Around the World in 80 Books discussion
NORTH KOREA: Tears of My Soul
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As You Read - What are you thinking about The Tears of My Soul?
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Cait
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Jan 16, 2018 07:24AM
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Hi all, I just wanted to point out that there is a Kindle daily deal only today for a different memoir from North Korea (Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim). I know it's not the one we picked but just to let you know in case you're planning to eventually read more than one book about North Korea!
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I picked that one up yesterday too!
That's great Cait! By the way, I second what Cait said about how the book might be hard to find. I ended up finding a copy at Columbia, but I had to head to the East Asian library and navigate down 4 stories of stacks in the basement (meanwhile taking wrong turns into interesting rooms with various kinds of art, interesting experience) to locate it. It was not available through the NYPL as far as I could tell. Best to start looking for your copy early!
Just finished! It was short and engrossing, so I read it all in under a day. I'll be traveling during the discussion window so I'll drop my main thoughts here now just in case I'm unavailable during that time.I found this to be a fascinating glimpse into the life of a North Korean spy. I kept having to renormalize my expectations. I would have some image in my mind of the setting, then there would be some detail thrown in (e.g. children picking maggots out of dung) that completely disoriented me. I'm not sure we can really fully understand what it is/was like to live in North Korea.
Some of the details that stood out to me: the medical monitoring of virginity, the fact women were treated equally to men in intense physical tests yet high ranking women did not get to drive cars (like most North Koreans), the indoctrination to feel ashamed at attachment to family members, etc.
I thought it was especially interesting to learn what it was like to be a spy in this context, coming from a society with such limited interaction with the outside world. I was amazed how the author was able to learn Japanese so well that she could pass as a Japanese citizen, without ever setting foot outside of North Korea. Personally, my language skills are flawed even after years of immersion, and I've always needed to be somewhat immersed in the culture to even get started! I think this goes to show what immense pressure they were under at the camp and how strict the educational system was. At the same time, this seemed to lead to some serious gaps in her ability to be a spy. For example she was already out in the field and didn't even know what a cross symbolized!
Her process of de-radicalization was also very interesting. She had been all over the world visiting capitalist countries, yet the brainwashing was so strong that she was still willing to carry out the "mission." It took a return to the homeland to shift her perspective.
There were a few things that didn't quite make sense to me, for example I didn't know how she would have a quote from the report she wrote to the authorities about her first mission in Europe. Also, it was interesting how many flaws there were in North Korea's plans for the Korean Air Line mission, from the issues with the itinerary that were repeatedly brought up by her companion to the fact that they sent an ailing spy who seemed unfit for the mission due to his stomach problems.
Favorite quote (regarding the eventual pardon by the South Korean government): "You know, I think a foreigner might not understand this decision. I think one has to have lived through the painful division of Korea to appreciate it. People elsewhere couldn't imagine what it's like to have their country split in two, with one half ruled by a cruel tyrant. Many of us have relatives in North Korea whom we've never seen. You never know. Maybe this awful mission of yours will help us unify after all."
Two last things:1) By complete chance I just finished Pachinko by Min Jin Lee right before reading this, and I highly recommend reading it. Beyond being a fabulous book on its own, it also gives historical context for some of the events leading up to this (as well as a somewhat complementary perspective of Japanese imperialism and racism towards Koreans in Japan).
2) Kim Hyun Hee's descriptions of the physical examinations during spy training vividly brought back some memories from my year abroad in Japan in high school. Clearly there are many huge and important differences between the two countries -- including capitalism vs. communism, wealth/poverty, human rights violations, the years of Japanese imperialism/discrimination in Korea, etc. -- yet the seeds (remnants?) of stoicism/group think in Japan seem to appear in a similar way (perhaps amplified by orders of magnitude) in descriptions of North Korea. For example: The marathon really reminded me of our standardized sports test in Japan, where the entire school (no exceptions) had to run 20 miles within a certain time limit. In my school in the US that would have been an unthinkable requirement. As someone who was always the worst at gym even back in the States and could barely run a mile, it was eye-opening to experience the process of being pushed to the point where I could complete this -- because you simply *had* to. Similarly, I was browsing some of the sites with photos/videos/summaries from people who decided (!) to go on tourism to North Korea, and in the Mass Games they have a mind-boggling display of thousands of children creating ever-changing images by holding up different colored cards. In my high school we spent many hours training to do a demonstration exactly like this (using colored clothes instead of cards); some of the images even moved like flip-book movies. It was on an entirely different scale of course, but the similarities are interesting (and unlike anything you would ever find in the US, which is so focused on the individual). Hope this isn't too much of a tangent. :)
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Another thing that struck me about this book is how much it read as a spy novel. There were so many details that felt like... is that really how life works, or how a movie of life would work? And then how abruptly that changed when she was caught - suddenly it *was* a real life, nobody withstands interrogation forever, and that made the whole book come into much sharper focus for me.
