Quotes by Barbara Demick - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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The cadence of life is slower in North Korea.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
North Korea
Slower
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One death is a tragedy; a thousand is a statistic.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Thousand
Tragedy
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There was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Optimistic
Instinct
Natural
Survival
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People have crossed the Himalayas in flip-flops seeking a blessing from the Dalai Lama.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Blessing
Dalai
Lama
Seeking
Crossed
Dalai Lama
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As a reader, I've always been interested in dystopian novels like 'Nineteen Eighty-four'.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Dystopian
Nineteen
Reader
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Good reporting should have the same standard as in a courtroom - beyond a reasonable doubt.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Courtroom
Reasonable
Standard
Reporting
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The Uighurs are a Turkic people more closely related to Uzbeks and Kazakhs than to Chinese.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Chinese
Related
People More Than
Closely
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Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Hussein
Saddam
Saddam Hussein
Suggestive
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North Korea is probably the only country in the world deliberately kept out of the Internet.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
North Korea
Deliberately
Only Country
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North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Developed Country
Fallen
North Korea
Developed
North
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In 1991, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Post Office
Phone Call
Post
Telephone
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I agree with Kathi Zellweger that sanctions mostly punish the ordinary people who live at the edge of starvation.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Agree
Ordinary
Ordinary People
Sanctions
Starvation
People Live Who
Live People Who
Edge
Punish
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The anti-Japanese resistance was as familiar a theme in North Korean cinema as cowboys and Indians was in early Hollywood.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Cinema
Familiar
North Korean
Resistance
Cowboys
Indians
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By the mid-1990s, nearly everything in North Korea was worn out, broken, malfunctioning. The country had seen better days.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Broken
North Korea
Worn
Nearly
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Kim Jong Un came in as a fresh face, so I think there's a great disappointment that he's playing the same game as his father.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Disappointment
Un
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In the 1990s, the United States offered to help North Korea with its energy needs if it gave up its nuclear weapons programme.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
North Korea
Nuclear
Weapons
Energy Needs
Offered
Programme
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For a North Korean watcher, seeing 'The Interview' is like seeing an earnest endeavor reflected back through a freak-show mirror.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Earnest
Endeavor
North Korean
Interview
Reflected
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In 1995, the Chinese government picked a 6-year-old child to succeed the Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Buddhism
Chinese
Chinese Government
Lama
Succeed
Tibetan
Picked
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Over the years, so many exceptions and amendments were made to China's one-child policy that it was hard to pinpoint a moment to pronounce it dead.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Amendment
Exceptions
Pinpoint
Pronounce
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The scene that has raised the most objections in 'The Interview' is at the very end, when Kim's head dissolves into flames. To me, it feels gratuitous.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Feels
Flames
Objections
Raised
Scene
Gratuitous
Interview
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When North Koreans cross the border into China, they are stunned to learn that the Chinese can afford to eat rice daily, sometimes for three meals daily.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Chinese
Meals
Rice
Stunned
Afford
Border
Cross
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In 1949, Mao Tse-tung's Communists established the People's Republic of China, and the following year, his People's Liberation Army invaded central Tibet.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Army
Following
Liberation
Mao
Republic
Tibet
Established
Central
Communists
Invaded
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The North Korean landscape is strikingly beautiful in places. It could be said to resemble America's Pacific Northwest - but substantially drained of color.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Drained
Landscape
North Korean
Pacific
Resemble
Substantially
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China's one-child policy was born in 1980, after years of less severe measures to discourage births. The Communist Party promised that the policy would be temporary.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Communist
Communist Party
Severe
Temporary
Discourage
Measures
Promised
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Walking down the street with a portrait of the Dalai Lama will get one immediately arrested in most parts of China. Tiny medallions are routinely confiscated and destroyed.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Arrested
Dalai
Destroyed
Lama
Tiny
Dalai Lama
Immediately
Portrait
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If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Democratic
East
Lacking
Republic
Photographs
Curiously
Far East
Satellite
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The night sky in North Korea might be the most brilliant in northeast Asia, the only airspace spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert sand, and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Dust
Korea
Night
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Since 2009, 140 Tibetans have immolated themselves to protest Chinese policies that limit their freedom of movement, speech and religion, especially their right to venerate the Dalai Lama.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Chinese
