As someone who has read books about Cuba and Puerto Rico written by people from the U.S., I was hesitant to pick this one up. Would Jeppensen be too judgmental about the culture because he was seeing it with Western eyes? The answer is yes, at times he is, but I could look beyond that fact because his book is much more than just a travelogue.

As I prepare for entry into the foreign service, I am making it a priority to read about other cultures. I found this to be fascinating overview of life in North Korea.

Enjoyed the author's description of his time in North Korea, Having travelled there myself, his impressions were right on target. An excellent insight to this closed off nation.

This isn't good for people who have already read a ton about North Korea.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC.

One topic that I never cease to be fascinated by is the story of North Korea. That a nation exists in such turmoil during the modern times that we live in continues to baffle me. I have read quite a few books on the subject, from histories of the nation, to fiction that uses North Korea as a backdrop, to first-hand accounts of defectors and survivors.

See You Again In Pyongyang by Travis Jeppesen took a completely different approach and one that I absolutely appreciated. Jeppesen, a seasoned writer and world traveler, also became interested in the secluded nation and arranged a series of trips to explore the country. This book covers his most recent journey and provides insight that I had not previously encountered in other texts.

Jeppesen does his best to provide an unbiased (or as much as possible) account of experiences. He presents situations and North Korean responses as they happened and makes a clear attempt to contextualize them. Many tales from North Korea emphasize the horrors of the country. Jeppesen’s accounts put daily life in North Korea on full display, and while no free passes are given for the atrocities that have taken place, he tries to present facts and look objectively into why or how things have transpired the way they have. For me, the result is a book that insightfully shows the people he met daily as actual people, humanizing the experience, while the constructs that these people are forced to live in show themselves as inhumane.

Jeppesen’s experience was unique since he was allowed a prolonged stay in the country to study Korean. As a student, not just a tourist, he and his small group were afforded access to more places and activities than the standard tourist would get to see. His descriptions of places show the glimmers of beauty that the country has: mountain vistas, pristine beaches, and a people that mean well but aren’t necessarily allowed to show it. But he also demonstrates the sad reality of the people: arriving at hotels where there is no food to be had, the fear of his tour guide when she loses a USB drive and worries that she may be punished, the difficulties of travel on roads with poor infrastructure. And of course, everything is monitored. His hotel is most likely bugged. His Korean Language teacher cannot speak freely with him. His guides watch their every move. The detail with which Jeppesen writes about all of these experiences was incredible. He was constantly restricted when it came to photography, but his descriptions of buildings, museums, people, and the countryside made the country come to life more vividly than in any other book I have read on the topic.

Another unique aspect of the book is how Jeppesen structured his story within the context of history and current events. Rather than only tell the story of his month in the country, he interrupts himself to explain aspects of history that enhance the topic he is discussing. His deep dives into the creation of the country, the rise to power of the dictatorship, and insight into the Juche Idea are all approachable, concise, and truly enhanced my reading (even though I have read other histories of the country). As his trip was recent, he makes sure to contextualize the potential danger he found himself in as the only American in the group - in a country that hates America - just shortly after American student Otto Warmbier had been arrested within North Korea and detained.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the book was how Jeppesen explains the impact of the lengthy visit on his own psyche. After weeks of being watched and herded around, coupled with the stress of having to be mindful of every action and word in order to avoid offending anyone and being arrested, Jeppesen detailed his struggles. He experienced exhaustion and physical ailments from the mental strain. He came to see (albeit in short form) how the constant brainwashing, the playing of music to condition people, and the rigidity of life can restrict your personal thinking. His experience and presentation of the people around him - his tour guides and fellow classmates/tourists - creates a feeling of empathy for everyone involved. Jeppesen shows that you don’t have to agree with the country, its leadership, or its policies to develop an understand and sympathy for the people who live there - who more or less have no say in their lives from the moment they are born, who (in some cases) know that they are part of a national charade but have no opportunity to speak up. One can empathize without condoning a dictatorship.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with interest in North Korea or in travel writing. Jeppesen is a master of description and brings a fresh perspective on a country that we get so few new details about.

3.5 stars

Although North Korea is a difficult place to visit—especially for anyone holding a U.S. passport—there are a good number of newspaper and magazine articles that recount the authors’ short trips to the “Hermit Kingdom.” I’ve read a lot of those articles, and after a while they all blur together: when all of the authors are going on near-identical package tours, highly scripted and closely monitored by North Korean authorities, it’s difficult to say anything new or surprising. There are some changes over time, particularly since Kim Jong Un has permitted very slight economic liberalization and a new class of Pyongyang nouveau riche has emerged, but most tourists go to the same places and are told the same stories.

