Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

Korea is simply a blank. North Korea faded to black in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had propped up its old Communist ally with cheap fuel oil, North Korea’s creakily inefficient economy collapsed.

They don’t stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.

As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean.

A smaller number of Communist sympathizers fled north.

If my parents had fled north id be pissed the hell off

Broadcasters would speak of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il breathlessly, in the manner of Pentecostal preachers. North Korean newspapers carried tales of supernatural phenomena. Stormy seas were said to be calmed when sailors clinging to a sinking ship sang songs in praise of Kim Il-sung. When Kim Jong-il went to the DMZ, a mysterious fog descended to protect him from lurking South Korean snipers. He caused trees to bloom and snow to melt. If Kim Il-sung was God, then Kim Jong-il was the son of God.

A well-known actress from Chongjin found herself in the uncomfortable position of being unable to force out her tears. This not only put her politically at risk, but professionally. “It’s my job. I’m supposed to cry on demand,”

Afterward he toured Auschwitz and noted the parallels with his own experience.

The photograph was meant to illustrate the exploitation of the worker in capitalist society; instead the student noticed that the “oppressed” worker wore a jacket with a zipper and had a ballpoint pen in his pocket, both of which were luxuries at the time.

The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated. But now she couldn’t deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.

During the commercial breaks, there were advertisements for mobile telephones and other things that Mrs. Song had never heard of.

IT IS NOT EASY for people earning less than a dollar per month to be integrated into the world’s thirteenth-largest economy.

“Now that I can call him on the phone whenever I want or send him a text, I’m not so interested,” Mi-ran admitted. “It’s hard for me to understand now why I spent so many years obsessing about this guy.”

Those of us who hoped North Korea would become more like the rest of the world are dismayed that the rest of the world has become more like North Korea.