Dalai
Lama
Protest
Speech
Dalai Lama
Limit
Policies
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By 2022, China is expected to cede the dubious distinction of being the world's most populous nation to India, according to the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Department
Distinction
Dubious
Nations
Population
United Nations
According
Affairs
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We see North Koreans as automatons, goose-steeping at parades, doing mass gymnastics with fixed smiles on their faces - but beneath all that, real life goes on with the same complexity of human emotion as anywhere else.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Complexity
Emotion
Faces
Fixed
Gymnastics
Life Goes On
Mass
Parades
Real Life
Anywhere Else
Beneath
Smiles
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The East Turkestan Islamic Movement, named for an old Uighur name for Xinjiang, is a shadowy group that operates largely out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and is devoted to expelling the Chinese Communist Party from northwestern China.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Afghanistan
Chinese
Communist
Communist Party
Devoted
Islamic
Northwestern
Pakistan
Named
Largely
Shadowy
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In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family's second child, a boy. She died during the procedure.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Birth
Fields
Officials
Family Mother Me
Chased
Family Me Mother
Five-Year-Old
Prevent
Procedure
Province
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North Korea faded to black in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had propped up its old Communist ally with cheap fuel oil, North Korea's creakily inefficient economy collapsed. Power stations rusted into ruin.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Collapse
Communist
Faded
Fuel
North Korea
Oil
Soviet
Soviet Union
Stations
Ally
Cheap
Early 1990S
Inefficient
Union
Propped
Ruin
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A South Korean teenager, 18-year-old male, is about five inches taller than his North Korean counterpart. And there are many soldiers who are only about 4'6". The height requirement is supposed to be 4'9". That's the size of my 12-year-old son.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Five
Height
Inches
North Korean
Size
Male
Counterpart
North
Soldiers
Supposed
Taller
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It's frightening to think about more sanctions. When I've met North Koreans in China, they've said to me, 'You have no idea how difficult our lives are. We live like dogs.' They wake up in the morning wondering what they're going to eat for dinner.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
China
Difficult
Frightening
No Idea
Our Lives
Said
Sanctions
Wake Up
Idea
Dogs
Met
North
Wake
Wondering
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One of the ways the North Korea regime has kept power is by keeping its people ignorant of the living standards in the outside world. That's the underlying lie that supports the regime - not that their country is 'normal' but that they are better off.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Better Off
Ignorant
North Korea
Outside World
Standards
Supports
Underlying
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In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Colour
Emanate
North Korea
Orange
Posters
Propaganda
Rays
Sun
Vivid
Yellow
Depicted
George
Images
Orwell
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Televisions and radios are locked on government frequencies - it is a serious crime to listen to a foreign broadcast. As a result, North Koreans think that they live in the best country in the world and that, as difficult as their lives may be, everybody else has it much worse.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Locked
Best Government World
Broadcast
Everybody Else
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North Korea's whole idea is to create a crisis to solve a crisis. They're so poor and they're so desperate that they realize that this bombastic rhetoric can drive the South Korean stock market down and get the U.S. in a tizzy. And it's a game they've been playing for many, many years.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Crisis
Desperate
Rhetoric
Stock
Stock Market
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North Korea, under its thirtysomething Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is no country for old men. The latest casualty in Kim's ongoing purge of the senior military command was the defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, who reportedly committed the classic old man's offense of falling asleep in a meeting.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Classic
Command
Committed
Defense
Military
North Korea
Offense
Senior
Supreme
Asleep
Casualty
Falling
Latest
Meeting
Minister
No Country
Old Men
Purge
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Gonpo Tso was born a princess. As a young woman, she dressed in fur-trimmed robes with fat ropes of coral beads strung around her neck. She lived in an adobe castle on the edge of the Tibetan plateau with a reception room large enough to accommodate the thousand Buddhist monks who once paid tribute to her father.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Accommodate
Beads
Born
Buddhist
Enough
Father
Paid
Princess
Reception
Thousand
Tibetan
Tribute
Young
Once
Fat
Around
Lived
Neck
Castle
Woman
Coral
Dressed
Edge
Her
Large
Monks
Room
Plateau
She
Strung
Young Woman
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A North Korean soldier would later recall a buddy who had been given an American-made nail clipper and was showing it off to his friends. The soldier clipped a few nails, admired the sharp, clean edges, and marveled at the mechanics of this simple item. Then he realized with a sinking heart: If North Korea couldn’t make such a fine nail clipper, how could it compete with American weapons?
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Heart
Korea
Simple
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North Korean defectors often find it hard to settle down. It is not easy for somebody who’s escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing where to live, what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning is tough enough for those of us accustomed to making choices; it can be utterly paralyzing for people who’ve had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives.
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Morning
Clothes
Country
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North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity. Who could possibly resist?
Barbara Demick / Journalist
Country
Korea
Song
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