Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons

Cullen Thomas was just like the thousands of other American kids who travel abroad after college. He was hungry for meaning and excitement beyond a nine-to-five routine, so he set off for Seoul, South Korea, to teach English and look for adventure. What he got was a three-and-a- half-year drug-crime sentence in South Korea’s prisons, where the physical toll of life in a cell was coupled with the mental anguish of maintaining sanity in a world that couldn’t have been more foreign. This is Thomas’s unvarnished account of his eye-opening, ultimately life-affirming experience. Brother One Cell is part cautionary tale, part prison memoir, and part insightful travelogue that will appeal to a wide readership, from concerned parents to armchair adventurers.