Lucia Escaped NK
Lucia Jang and Susan McClelland. 2014. Stars between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra
Reality is so much more interesting than fiction. How people cope with adversity stretches the imagination, which allows the observer to enter the story and experience it firsthand. There is no safety net in knowing that the hero pulls though miraculously avoiding terrible loss or pain. Reality allows none of that. The pain and loss is real and it leaves a blood signature.
Lucia Jang with the help of Susan McClelland writes in her memoir—Stars between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom—of her life in North Korea and her several escapes into China and beyond.
FamineFamine shaped Lucia’s daily life in North Korea. Hungry people obsess about food. In just about every paragraph, Lucia describes what she ate and how much. Your choice of occupation, your stage in life, your family status, all influenced your expected rations in communist North Korea. In a place plagued by chronic famine, one’s wealth, social status, and life expectancy can all be read just by looking at you.
Hunger is a theme throughout Lucia’s experience growing up in and around the City of Yuseon. This city lies along the border of North Korea’s Hamgyong province along the Tumen River across from China. Lucia writes about experiences during the tenures of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994) and his son, Kim Jong-il (1942-2011).
Famine is still a problem in North Korea. Dead fishermen still wash up on Japanese shores (ghost ships after 2017) when inadequate equipment fails in the Sea of Japan and they starve at sea. Only this week, there was the story of an elderly man being discharged from prison in North Korea only to find his family unwilling to receive him back, arguing that they could not feed him (Un 2022). His crime? His daughter escaped to South Korea and sent him money.
Consequently, Lucia’s memoir refers to life in North Korea at least a decade ago, not overlapping the tenure of Kim Jong-un, who assumed leadership with his father’s death in 2011. Yet, the circumstances described remain an economic reality.
Griefs and Shame AboundThe legacy of hunger and the poverty it brings touched all aspects of Lucia’s life. Because the official ration amounted to only three hundred grams (about two-thirds of a pound) of food, people traded their possessions for additional food and engaged in illegal trades to earn additional money. This left virtually everyone liable for arrest and imprisonment.
Lucia was raped by a young man who got her pregnant. After that she was forced to marry him. She later learned that his primary motivation for marriage was to gain the bride price to pay old debts. Unable to feed everyone, her own parents sold her second child, a boy, to a wealthy family for three hundred won (about a quarter of a dollar) and two bars of soap.
Lucia later escaped to China, where she was sold as a bride to a Chinese man. Such marriages were not recognized by the Chinese government and she was later repatriated to North Korea and imprisoned.
AssessmentLucia Jang’s memoir, Stars between the Sun and Moon, written with the help of Susan McClelland is the story of a woman’s determination to survive under much adversity. Lucia writes to her son, Taebum, who she refused to abort and smuggled out of China. I cried through much of this book.
ReferencesUn, Lee Chae. 2022. Elderly man in N. Hamgyong Province returns to labor brigade after being refused entry at home. Daily NK. Online: https://www.dailynk.com/english/elder.... Access: 26 April 2022. Dated: 2022.04.22.
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