So I FINALLY caught up and finished this and - OMG I liked it so much more than I expected to! I really was not prepared for that John le Carré spy feel somehow, I was expecting a more blase memoir. The spy elements truly fascinated me - they are almost cinematic and she describes them so well, I'm shocked this hasn't become a movie yet. I also found it interesting to think about the fact that this is a terrorist attack on a plane but 20ish years before the September 11 attacks - how much the world has changed! I am sure this was very sensational when it was first released but now it feels still shocking but is not unimaginable to me, because I have always lived with the reality that planes = terrorism. That was something I didn't expect to find while I read this. I love the thoughts on groupthink and misogyny and completely agree - Cait, I think your point about this feeling different due to lack of tribal feuds is correct. To me, this conflict reads more like one giant tribe that one bad dude got too greedy within and forced everyone to draw a literal line in the sand so he could have his way, which is so horrifying but here we are. The literal split of Korea and sundering of families is a very interesting resolution to this problem and does make me wonder - when are the people of North Korea going to have enough? Will it ever happen at this point, now that anyone who would truly remember unified Korea is probably dead? It's so sad to think about but how else can a realistic solution to this problem come about? And Claire, I didn't explicitly think about the groupthink aspect but you are totally right - that extreme training to benefit the collective good at literally any cost is really unique. Even somewhere like Russia, where the idea of communism started, the country is too vast and multicultural to really ever say that everyone goes in lockstep with a particular dictate. There's no real comparative society with such extreme communist discipline in that regard. I think this communist idea when coupled with the traditional duty-bound legacy of Asian culture is a really extraordinary combination, both in its power and the difficulty of trying to uproot it at that point - they marry really well. And hell yes to all thoughts on the misogyny - I don't know why I was so surprised to find so many of those aspects but I really was. The approach towards sex seems so clinical and manipulative, which is obviously for a reason but made me really sad. The filial separation was really hard too. I can't imagine having a government just take away your children without any compensation or consultation and then just having to pretend they don't exist anymore - how horrifying.
Another thing that was a complete accident but was very interesting to me was reading this during the Olympics, where South and North Korea competed as a single team for the first time in decades. It was so interesting to read these insights into that culture and then see the amazing American-South Korean immigrant athletes meeting their families in Seoul and then the combined teams all competing and mingling together. It's impossible not to wonder if this will be the step that leads to a thawing in North Korea - it's really been an extraordinary few weeks for Korea in general - and to wonder how things might be different if there were a different American president shepherding this process. I'm really interested now in seeing how things go over there. I can't wait to check out some more books!
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I read it days after I finished Tears of My Soul, and it was a pretty eye opening take on South Korea at almost exactly the same time. Obviously the people in South Korea were, on average, doing a hell of a lot better than the people in North Korea, but I realized that I had taken her at her word about the thriving capitalist democracy, when in fact South Korea was under US-supported military dictatorship until the year before the Olympics, and some - but obviously not all, or even most - South Korean citizens really were being killed, driven from their homes, etc, just the way North Korean propaganda said. And these abuses, I think, seem more similar to the other regimes we’ve read about - basically most people fall in line or turn a blind eye because it’s not happening to everyone. That’s part of what was so strange about reading about North Korea, because it seemed like it *was* happening to everyone and the only thing keeping people in line was brain washing, national pride, and secret police.
Cait, that is a TERRIFIC article. I learned a lot and it really bolsters a lot of my feelings about the Olympics - love what they can do for diplomacy and global citizenship, LOATHE what they do in terms of construction and impact on the local population. Thank you so much for sharing! And it's a really good point that no one and nowhere is perfect: while we read about the fractured governments of countries in turmoil, it's easy to point fingers and think about how much better it is elsewhere - but that doesn't mean elsewhere comes without problems or fault. It really is an interesting distinction!
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Oh that's a really good point I didn't even think of but you're totally right. I just kept thinking of the loss those parents sustained over and over - their family ripped in half with the war, their legacy and financial security taken away, dead children, children stolen to become spies... it's just an unimaginable weight to bear, especially in total silence. Again, it just makes me wonder - is there anything that could free the North Koreans, truly? To make them believe it was possible to live another way? I just don't know short of them all leaving the country and I find that a very small possibility. It's a really mindblowing situation.
