During the 1990s, a large number of North Koreans died of famine — hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of people. In my hometown of Hamhung, people sat exhausted by the road or just collapsed on the street, and their bodies lay there. As summer came, the number of corpses increased. By the late ’90s, death was everywhere in the city. There was a “body disposal squad,” tasked with clearing away the scattered dead from many of the streets. I noticed new graves appearing every day on a small hill on the way to my friend’s house. There were...