Nothing to Envy

by Barbara Demick

  Even in the best of times North Korea can produce only about 60 percent of the food needed for its population, and it currently cannot afford to import the rest. The food shortage worsens the farther away from Pyongyang you get. The assessment prepared jointly last year by the U.N. World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization named North Hamgyong once again as the province most vulnerable to shortages.

  THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY continues to stagnate. South Korean investment in North Korea has shrunk since the conservative Lee Myung-bak was elected president in December 2007. South Korean tours to the scenic Mount Kumgang area just north of the DMZ—one of North Korea’s largest sources of hard currency—were suspended for more than a year after the accidental shooting of a South Korean tourist in the summer of 2008. Strained relations between the Koreas have threatened another promising project north of the border, the Kaesong industrial park where South Korean factories employ more than 38,000 North Korean workers.

  The belligerent mood in Pyongyang goes hand in hand with the economic hard line. Decades after the rest of the Communist world capitulated to capitalism, Kim Jong-il is trying to run the economy the same way his father did in the 1950s. If anything, he’s been taking the country on a great leap backward, rolling back the market reforms of the past decade. The markets that had brought North Koreans imported fruits and bright T-shirts are under constant pressure from the Workers’ Party, and some fear they might soon be closed down entirely. Market hours in much of the country have been restricted to 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. The government has banned all vendors except for women aged fifty and over; all the men and younger women must report to their official jobs at state-owned enterprises. There are increasing restrictions on what can be sold, too. Along with rice and corn, soybeans have been banned from the markets lest they be taken into China and resold to the enemy in South Korea. Special police roam the markets confiscating banned goods.

  Our General wants to bring back socialism the way it used to be,” a trader who gave his name as Kim Young-chul told me. He was one of several people from North Hamgyong province I interviewed in June 2009 near the border. The North Korean government, he said, had launched a new campaign against all products “made in China” that has practically emptied the markets of cosmetics, candies, cookies, and medicines.

  “We’re supposed to buy North Korean products instead of Chinese, but North Korea doesn’t make anything—it all comes from China—so there is nothing to buy,” he said.

  Lee Myong-hee, a woman in her fifties, complained that the restrictions were squeezing the life out of the economy.

  “If they don’t give us food and clothing and we’re not allowed to buy things, how are we supposed to survive?” she demanded. She was from Kilju, the city closest to the nuclear test site, and had come out of North Korea five days before the test. She was frantic with worry—about radiation leakages, about impending U.N. sanctions, about the economy. As fat tears rolled down the hollows of her cheekbones, she asked, “Isn’t it a waste to be spending money on nuclear weapons when people are starving?”

  Although China remains North Korea’s largest trading partner, the back-and-forth across the Tumen River has slowed. In the runup to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China installed barbed-wire fences and security cameras along the river. The pillboxes for North Korea’s border guards have been moved closer together to prevent defections and illegal trade. A Chinese businessman who owns a factory in Chongjin told me that the North Korean government had recently banned the export of steel plates to China, decreeing that vital resources should not be taken out of the country.

  Chongjin might be the most entrepreneurial city in North Korea, but it is under constant pressure from the central authorities, who have anxiously watched it drifting away from their control. As the city’s fortunes over the past decade have become more entwined with the border trade and less with the dictates of Pyongyang, its residents and even its provincial officials have become less pliable. In March 2008, when the edict barring women under age fifty from the market was first imposed, people simply refused. Female vendors held a rare public protest at the management offices of Chongjin’s big Sunam market, chanting, “Give us food or let us trade.”

  Market authorities were forced to back down, although this year they are again trying to enforce the restrictions. Many people I’ve met from Chongjin describe the prevailing sentiment: why can’t the government just go away and let us run our lives? It’s not something that’s said so much as intuitively understood. A coal miner from Chongjin whom I met in 2004 in China told me, “People are not stupid. Everybody thinks our own government is to blame for our terrible situation. We all know we think that and we all know that everybody else thinks that. We don’t need to talk about it.”

