Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

by Barbara Demick

In the futuristic dystopia imagined in 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only color to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea.

The officers, one of whom was Dean Rusk, later to become secretary of state, wanted to keep the capital, Seoul, in the U.S. sector. So the two army officers looked for a convenient way to divide the peninsula. They slapped a line across the map at the 38th parallel. The line bore little relationship to anything in Korean history or geography.

Reminds me of the line dividing India and Pakistan

Murals in vivid poster colors showed him surrounded by pink-cheeked children looking on with adoration as he bestowed on them a pearly-toothed, ear-to-ear grin. Toys and bicycles clutter the background of these images—Kim Il-sung didn’t want to be Joseph Stalin; he wanted to be Santa Claus.

More like an Idiot Claus

If Kim Il-sung was God, then Kim Jong-il was the son of God. Like Jesus Christ, Kim Jong-il’s birth was said to have been heralded by a radiant star in the sky and the appearance of a beautiful double rainbow.

*Heralded most probably by a huge ball of shit and a projectie of vomit

Like German Jews in the early 1930s, who told themselves it couldn’t get any worse, the North Koreans deceived themselves. They thought it was temporary. Things would get better. A hungry stomach shouldn’t believe a lie, but somehow it did.

Lights were rarely switched on during the day because the electrical supply was diverted to keep the Kim Il-sung statue illuminated around the clock.

It is axiomatic that one death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic. So it was for Mi-ran. What she didn’t realize is that her indifference was an acquired survival skill.

He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories.

Listening to South Korean television was like looking in the mirror for the first time in your life and realizing you were unattractive.

It was beyond reason that this small child should be singing a paean to the father who protected him when his circumstances so clearly belied the song. There he was on the platform, soaking wet, filthy, no doubt hungry.

Much of the pleasure he took from reading was in the anticipation of telling Mi-ran about it later. During their long months apart, he would store up his best material, rehearsing it in his mind, imagining the way her eyes would flicker with delight, how she would laugh out loud without the coy gesture of covering her mouth.

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

Whenever an image of Kim Jong-il came on the television, Oak-hee flew into a rage. “Liar! Cheat! Thief!” she would scream at the television.

Then again, he felt somewhat guilty about deceiving them by pretending to be a believer. Gradually, his attitude softened. After a while, as he murmured the words of the prayers, he felt the comfort he had not enjoyed since his early childhood when he recited a poem about Kim Il-sung and had something greater than himself to believe in.

Guilt and shame are the common denominators among North Korean defectors; many hate themselves for what they had to do in order to survive.

He tried to comfort himself. He remembered a poem by the nineteenth-century Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi that he’d recited as he crossed the Tumen River: Liberty and love These two I must have. For my love I’ll sacrifice My life. For liberty I’ll sacrifice My love.

The instant gratification of modern communication killed some of the magic between them. Their relationship was one that thrived in the adverse conditions of North Korea. Emotions somehow meant more when they were handwritten on precious scraps of paper and conveyed on slow trains running out of fuel.

Choosing where to live, what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning is tough enough for those of us accustomed to making choices; it can be utterly paralyzing for people who’ve had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives.

But the heir apparent, the eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, had disgraced himself with a dissolute lifestyle and an embarrassing arrest in 2001, when he’d tried to enter Japan on a forged passport to visit Disneyland with his son.

The disconnect between the flashy new upgrades and the abject poverty of North Koreans suggests that Kim Jong-un has directed his efforts at the elites, improving their living standards to buy loyalty and ensure the survival of his own leadership.

"Democratic" peoples republic of Korea

“It’s not belief in the system that keeps us going. It is belief in life.”