He said I was an “outstanding worker.” I don’t think I was outstanding at all—just average—but that was enough. But that’s the thing. People in North Korea spend so much time in study meetings and calculating the number of hours they’ve worked that there’s no time to do the actual work. The result? Raw materials don’t arrive in factories, the electricity doesn’t work, and farms are overrun with weeds. But as long as people can get their food rations, they don’t care. Since my job was off the record, I had no study meetings and was not forced to put in countless hours for pointless bureaucracy.
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