A Capitalist in North Korea

by Felix Abt

  The burden on women also treads back to North Korea’s historical suffering. I learned this during a farm visit in a remote province where, after being shown around stables and the fields, had lunch with a group that included an old and frail woman sitting at the head of the table. As she hunched over, I noticed that most of her teeth were gone and she ate little, giving off a worn in aura.

  I asked who she was. “She was the founder and the boss of this farm after the war in 1953,” said the farm’s manager. “We are indebted to her for her great work.”

  I asked if we could invite her to sit closer to us. The elderly woman, who went by the name of Ms. Kim, limped slowly and sat down opposite me.

  Given my interest in Korean history, I wanted to learn how she witnessed the Korean War and deprived period afterwards. She revealed that surviving women and children not only had to suffer so much during the war, but also carried the burden of postwar reconstruction. She spoke slowly and in a subdued voice: “It was very hard for us. Everything was missing, in particular the men as many of them died during the war,” she bewailed. “Our houses and fields were destroyed by American bombers that dropped bombs everywhere. Not only were many people killed but also our animals.”

  “How did you survive the war?” I asked.

  “We dug holes and there were always people on guard watching and listening to early detect small flying dots in the skies approaching. When the guards yelled an alarm we all disappeared in the holes until the airplanes were over.”

  She explained that women, for the most part, constructed the farm while the men were off fighting and were killed, injured or imprisoned in the war. The work was both dangerous and grueling. Since they had few tools, they cleared out the ordinances, bombs and landmines from the field, making room for seeds planted and harvested with their bare hands.

  “Later,” she said, inserting a patriotic clarifier, “we received seeds, tools and building materials as a generous help from our great leader Kim Il Sung.”

  The prominent American historian, Bruce Cumings, wrote in his seminal book, Korea’s Place in the Sun, that the atrocities of this war have largely been forgotten. American planes systematically destroyed all cities, villages and fields. They also shot at anything moving on the ground. Pointing out that more than 2 million civilians were killed, he even called it a “Holocaust” as a measure of the sheer brutality on the peninsula.

  “Do you have a family?” I asked Ms. Kim.

  “No. I was busy farming and had no time to look for a husband. Besides, men were so rare in those days,” she answered with a smile that was perhaps not genuine and covered up some old suffering from those days. “The members of our farm were my family till this day and I am so happy about it.”

  The marriage question

  In October 2006, one young lady had put in a job application and I invited her to my office for an interview. Her facial expression and body language looked uncomfortable. She looked nervous. She’d surely never met a foreigner before.

  As she peered at me furtively, I wondered what thoughts were crossing her mind. What are his intentions? she must have pondered. Is he a true friend of our country, or a spy or agent?

  Since I had hired North Korean women before, the situation was familiar. Most were nervous and did not even look at me face-to-face during our first meetings. There were ways to calm their nerves: from the first working day I explained that I appreciated their good work and that I respected them. Over time I tried to be informal and caring. I regularly asked about their families over short friendly chats. The longer they worked in the company the more often they laughed at my jokes. It sometimes took months until they relaxed and until working with me became a normal state of affairs.

  This candidate sitting in front of me, Dr. Song, was a young and brilliant medical doctor who received the highest possible marks from her university and excellent references from her employers at a university hospital. Her English proficiency was remarkable. I have never met a junior medical doctor in this country with such English skills. Although she was shy, her answers to my interview questions were intelligent and concise.

  We were looking for somebody who could give fair, competent medical advice, in response to questions from readers, on our company’s website. The country’s intranet was then accessible to households throughout the country, rather than merely government agencies, state companies and universities.

  We hired Dr. Song and she did not disappoint us. Because she practically inhaled vast amounts of medical literature every month, we knew she brought substantial knowledge to the table. In 2007, we began our online medical advice service, receiving one or two emails a day. Dr. Song diligently searched the literature for the best possible advice, and only when she was certain she responded to the questions.

  Dr. Song was also a talented medical writer. She put together terse, understandable articles with tables and illustrations on our website. Her efforts paid off for all of us: after a few weeks, the number of incoming emails started to explode from North Koreans looking for health-care wisdom. Dr. Song’s working days became longer and longer, but this relentless physician didn’t complain. She must have, after all, become one of the country’s most popular doctors, building our reputation as a competent pharmaceutical company. Not surprisingly, the first orders of pharmaceuticals from remote provinces reached us a few weeks later after her public image took off.

  More marriages are for love nowadays, but if one of the parents objects, the marriage will not take place—or at least that’s what several young North Korean staffers told me when they were heartbroken. In North Korea along with much of the world, spring is the season of marriage. Wedding ceremonies take place both in the house of the bride and that of the groom. Eating and sometimes heavy drinking is part of the wedding.

