The Hidden People of North Korea (4 page)

Andrew Holloway, another Brit who went to Pyongyang as an English-language editor, in this case for a year in 1987, had even less opportunity to get to know the country. Holloway thought the North Koreans were the nicest people he had ever met but admitted that because of the controlled nature of the society, he was unable to form any close friendships. He believed the masses were “contented with their simple lives,” almost childlike in fact, but for himself, he expected something more from life and could not wait to get out of the country. Most visitors to the country would almost certainly echo his matter-of-fact evaluation of North Korea: “It was not the type of society of which I would ever wish to be a member.”
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On rare occasions, foreign media, including a couple of American television networks, have been allowed into North Korea, in addition to the press corps that accompany high-level foreign delegations. To their credit, a few foreign filmmakers have even managed to negotiate permission to make short documentaries. The documentary that comes closest to the subject matter of this book is titled
North Korea: A Day in the Life
. Directed by Dutch film-maker Pieter Fleury and released in coordination with the DPRK Ministry of Culture in 2004, the film is available in the United States for purchase or rental. Needless to say, the director had little freedom to choose whom, what, where, or when to shoot. The authorities provided him with what they claimed was a typical family living in Pyongyang and allowed him to follow its members around for a few days. To illustrate the difficulty of penetrating North Korean society, as well as to provide a further preview of the themes we will be presenting later in the book, some of the high points of the film are worth reviewing.

This model family consists of a husband and wife, their daughter, and two grandparents who share their apartment. The father seems to be studying English, the mother works at a small coat factory, and the daughter is in nursery school. The family lives in a gray apartment building on a street with other gray apartment buildings.

In the opening scene, the grandmother is preparing breakfast while the son carefully cleans the three framed photos of Kim Il-sung, his wife Kim Jong-suk, and Kim Jong-il that are required to be hung on the most prominent wall in every North Korean dwelling and workplace. The rooms are small and full of furniture. After a hearty breakfast of the sort most North Koreans could only dream of, the mother walks her daughter to kindergarten, first singing a children’s song about trees and then urging the daughter to accompany her in a song that goes, “Our powerful people’s army, that shakes heaven and earth, the pathetic Americans kneel on the ground, and beg for their lives” (actually, the lyrics translate to “the jackal-like American bastards”—but these words do not appear in the film’s subtitles). Few cars are seen on the streets, just pedestrians and the occasional bicycle, but the camera does catch three large posters, two depicting North Korean soldiers ready for battle and the third depicting a large American and a small Japanese skewered on the end of a North Korean bayonet.

As the children file into the school, each child bows to a large painting of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il surrounded by happy children. In the classroom the children sit on benches around the edge of the room as the teacher plays a taped morning message: “Flowers need the sun in order to blossom, and the children of our country need the love of our great general Kim Jongil in order to grow.” On the wall is a child’s drawing of two North Korean fighter jets shooting down an American jet. In the hallway is a poster of little children dressed as soldiers attacking an American—or rather, an American’s head, which seems to have been separated from his body.

A kindergarten lesson is presented in a room built around an elaborate model of the “secret camp” on Mt. Paektu where Kim Jong-il is supposed to have been born. A similar room has been described by a foreign tourist who was taken to Pyongyang’s “model” kindergarten, suggesting that the film crew happens to be in this same school and raising the question of why this “typical” child in a city of three million would be attending such a prestigious school. The teacher tells the Story of the Returned Boots: “Sit up straight. Little comrades, when you have heard my story, you will know that our general is the most praiseworthy man on earth. When he was young, he was a child just like you. Comrades, do you know what boots are?” She holds up a pair of red-and-white rubber boots. “Have any of you ever played in the snow?” One child offers that he likes to throw “snow grenades.” The teacher then explains that Kim Jong-il’s mother gave him a pair of rubber boots. “The great leader was so happy with his boots he put them on right away, and he ran straight to his comrades. But suddenly our great leader Kim Jongil stopped running. Do you know why?” One child, who has undoubtedly heard the story many times, answers, “Because he was sad?” “Yes, because he saw his friends were still wearing wet sneakers. That’s why our thoughtful general ran right back home, and when he came back outside, he was wearing wet sneakers.”

Meanwhile, the mother is on her way to the coat factory. Military music is playing on the subway public address system, and the obligatory photos of the two Kims are hanging in the subway car. At the factory entrance, the workers (all women) are greeted by a female agitprop team whose leader is praising Kim Jong-il while her half-dozen associates line up behind her waving red flags. As the workers prepare their sewing machines for the day’s work, the factory manager announces that the factory has been assigned a quota of 150 coats for that day, although they made fewer than 100 the day before. Then the electricity goes out, and the women take out paperback books and read or talk to each other.

In a separate room the factory manager convenes a meeting at which he blames the power outage on “the American stranglehold and years of natural disasters” and predicts, “As long as imperialism continues, our energy problem will exist.” Then he calls on the equipment manager to stand and give her report, which she reads in a monotone voice: “I am responsible for the equipment department. I am not a good manager. I did not prepare the equipment plan properly. It’s my fault the machines are in bad shape and unreliable. I didn’t train the workers well. That’s why the whole department performs so poorly. I vow that I will improve the production lines.” Everyone takes notes, and when she sits, there is a moment of silence. Then another manager reads his report: “Our comrades should know that the electrical shortage is caused by the isolationist policy of imperialist countries, above all, the U.S.” The factory manager adds, “This problem will go on until our enemy is defeated.”

