by Daniel Tudor
I asked my wife about how plastic surgery is done in North Korea. It costs around 120,000 won in North Korean currency, or about 100 Chinese renminbi. Please bear in mind that there could have been a change in the price since my wife left North Korea. Also, a nose job costs around $100 in U.S. currency.
It’s very hard to find a plastic surgeon in North Korea. One has to find someone who can perform the surgery through people they know. I heard that people usually get double-eyelid surgery at someone’s house. In North Korea, one does not get anesthetized when getting double-eyelids (ouch!). This is because people believe that your eyes will look more natural and won’t become puffy if you don’t have an anesthetic. But regardless, I heard that some North Koreans who had double eyelid surgery were unable to open their eyes for a whole week due to side effects of the surgery.
I assume that a North Korean woman with money would at least get double eyelids done. I also assume that there will be some North Korean men who have gotten plastic surgery, like in South Korea. But plastic surgery for men is not as popular in the North as it is in the South.
The price for plastic surgery ranges from 100 yuan to 1,000 yuan in Chinese renminbi. Actually, if you get plastic surgery at a proper hospital, you don’t need to pay—but some people give a bundle of cigarettes to their doctor as a present so that they will take more effort and caution when performing surgery on them.
So, plastic surgery does exist in North Korea. If medical technology improves in the North, I’m sure people will get a wide range of plastic surgeries, not just limited to nose jobs or double eyelids—just like in South Korea.
Would North Koreans be able to adapt to a market economy? And what about free speech?
DT: Although North Korea doesn’t have an “open” economy, there have been huge economic changes from the ground up in the past 20 years. Politically, though, things are no different to before. This author doesn’t see much prospect for positive political change, but one can hope.
If the DPRK state collapsed tomorrow, the North Korean people would see great long-term benefits, but also go through a degree of shock and confusion in the short term. We asked a group of North Korean defectors if they thought their compatriots would adapt well.
Joo Sung-ha:
It should not be difficult for North Koreans to understand and adapt to these concepts. I think North Koreans are ready for them now. It has already been 20 years since North Korea discontinued socialism. North Koreans are actually dependent on the black market economy, known locally as Jangmadang.
Recent defectors understand you cannot earn money without working harder than previous generations. The economic crisis in North Korea forced people to learn about the market economy independently. As such, the pursuit of material wealth is actually stronger in the North than in the South.
Of course, understanding and experiencing are two very different things—it will be more difficult for North Koreans to put these ideas into practice than to simply understand them.
However, while it will not be that difficult for people to accept society opening up and ensure freedom of speech, it will be difficult to curb fraud, trickery, and corruption.
Jihyun Park:
These things might have been difficult up until the 1990s, but in reality North Korea today operates as a market economy. Therefore, it will not be too difficult to accept a capitalist economic system. Opening up and freedom of speech will not be very difficult either. People already feel differently than before, since they have heard a lot of news from the outside and there are open cities like Rajin or Sonbong [where the “free economic zone” is located].
One challenge would be to set up a way to share the positive aspects of each system so they can be implemented. But as of now, there seems to be no way of accomplishing this.
In my opinion, South Korean capitalism is a failure. The world may look at it as an advanced country, but there have been many negative side effects, such as the widening rich-poor gap and the highest suicide rate among developed nations.
If North Korea were to adopt this system, it would hurt the defector community even more. It might seem like there is an easy solution to the problem, but that could make things even more difficult.
Choi Sung-guk:
As long as Kim Jong Un’s regime exists, it will not be easy for North Koreans to properly understand the concept of liberation, freedom of speech, or a free economy. But once Kim’s control over the country collapses, it will be a lot easier than many people speculate.
Although North Koreans might not have a deep understanding of the free market, they are already familiar with it. Also, the many defectors successfully living in South Korea will be able to positively influence North Koreans’ view of the capitalist system.
Most of all, since both Koreas speak the same language, and the South is economically superior to the North, there will not be many obstacles to overcome.
Ji-min Kang:
I think it would be natural for the North Korean people to transition to a capitalist market economy. If you look at North Korea today, the system is already being sustained through market activities. People’s opinions have also changed quite a bit, which will help make the transition even smoother.
Of course there will be some things that will be hard for the North Korean people to understand.
Most North Koreans have never been exposed to a competitive environment, except in the political realm. For them, the fiercely competitive nature of capitalism will be difficult to grasp at first. North Korea is a planned economic system where market competition does not exist. Essentially, it’s a society devoid of competition, that failed to progress.
With no sense of ownership, no one in North Korea was motivated to work hard, and it became commonplace for people to cut corners in their work. This mindset will gradually change as people learn to survive in a competitive system. This transition will not be difficult to implement, since North Korea’s modern economy is already a de facto capitalist system.
