Few outsiders have seen North Korea, in spite of the increasing international urgency to understand it. Perhaps for this reason, stories from the hermit kingdom hold a unique power over us. Like books about China written from behind the bamboo curtain, our only understanding of this “workers’ paradise” comes from state propaganda, and sensationalistic accounts from defectors—many of which can never be verified. But for all the accounts that go unchallenged, there are also books like the ones below, ones written by scholars and journalists working to shed light on the mysterious DPRK.

Lee Ambrozy