  SEVERAL OF THE PEOPLE whose lives I’ve followed in this book are able to contact their families in Chongjin occasionally through the illegal telephones in Musan, Hoeryong, and other border towns that pick up Chinese signals. “Things are so, so hard for people,” Mrs. Song told me after speaking to one of her brothers on the phone in March 2009. “There is not much food on the market and the inflation is terrible. They are barely making ends meet.” She says her siblings live better than most because of money she sends through China, but much of it is confiscated by officials.

  “The families of defectors are some of the richest people in the neighborhood,” Oak-hee told me. “My husband says security agents always come by looking for something. They even come by to shave because they know he’s the only one who has razors.”

  The widening gap between rich and poor has led to a rise in crime. The husband of Mrs. Song’s second daughter worked as a security guard for the railway until 2006, when he and his wife came to South Korea at Oak-hee’s invitation. At the time of his defection there were so many thieves stealing food from the cargo warehouses that guards were issued guns with real bullets and shoot-to-kill orders. Similar rules apply to the narrow plots planted alongside the tracks to grow corn for the families of railroad workers. Chongjin also has a surprisingly large drug problem because of the widespread availability of “ice,” or crystal methamphetamine, which is produced in small factories and sold inside the city and at the Chinese border. It’s cheap and it cuts the appetite, making it a drug well suited for the North Korean lifestyle.

  Chongjin is not experiencing the little boomlet of new construction that I observed in Pyongyang. Except for a couple of gas stations along the main road, nothing of significance has been built downtown in years. The newest building is a garish pink structure put up in the late 1990s to house a permanent exhibit of Kimjongilia, a flower named for the Dear Leader. Facades along the main Road No. 1 have been repainted in pastel shades of wintergreen and peach, but the cornices are crumbling—a constant danger to pedestrians below. New posters spaced at regular intervals along the roadside tout the government’s latest slogan about rebuilding the economy: kyungjae jeonsun, the economic front line.

  In the last few years, a number of private restaurants have started up inside empty buildings that once housed state-owned restaurants or companies, as have noribangs, karaoke bars. Most of these kinds of businesses, however, don’t last long before they are shut down.

  “I didn’t see any signs of progress. In fact, Chongjin looks like a city moving backward in time. Everything is in a state of disrepair and it appears to be getting worse,” said Anthony Banbury, Asia regional director for the World Food Programme, who visited in August 2008. “At most of the factories, there is no sign of activity. At best one smokestack out of eight is puffing smoke.”

  Eckart Dege, a German geographer who generously contributed photographs to this book, in September 2008 was permitted to visit both Chongjin and Kyongsong county, where Mi-ran grew up. He also detected little economic activity except for a large group of civilians on the road to Kyongsong who were rebuilding a road entirely through manual labor. “There were thousands and thousands of people carrying dirt f
rom the hills in shovels and laying it down in little heaps, as though they were building the pyramids,” Dege said. Inside the city, he noted the unusually large number of people squatting in a position that is almost emblematic of North Korea, knees bent up to the chest, balancing on the balls of the feet. “In other places in the world people are always doing something, but here they were just sitting.”

  It is a North Korean phenomenon that many have observed. For lack of chairs or benches, the people sit for hours on their haunches, along the sides of roads, in parks, in the market. They stare straight ahead as though they are waiting—for a tram, maybe, or a passing car? A friend or relative? Maybe they are waiting for nothing in particular, just waiting for something to change.

  —Barbara Demick

  September 2009

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest gratitude goes to the six North Koreans profiled in this book. They gave generously of their time, endured prying questions, and relived painful memories for no motivation other than to help me and my readers understand their world. I am grateful to the members of their families as well for their help. Jinna Park deserves special thanks for her love of language and patience in interpreting most of the interviews that went into this book. The late Dr. Jae Nam introduced me to the first people I met from Chongjin. I could not have learned as much about North Korea as I did without the help of a very courageous woman I will call K, who gave up a comfortable retirement in the United States and who, despite her advanced age, worked tirelessly with her husband on behalf of North Korean refugees. She is one of many people whose names should be mentioned here.

