Political billboards on streets. © Linqong | Dreamstime.com

42 IPA Review | August 2010 www.ipa.org.au Inside the hermit kingdom

But even if you could move freely Brad Laver reviews around without the ‘help’ Nothing to Envy: of the local guides, Pyongyang’s resi- Love, Life and Death in dents are hardly representative of the average North Korean. Traditionally North Korea Koreans have measured their success by by Barbara Demick their proximity to the seat of power— (HarperCollins, 2010, 336 pages) usually the imperial palace. Before the Korean War this meant living as close ometimes it’s the simplest things to Seoul as possible. that cause the most brilliant Not surprisingly, North Koreans epiphanies. Think Newton and don’t get to choose where they live— S There is no the Workers Party decides this for them the apple. Despite a lifetime of propaganda international postal based on a class order that is once again and indoctrination, for many North eerily reminiscent of Nineteen Eighty- Koreans their view of the world can or telephone service Four. Following World War 2, newly change almost overnight. installed president Kim Il-sung made it For one former North Korean sol- and listening to his first order of business to weed out dier it came whilst clipping his finger friend from foe. Each North Korean nails. The clippers he was using were South Korean radio was put through eight background made in America. He was amazed by the or television is checks to determine their — sharp clean edges they left behind. And their social ranking. Political billboards on Pyongyang streets. © Linqong | Dreamstime.com then it hit him: ‘If North Korea couldn’t punishable by death. North Korean society is broken make such a fine nail clipper, how could into 51 categories which are part of 3 it compete with American weapons?’ North Korea (investigative journalists broad classes—the core class, the wa- He defected a few years later. writing books about North Korea, even vering class, and the hostile class. You Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and less frequently), and when they are, the can never rise up through the social or- Death in North Korea, by Barbara visit is limited to the capital Pyongyang der, only fall down. Only those high up Demick, is the story of ordinary North only. Even then, the tours around the on the pecking order get the privilege of Koreans who have all managed some- city are highly choreographed, with living and working in Pyongyang. For thing extraordinary—they escaped two guides accompanying tourists at all the average North Korean, this means from the clutches of one of the world’s times (one to ensure the other isn’t be- living in a city like . most tyrannical regimes. Indeed, the ing bribed). ‘Thanks to our dear leader In the course of writing Nothing similarities between North Korea and Kim Jong-il’, Demick remarks, is a to Envy, Demick interviewed over 100 the dystopian nightmare Orwell imag- phrase used by the guides with strange , but the book ined in 1984, are striking. regularity. zeros in on the stories of just six—all Nothing to Envy gives a brilliant ac- The North Korean government from the northern city of Chongjin, count of the real North Korean experi- goes to great lengths to ensure that near the Russian border. Chongjin, ence. It’s a story seldom heard before. nobody from the outside ever gets to she explains, was chosen deliberately Hardly surprising given North Korea see the real North Korea. While many because ‘I believed that I could verify is still the most secretive country on countries heavily censor it, North Korea facts more easily if I spoke to numer- earth. is the only country to have almost en- ous people about one place.’ She adds ‘I Tourists are rarely allowed into tirely rejected the internet. There is no wanted that place to be as far from the international postal or telephone service well-manicured sights that the North Brad Laver is Deputy Editor of the and listening to South Korean radio or Korean government shows to foreign IPA Review. television is punishable by death. visitors—even if it meant I would be

www.ipa.org.au IPA Review | August 2010 43 nese actually defected to North Korea. Their lives may not have been perfect, but they were assured their South Kore- an cousins were far worse off. In school the children sung: Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world. Our house is within the embrace of the Workers’ Party. We are all brothers and sisters. Even if a sea of fire comes to- wards us, sweet children do

© Yunxiang987 | Dreamstime.com Yunxiang987 © not need to be afraid. North Korean houses Our father is here. We have nothing to envy in this writing about a place that was off lim- forbidden relationship that would last world. its.’ 9 years and only end when Mi-ran fled But the politics of starving changed If the measure of one’s standing the country. things. Where once people feared to in North Korea is one’s proximity to But for most the darkness was just make even a slightly disparaging remark Pyongyang then many of Chongjin’s symptomatic of greater problems that about Kim Jong-il’s height for fear of residents sit on the bottom rung of the existed. No electricity meant no in- imprisonment, they were now openly societal ladder—about as low as you dustry, which meant no exports, which questioning their government—the can go without residing in one of the meant the North Korean regime was un- fear of execution by your government countries many gulags. able to import enough food to feed its just isn’t as frightening when you are Those interviewed paint a bleak population. To avoid starvation, many starving to death. picture of Chongjin. The only respite North Koreans resorted to what they Just 71 people defected to South from the depressing shades of grey that were always told was evil—capitalism. Korea in 1998. Since then the number overwhelm the landscape are the depic- For Song Hee-suk (Mrs Song as she defecting has risen to between 1,000 tions of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il is now known in ), this was and 3,000 annually. In addition there in the propaganda posters which dot a particularly difficult step to take. Mrs are hundreds of thousands of North Ko- the city’s streets. As an industrial town, Song was a true believer—a model citi- reans illegally living in China. Count- Chongjin was hit hardest following the zen, literally up to the day she escaped. less more have died trying to cross the collapse of the Soviet Union. She recalls later: ‘I lived only for Mar- Chinese-North Korean border. Without the Soviet Union to pro- shal Kim Il-sung and for the fatherland. But for many North Koreans, as- vide raw materials at ‘friendship pric- I never had a thought otherwise.’ similating with the South Korean way es’, the factories for which Chongjin Reluctantly, she began buying and of life is a difficult experience. Although was known, shut down almost imme- selling produce at the flourishing—but she suspected more thought the same diately. But like all other North Ko- still very much illegal—farmers mar- way, of the 100 people Demick inter- rean cities, the collapse of the Soviet kets. In the end, it was Mrs Song’s en- viewed, only one admitted she regretted Union meant Chongjin was plunged trepreneurial spirit which ensured that making the journey: ‘I wouldn’t have into darkness. The government simply she and her daughters survived a fam- come here if I knew what I know now” couldn’t fuel the nation’s power sta- ine which claimed the lives of approxi- she lamented. But these feelings are tions anymore. mately 2 million of her fellow North generally short-lived. For some of those interviewed by Koreans. Tragically, she notes that the Once the shock of living in a world Demick, like Mi-ran and Jun-sang, the ‘people who did what they were told— that is almost entirely alien passes, few darkness became something of a saviour. they were the first to die.’ North Koreans look back. They embrace The cover of absolute darkness allowed Before the famine, the people of their new found freedom and prosper- many North Koreans to do many of the North Korea were quite content. They ity, and grasp with both hands every op- things that are simply not allowed dur- had food, shelter, education and health- portunity it affords them. These are the ing the day. For Mi-ran and Jun-sang— care. There were almost no defections to North Koreans who truly have nothing whose families sat too far apart in the South Korea. In fact during the Great to envy. social order—that meant beginning a Leap Forward of the 1960s many Chi- R

44 IPA Review | August 2010 www.ipa.org.au