from_north_korea?language=en.)
“My Daily Life in North Korea (MYSTERIOUS 7 DAY TRIP)”* (2016), a 14-minute video by “digital nomad” Jacob Laukaitis that takes the viewer along for a typical DPRK tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMoSyk0rK9s.
North Korea Confidential (Tuttle, 2015) by Daniel Tudor and James Pearson, the most up-to-date and comprehensive account of the astonishing changes that North Korean society is currently undergoing.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau, 2009) by Barbara Demick, a rare picture of daily life in the northeast and the devastating impact of the 1990s famine, based on interviews with defectors.
A State of Mind* (2004), a documentary film that follows two young gymnasts in Pyongyang as they compete for the privilege of performing in the Mass Games.
Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America (HMHC, 2015), by Joseph Kim with Stephen Talty, a memoir of a North Korean childhood, from comfort to deprivation to street life, before escaping as a teenager. (See also his TED talk* at https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_kim_the_family_i_lost_in_north_korea_and_the_family_i_gained?language=en.)
Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim (Broadway Books, 2015), an account by a Korean American investigative reporter posing as an English teacher at a Pyongyang school run by foreign missionaries.
For details of North Korea tours, I consulted numerous online blogs and photo essays. NKNews.org (by subscription) offers a comprehensive source of news about the DPRK. In 2015, I traveled to Dandong, China, where I was thrilled to discover that my hotel room window faced the Yalu River with a view of the city of Sinuiju. I took a motorboat ride through the waters that separate the two countries, and traced Mia and Simon’s steps up a section of the Tiger Mountain Great Wall, where I sat and gazed at “One-Step Crossing” and the North Korean countryside. Additionally, throughout the development of this book — and the thirty years of our life together — our beloved daughter, Yunhee, has shared her experience of being a transracially adopted Korean American.
I am also enormously indebted to those who provided expert and essential feedback on the final draft (a number of whom can’t be named for fear of difficulties if they return to the DPRK): A, an international observer of North Korean affairs who travels frequently to the DPRK; D, a foreign resident of Pyongyang, for detailed information about city life; SJK, who taught English in Pyongyang, for a Korean American perspective on North Korea; David McCann, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature, Harvard University, who has traveled to the DPRK four times and lectured there; and Seongmin Lee and J, both of whom were born and raised in North Korea and escaped as young adults. These readers, as well as an expert on Korean transracial adoption, corrected many mistakes and mis-impressions and challenged me to go deeper into the material. Any remaining errors of fact or interpretation are my own.
Drawing on all of these sources, I have attempted to present the realities of life in current-day North Korea as accurately as possible based on the present available information. (By the time this book is in print, some of what I have written may already be outdated.) But I have also made a few decisions in service of my story. For instance, the Arirang Mass Games have not been held since 2013, but I included a performance here, because the scale, organization, and presentation of the event is a uniquely and definitively North Korean phenomenon. It’s possible to trace Mia and Simon’s entire journey as I plotted it on Google Earth, but I did add the stairs down which they escape at Mangyongdae, and the park along the river in Sinuiju.
I met one of the most important influences on this book in 2010, at the invitation of my friend Yoo Myung Ja. She introduced me to Professor Kim Hyun Sik, formerly one of North Korea’s foremost educators, and the personal Russian tutor to the teenaged Kim Jong-il. In 1991, while working in Moscow, Professor Kim was approached by a South Korean agent with the astonishing news that his sister, whom he hadn’t seen since the Korean War and had long thought dead, was alive and waiting to meet him. A double agent reported their reunion to the DPRK, and Kim was forced to make the excruciating decision between returning home to face certain death, or defecting, knowing his entire family in North Korea would be killed. He spent a number of years in South Korea before moving to the US, where he served as a research professor at George Mason University. (You can read Professor Kim’s account of his years in North Korea, the circumstances of his defection, and his life since in this article: http://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/forgiveness/forgiving-kim-jong-il.)
