I found it a good read and very balanced despite being for the most part a collection of accounts of former North Koreans that had defected to the South. I also liked that it took as a starting point the initial formation of North and South Korea at the end of WWII. The entire partition was purely as the result of drawing of battle lines between the USSR and the US. Koreans were treated as nothing but pawns. I would be fascinated to hear about your impressions of North Korea should that come about. Maybe you could write a book picking up where Demick left off. The book ends before the death of Kim Jong-il.