Ask a North Korean
ASK A NORTH KOREAN
ASK A NORTH KOREAN
DEFECTORS TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES INSIDE THE WORLD’S MOST SECRETIVE NATION
Daniel Tudor
Foreword by Andrei Lankov
Translations by
Elizabeth Jae, Nara Han, Ashley Cho and Daniel Tudor
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Contents
Foreword by Andrei Lankov
Introduction
Contributors
PART 1 Economic Life
PART 2 The Powers That Be
PART 3 Media and Information
PART 4 Pyongyang vs. the Rest
PART 5 The Outside World
PART 6 Comparing North and South
PART 7 Health and Welfare
PART 8 Defection from North Korea
PART 9 Religion and Spirituality
PART 10 Love, Sex, Relationships
PART 11 Fun and Leisure
PART 12 Any Other Questions?
Foreword
If one has a look at a publication list, it becomes obvious that North Korea punches well above its weight when it comes to attracting the attention of foreign academics and journalists. Though its economic power and population are roughly similar to those of Mozambique, North Korea is well represented in English language articles and books.
However, a closer look uncovers a major problem. Most of these publications belong to one of only two major groups. First, there are numerous studies related to North Korean politics—above all, the nuclear program and associated problems of international diplomacy. Second, there are testimony-style books, written by defectors who tell horror stories about a country that is, indeed, run by a highly repressive regime.
However, the existing literature has a number of serious gaps. First, the real daily experiences of the vast majority of the North Koreans is overlooked—and these people are not in prison camps, and generally live normal, if often impoverished and regimented, existences. They tend to have the same feelings and concerns that dominate the lives of people in New York City or London, even if their environment appears to be very different.
Second, there is a remarkable shortage of North Korean voices. Studies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries were once much influenced and even, sometimes, dominated by exiles from those countries; but there are very few journalists, writers and academics of North Korean origin who are prominent in the field.
There are reasons for the absence of authentic North Korean voices. Unlike the Cold War era émigré community, most North Korean refugees come from the underprivileged and poorly-educated strata of North Korean society. They have no command of English (the world’s major international language), and are seldom used to expressing themselves in it.
NK News, a website I have been working with for years, has initiated a program whose task is not merely to introduce the daily lives of common North Koreans to world readers, but also to do it using the authentic voices of North Korean contributors. This is how the “Ask a North Korean” column came into being.
The columns concentrate on issues people seldom can read about elsewhere. When dealing with food, for instance, contributors talk about ways of cooking, tastes and table manners—not about grain production and rice distribution policy. When they talk about the hereditary songbun caste system, they do not see it as a factor in the country’s political surveillance network, but rather as something to pay attention to while seeking a marriage partner.
This might appear trivializing to those who expect righteous invectives unmasking the human rights abuses of the regime. However, there is a simple truth: as many people who lived under authoritarian governments (including the present author) will testify, even under the most repressive of regimes life does not necessarily consist of suffering, torture and fear. Actually, and fortunately, most people live normal lives, even in bad times and bad places, and we will not be able to understand them if we do not know how their lives are.
Fortunately, the NK News’ “Ask a North Korean” project gives us a glimpse into those lives.
Introduction
It should go without saying that although North Koreans live under a very unusual and often deeply cruel and incompetent system of rule, they are above all human beings with more or less the same desires, worries, and aims that you and I have. But it is customary to dismiss of North Koreans as brainwashed automatons or victims, whilst making little attempt to try and understand what their daily lives might be like, or what they think about the society they live in.
This is in spite of the fact that there are a huge variety of books about North Korea. In the past decade or so there has been a never-ending flow of books about the geopolitical situation; the ruling Kim dynasty; and, the dramatic escapes of defectors from North Korea.
It is difficult, however, to think of many that were written by North Koreans themselves. Even popular defector memoirs tend to be ghostwritten. The purpose of this book, then, is to allow
North Koreans to speak for themselves, and give you, the reader, a true picture of North Korea straight from the horse’s mouth.
