Eventually, I couldn’t help but ask her how she was getting the rice. At first, she didn’t say anything, but I pressed her until she admitted the truth. Apparently, when she said she was going to her grandmother’s house, she was really going to a blood-transfusion station in Hamhung City. She sold her blood to buy the rice. I just gazed up at the sky. Let me tell you what we were taught in school in North Korea. “People in South Korea can only survive by stealing things and selling their blood.” The irony!
