Nothing to Envy

My blog post title is not a result of feeling superior.  It's actually the North Koreans who have "nothing to envy," according to their "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il.  Au contraire according to Barbara Demick's book, Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which tells of North Korean defectors whose stories pack a hard visceral punch.

I enjoy history but struggle getting through historical texts focusing strictly on dates and events.  Throw some stories of actual lives in with the history and the history becomes real to me.  This book was so real to me that I felt anxious when I became hungry.  The stories were so moving that I had to remind myself that my next meal wasn't weeds or pine bark or cicadas that I had to walk miles to get.  I simply had to walk to the kitchen.  But the low-level panic was there.

The collapse of the Soviet Union - a trading partner and communist ally of North Korea - contributed to a series of events that resulted in tremendous suffering in North Korea in the 1980's and 1990's.  The actual number of starvation deaths will perhaps never be known during this period known as the Arduous March.  Estimates range from hundreds of thousands to millions. 

The people in this book, and countless others, watched the young and old die.  People were required to make "Sophie's Choice" type decisions - teachers had to find food for themselves or share some with the school children who were obviously dying.  Doctors had to try to comfort the dying or go search for food for themselves and their families.  It was not uncommon to see dead bodies in the streets.  People got used to seeing this, as I imagine many of us American urban dwellers are accustomed to seeing homeless people in our U.S. streets. 

The communist propaganda engine was perhaps the only thing that was working smoothly in North Korea during this time.  In 1992, Kim Jong-il's government launched the "Let's Eat Two Meals Per Day Campaign" in an effort to make the good citizens of this communist country-prison sacrifice for the collective good.  His government required doctors to grow their own cotton for bandages and harvest herbs for use in the hospitals.  IV fluid was distributed in old beer bottles - if you brought two bottles, you could get two bottles of IV fluid...in the rare cases it was available.

The Chinese government has a pact with North Korea that it will return North Korean defectors to their homeland.  If returned, they face either execution or long imprisonment.  North Koreans could not even turn themselves in to the South Korean embassies in China.  Still, some desperate citizens escaped across the Tumen River separating the countries and went deep into China.  They might be lucky enough to get fake travel documents to enter South Korea, where they were welcomed as citizens.  Others would go into China then Mongolia.  As soon as they crossed into Mongolia, they were taken into custody - but the Mongolians deported them to South Korea.  Oftentimes, any family members remaining in North Korea were punished because their defector relatives were with "the enemy" - South Korea.

This book read like an evil Disney World tale.  I think it would be difficult for someone to make this up, which is why it is so powerful.  It's truly surreal.  We simply have no idea.  Of course, this book is not uplifting reading but it's important reading. 

I'll follow the goings-on of North Korea even more seriously moving forward.  I wonder if the Koreas will ever reunite?  I know South Korean "think tankers" are looking at the exorbitant cost if that does happen - half of the country decades behind and the people smaller, less healthy, and many less educated than the South Korean population.  Currently, defectors receive months worth of education.  They learn to use ATMS, cell phones, the internet and also learn about the South Korean version of the Korea War and what the Americans ("imperialist bastards" to the North Koreans) really did in WWII.  If there is ever reunification, what a challenge.  There is nothing to envy.