Working with the disabled in North Korea – NKNews Podcast Ep. 192
North Korea News Podcast
Society & Culture
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Humanitarian professional and author Carla Vitantonio joins the NK News podcast this week to discuss her four years in North Korea working with and for people with disabilities, the impact of international sanctions on humanitarian aid and leaving a diplomatic job to work at a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Vitantonio was a country director and project coordinator in North Korea for Handicap International (now Humanity & Inclusion) from Dec. 2013 to Aug. 2016, and she now serves as the country representative in Cuba for CARE.
Vitantonio is the author of two Italian-language books: “Pyongyang Blues” and “Myanmar Swing.” An English-language excerpt from “Pyongyang Blues” about the Arirang Mass Games, mentioned in the interview, is available here.
About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jacco Zwetsloot exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.
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Pyongyang blues Paperback – 25 September 2019
Italian edition by Carla Vitantonio (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 107 ratings
Part of: Asia (2 books)
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What happens when you respond to the precariousness of the capitalist system by finding work in one of the last remaining communist realities? At stake are one's own vision of the world, love and friendship relationships, the search for stability and dignity. In her early thirties and equipped with a master's degree in diplomacy, Carla Vitantonio landed for the first time at Pyongyang airport with a job as an Italian teacher. She did not know that her expat experience in the North Korean dictatorship would last four years and that right there, becoming head of mission of an NGO, she would get to know the world of international cooperation in depth. Through existential and relational explorations, in an ordinary and extraordinary newspaper, her reading of North Korea offers an unprecedented and fresh look, which enriches the usual representation of the monolithic regime par excellence with nuances and subtleties. As in a Monopoly governed by random rules, unforeseen events and probabilities, "Pyongyang blues" follows the rhythm and the endless cyclicality of the seasons, natural and diplomatic, narrating a context in which life itself is a political act.
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285 pages
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Italian
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ADD Publisher
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Publisher : ADD Editore (25 September 2019)
Language : Italian
Paperback : 285 pages
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
SD
4.0 out of 5 stars For a journey of a few hours through the melancholy of PyongyangReviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 May 2020
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Colloquially written book that I read in half a day. It made me want to go and visit distant and exotic places like North Korea. Sometimes stories are suggested that are not then processed. But cam a book that I read in one breath!
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Today Vegas
5.0 out of 5 stars Smooth and interestingReviewed in Italy on 3 May 2022
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What happens when you respond to the precariousness of the capitalist system by finding work in one of the last remaining communist realities? At stake are one's own vision of the world, love and friendship relationships, the search for stability and dignity. In her early thirties and equipped with a master's degree in diplomacy, Carla Vitantonio landed for the first time at Pyongyang airport with a job as an Italian teacher. She did not know that her expat experience in the North Korean dictatorship would last four years and that right there, becoming head of mission of an NGO, she would get to know the world of international cooperation in depth. Through existential and relational explorations, in an ordinary and extraordinary newspaper, her reading of North Korea offers an unprecedented and fresh look, which enriches the usual representation of the monolithic regime par excellence with nuances and subtleties. As in a Monopoly governed by random rules, unforeseen events and probabilities, "Pyongyang blues" follows the rhythm and the endless cyclicality of the seasons, natural and diplomatic, narrating a context in which life itself is a political act.
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🌟🌟 IRENE 👩🏼 🌟🌟
4.0 out of 5 stars Simple and interestingReviewed in Italy on 21 March 2020
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Simple, smooth and pleasant, one of the few books in Italian that bring back stories of life in North Korea. In some passages, especially at the end, it is a bit "nebulous", in the sense that to understand it the reader must have a basic knowledge of that country and its main places. Interesting for anyone attracted to this dramatically unique and surreal country.
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rasputin
5.0 out of 5 stars A revelation!Reviewed in Italy on 5 February 2022
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If she hadn't written this extraordinary and very personal reportage, Carla Vitantonio would be an anonymous and forgotten official of one of the many mysterious NGOs around the world. The book is undoubtedly a high-level work for the originality of the writing, for the ease of reading and for how the reader can walk around Pyongyang with her, experiencing her fears, her perplexities, her fears and innocent unconsciousness of her.
Carla makes us laugh, makes us think, makes us understand and makes us think. The author, however, in my opinion, she is not very objective, she makes her ideological experience prevail over the real situation in North Korea. She is often conciliatory and tolerant of very severe coercive forms and in the course of reading she feels her "sympathy" for this form of North Korean socialism. The undisputed merit of her therefore remains in the writing, which I consider very captivating. Five well-deserved stars and an appointment in Myanmar.