Throughout the hours of our conversation over several days, Professor Kim, a gentle, soft-spoken man, was often in tears recalling the struggles of his former countrymen. He was the first North Korean defector I’d ever met, and he told me I was the first white American with whom he’d had such a personal encounter. “They told me you were my enemy,” he said. I shared my book idea with him and asked what he would hope to see a novel about his homeland accomplish. “To create empathy for the North Korean people,” he said. In the course of writing In the Shadow of the Sun, this has become my hope too.
As I complete this book, my research has also led to questions about ways in which I, as an American, might bear some responsibility, based on the past and present actions of my government, for the separation of the Korean people and for current conditions in North Korea. I long to know more, and for the heartache and pain of the division to end. If you’d also like to know more and perhaps get involved, there are many organizations dedicated to making a difference in the lives of suffering North Koreans:
Free North Korea Radio, staffed by North Korean defectors: http://www.fnkradio.com
Liberty in North Korea (LiNK): http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/
North Korea Freedom Coalition: http://www.nkfreedom.org/index.aspx; “Ways You Can Get Involved”: http://www.nkfreedom.org/Get-Involved/Ways-You-Can-Get-Involved.aspx
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) DPRK Country Programme: http://www.unicef.org/dprk/
Creating a novel is like assembling an intricate mosaic, with fragments collected or gifted from many sources. This stone, that jewel, this shell, that bead — each piece is essential to building the patterns, bit by bit, that eventually form the whole. There are so many people and communities to whom I am deeply grateful for the assistance, information, inspiration, and support that made the creation of In the Shadow of the Sun possible. (These are the names that come to mind; thanks also to those I’ll remember after this goes to print.)
This book is rooted in love for the people of Korea — my people — as a response to the friends, colleagues, and extended family members who welcomed my parents and their four children into their lives, their culture, and their hearts, over the twenty years that South Korea was our home, and far beyond.
Thank you to the book community of Maine, New England, and beyond: in particular, my buddies Rosie Benson, Joan Chamberlain, Deb Eaton, Kevin Hawkes, Jennifer Jacobson, Joan McCarthy, David Neufeld, Pat Spalding, Maria Testa, and other members of the Maine House of Peers retreats, where I began to learn how to write a novel, and especially the incomparable Emily Herman, whose “Writer’s Toolbox” templates were founda
tional in structuring and shaping the narrative and whose early reading of the manuscript provided crucial feedback; the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for its invaluable support throughout my career, and all the leaders of the NESCBWI conference workshops I attended; the founders of National Novel Writing Month and participants in NaNoWriMo 2008, which I “won” by completing my first draft of this manuscript (51,000-plus words); Mitali Perkins, who introduced me to my agent; the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance; Peaks Island librarians Priscilla Webster and Rose Ann Walsh, who stoked my research with all those inter-library loan books; Francisco X. Stork, marvelous writer and teacher, and Bethany Hegedus, who hosted him at the Writing Barn; and my fabulous critique group partners, Liza Kleinman and Sarah Thomson.
Thank you to friends and neighbors, in particular Yvonne Torstensson, college buddy who became my B&B host (over 36 years) for NYC trips to visit publishers; envisioning partners Ronda Dale and Nancy 3. Hoffman; Steve Schuit for the moment-by-moment account of his DPRK tour; and the extraordinary community of Peaks Island, Maine.
Thank you to the Korean American community: in particular, visionary and booster extraordinaire Yoo Myung Ja; Reverend Peter Yoon, for his video of North Korea; soul mate Hyaekyung Jo and the Camp Sejong family; the dynamic trio, Dr. Agnes Ahn (where’s our next adventure?), Sheila Jaung, and MinJeong Kim of the Korea Studies Program, University of Massachusetts-Lowell; Professor Kim Hyun Sik, for the profound inspiration of his life, his generosity and grace, and his wife, Kim Hyun Ja, who translated for him; and HJ Lee of Korean American Story and Sam Yoon and John Kim of the Council of Korean Americans, for their work and for invaluable assistance in locating the expert beta readers listed in the Author’s Note.