  Besides the people featured in this book, there were many other North Korean exiles who helped fill in the blanks about their country: Joo Sung-ha of Dong-a Ilbo, who will someday write his own book; Kim Do-seon; Kim Yong-il; Cho Myong-chol; Kim Hye-young; and Kim Tae-jin.

  I also relied on the work of many nongovernmental organizations devoted to North Korean issues. The Seoul-based Good Friends publishes an excellent newsletter on North Korea. Lee Young-hwa of Rescue the North Korean People provided guidance and steered me to photographs and videos that enriched the descriptions of Chongjin. Other excellent sources included Tim Peters, Michael Horowitz, Suzanne Scholte, Han Ki-hong of Daily NK, Sunny Han, Reverend Kim Young-shik, Chun Ki-won, Human Rights Watch, and the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. Do Hee-yun’s research into POWs and abductees helped me to capture the story of Mi-ran’s father.

  Among the people in the humanitarian aid community, I wish to thank Katharina Zellweger of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; the American agronomist Pil-ju Kim Joo; and from the United Nations’ World Food Programme, Jean-Pierre de Margerie, Gerald Bourke, and Tony Banbury.

  Korea experts who were unusually generous with their time were Michael Breen and Scott Snyder, as well as Stephan Haggard, Marcus Noland, Nicholas Eberstadt, Bob Carlin and Leonid Petrov, Brian Myers, Daniel Pinkston, Donald Gregg, David Hawk, and Brent Choi. I was helped enormously by the scholar Andrei Lankov, whose writings are quoted frequently in this book. Fellow journalists Donald Macintyre and Anna Fifield were as obsessed with North Korea as I was and shared with me their ideas and inspiration. Charles Sherman offered constant encouragement for this project, as did other friends and colleagues in Seoul, including Jennifer Nicholson, Jennifer Veale, Scott Diaz, Sue-Lynn Koo, Patricio Gonzalez, Pascal Biannac-Leger, Lachlan Strahan, and Lily Petkovska. Others whose work in Korea helped to shape this book were Moon Il-hwan, Tim Savage, Paul Eckert, Jasper Becker, Choe Sang-hun, Kim Jung-eun, Donald Kirk, and Bradley Martin, whose own book, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, is cited frequently here. Chi Jung-nam and Lim Bo-yeon accompanied me on many interviews with North Koreans.

  I’d like to thank the people who provided photographs for this book: Eckart Dege, a geographer who traveled to Chongjin and Kyong-song county in autumn of 2008; photographers Jean Chung and Eric Lafforgue; and journalists Anna Fifield and Jonathan Watts. Jiro Ishi-maru of Asia Press helped me track down photographs of Chongjin that were taken by North Koreans at great risk.

  Among those whose research went into this book were Lina Park Yoon, Park Ju-min, Hisako Ueno, and Rie Sasaki. Howard Yoon was a great help in shaping the book proposal.

  My friends Julie Talen and Tirza Biron served as writing coaches, helping me transform a style learned at daily newspapers into one suitable for a book. Without Jim Dwyer, I don’t know that I could have gotten this book published. Margaret Scott and Terri Jentz talked me through the book proposal and writing processes. Others who contributed valuably to this book were Gady Epstein, Molly Fowler, Ed Gargan, Eden Soriano Gonzaga, Lee Hockstader, Aliza Marcus, Ruth Marcus, Nomi Morris, Evan Osnos, Catherine Peterson, Flore de Preneuf, David Schmerler and Isabel Schmerler, Lena Sun, Jane Von Bergen, Nicholas Von Hoffman, Eric Weiner, Laura Wides-Munoz, and Tracy Wilkinson. Many years later, I am still thankful to my college writing teacher, the late John Hersey, who taught his nonfiction writing students to seek structures and models in the work of other writers. His own book Hiroshima was an inspiration to me as I wove together the stories of the six people in this book.

  I was extremely lucky to find as my agent Flip Brophy, who rose from a bad bout of the flu over Christmas 2006 to take on this project and whose support has gone beyond the call of duty. My publishers, Julie Grau and Celina Spiegel, understood the concept of the book completely from day one. And Laura Van der Veer helped put the pieces into place.