At one point the “third broadcasting” speaker on the workroom wall comes alive with a “news flash”: “Our great general Kim Jong-il has, on behalf of the people, received a letter from a Chinese delegation. The letter of thanks says, ‘Pyongyang, we have seen the fantastic results of your socialist system and encountered a friendly tradition and warm atmosphere during our visit. We would like to express our thanks for the effort Korea has made to make our visit a success. DPRK, we wish you eternal life and happiness.’ ”

At the end of the day, the family gathers in its apartment and listens to the grandfather, dressed in a suit covered with war medals, tell Korean War stories about how the Americans bombed his school and his house, killing his father and older brother. When he enlisted and went to the front, “I shot at Americans. I was breathing fire. You can imagine how badly I wanted revenge.” He proudly says, “Even my granddaughter says, ‘Kill the American dogs.’ I taught her that.”

His daughter-in-law, smiling brightly, adds, “My father-in-law has often told us about the enemy and about his experiences during the war. So even though I wasn’t in the war myself, his stories have shown me how bad and cruel those American dogs, our people’s enemy, were to our people. We must ensure that our people never suffer at the hands of those American monsters again. I believe from the bottom of my heart that we must do everything to destroy all American monsters on our land [i.e., the Korean Peninsula].”

The Book Chapters

Following this brief preview of North Korea, we move in chapter 2 to a discussion of the ideas, leadership techniques, and lifestyle of Kim Jong-il and his father, who are the architects and builders of North Korea and the two people for whose benefit the country continues to exist separately from South Korea. Although they have governed much like other dictators, the two Kims stand out because they have had a much longer time to perfect their dictatorship.

The foundation of a society is its economy, which is the subject of chapter 3. The socialist command economy that Kim Il-sung adopted and that Kim Jong-il has embraced is more than an economy: it is a social-control mechanism. People who don’t obey, don’t eat. Although this economic model is admirably suited to keeping the Kim regime in power, it can only function as long as it receives foreign aid or allows the people to supplement their income by participating in a parallel economy. When the economy breaks down, as North Korea’s has, survival becomes an individual rather than a collective effort, as is described in chapter 4, which takes a more detailed look at the health, welfare, and work of the people.

Chapter 5 begins with the self-evident proposition that people need information to make intelligent choices. In order to limit the choices available to its people, the Kim regime has severely restricted information. Predictably, the so-called mosquito net that the regime has drawn over the country to block outside influences has developed holes. By secretly listening to foreign radio and television broadcasts and watching smuggled videotapes and discs, North Koreans are learning about the outside world, and this unauthorized information is beginning to change their beliefs. However, beliefs, the topic of chapter 6, change slowly, and in North Korea any beliefs other than the officially sanctioned thought of the party must be carefully hidden. In fact, it appears that most North Koreans do not even think about politics but instead focus on economic survival.

Chapter 7 takes up the related topics of the law, political class, and human rights. It is not unusual for dictatorial governments to grant their citizens a long list of constitutional rights, but most of these rights exist only on paper. The more rights the people enjoy, the more constraints are placed on the leader. Since the late 1980s, millions of North Koreans have not even enjoyed the right to an adequate diet. If the Kim regime does eventually reform its political system, which is far from certain, granting its people more individual rights will probably be the last step it takes.

Chapter 8 recounts how hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have fled across the border into China and how, by 2009, over fifteen thousand of them had then made their way to South Korea. Severe economic hardships, loss of confidence in Kim Jong-il’s leadership, and disillusionment and curiosity due to information about the outside world are the main reasons they leave their homeland. Their flight to China and their struggle to survive or move on to a more hospitable haven in South Korea provide clues about what North Koreans will face if the Kim regime collapses in the near future.

The material for these chapters has come to us from many sources. Because our writings have been uniformly critical of the Kim regime, we have not been permitted to visit North Korea; instead, we have let North Koreans come to us. Over two hundred defectors have been interviewed by Kongdan Oh in recent years. In addition, Koreans and Chinese who live on the Chinese side of the North Korean border have shared their observations. North Korean officials attending international conferences are usually eager to talk with Oh, whose family originally came from North Korea (although she was born in South Korea). We have also consulted many North Korea specialists in South Korea, China, and Japan and studied thousands of news reports, travelers’ accounts, and direct transcriptions and translations of North Korean media reports and internal documents. We frequently quote from domestic North Korean sources as a means of illustrating the information environment in which the North Korean people live, and it must be admitted that a secondary motive for doing this is to convict the Kim regime with its own words.

North Korea is constantly changing, and in any case it is impossible to be entirely accurate when describing a population of twenty-three million people. We believe our conclusions about North Korea are substantially correct, although we would be the first to admit that a few of the details may not be entirely accurate or up-to-date. One of the defectors we have interviewed on several occasions has been kind enough to read through the entire manuscript and tells us that, based on his experience, our description is accurate in regard to not only the main themes but the details as well. We have done our best with what is at hand, and we encourage interested readers to consult other sources as well, because no two views of North Korea are identical. For a start, a short list of readings for further study may be found at the end of the book.

CHAPTER TWO