
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, is an account of the imprisonment of Kang Chol-Hwan and his family in the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea.

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters is a 2010 book by Brian Reynolds Myers. Based on a study of the propaganda produced in North Korea for internal consumption, Myers argues that the guiding ideology of North Korea is a race-based nationalism derived from Japanese fascism, rather than any form of communism. The book is based on author's study of the material in the Information Center on North Korea.

Im Dienst des Diktators: Leben und Flucht eines nordkoreanischen Agenten is a biography of North Korean defector Kim Jong Ryul that reveals information on the luxurious lifestyle of North Korea's Eternal President Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il. Austrian journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi authored the book, and Ueberreuter published it in March 2010.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a 2009 nonfiction book by Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick, based on interviews with North Korean refugees from the city of Chongjin who had escaped North Korea. In 2010, the book was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is a black-and-white graphic novel by the Canadian Québécois author Guy Delisle, published in 2004. The novel details the months Delisle spent in Pyongyang while working for a French animation company.

The Tears of My Soul is the memoir of Kim Hyun Hui, a North Korean agent known for planting the bomb on board Korean Air Flight 858. This book recounts one of a number of North Korean state-sponsored acts of terror over the last 40 years.

Lee Hyeon-seo, best known for her book, The Girl with Seven Names, is a North Korean defector and activist who lives in Seoul, South Korea, where she is a student. She escaped from North Korea and later guided her family out of North Korea through China and Laos.

This is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood is the autobiographical account of Hyok Kang, who describes his childhood in Onsong, North Korea in the 1980s and 1990s, his escape into China in 1998, his journey through southeast Asia, and his life in South Korea.