Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of my IdentityBy Monica MaciasDuckworth, 2023

There is a dearth of authentic narratives about life in contemporary North Korea. It remains among the world’s most closed countries. The scanty evidence we do have is based primarily on a mix of diplomatic reports, (not very representative) defector memories (invariably renumerated for sensationalism), and the sparse observations of rare visitors. Travel stories follow the DPRK’s spasmodic periods of socialist tourism, but naturally these tend to be partisan. Indeed, accounts from dictatorships are complex sources for IR students. The author knows South Korea well (having written an account of the UN Cemetery at Pusan) but served only a month in the DPRK assisting the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). From that experience, I would suggest that in contrast to most UN assignments involving fluid contact with local staff, service in DPRK is a little more akin to life as an astronaut. We might as well have been on the moon, for all the genuine contact we had with local North Koreans. All resources had to be provisioned by the agency, and save for some DPRK military officers minding us, we were the sole inhabitants of a hotel which, in winter, still had no heating and very little electricity. The contact we had with DPRK interlocuters was limited to staccato conversions on very basic issues of operational protocol.

My wordy introduction is part argument that while this recent book is an account of an elitist childhood from a person whose bizarre circumstances uniquely predispose her to the country, such narratives are rare. The paucity of first-hand accounts from the DPRK make these childhood recollections invaluable. Monica Macias was of the fold of two dictators. The daughter of assassinated President of Equatorial Guinea, she was sent in 1979 to the DPRK under the guardianship of Kim Il Sung. Her father was executed in a subsequent coup, and her mother was uncontactable for years. Residing at a military boarding school and then industrial university, her field of contact with grassroots North Korean society was narrow. Nevertheless, she retained an affection for its people, long after she had left. Given her late father’s close relationship with the Kims, she is far from an impartial witness. However, she writes with frankness about the country she got to know intimately. For all of these reasons, and with observations about the country being so rare, this memoir augments the comparative radio silence characterising our DPRK........

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