Travis Jeppesen, an American writer who lives in Berlin, made several of those short visits to the DPRK starting in 2012 before signing up for a month-long study tour, one of the new opportunities now available under Kim Jong Un. In See You Again in Pyongyang, Jeppesen describes the four weeks he spent in North Korea learning Korean during the summer of 2016, interspersing the narrative of that month with anecdotes from his previous trips to the country, as well as short explanations of Korean history from pre-modern times to the present.

Since he was in the DPRK for a longer period of time than most Western tourists, Jeppesen sees more of the country and has more of a chance to deepen his relationships with the North Korean minders assigned to watch over his small group. As he admits toward the end of his story, though, Jeppesen can’t really claim to “know” North Korea, and while he has come to think of his language teachers and minders as “friends,” they aren’t, really. See You Again in Pyongyang is more fleshed-out than most North Korean travelogues, but Jeppesen is still constrained in his movements and unable to have any sort of free exchange with the people he encounters along the way.

Though he sometimes slips into making over-stated claims about what it’s like to live in North Korea, for the most part Jeppesen is aware of how limited his understanding of the country and its people is, and he sticks to telling stories about his language classes and the tours he and his two fellow students take. Jeppesen’s tone toward the North Koreans he encounters is respectful and sympathetic; he tries to be conscious of his status as a guest in their country and doesn’t attempt to “teach” them that their system is wrong. The one aspect of the book’s style that I quickly tired of is Jeppesen’s fondness for sentence fragments. We all have our writing tics and quirks, of course, but this one feels like an author trying too hard to sound profound.

Jeppesen finished his manuscript before the 2018 roller-coaster of U.S.-DPRK relations got underway, so his epilogue is pessimistic about the prospects for improved ties between the two countries. With a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un getting underway in Singapore as I write this review, we might soon see changes that Jeppesen didn’t anticipate when he was working on this book. And if more Americans are soon able to visit North Korea, more books like See You Again in Pyongyang will probably appear on bookstores’ shelves in the next few years.

Travis Jeppesen is an American writer and artist, involved mainly in critical writing on art and film. In 2012, he made his first trip to North Korea, and subsequently made four more trips to the country, eventually enrolling in a Korean language course at Kim Hyong Jik University in Pyongyang – apparently the first American ever to study in North Korea. These experiences led to his recently published memoir, See You Again in Pyongyang. The book is rooted in Jeppesen’s trip to study Korean, with the North Korean guides and handlers created as composites of people he met there (something other writers on North Korea have done, as well, in order to protect those they’ve been in contact with – and Jeppesen is quite transparent about his methods and the limitations of his experience, given the nature of travel in the notoriously controlled environment of North Korea).

Jeppesen describes the experience of travelling in North Korea like being on a roller coaster; one experiences a whole range of emotions – amusement, charm, intrigue, disgust, terror – sometimes individually, sometimes together.

I appreciated the attempt to provide a historical framework in order to better understand the division between North and South Korea – and given recent events on the Korean peninsula, the history lesson is, perhaps, timely and important, though it does mean that, in parts, Jeppesen’s book is already a little bit out of date, certainly not something anyone could have predicted even a few months ago (Jeppesen notes, in a chapter on reconciliation and reunification, that no progress had been made as of the time the book was written on South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s willingness to re-open the process, something that has changed at almost lightning speed in recent weeks).

I also found it curious why Jeppesen would want to go to North Korea to learn Korean, especially when the popularity of K-pop and K-dramas have generated an interest in Korean language learning and an explosion of courses and materials with which to learn. And, especially when there is an acknowledged divide between the Korean spoken in the DPRK and that spoken in the ROK – so much so that there was even commentary during the recent summit between leaders Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un, with people noting that Kim was speaking in an almost Seoul-like accent. Jeppesen, to his credit, notes the divide in language that developed after the division of the peninsula. And his descriptions of his first attempts at learning Chosungul (what Hangul is called in the North) connected with me, as I’ve just begun a Korean language course myself. Both Jeppesen’s course and my own start in the same way: with a description of Chosungul/Hangul and its history, and with the memorization of its characters – first vowels, then consonants. Jeppesen notes the assertion made by King Sejong (who introduced the script in 1443) that “a clever person could master it in one hour, an idiot in ten days.” At the end of his first day, Jeppesen notes that his head is “spinning with vowels”, a feeling I could totally connect with.

