Life in North Korea, undoubtedly the most secretive state today, eludes many. Such little, besides what a few defectors now and then relate, is known to the outside world of the day to day life of its ordinary citizens. Hence, basing a novel primarily on the premise of this totalitarian regime was bound to be of great interest and at the same time open to criticism on whether a Western man, who has never visited the country, has the liberty to write about the trials and tribulations of young North Korean women with such authority.

A sculptor and musician, Brandon W. Jones’s debut novel, All Woman and Springtime, is the journey of two teenage friends, Gyong-ho and Il-sun, from living in an orphanage and working in a garment factory in Pyongyang, to being tricked into the sex trade and trafficked to Seoul and then further on to Seattle, United States. Spanning over a decade the book is written in three parts, each covering one phase of their continuing ordeal.

At the book’s commencement, Jones has gone in great depth, painstakingly describing the life of the two teenagers working in a garment factory under the terrifying watch of the demonic Foreman Hwang. Backtracking, the author also tells the tale of how each came to live in the orphanage. Gyong-ho or Gi, as she is usually referred to, belongs to an ordinary worker family. When she is eight, her entire family, including her old grandmother, are whisked away to a labour camp on the charge of failing “to properly maintain the portraits of the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, and his honourable son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il,” as reported by “a concerned citizen.”

Il-sun on the other hand is the daughter of a late war veteran. Not being able to bear never seeing her son, who disappears on account of expressing dissent for the regime, her mother passes away and with her Il-sun’s dreams of marrying well and continuing her till-then relatively comfortable lifestyle vanish. Still struggling with the loss of her mother and family status, she comes to live with Gi in the orphanage.

This narrative, even though too detailed at times, is quite gripping and draws the reader into the young women’s ensuing journey. The flight to South Korea, however, in relation to the ordeal of their daily life, is a little too easy and rather anticlimactic. Having said that, it can be understood as being vital to the continuity of the storyline.

And the chapters where the author introduces the protagonists to life in South Korea are quite amusing. Gi wonders, “It seemed a small miracle. Could food be so easy.” And: “where were the long grim faces and pleading, desperate eyes” in South Korea as had been told by the North Korean government propaganda machinery. Upon being introduced to what seemed to them like opulence in South Korea, she questions, “so far South Korea was full of contradictions.”

This leaves the reader wanting to know how much of the protagonists’ background portrayed is based on reality and how much is typical stereotyping and generalisation.

Where the first part of the story endears the reader to the two women, in the second part, when the focus quickly turns to the harrowing malice of human trafficking, the severity of the storyline overrides that emotion and the protagonists often seem to get lost in the narrative. It is here that the reader begins to feel an emotional detachment with the protagonists, taking the impression that they are merely fillers in the story because their emotions and personality changes are greatly rushed through in the ensuing storyline. The harrowing tale of their experiences in the sex trade and its several manifestations is gut-wrenching and very believable. The exploitation of Il-sun and Gi continues in South Korea as well as the United States, supposedly ‘free’ countries. It is only manifested differently. What is interesting to note is that upon completing the book, the reader begins to think that the kind of exploitation these women faced in North Korea was rather less severe than the sexual slavery in the outside world.

All Woman and Springtime is an important novel mainly because of its meaningful topic of human trafficking for the sex trade. Jones has chosen North Korea as the basis simply to give it an interesting, unwritten-before angle, which is rather brave. Otherwise, the women could have belonged to any country of the world and the rest of the story would have been the same. Because it really doesn’t matter which country victims of sex slavery belong to, their fate is almost identical.

There is an American undertone in certain situations throughout the book where the author is guilty of slipping-up and portraying nuances that are alien to his protagonists. He also continuously evades being propagandist and at times falls only slightly short of the accusation of stereotyping. Having said that, North Korean lifestyle and the women’s circumstances have been quite intelligently woven into the storyline, making the book a compelling read. And the criticism can be overlooked if the book is understood not as political writing but as a work of fiction.

All Woman and Springtime

(Novel)

By Brandon W. Jones

Algonquin Books, US

ISBN 1616200774

384pp.