Kirkpatrick Documents NK Suffering

 

Melanie Kirkpatrick. 2012. Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad. New York: Encounter Books.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

Most of what Americans know of North Korea arises from conflicts, past and present. My father served in Korea shortly after the Armistice in the early 1950s. Other servicemen have been stationed there. More recently North Korea has been in the news because of rocket launches, failed peace attempts, nuclear tests, and economic sanctions. Seldom, however, do you hear much about the people of North Korea.

Introduction

In Escape from North Korea author Melanie Kirkpatrick begins:

”This is a book about personal courage and the quest for liberty. These qualities are embodied in the North Koreas who dare to escape from their slave-state of a nation to the neighboring, but unwelcoming, country of China.” (vii)

When I was growing up, the negative attributes of North Korea might have been described as saying that they have a communist government, but most Americans today don’t know what that implies. They cannot tell you much about the millions who died in Stalin’s gulags or Mao Zedong’s labor camps that make the holocaust look like amateur hour. The evils of communism are forgotten or dismissed primarily for the sake of open trade, peaceful relations, and progressive governance here that drinks from the same fountain. North Korea is criticized for its authoritarian government, not the politics behind it, and it is characterized as an anachronism.

Kirkpatrick writes:

“The new underground railroad is operated by humanitarian workers, largely Christians, from the United States and South Korea, and it is supported by thousands of ordinary men and women in China…Helping a North Korean—even so much as giving him a meal—is a crime in China.” (viii)

Most refugees from North Korea are women and most of them are trafficked into brothels in Northern China or sold as brides to Chinese men, who have had trouble finding wives. The human trafficking problem is a mirror image of the Chinese one-child policy, now discontinued, which combined with abortion lead to a disproportionate number of men, especially in rural China. Because these women and their children are largely undocumented, they are subject to abuse, discrimination, and repatriation to North Korea, where they may be imprisoned or killed. The sadness here goes on and on.

Background and Organization

Melanie Kirkpatrick is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. She worked as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, is a fellow of the Hudson Institute, and has written a number of books.

Kirkpatrick writes in seventeen chapters, divided into seven parts:

Introduction

PART I: ESCAPE

Crossing the River
Looking for a Building with a Cross on it
Defectors

PART II: IN HIDING

Brides for Sale
Half and Half Children
Siberia’s Last Gulag
Old Soldiers
Hunted

PART III: HUNTED

Jesus on the Border
The Journey out of China

PART IV STOCKHOLDERS

Let My People Go
Be the Voice

PART V: LEARNING TO BE FREE

Almost Safe
Unification Dumplings
Left Behind

PART VI: THE FUTURE

Invading North Korea
Conclusion: One Free Korea (v-vi)

These chapters are preceded by an author note and followed by acknowledgments, contacts, notes, and an index. All throughout, Kirkpatrick draws parallels between the North Korean experience and the experience of African Americans fleeing slavery in the nineteenth century.

Information Gap

All aspects of life in North Korea are controlled by the government which restricts access to media and all forms of communication. All forms of religion are banned and even possessing a Bible can get one imprisoned. The official religion is the personality cult surrounding the Kim family.

Ironically, the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, was known before the communist takeover as the Jerusalem of the East. For this reason, perhaps, Ruth Graham, whose parents were missionaries in China, was educated in Pyongyang, one reason that Billy Graham visited the city in 1994 at the invitation of Kim Il Sung, the founding leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who himself attended church as a young man.

Because information is difficult to acquire and government propaganda makes people suspicious of outsiders, it is hard for North Koreans interested in leaving to learn how to depart. Everything is learned by word of mouth. The obvious destination for refugees is to travel to South Korea, but that route is cut off by the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the thirty-eighth parallel.

The DMZ is two and a half miles wide, heavily mined, and constantly patrolled by the armed forces of both nations. The DMZ makes it virtually impossible for North Koreans to leave and directly enter South Korea. In fact, it is so dangerous to enter the DMZ that it has become a de facto nature preserve and home to many otherwise endangered species. Consequently, most North Korea who leave escape northward across the Tumen River into China.

 Famine

North Koreans who escape into China are easily identified. Because of periodic famines, food shortages, and rationing, North Koreans are generally shorter and thinner than the Chinese. Protein deficiencies leave their hair lackluster with many split ends. Their clothing is plain and often in rages. Since Chinese economic reforms, the typical Chinese citizen is also substantially wealthier than most North Koreans. North Koreans are also ethically distinguished from Han Chinese and discrimination is a problem when Norths Koreans try to blend into Chinese society outside of North China, where many people share a common Korean heritage.

The existence of periodic famines provides an economic incentive for North Koreans to immigrate to China and accept the deprivations implied. Even since Kirkpatrick published her book, starvation has been a theme in North Korea life and estimates of those dying from starvation run into the millions over the past decade. While international sanctions have exacerbated the situation, famine in North Korea was a problem before sanctions were imposed.

Assessment

Melanie Kirkpatrick’s Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad is a captivating read. Kirkpatrick writes like a journalist interspersing her themes with personal accounts of the events discussed taken from interviews with eyewitnesses. It is hard to read this book without shedding tears and asking how such deprivations continue to exist in our shrinking world.

Footnotes

https://www.melaniekirkpatrick.com

Kirkpatrick Documents NK Suffering
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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