A change in public opinion will also serve to change North Korea. The introduction of advanced culture through reform will change the people of North Korea, and a free press would further increase people’s awareness. Freedom of the press is the most urgent problem that needs to be addressed in North Korea. It is not an overstatement to say that the current situation in North Korea is largely a result of press censorship.
Oh Se-hyok:
Perhaps it would not be as difficult as we think because markets have already become an important part of daily life in North Korea. I think people would not have any problems understanding the fundamentals of a market economy.
One challenge would be building trust and maintaining long-term relationships. It will also be difficult for North Koreans to understand long-term growth. For example, they might make a profit one day and then not make a profit for a long time. I think that peoples living in former socialist countries might have shared this experience. And this could affect business transactions with North Koreans because they would not be planning for the long-term. People might start to rely on illegal transaction methods more and avoid official business channels.
I think it will take a while for North Koreans to understand freedom of the press under the current circumstances. First, I think it is essential for people to understand what press freedom is and how it contributes to social growth. Achieving that will take time. For example, if I tried to explain this to North Koreans who fled to China or are visiting China, I think it would be a difficult concept for them to understand.
Ham Jin-woo:
All North Koreans are well aware that capitalism is superior. They are also asking for openness and reform. But, they stop short of openly expressing these opinions due to fear of negative political repercussions.
North Koreans already know that neighboring countries such as China, Russia, and Vietnam are better off than North Korea because they implemented economic reforms. It is only a matter of time before they refo
rm too.
If one person—Kim Jong Un—is removed from power, North Korea would easily adjust to economic reforms.
PART 2
The Powers That Be
[Introduction]
Government is a factor in all of our lives. It provides us with services and protection, in return for our taxes and our compliance with certain rules. As we have already learned, this social contract has been gravely undermined in North Korea.
In other ways though, the relationship between people and state is extremely close in North Korea—whether the people like that or not. Though the policing of “ordinary” crimes is considered quite ineffectual, The DPRK’s secret police agency is said to be able to know everything about you, right down to how many spoons you have in your kitchen. This is not necessarily a great exaggeration, given that one in every five households is a family of informers.
Those who fall foul of the authorities—having been accused of holding critical views of Kim Jong Un, or watching foreign TV shows, for instance—may find themselves subject to brutal interrogations, and labor camp sentences if found guilty. As may be expected, guilt and innocence are rather arbitrary notions, depending upon the whims (and corruptibility) of officials. A woman wearing revealing clothes, or a man with long hair, may also be judged to be committing a crime against public morals.
Times are changing though, as North Koreans are now far less cooperative with the authorities than they used to be. People are less likely to inform on each other, and officials themselves are much more open to taking a bribe to look the other way. However, the idea of open resistance to authority is still more or less unthinkable.
For men, the state imposes another burden: Military service, usually for a period of ten years. This brings special challenges of its own, as you will see below.
Do people criticize the Kims behind closed doors?
DT: Do North Koreans genuinely love their leader, or is it more the case that they simply “have” to love him? These days, it is more likely to be the latter. But the power of propaganda still works on many people.
Jae Young Kim:
My parents used to repeat an old North Korean proverb, “The bird listens during the day and the mouse does at night.”
In my fatherland, the meaning of this was clear. You’re always being watched. From a young age, I learnt to think of the potential consequences of everything I might say, before I said it. One wrong word could have potentially severe implications for our whole family. A visit from the Ministry of State Security (MSS) was something to be feared.
Criticism of the leaders is something that can lead to someone being sent from their city to the countryside, to a prison camp, or even worse. Because of the potential for punishment, it is risky for people to criticize the leaders, even behind closed doors.
This is why so few of us complained, even if we wanted to.
But not all of us wanted to. From a young age we are submerged in an intensive ideological curriculum that teaches us to refer to the leader using terms like “Dear General” or “Dear Leader.” We learn that their real names—Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sung—are to be held with reverence, and to never say them in vain. There is a genuine myth and intrigue surrounding North Korea’s leaders. A lot of people simply believe in their greatness. For many, they are simply too far away to criticize.
When I was living in North Korea, I rarely called the Kims by their real names and I never dreamt of questioning their leadership. In a country where we grow up thinking about our leaders as gods, for many of us it would just never make any sense to even think about criticizing them.
However, not everyone is like me. I’ve got one friend, who also defected, who told me that she used to criticize the leaders quite regularly at home with her family. They used to blame the regime for the extreme poverty faced by the country.