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franpas
4.0 out of 5 stars interesting analysis ...Reviewed in Italy on 27 January 2020
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... especially because it is completely devoid of prejudices, of a world apart, that of international cooperation, in an alien world, the Korea of the Kim. The estrangement, the sensations experienced and the successful attempt to identify oneself without preconceptions in those of the premises are very well described. Advisable
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Pyongyang Blues
Carla Vitantonio
Four years in North Korea: the extraordinary story of a young European woman struggling with everyday life in the monolithic regime par excellence
What happens when a young woman responds to the precariousness of the capitalist system by finding work in one of the last remaining communist realities? At stake is your own world view, love and friendship, the search for stability and dignity.
Equipped with a master’s degree in diplomacy and previous experience in South Korea, Carla Vitantonio presents North Korea with a new look, which enriches the usual representation of the monolithic regime par excellence with nuances and subtleties.
Her point of view, fresh and ironic, combines two main reflections: one on an ideological model that survived a vanished era, and the generational one on the model of working flexibility that the capitalist system imposed.
Carla Vitantonio first landed at Pyongyang airport with a job as an Italian teacher, she was in her early thirties and did not know that she would spend four years of her life in North Korea, in the meantime becoming head of mission of an international NGO .
Following the rhythm of the seasons and the cyclical nature of nature, the author proposes a parallel with the obsessively repetitive trends of the national political phases of calm and domestic and international tension.
A memoir on her experience of life and work in a country that through these stories turns out to be a little less alien in the end. No novel, travel report or in-depth essay has so far succeeded in the venture. Internazionale, Italy
Carla Vitantonio was often the only Italian in North Korean territory, her testimony is one of the very few really credible Il Foglio, Italy
A memoir that takes us with irony and yearning to places where press reports or geopolitical analyses can never go Corriere della sera, Italy
A totally unprecedented account from inside the regime Left, Italy
Vitantonio has succeeded in transforming fear of failure into an extraordinary adventure. The author’s conversational, chatty style glues you to the pages Il Sole 24, Italy
Really interesting take on a much- misunderstood country. Mike Gifford, former diplomat for the UK in North Korea
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Pyongyang blues
Carla Vitantonio
3.88
155 ratings22 reviews
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Eleonora
52 reviews
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January 18, 2022
Recommended reading! The book is bubbly and at times ironic but manages to perfectly convey the experience of being a foreigner in North Korea. Full of contradictions, very interesting and with a clear and intriguing style
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that's right
9 reviews
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January 5, 2021
If you could, I would rate this book 3.5
I also work in international cooperation, I have visited North Korea and lived for a long time in China, so the topic that the book anticipated interests me very much. The writing style is very pleasant, easy, precise, fluent. The observer is attentive and witty, honest with herself and with her readers, prepared and stimulating in the questions she poses. Overall, the book was easy to read.
That said, it seemed to me a bit of a wasted opportunity: I would have gladly done without the story of many personal moments of leisure and excess (see sexual adventures, descriptions of trips outside Korea) - which I found little or nothing inherent to the true theme of the book - and appreciated more "insights" into the world of international cooperation in North Korea, in everyday life with daily colleagues, to the extent that security and confidentiality assessments allow it and in the awareness of the limitations that the living and working there entails. Precisely for these limitations, for the peculiarities of the North Korean context, for the rare opportunity to visit and, even more so, work in the country, all the more for a long period of time like the one the author spent there, I think his experience is a rare gem. Pearl that, in my view, the text has partially disregarded, often misleading the argument on the story of little relevant aspects and leaving out others that are more pertinent and touched only en passant. Maybe an opportunity for a second part?
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Martina
63 reviews
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May 30, 2020
I've been wanting to know more about North Korea for a while. A country perhaps different from any other in the world, which until very recently had managed to isolate itself almost completely, especially from capitalist nations, and consequently also largely from progress. For this reason it appears to us external observers as a world that is difficult to understand, and this book has on its side the fact that it is written by an Italian who lived in Pyongyang, and therefore offers us a decoding of North Korea from the point of view of someone who is part of our own culture. But soon in the book it emerges that North Korea is so isolationist that it tries as much as possible to keep its citizens away from the few foreigners present in the country.
So the main topic of this book is what it means to be a foreigner in North Korea, and you shouldn't expect an immersion into local life instead, which was probably what I initially expected. In any case, it remains a very interesting report that allows us to peek a bit into one of the most closed countries in the world.
One aspect that I certainly would have liked to have seen more in depth is that of the author's work as a cooperator for an NGO. Few words are spent on this topic, and I think a further study would have been very interesting.
