‘ The pain in my side hasn't been diagnosed but I'm sure it's Korea . A Iittle Korean tumour there between the pancreas and liver, or maybe a Korean tear in the muscle around the ribs, a Korean hernia, a persistent Korean funk….the Hermit Kingdom took a huge piece of me, she vigorously broke me down and forced me to start life over.'

A young American in search of adventure, Cullen Thomas spent more than four years in South Korea , seven months teaching English and three and a half years in prison for smuggling hashish into the country. A rare foreign convict struggling to survive the rough conditions, Cullen came of age among a motley group of life-hardened men: Pakistani human-traffickers awaiting the death penalty for murder; a philosophical Colombian emerald smuggler; a carefree Peruvian thief who traveled the world in a business suit; a fellow American who killed his two sons and a Korean gang leader in the shoe factory in which Cullen worked who inspired the men of the prison to do their with dignity and strength.

In this evocative and powerful memoir, Cullen describes how, as he fought to regain his identity and come to terms with the strict rules of Korean prisons and Confucian culture, be foulnd within himself a lasting sense of freedom and gratitude – for the men he'd come to know, for the trial he'd passed through, even for the trial he'd passed through, even for Korea herself.

Cullen Thomas lives and works in New York . His writing has appeared in the New York Times magazine, the Washington Post, Salon, and Current Biography, among other publications. This is his first book.