There is one caveat, though. The people who submitted the essays contained in this book are all defectors from North Korea. Defectors are those who were unhappy or disadvantaged enough to take the great risk of crossing the border and then making their way to South Korea from China, a country whose government often sends defectors back to the North. Their views may not always be representative of the general North Korean population.
That said, we have put together a range of writers hailing from different parts of North Korea, both female and male, young and old. Some are from elite backgrounds, and others extremely poor. This means that by reading this book, you’ll be exposed to quite a diverse range of opinions. If you asked a wealthy Manhattanite and a rural Arkansan to describe life in the United States, you’d likely get divergent answers. The same is true of North Korea, so we thought it important to ask a wide range of people to contribute, rather than just telling you about life in North Korea through the eyes of one particular defector.
Most of this book concentrates on how ordinary people live, work, love, study, and so on. Unless you already know North Korea very well, you’ll be in for surprises on each page. You’ll hear how young North Koreans drink moonshine and dance to South Korean K-pop in abandoned buildings; you’ll hear about what it is like to be rich in the country labelled as the last genuine Communist/Stalinist place on earth; you’ll hear about North Korean fashion and beauty, and even plastic surgery; you’ll learn some new slang; and you’ll learn about the difficulties of holding a funeral in North Korea, among many other things.
We do touch upon the repressiveness of the state, which is an unavoidable fact of life in North Korea. But while reading this book you may notice that our focus is quite different to other books on North Korea. You may find it jarring or strange at first, to read about (for instance) skinny jeans and gambling in the context of such a country. But skinny jeans may mean a kind of liberation for a young North Korean woman, and a wager on a card game may provide a temporary thrill and escape from the daily pressures of life for others. We don’t want to “whitewash” the behavior of the regime. Our point is simply that North Koreans are human, and have more in common with the rest of us than typical media portrayals would have you believe.
A note on the material in “Ask a North Korean”
Most of the material in this book originally comes from the “Ask a North Korean” section of NK News. It has however been re-edited and tidied up, and organized into relevant sections. Many new essays were also commissioned, to take into account recent developments and any previously untouched subjects we felt needed attention.
The essays are presented in question-and-answer form, and most were translated into English from Korean by Elizabeth Jae, Nara Han, and Ashley Cho. A small number were translated by Daniel Tudor. Editing was handled by Rob York and Daniel Tudor.
Thanks
We would like to thank “TK” of the “Ask a Korean” blog, for inspiring us to start the “Ask a North Korean” column.
Thanks are also due to Sokeel Park, for making valuable introductions.
Contributors
Cho Ui-seong
Cho Ui-seong dropped out during the final year of his electronic engineering degree to come to South Korea. He originally wanted to be a journalist in Seoul but is now training to be an elementary school teacher. He is 28 years old.
Mina Yoon
Mina Yoon is a former soldier who left the northeast of North Korea in 2010. She is now a student in Seoul.
Ji-min Kang
Ji-min Kang is in his late twenties, and left North Korea in 2005. He first went to South Korea, but now lives in London, England.
Kim Cheol
Cheol is from Hamheung, in the province of South Hamgyeong. After escaping North Korea he became a university student in Seoul. He is now in his second year.
Jinhyok Park
Jinhyok Park joined NK News’ “Ask a North Korean” as a contributor in spring 2016, and has worked and studied in Pyongyang, North Korea and Washington, D.C. He is in his late thirties and married to a fellow North Korean defector. He came to the United States in 2011 and is studying at a U.S. college.
Kim Yoo-sung
Kim Yoo-sung is an “Ask a North Korean” contributor who left Giljoo County, Hamkyungbuk-do, in 2005.
Je Son Lee
Je Son is an “Ask a North Korean” contributor. She is in her late twenties and left the Mt. Paektu area in 2011.
There are several other contributors who appear in the round table discussion sections. If you wish to know more about these individuals, please see the “Ask a North Korean” section of the NK News website.
PART 1
Economic Life
[Introduction]
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known around the world as North Korea, is considered a byword for communist, collectivist economic control. But how accurate a depiction is this?
