Book Review: Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom by Lucia Jang
Stars Between the Sun and Moon by Lucia Jang is a searing, deeply personal account of a woman’s struggle to survive — and ultimately escape — one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Co-written with Susan McClelland, Jang’s memoir brings to light not only the cruelty of the North Korean government, but also the strength and resilience of a mother determined to protect her child at any cost.
Jang’s life in North Korea is marked by hardship from the start — poverty, hunger, imprisonment, and unimaginable abuse. Yet what sets her story apart is her unbreakable spirit. Again and again, she is betrayed by her country, by the men in her life, and by a system that punishes even the smallest acts of defiance. And yet, she persists. Her journey through prison camps, trafficking networks, and eventual flight to freedom is harrowing, but never without hope.
Jang’s voice is honest and unflinching. She doesn’t shy away from the uglier details of her past, nor does she try to cast herself as a perfect hero. Instead, she offers a raw, human portrait of survival — one that centers not only on her own life, but on her fierce love for her son.
Stars Between the Sun and Moon is not only a memoir of escape; it is a testament to the quiet power of endurance and the extraordinary courage it takes to start over. Lucia Jang’s story is both heartbreaking and inspiring — a reminder of the untold suffering that continues in North Korea, and the individuals who risk everything to break free.
Check out all my reviews of North Korean Defector Memoirs here.
About Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom by Lucia Jang
An extraordinary memoir by a North Korean woman who defied the government to keep her family alive.
Born in the 1970s, Lucia Jang grew up in a common, rural North Korean household—her parents worked hard, she bowed to a photo of Kim Il-Sung every night, and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. However, there is nothing common about Jang. She is a woman of great emotional depth, courage, and resilience.
Happy to serve her country, Jang worked in a factory as a young woman. There, a man she thought was courting her raped her. Forced to marry him when she found herself pregnant, she continued to be abused by him. She managed to convince her family to let her return home, only to have her in-laws and parents sell her son without her knowledge for 300 won and two bars of soap. They had not wanted another mouth to feed.
By now it was the beginning of the famine of the 1990s that resulted in more than one million deaths. Driven by starvation—her family’s as well as her own—Jang illegally crossed the river to better-off China to trade goods. She was caught and imprisoned twice, pregnant the second time. She knew that, to keep the child, she had to leave North Korea. In a dramatic escape, she was smuggled with her newborn to China, fled to Mongolia under gunfire, and finally found refuge in South Korea before eventually settling in Canada.
With so few accounts by North Korean women and those from its rural areas, Jang’s fascinating memoir helps us understand the lives of those many others who have no way to make their voices known.
