If one reads accounts by survivors of the Soviet gulag, as well as its earnest imitations in China and North Korea, the similarities are impossible to miss. Mr. Kang's account is special for the extreme rarity of books in English about North Korea's gulag, for the fact that Mr. Kang entered Yodok when he was a child and remained there until early adulthood, and for the fact that North Korea's labor camps are very much still in active operation.One very interesting facet of Mr. Kang's memoir is his description of his growing interest in Christianity. Ta Chen's recent 3-volume memoirs (Sounds of the River, Colors of the Mountain, and China's Son) have rather a similar tone: the brutality of the Chinese and North Korean Communist regimes made the Christian emphasis on brotherly love powerfully appealing to some of the young people who grew up at close range to the workings of communist governments.Well worth reading!