  A decade earlier the age of marriage for men used to range from 28 to 30 years old, and for women from 25 to 28 years old. Today, unlike in the West, couples are getting married at younger ages because fewer people are entering military service and have fewer moral expectations.

  Of course, any North Korean ceremony wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the majestic statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and with a loyalty declaration. When I took pictures of this wedding party in the center of Pyongyang the photographer got distracted and, instead of taking pictures of the cute wedding couple, turned his camera to me—as revenge against this intrusive foreigner.

  Even though North Korean women are talented, lots of other pressures loom over their young lives. Miss Han, a waitress in the diplomatic village once bemoaned to me that, at 29, she was too old to get married. Normally, waitresses would not share their sorrows with foreign guests, and it took me a few years of building confidence to get to this point.

  In North Korea, young women typically hope for nuptials when they’re around 23 to 26 years old. Men similarly look for potential brides in this age bracket. When young women approach their 27th birthday, they and their families often panic. I felt helpless as I could not help Miss Han, a pretty, intelligent and sympathetic young lady; I could not even find the right words to console her.

  Still, she had a lot going for her. Women working in restaurants serving foreigners are normally in high demand among Korean men. These waitresses are highly educated and bring home a good income. But by 29, men become more concerned with their aging than with their perceived status.

  For several years the restaurant closed its doors once a week but was always open on Sundays, an inconvenient day when men weren’t working and when the women could court them. Thankfully, the manager then was a thirty-something woman who was not married herself. Out of sympathy for her female staff, the supervisor changed the weekly holiday to Sunday.

  The decision cheered up the female cooks, waitresses and other staff and their families. Now, their parents could go on a more promising search for suitable men, who they introduced to their daughters and sisters on Sundays. I always felt happy for these girls w
hom I got to know better over the years and whom I liked. On the other hand, it was sad to see these familiar faces slowly disappear as they found spouses and had children. I wished them well.

  These young women, pictured here playing with my baby daughter, would love to marry and have kids of their own. They work in one of Pyongyang’s best restaurants where affluent Koreans enjoy fine meals, a great place for meeting Mr. Right. Waitresses in North Korea, particularly those working in restaurants earning a hard currency income, enjoy high social prestige.

  Not all of North Korea, however, is traditional in that parents arrange marriages. I’ve met women who’ve proudly told me that they alone chose their husbands, not their parents. These women usually fell in love with significant others at their universities. Nevertheless, many parents arrange for a groom-to-be like in the olden times. In this traditional hierarchy, the man’s family is expected to have a higher social ranking than the woman’s family. For the women who work in restaurants and hotels filled with foreign guests, they often welcome help from parents in finding a locally bred Korean.

  Sometimes, out of curiosity, I asked married women whether they chose their husbands, their husbands chose them, or the parents of either spouse arranged the marriage. Most women I dealt with, as colleagues, were university educated and exposed to the outside world (some even traveled outside North Korea). They often giggled at the question, knowing that arranged marriages is considered backward in other countries.

  Most of my female customers answered that it was mostly the parents who picked a spouse, but among the younger generation it’s the young people themselves who fall in love and then make the decision. When I walked in the streets of Pyongyang at night, I sometimes stumbled on young couples whispering and giggling as they walked each other home.

  They obviously liked the darkness which allowed them to intimately get to know each other. It probably helped them to make the right decision when it came to marriage. Showing affection and emotions in public was not welcome. So, to get to know each other well, darkness offered the “right cover.”

  Unlike most so-called developing countries, North Korea is home to an aging population, because women are having on average 2.02 babies—barely enough to sustain the population numbers, according to a 2010 report by Statistics Korea. The demographic is in part because most young couples bear one child. The government, in response, has taken a pragmatic response to population growth rather than a Leninist one: it urges families to have more children, and discourages abortions and even contraceptives even though they are legal.

  North Korean women often use contraceptive coils, or small plastic devices inserted into the womb. Men get condoms from friends who bring them back from abroad. When I was running the pharmaceutical company I wanted to import and distribute condoms and other contraceptives, hoping they would be a commercial success. But the government didn’t hand over a permit because it needed more babies, not less.

  My company also looked into selling Viagra and Cialis, products also popular with Korean men. The government wouldn’t mind, I thought, as these aphrodisiacs would get couples heated up and create more kids. I was quickly proven wrong when denied the permit. Ms. Thak, a pharmacist, revealed the reasons to me: “The result of the higher sexual appetite of men would not have led to more children but to more abortions,” she claimed.

  In 2007, I was approached by the North Korean inventor of a drug he called “Natural Viagra,” a gimmicky mixture of herbs. He asked me to market it within North Korea and abroad and gave me samples. I passed them on to some friends who were using the original version of Viagra, who concluded that Viagra and Cialis offered better results. Still, the North Korean government admitted Natural Viagra for sales, and now I understand its reasoning. We would not sell this as I was keen on building the reputation of the pharmaceutical company.