Thank you as well to my American readers for their generosity and helpful feedback: Emily Herman, Yunhee O’Brien Keough, Perry O’Brien, Jean Sibley, Frances Taylor, and Tami Charles.
Thank you to my book-making team, about each of whom I could gush endlessly: my first and second agents, both of Andrea Brown Literary Agency — the wise and wonderful Laura Rennert, whose enthusiasm made me believe this could happen, and the brilliant and delightful Lara Perkins, whose editorial guidance gave me the support to make it happen; my publicist and adored friend, the inestimable Kirsten Cappy of Curious City; and the crew at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic — Cheryl Klein, the editor of my dreams; her assistant, Weslie Turner; Carol Ly, book designer; and my publicist.
And thank you to my beloved immediate and extended family, in particular those who’ve been with me for every step of this ten-year journey: our daughter Yunhee and son Perry, who listened, read, helped me think, and provided so many kinds of assistance; my husband, O.B., my thesaurus, encyclopedia, plot and logic adviser, and crucial support system, always assuming I will succeed, at this and anything; my mother, Jean Butler Sibley, who is always interested in and supportive of everything I do and who first sparked in me the love of books; and in memory, my father, Dr. John R. Sibley, whose love, vision, and example will always inspire and guide me.
Anne Sibley O’Brien was raised bilingual and bicultural in Seoul, Daegu, and Geoje Island, South Korea, as the daughter of medical missionaries. She has written and/or illustrated thirty-five picture books and is a frequent speaker in classrooms across the country and in international schools around the world. In the Shadow of the Sun is her first novel. She lives on Peaks Island in Maine. She can be found on the web at her website, www.annesibleyobrien.com; her blogs, Coloring Between the Lines, at www.coloringbetweenthelines.com and www.intheshadowofthesunbook.com; and on Twitter at @AnneSbleyOBrien.
This book was edited by Cheryl Klein and designed by Carol Ly. The text was set in Janson Text LT Std. The book was printed and bound at Command Web in Jefferson City, Missouri. The production was supervised by Rachel Gluckstern, and manufacturing was supervised by Angelique Browne.
Copyright © 2017 by Anne Sibley O’Brien
All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O’Brien, Anne Sibley, author.
Title: In the shadow of the sun / by Anne Sibley O’Brien.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2017. | Summary: Twelve-year-old Mia is on a five-day tour of North Korea with her older brother, Simon, and their father, Mark, an food aide worker, but she is scared because her father keeps sneaking off at night, and terrified that her brother’s sullen, rebellious behavior (which has absolutely nothing to do with the Koreans) is going to get them in trouble—and things get much worse when she is pulled into a deadly political game that seeks to expose North Korean atrocities, and her father is arrested.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016032888 | ISBN 9780545905749 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Brothers and sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Father and child—Juvenile fiction. | Tourists—Korea (North)—Juvenile fiction. | Secrecy—Juvenile fiction. | Conspiracies—Korea (North)—Juvenile fiction. | Korea (North)—Politics and government—2011—Juvenile fiction. | Korea (North)—Social conditions—21st century—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Father and child—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Conspiracies—Fiction. | Korea (North)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.O1267 In 2017 | DDC 813.54 [Fic] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032888
First edition, July 2017
Photos ©: cover barbed wire: chronicler101/iStockphoto; cover texture: STILLFX/Shutterstock, Inc.; x: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock, Inc.; xi top: Goddard_Photography/iStockphoto; xi bottom: Viktoria Gaman/Shutterstock, Inc.; xii top: btrenkel/iStockphoto; xii bottom: Reuters/Alamy Images; xiii: Attila Jandi/Shutterstock, Inc.; xiv: Ng Han Guan/AP Images.
Map by Jim McMahon
e-ISBN 978-0-545-90576-3
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