Lies and Wasted Lives in North Korea

 

 

 

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2010)

By Barbara Demick

Spiegel & Grau, 316 pages.

★★★

 

The above book is now 16 years old, but my one-line review is: If there a country in the world more pathetic than North Korea, I don’t want to know about it. Nothing to Envy was a National Book Award finalist when Barbara Demick published it, but a quick check shows that its current population has barely grown since 1990. That’s due to famine and outward flight of those who have illegally emigrated from their homeland for better lives in Russia or China. That alone tells you something.

 

A pocket recap of mid-20^th century history reveals more. During World War II, Japan occupied the entire Korean Peninsula. The Soviet Union joined the War in Pacific just weeks before atomic bombs ended the war, but their troops occupied the northern part of Korea. In 1945, the U.S. and Soviet Union could not agree upon a unification plan, hence, as in Germany, Korea bifurcated. North Korea drifted toward communism under its ideological premier Kim II Sung, and South Korea into kleptocracy under Syngman Rhee, a Catholic in a Buddhist land who gave economic favors to relatives and friends. The South was, however, a far richer land agriculturally.  In 1950, North Koreans and Chinese communist troops crossed the 38^th parallel of latitude, invaded the South, nearly conquered it, and precipitated the Korean War.  

 

Only General Douglas MacArthur’s risky flanking maneuver at Inchon stopped the advance. MacArthur drove the invaders back north and spoke of using atomic weapons against China. He was dismissed by President Harry Truman, who feared atomic war with the Soviet Union. The war stalemated and, in 1953, an armistice (no peace treaty) restored the status quo. Some three million Koreans died in the conflict. Since then, the DMZ (demilitarized zone) has been one of the most heavily guarded places on earth. Sung essentially locked in North Koreans and anyone caught trying to cross the DMZ was executed. Kim II established a cult of personality and a propaganda campaign teaching that “American bastards” were their enemy, that the North Korean system was pure, and that devotion to it was the highest duty. Citizens were told to spy on each other and report all suspicious behavior. Religion was banned and owning a Bible or demeaning the Kim family were serious crimes.

 

Before Demick did her research in the 21^st century, North Korean propaganda had done its job. Industries provided jobs, per capita income, and its educational, health care, social services rivaled that of the South. Juche (devotion to the system) worked–as long as rice bowls were full.  In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. When Kim II Sung died in 1994, North Koreans mourned as if a savior had died. His son, Kim Jong II took over at the beginning of famine and economic collapse. No one knows how many died of starvation–numbers vary from 420,000 to several million–but Demick, who collected stories from those who fled, tells of people eating corn husks, bark, grass, saw dust, pets, and anything that looked edible. Industries collapsed, illegal black markets emerged, and those who something (including their bodies) to sell, paid smugglers to take them across the Tumen River into Russia or China in hope of getting to South Korea; the successful were called Kotjebi (homeless).  But even soldiers stationed in Pyongyang, the capital where things appeared better, began to question Juche.

 

Demick interviewed refugees of all sorts, including a once-patriotic mother, a woman who left first her boyfriend and then a husband and child behind, a twice-arrested orphan, a teacher who watched students die of hunger, and women who became Chinese wives. Most were from the city of Chongjin. Some who left miss their old neighborhoods, but nearly all felt they were betrayed by their government and were staggered by the wealth of South Korea.

 

Demick’s book is a walk through hell and one of the cruelest set of human rights violations imaginable. Imagine learning that Western aid saved North Korea! Kim Jong II died in 2011, and his youngest son Kim Jong Un took over. Donald Trump has both courted him and called him “Little Rocket Man.” He’s right about the second; North Korea survives because of money that went to weapons instead of food and the Western belief that he’s crazy enough to use them.

 

Rob Weir