Of most interest to me, however, was Jeppesen’s description of his visit to the Korean Art Gallery (which he has visited a number of times), and his explanations of “Chosonhwa”, a painting style particular to North Korea. Chosonhwa – literally “Chosun painting” – combines tradtional Korean materials such as ink and rice paper, often with a minimal use of colour, to express contemporary subjects that reflect North Korean socialist ideals. Jeppesen notes, too, the role that the arts have played in the spread of propoganda and the development of a cult of personality, most particularly under the leadership of Kim Jong-il (father to the present day leader Kim Jong-un). Jeppesen also discusses the role of public art – posters, murals and mosaics – in contributing to the expression of socialist realism in ways particular to North Korea, which Jeppesen dubs “Norkorealism”.

But Jeppesen goes beyond this, exploring the idea of what it actually means to be an artist under this system, and how art with such specific purpose and value is created under a system that stands in contrast to artistic expression and working styles elsewhere in the world. Artistic talent, Jeppesen suggests, is one of the few ways someone might rise above their status in the songbun system – the socio-political status system that largely determines one’s fate – where they will live, what job they will have, amongst other things — from their birth.

Equally interesting, to me, is Jeppesen’s exploration of North Korean pop music, as exemplified by Moranbong Band, an all-girl group handpicked by Kim Jong-un that made its debut in 2012 with their distinctive style of pop, rock and synth fusion. Again, this is music as state propaganda, and stands in distinct contrast to South Korean K-pop (also used, until very recently, as a propaganda tool by the ROK). Music, it seems, is a catchy way of sending all sorts of messages.

See You Again in Pyongyang might not, on many fronts, break new ground as a narrative of travel to North Korea, but it is an interesting read (supported by research – the bibliography at the end is worth further exploration). It’s at its best when Jeppesen sticks to his strengths as a writer and art critic, rather than ticking off many of the same boxes other first-person accounts of travel to the DPRK do. Jeppesen notes that, perhaps, the stories of North Korea and its people are not, in the end, his, or any other foreign visitor’s to tell, and he readily accepts that his “composite” character accounts are just speculation on his part. Perhaps, for greater insight into the lives of North Koreans, we are better served by the writings of defectors, and more recently, by Bandi’s The Accusation to gain some insight into those stories.

Another interesting and timely look into a country most outsiders know little about. Very informative but not dry. I felt like some chapters could have been fleshed out a bit.

This was a timely book looking at the everyday life of North Koreans. At first I thought the author was crazy for wanting to spend a month in North Korea to immerse himself in a language program. After I finished I still think he was crazy to go, but It did give me a brief look into the lives of people there.

It was a little dry in spots, but overall it was pretty interesting!

‘Where you are bound to spend each day on a roller coaster, alternately charmed, intrigued, disgusted, amused, terrified—often all of these at once.’

American Travis Jeppesen spent the summer of 2016 studying Korean in Pyongong, North Korea, and the result is this book, See You Again in Pyongyang. Jeppesen seamlessly cuts his narrative with snatches of the history and culture of the Hermit Kingdom in a book that is both immediate and reaching in scope.

He gleams as much reality as possible from his minders and the many ‘ordinary’ people he meets in his stay. Joining him are a couple other students (who may or may not be obsessed with the DPRK). His mornings are spent at a local university studying vowels, consonants, pronunciation, and vocabulary (the only student in the class), and the afternoons and weekends are reserved for trips to tourist sites in and around the capital city. From art to literature to languages to economics and business endeavors, the author serves as the reader’s guide through a country that few have spent any time in.

Jeppesen’s writing definitely has some bite. His Author’s Note immediately deals with the question of ‘torture porn’ and other issues that may come up in traveling to countries like North Korea. He anticipates his audience and addresses their questions, and teeters between defending the common citizen and revealing truths of the regime.

Overall, Jeppesen’s See You Again in Pongyong is a timely travelogue with a distinct edge. He comments and editorializes on several timely issues facing DPRK including the Otto Warmbier incident, the current US administration’s diplomatic involvement, and the International treatment of defectors. The author tries to lay out the complexities, the truths, the half truths, and the rumors, in an effort to make the reader contemplate where and how we get our information.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Books, and Travis Jeppesen for the advanced copy for review.

See You Again in Pyongyang is one of those books that doesn't fully affect while you are reading it. You find yourself later, however, thinking about the people the author has met in the country, and about what reality is truth. For instance, defectors are often told to cry real tears when telling their stories, or people will think the stories are fake. They finally made it out of their own personal hell, then they are asked to put on a show for the rest of the world, going from one false reality to another. Do any of us REALLY know what's real in our world and what is not? Most of the time we think we know until a book like this comes along and makes us take a good hard look at it. I was a bit disappointed in the book only because I had been hoping for more stories of the people met along the way during the author's journey and less of the history, but it is an excellent merging of a history book and travel guide. I did find it a bit long, but probably because it was a different book than the one I thought I would be reading. As I said however, it is something that continues to niggle at your mind as you go about your life, seemingly a world away from North Korea.