  At the Los Angeles Times, I wish to thank Simon Li, who first hired me to cover Korea, and editors Dean Baquet, John Carroll, Marc Duvoisin, Doug Frantz, Marjorie Miller, and Bruce Wallace, who encouraged the kind of investigative reporting that made me proud to work for the newspaper. Julie Makinen expertly edited a series of articles about Chongjin that were the germ of this book. Mark Magnier, John Glionna, Valerie Reitman, Ching-ching Ni, Don Lee, and David Pierson were among many colleagues at the Los Angeles Times who were particularly helpful.

  At Princeton University, where I spent 2006-2007 as a Ferris fellow at the Council of the Humanities, Carol Rigolot gave me a place to write at Henry House. Among the other fellows, Lisa Cohen, Martha Mendoza, T. R. Reid, and Rose Tang gave valuable advice, along with my friends on the faculty, Gary Bass, Maryanne Case, Gabe Hudson, and Jeff Nunakawa.

  Finally, special thanks to my mother, Gladys Demick, who, when I told her I was moving to Korea with her only grandchild, instead of complaining, replied, “What a great opportunity!” Her encouragement has been the foundation of my career. And to my son, Nicholas, who cannot remember any time in his young life when he was not competing with North Korea for my attention, and who must have asked me dozens of times, “Aren’t you done with that book yet?” I can finally answer yes.

  NOTES

  THIS BOOK IS PRIMARILY AN ORAL HISTORY. I HAVE MADE BEST EFFORTS to confirm the accounts of my subjects through other sources and have added information obtained through my own reporting on North Korea.

  I made nine trips to North Korea between 2001 and 2008, three of them to Pyongyang and nearby areas; the others were to areas just north of the demilitarized zone, such as Mount Kumgang, when it was open to tourists. In the course of my reporting for this book and for the Los Angeles Times, I interviewed approximately one hundred North Korean defectors, most of them now living in South Korea or in China; about half were originally from Chongjin. I also reviewed hours of video footage taken secretly in Chongjin, some of it shot by the courageous North Koreans Ahn Myong-chol and Lee Jun, who carried concealed cameras in their bags. I am indebted to the Osaka-based organization Rescue the North Korean People for allowing me to screen the footage and to Asia Press for granting me rights to the still photography. In addition, an excellent series of photographs of both Chongjin and Kyongsong taken in 2008 by the German geographer Eckart Dege proved very helpful in corroborating the descriptions of my subjects and in bringing the landscape and vistas to life.


  CHAPTER 1: HOLDING HANDS IN THE DARK

  Credit for the term “Great Vituperator” belongs to the North Korea scholar Aidan Foster-Carter. “Great Vituperator: North Korea’s Insult Lexicon,” Asia Times, May 26, 2001.

  Kim Jong-il’s ideas about film are spelled out in his book On the Art of Cinema (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1973). His love of cinema was manifested in its most extreme form in 1978, when he arranged the kidnapping of his favorite South Korean actress, Choi Eun-hee, and her ex-husband, Shin Sang-ok. Choi and Shin had been recently divorced before their abduction—they remarried in North Korea at Kim’s “suggestion.” They made films for North Korean studios until 1986, when they defected to Vienna. A memoir they wrote together in 1987 about their experiences is one of the few firsthand accounts of Kim Jong-il.

  For more on cinema in North Korea, see Andrei Lankov, “The Reel Thing,” in North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007). Lankov quotes a 1987 report on Pyongyang radio stating that the average North Korean goes to the cinema 21 times per year. South Korean sociologists who surveyed defectors found they’d gone to the movies 15 to 18 times per year. The average South Korean visits the movie theater 2.3 times per year, according to Lankov.

  I also wrote about North Korean cinema for the Los Angeles Times in 2008 when I attended the Pyongyang Film Festival. “No Stars, No Swag, but What a Crowd!” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2008.

  CHAPTER 2: TAINTED BLOOD

  The accounts of Tae-woo’s childhood came from interviews I conducted on February 28, 2008, with two of his childhood friends still living near Seosan, South Korea.

  Background about rural life in South Korea before the war comes from Cornelius Osgood, The Koreans and Their Culture (New York: Ronald Press, 1951).