Is it a North Korean Phenomenon that many have observed. For lack of chairs or benches, the people sit for hours on their haunches, along the sides of roads, in parks, in the market. They stare straight ahead as though they are waiting - for a tram, maybe, or a passing car? A friend or relative? Maybe they are waiting for nothing in particular, just waiting for something to change.
I wrote an essay about 7 years ago on the international dynamic between North Korea and the West. I imagine it was pretty naive, knowing my 19 year old self I imagine I would have gone out of my way to 'defend' the North Korean regime and pour scorn on the imperialist West. Being a lot older doesn't necessarily make me a lot wiser, but I at least can appreciate that there are so many nuances on the 'world stage' that to label anyone as a 'good guy' is folly. North Korea as a country has always fascinated me, largely because of the mystery within. Tourists are only allowed to enter at certain times of the year, under constant supervision from government officials. Journalists, of course, are given equally stringent access, and furthermore there is a total communication blockade, in part because their electricity grid is hardly ever switched on. Even countries riddled with economic and political strife are still to a certain extent either welcoming to visitors or at the very least open to journalists. North Korea is one of the few remaining exceptions to the rule. But I'm always curious as to what the world is like for North Koreans. What's normal and everyday for the North Korean people? What do they look forward to? How do they spend their time?
Barbara Demick is a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, and spent several years collecting accounts of people who had defected from North Korea for various reasons. Some political, some economical, some just by accident. These accounts range from a Dr who had become utterly disillusioned by the huge death toll from the famine in North Korea in the 1990's, and her government's inability to do anything about it. Another follows an almost Dickensian story of a street urchin who lives amongst the dead and destitude in Chongjin station, and his eventual escape to a new life in South Korea. The accounts themselves are fascinating, and range from inspiring to tragic. The sour note comes with Demick constantly trying to put her own opinions of North Korea in the way. Reading Nothing to Envy rarely feels like personal accounts, and more often than not comes across as a journalist choosing words and passages to illustrate her damnation of the North Korean regime, which is undoubtedly deserving of pages and pages of scorn, but seems to dilute the personal accounts to a certain extent.
That isn't to say that the book isn't filled with some very moving, intriguing and genuinely page-turning accounts, but that there always seems to be a shadow of critique hanging in the background. We all know that the North Korean regime is an Orwellian nightmare, that the Kim 'dynasty' would be seen in an almost farcical light if it wasn't for the fact that they are indirectly responsible for the death of millions of North Koreans, and responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands more, but it seems this book is geared to a small portion of people out there who have no idea about this country whatsoever.
I also find the exploration of people's lives in South Korea following defection rather short in comparison, yet two of the most memorable quotes for me came from the defector's lives in South Korea, for example when Demick describes one of her sources after having not seen her for a few months.
She's had plastic surgery to add the extra little crease in her eyelids to make herself look more Caucasion. It was the ultimate South Korean experience. Mrs Song had arrived.
And another account by the Dr, who ended up working as a cleaner in South Korea, on telling her employer, a university professor, that she used to be a Dr.
Dr Kim felt she had no choice but to confess. She blurted out her life story - the divorce and the loss of custody of her son, her father's suicide after Kim Il-Sung's death, the years of semistarvation, the dying children at the hospital.
"Oh my God. You're a doctor!" the professor said. The women hugged and cried together. "If I had known, I would have treated you differently."
The message behind the book seems so confused at times. It holds the every day life of the North Korean as important, but then broadcasts ideological arguments in the background. If I had known the book was the latter, I wouldn't have bothered reading it. There was just enough of the former to maintain my interest. I imagine I am spoiled by having read some of the McSweeney's Voice of Witness series, which dedicate much much more attention to varied and personal accounts, over authorial opinions, and are well worth your attention.
I feel like I've come down a bit hard on Nothing to Envy, it's by no means a bad book, but when reading it I felt misled at times. If you are completely ignorant to North Korea, then this is probably ideal. I'm still just waiting for the Ernest Hemingway of North Korea to step forward and fill my brain with bulbous prose.
Below is a rather heartbreaking account from 1999, again by Dr Kim, of her first day in China, beyond the North Korean border. One day she basically just started walking, and made it to China without even seeing anyone else. It it probably worth mentioning that in the 1990's most North Koreans who didn't starve to death survived on pulped corn cobs or tree bark, and whatever grasses and weeds they could scavenge. Often they would spend all day finding enough edible morsels to have a single meal in the evening. The UN World Food Programme rice bags mostly ended up on the black market.
Dr Kim looked down a dirt road that led to farmhouses. Most of them had walls around them with metal gates. She tried one; it turned out to be unlocked. She pushed it open and peered inside. On the ground she saw a small metal bowl with food. She looked closer - it was rice, white rice, mixed with scraps of meat. Dr Kim couldn't remember the last time she's seen a bowl of pure white rice. What was a bowl of rice doing there, just sitting out on the ground? She figured it out just before she heard the dog's bark.
Up until that moment, a part of her had hoped that China would be just as poor as North Korea. She still wanted to believe that her country was the best place in the world. The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated. But now she couldn't deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.
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