Some of you who follow my YouTube feed may have noticed my recent like of a video that featured Vice News' meeting with North Korean gulag escapee Kim Hye-sook. I haven't told many people this, but it should come as no surprise that the persecuted North Koreans have always had a special place in my heart. I only barely scratched the surface on what was going on there, through the very occasional report that I read when I was a child, or through what people close to me told me. So over the last few months I'd been taking to doing research, even on the most sordid things that happen there.

My mind is somewhat resistant to it all because I've experienced a fraction of indoctrination, discrimination, glorification of the nation's leaders, physical, mental, verbal and emotional abuse, inhumane living conditions, while I was still in Malaysia, and I relate wholeheartedly to the North Koreans' suffering... even though I probably don't come close. But I can surely say this: at the end of this video, Kim Hye-sook said that she only saw the scenes from the concentration camp in her dreams, and not her life in South Korea. I am the same: I only see all the sordid scenes from Malaysia in my dreams, and I haven't had a good dream in months, let alone a dreamless sleep.

If you've researched this as much as I have, or if you're a regular on TVTropes and have stumbled upon this at random, you may have perhaps heard about a North Korean tearjerker drama called The Flower Girl. I won't go into details about that story, because that's what the link is for... but I will say this much: I don't know how true it is, but the script for this film was purportedly written by Kim Il-sung himself.

Guess what? I'm going to subvert it and turn it on its head.

This is a book I have in the pipeline, and I'm going to let it take its time. The writing work on it has already begun. With little satellite imaging to use for reference purposes, I only hope that the book will turn out to be a (somewhat) subversive piece of work.