The "black hole" of Asia and its estranged brother to the south are revealed in books from a political refugee, an American mountain man and a war veteran.

The DMZ runs across the Korean peninsula like a barbed wire belt, hiding an estimated 3 million land mines. Loosely formed during the waning days of the Korean War, the dividing line was made official during the 1953 armistice. The wire sprung up like kudzu vines and rifles haven't been put down since. Over time, the democratic capitalistic South has prospered, while the North limps along as a pariah nation led by a dictator's son who runs his fiefdom like an open-air prison.

North Korea is called the black hole of Asia. So little is known about the country that the intelligence community relies on satellite imagery and defector debriefings to create a picture of what is happening there, the world's most reclusive and repressed police state. One cannot expect much fine literature to squeak out of its closed borders, especially when famines waste the population every few years.

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Copyright © James Card.