Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

For one North Korean student it was a photograph in the official media showing a South Korean on a picket line. 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.

I asked her how many people she thought were still true believers. She lowered her voice and didn’t equivocate. “Zero,” she answered firmly. “It’s not belief in the system that keeps us going. It is belief in life.”