Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn't speak for themselves.

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

"A name isn't a person." Ga said. "Don't ever remember someone by their name. To keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart. Then, no matter where you are, they're always with you because they're a part of you."