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So92
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March 12, 2020
Discovering one of the darkest countries in the world, capable of maintaining almost total secrecy about itself through a policy of total control of everything that happens within its borders. Pyongyang Blues is the first-person account of a 35-year-old Italian who spent four years (from 2012 to 2016) in North Korea, initially working as an Italian teacher and then in an NGO. The first half of the book is very interesting, at times ironic and irreverent: it transpires the fact that the author does not write by profession, but the style is perfectly in line with the idea of the writer's personality that the reader gets by reading these pages. The second part - either because of the 'lack' of novelty, or because of a more personal approach than an exploration of the surrounding reality, now well known to the writer - it seemed to me less fluent and sometimes unnecessarily long, but summing up it is a different book than usual that opens at least a glimmer on a misunderstood and often misunderstood reality. Pyongyang Blues is a book that I highly recommend reading not only to fans of political discourse or Asia in general, but to all those who (like me) knew nothing about Korean reality and are ready to brush up their curiosity from under the hood. unspoken about North Korea.
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Anastasia
3 reviews
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October 28, 2019
I got excited, I laughed and I felt a feeling of nostalgia in thinking back to my 7 years living in a distant land, not North Korea but China. Same feelings described by Carla: same displeasure (which inevitably then leads to semi-indifference) to the umpteenth daily farewell to friends who were leaving, same frustration in not being understood, but also the same sense of fascination towards a people so different from mine . I lived in Beijing, Carla in Pyongyang but I understood exactly what she wanted to express. Beautiful, sincere, authentic story of her about the 4 years of her life in North Korea. Really recommended.
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Pao
325 reviews
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December 31, 2021
Read with the Books from the world group .
The parts on daily life in North Korea are interesting even if not well detailed while the parts related to the author's lifealcohol, drugs, and casual sex are downright boring when not annoying.
The impression is that it could have been an excellent book and instead it is a wasted opportunity due to the limitations of the author.
After reading, you want to read Pyongyang .
Read with the group Books from around the world .
Interesting the parts about everyday life in the North Korea, even if not very detailed but very boring and sometimes even annoying the parts about the author's lifealcohol, drug and casual sex.
The impression is that it could have been a great book but it's a wasted opportunity caused by the author's limits.
When the book is over you want to read Pyongyang.
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Abc
822 reviews
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June 4, 2022
I was very disappointed with this reading because I did not find what I was hoping for.
I imagined I could approach the world of North Korea and learn about some customs and traditions.
Instead, in the text I found very few references of this type, so much so that the author herself acknowledges, in the last pages of the book, that she did not understand anything about this country in which she lived for four years.
I honestly felt a little teased when I read that sentence because then I don't know what the hell drove her to write this blessed book.
I understand that North Korea is so armored for foreigners that it is almost impossible to get to know it even from the inside, but then it is not necessary to publish a book about it.
Among other things, the author does not even explain well what she went to do in Korea, another aspect that could have had some relevance. So really, apart from the humor with which certain situations are described, I have found very little of appreciation in this book.
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Legendbooks
184 reviews
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March 1, 2021
What about this book, which you can read to find out what it really is like to live in North Korea but also to do it with a smile. There are ways and ways of describing one of the least known places in the world, without denying the horror, but focusing attention on an everyday life that is foreign to our way of life. As Guy Delisle did in her time, Carla Vitantonio, with her Pyongyang Blues adds a new piece to understand a distant world that is changing, even if not with that evolutionary linearity that we recognize as normality.
Beautiful, this is one of the books that I would reread a million times
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Barbara
570 reviews
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June 6, 2021
"... Was the danger real? Or was it all calculated? I'll never know. But it's wonderful to feel survived. ..."
The story is very similar to a personal diary in which frustrations, anxieties, expectations, fears are noted. happy moments and others of pure paranoia of the years spent in the most unlikely of places on this planet, North Korea.
Much is told by the author but it seems to me little of the Korean reality beyond the most common "stereotypes", and as the author states towards the end of the book "Nothing, I didn't understand anything about this country ..." but perhaps this was that simple.
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Giacomo Dusina
144 reviews
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June 13, 2021
Interesting book to have a specific point of view on North Korea. The author does not venture into political and social analysis, but she observes and describes almost only her own experiences. Certainly much of what North Korea really is does not emerge, as foreigners are kept away from many aspects of North Korean life. However, there is a perception of a different world.
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Maria
174 reviews
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March 27, 2021
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An apron
264 reviews
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April 23, 2021
Captivating blues
Well written memoir, never banal considerations by Carla Vitantonio, who worked 4 years in North Korea. Interesting.
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