Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

Billboards went up in Pyongyang touting the new slogan, “Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day.”

“They would look at me with accusing eyes. Even four-year-olds knew they were dying and that I wasn’t doing anything to help them,” Dr. Kim told me years later. “All I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers over their bodies afterward.”

The school day started at 8:00 A.M. Mi-ran put on her perkiest smile to greet the children as they filed into the classroom. As soon as she got them into their assigned seats, she brought out her accordion.

But now she couldn’t deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.

The family reunion lasted two weeks. Both aunts came to China along with assorted relatives, ten people in all. As soon as they all laid eyes on one another, they realized that the DNA testing had been superfluous. “We just kept on staring. We marveled at the backs of our heads, the shape of our hands, the way we talked and walked,” said Mi-ran.

Deep down, however, Mi-ran was the same person who had occupied the lowest rung of North Korean society, the poor, female progeny of tainted blood. She had been shaped by a thorough indoctrination and then suffered the pain of betrayal; she’d spent years in fear of speaking her mind, of harboring illicit thoughts. She had steeled herself to walk by the bodies of the dead without breaking stride. She had learned to eat her lunch, down to the last kernel of corn or grain of rice, without pausing to grieve for the children she taught who would soon die of starvation. She was racked with guilt. Guilt and shame are the common denominators among North Korean defectors; many hate themselves for what they had to do in order to survive.

The sisters were presumably taken to one of the labor camps for long-term prisoners. Given the severity of the food shortage in 1999, it was likely they were dead.

Her sisters had paid the ultimate price so she could drive a Hyundai.

I often gave him books to read. His favorite was a translation of 1984. He marveled that George Orwell could have so understood the North Korean brand of totalitarianism.