Flower Swallows Sing: A North Korean Memoir in Verse

Poems from a North Korean defector
While Western media usually focuses its attention on the enigmatic dictator of North Korea, Flower Swallows Sing is a North Korean memoir in verse that focuses on the humanity and agency of the North Korean people. This collection of poems by Imu Baek is a powerful portrayal of everyday life for the citizens trying to endure North Korea's oppressive regime. How do they survive starvation, homelessness and imprisonment? How do they escape and live in exile in another country? While much of the literature translated from North Korea emanates from the elite class, this work offers a unique insight into the collective suffering of North Korea's poorest and most vulnerable populations. Parents and grandparents sacrifice themselves so the children can eat. Children wander the streets as orphans.

Writing pseudonymously as a defector living in exile, Baek's voice has emerged on the world stage as a reverberating condemnation of the violence inflicted upon North Korea's most defenseless population. This translation is an effort to make Baek's story available to English readers and hopefully, in doing so, continues her project of denouncing the violence of fascism in all of its forms.