Many people still think the poverty in North Korea is because of sanctions from the outside world, rather than the corruption and inefficiency of the leadership. Even if people do have doubts, it is hard for them to talk to each other about this. I didn’t find out the truth until I left North Korea and spent time in China and South Korea.
Things are changing, though. With the increasing levels of information coming into North Korea through foreign videos and radio, people are starting to realize that North Korea is much poorer than the outside world. When I watched foreign DVDs in North Korea, I used to get so jealous of Chinese and South Koreans living in huge houses, wearing nice clothes, driving amazing cars, and having freedom. But for me, I kept this jealousy in my head.
Having grown up in the system I’ve just described, you can’t understand how surprised and amazed I was when I came to South Korea and heard people even casually saying the name of the president, let alone even criticizing him. For North Koreans, we simply don’t have the right to express anything publicly that isn’t positive. Even though things are slowly changing, I can’t imagine people publicly criticizing the leader for some time yet.
Is there a state secret service with a network of informants, like the KGB in the old Soviet Union?
DT: North Korea’s secret police organization is arguably the most ruthlessly efficient of its kind in the world. Without it, the DPRK state would surely have disappeared long ago. Referred to as Bowibu, this agency has arbitrary powers to torture, imprison and kill.
Ji-min Kang:
Yes, a network of concealed informants similar to the Soviet Union’s KGB or East Germany’s Stasi exists in North Korea. It is called the Ministry of State Security (MSS), and is known to everyone.
To this day, secret informants who work for the MSS monitor and spy on many ordinary North Koreans. Their purpose is to prevent and suppress any opposition to the government and identify those who are not cooperative with the state. And to do its job, the Ministry has an extended network that spreads out far from the party center, much like a spider’s web.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to tell secret service agents apart from other ordinary North Koreans. They look just like normal citizens and obviously don’t wear a uniform or anything that would indicate their role to anyone. That said, I have heard that they do supposedly wear military uniforms when working inside the office buildings of the MSS.
So how does the MSS work?
You might be surprised, but the MSS has offices in nearly every neighborhood throughout the country, with some informants required to reside in these buildings during working hours. From here their job is to collect information about the local population through a network of people they get to know in the neighborhood.
The MSS system is a lot harsher than you’d think. In North Korea it’s always possible that your friend, neighbor or co-worker could be working for the network of people who help the MSS. In other words, your own friends and co-workers could be giving away information about your activities to these informants any time they want to. And unfortunately, this often keeps people from building trust with one another. As a result, some North Koreans are unable to trust even lifelong friends, neighbors or co-workers.
Also, you should know that North Korea has a policy of inspection known as the “one in five households” system. Essentially, one in five households in North Korea works on behalf of the MSS as a local spy cell. Sometimes these informants catch people for real crimes, but unfortunately some individuals abuse the system by taking revenge against those who they hold grudges against. From time to time, innocent victims are arrested due to the “one in five” system.
What’s worse is that some of the agents working directly for the MSS weren’t much different than the household inspectors when I lived in North Korea. For example, they sometimes used their power to report innocent people just so they might stand a better chance of getting a promotion. And some were so powerful that local people would do all they could to avoid getting on their nerves. In extreme cases, some of the MSS agents could even cause trouble for members of the Workers’ Party of Korea—and if charges were stro
ng enough, these people could even face being sent to prison camp or worse.
Yet, things are changing now.
These MSS agents were once invincible. But today they’re not as powerful as they used to be. Compared to the past, it seems many North Koreans are not as cooperative as they once were, and are less willing to report their close acquaintances to the secret police.
If, for example, it was revealed to your neighborhood that you had been working as an informant for the MSS, people would turn their back on you. You’d be given the cold shoulder by the local community. On top of this it seems that informants aren’t as loyal as they used to be, especially since private enterprise—and corruption—have become so widespread in North Korea.
What is an Inminban, and how does it operate? How has its role changed over time?
DT: An Inminban is something like a cross between Neighborhood Watch, a community voluntary organization, and a spying operation. It is one of the cornerstones of North Korean state control of the people. However, as Kim Cheol explains, its role has changed somewhat over the years.
Kim Cheol:
Inminban (Neighbourhood Units) can be considered the peripheral nerves of the North Korean regime. Each consists of around 20–50 or more households, and is under the direct control of the local city or district committee. The role of the Inminban is to disseminate the ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and the position of the Workers’ Party to residents, control residents’ thoughts and lives, and give various administrative directives.
An Inminban is led by a captain, a head of household, and head of hygiene. The captain and head of household are housewives, and the head of hygiene someone from among the community who can help with various Inminban duties. The head of household is in charge of cleaning, but in practice is a deputy to the captain.