Not very, is the answer. When state founder Kim Il Sung was alive, citizens received rations, free education, housing and health-care from the state—though admittedly, the standard of these was not necessarily great. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and more importantly, a devastating nationwide famine in the mid-1990s, this system broke down. Today, the average North Korean receives almost nothing from their government.
As a result of the state’s virtual bankruptcy, almost all North Koreans today are dependent upon private trade, otherwise known as “capitalism.” Those with connections and border access can bring in goods from China; middlemen can transport those goods across the country; middle-aged ladies can sell them in street markets; and officials can collect bribes for looking the other way. Senior officials in Pyongyang can collect much larger bribes from members of a newly-emerging financial elite, who engage in industries as diverse as apartment construction, department stores, and craft beer pubs. None of this is technically legal. But it is a culture that has grown to the point where the state cannot truly control it.
In the past, all but the elite lived in the same way. Today, though, there are North Koreans with money, and who want to show it. Those who can afford it may take regular vacations, and drive fancy cars, have plastic surgery, and use imported cosmetics (see below for more on these).
Sadly, extreme poverty still exists in North Korea. Particularly in rural areas and smaller cities away from either Pyongyang or the Chinese border, life is tough for the majority.
Is it true that there is no tax system in North Korea?
DT: Under a communist system, there is no tax—because everything is already owned by the state. It is no surprise, then, that the DPRK doesn’t have a formal tax system. But in reality, North Korea is not communist any more. People make their own money, and the state must find ways to claim a piece of it, as is the case anywhere else.
Kim Yoo-sung:
Yes, you’re right—there’s no tax system in North Korea, officially. On March 21, 1974, the Supreme People’s Assembly declared the abolition of all forms of taxation. To this day, North Korea celebrates “The Day of the Abolition of the Tax System” on April 1, the day the law went into effect that same year.
Yet North Korea still collects taxes from people, just calling it something else. True, people don’t pay money directly to the government, but the government does extort most of the goods and labor people produce. In short, North Korea collects more taxes from its people than any other country.
North Koreans are no longer obligated to give some portion of their income to the government, but they are forced to offer labor free of charge, and if North Koreans had a choice, they would rather pay taxes like in other countries than have to give their labor and receive nothing in return for it.
Last year, the North Korean government announced that they would extort only 70 percent of the crops people produce and the citizenry would b
e allowed to consume 30 percent of what they produced for themselves. They added that the amount they take would be reduced to 50 percent of the harvest once the country’s economy improves.
No one believes them, of course. Why would they, when North Koreans work so hard every day but the government says they’re entitled to only 30 percent of what they produce through their labor?
It’s ridiculous for Kim Jong Un to make such statements, as if he’s offering a huge favor by letting people keep 30 percent of their own harvests. The real reason they take such a large portion of the crops is to stop the black market from growing any bigger.
When North Korea “officially” abolished the tax system in 1974, the government boastfully called the move “a huge leap forward from the old system and a historical change towards making the dreams of Koreans come true.” Furthermore, they even said they didn’t have to revive the tax system during the Great Famine thanks to the “benevolent” politics and leadership of Kim Jong Il. However, since 2000, North Korea has been collecting taxes from its people—only they have a different name for it.
To make matters worse, the North Korean economy has suffered even more following a series of natural disasters and the sanctions imposed by the United States. Under such hopeless conditions, both central and regional governments in North Korea were faced with serious debt and financial difficulty. They had no choice but to begin taking money from the people. Hence, they began to charge people for using electricity and water, and renting out property and land. They made everyone pay the same amount of money, no matter how much they used.
This is not very different from the tax system in capitalist states, yet differences do exist. First, it’s true that the North Korean government began to collect money from its people for using electricity, water, etc. Still, the amount of tax revenue collected is far smaller than in capitalist states. Second, in most capitalist countries such as South Korea, rich people pay greater amounts of tax than those who make less. But in North Korea, everyone pays an equal amount of tax. These are the two big differences in how the tax system works between North Korea and other countries.