  North Koreans are, in fact, human beings, and like all other humans, they do have a sense of humor and sometimes tell dirty jokes. Some of these jokes were about husbands and wives who had extramarital affairs that made listeners, including myself, laugh. “When does a wife know that her husband is cheating on her? When he starts complaining about the lack of water as he wants to have two showers a week.” This was one of the many popular jokes.

  With this, it was implicitly acknowledged that marital unfaithfulness was not an absolute taboo, even if it was frowned upon. In fact, I knew two Korean couples who had extramarital affairs.

  Did somebody tell an indecent joke?

  Does prostitution exist in North Korea? Officially, no. It is illegal and subject to severe punishment, such as a “corrective” year-long stay in a labor camp. Street prostitution is too visible and too risky. Still, some North Korean men can afford an occasional day of massage and sauna. Often over lunch or after work, I heard men gossiping about which women in the parlors offered better “services” than others. Of course, that’s with the caveat that the statement leaves much room for interpretation.

  By offering discreet services, women can dole in a lot of money by North Korean standards, sometimes out of the sheer necessity to support their families. And for all the moralistic ideology, sex work isn’t a completely absent phenomenon. Indeed, some “flowers of the nation” may now be for sale, as I understood the half-joking remarks of men who said they were seeking to buy the pejorative “beautiful flowers.” While marketization is about to lead to more prosperity in North Korea, sex may also become just another tradable product.

  On the other hand, ever since women have overwhelmingly become family breadwinners, some female traders have increasingly had to take journeys away from their husbands that lasted weeks. They told me that sometimes these women have boyfriends and lovers who they financially support on the side. In that way, North Korean women aren’t much different than some of their counterparts from around the world!

  Though illegal, plastic surgery has gained popularity in recent years among females from more affluent families in Pyongyang. I met a couple of women who admitted, in a frank manner, to having undergone cosmetic surgery. One popular operation makes their eyes look larger and, in the words of some of them, more “Western,” mirroring a trend among Chinese, Japanese and South Korean women.

  This is popular because North Koreans are watching prohibited South Korean dramas with beautiful actresses who had themselves undergone cosmetic surgeries. That the law was not enforced had nothing to do with the privileged position of these women, because the authorities are pragmatic and do what they can to survive.

  Women are much more friendly and warm-hearted among themselves than when their much more competitive macho-type male counterparts have an informal get-together. This is a group of women enjoying making music, singing and dancing together in Pyongyang’s Moranbong Park, the capital’s largest recreational area.

  No career for women in Korea?

  It is true that few women make it to the top echelons of the government and business in North and South Korea. One exception, however, is Mrs. Han Kwang Bok, who graduated as an electric engineer from Kim Chaek University of Technology, Pyongyang. She became Minister of the North Korean Ministry of Electronics Industry and was later appointed Vice-Premier of the Council of Ministers while keeping her post as Minister of the Electronics Industry. She is also a member of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea.

  I met Mrs. Han several times, and I was highly impressed by her extraordinary intelligence, competence, negotiating skills, charm and a fine humor unmatched by most men.

  The image shows Kim Sung Hyon, Minister of the Ministry of Metal and Machine-building Industries, wearing the grey traditional suit, and Mrs. Han Kwang Bok talking with me.

  Chapter 10:

  Nurturing Revolutionaries

  “Learn from the masses, and then teach them.” — Mao Zedong

  In July 2012, state television began airing a video of five young singers dancing in skimpy miniskirts. The female troupe dressed more conservatively than their south
ern counterparts, famous worldwide for salacious dance moves of “K-Pop.” But these girls were North Korean, and their message was a sort of “old meets new” in this hermit kingdom.

  North Korea, despite its communist system, is fundamentally not distinct from other East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan. North Korean culture has, just like its neighbors, been influenced by Master Kong, known today by his popular Latin name, Confucius. More than 2,500 years ago, Confucius wrote about the importance of a good education as the key to social advancement, an idea that spread all over East Asia.

  During the communist upheavals in China, Vietnam, and Korea in the past century, young revolutionaries tried to eliminate the social hierarchies associated with Confucianism, which they perceived to be part of a repressive feudal order. But even in communist North Korea, Confucianism has survived and today prospers as the glue that holds society together.

  North Koreans are the pride of their parents and climb the social ladder when they reach high levels of education, especially at the doctorate level or higher. In this sense, South and North Korea share much in common: south of the DMZ, parents pressure their children to achieve near-perfect school results and gain entrance to top universities, the three most sought after being Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Korea University.

  It is common for teenagers to study every day until midnight, in part because they join extracurricular “cram schools” that help them prepare for university entrance exams. This scholastic achievement opens the door to prosperity, a powerful network, and thus the springboard for an impressive career.