The Hidden People of North Korea (2 page)

As for pronunciation, “Kim” (the most popular name in Korea) is pronounced just as it would be in English. “Il” is pronounced like “eel,” and “sung” is pronounced much like the English word. “Jong” rhymes with “sung.” In general, the vowels in romanized Korean names are pronounced more as they would be in romance languages than in English. For example, the letter
a
in Pyongyang, the capital city, is pronounced like the
a
in “almond,” not the
a
in “salmon.”

CHAPTER ONE

The Illusion of Unity

Unity of purpose and coordination of effort are important sources of strength for a nation, so it is not surprising that the Kim regime of North Korea (officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) has spent over half a century trying to unify the North Korean people socially and ideologically. The regime’s unifying principle is not nationalism, however, but loyalty to the Kim family. Everyone is supposed to think the same thoughts—to be “dyed” with whatever the ideology of the moment is, whether it is Kim Il-sung thought,
Juche
theory, or military-first politics. The regime wants every citizen to be an obedient member of the Kim family. “Our people are a happy people who have an absolutely perfect guarantee for their destiny as a result of having joined their blood vessels of life with the great heart of the nerve center of the revolution.”
¹
That nerve center and “supreme brain of the revolution” is none other than Kim Jong-il. Nor are the people of South Korea (officially, the Republic of Korea, or ROK) excluded from this appeal: “The entire fellow countrymen uphold the respected and beloved General Kim Jong-il, the sun of the nation and outstanding military-first brilliant commander, as the center of national unity.”
²

But something has gone terribly wrong with the unity campaign. The regime’s economic system of centrally controlled socialism collapsed in the 1990s, and at just that time, Kim Il-sung, the revered founder of the nation, died, leaving his son to address the nation’s crippling economic problems. When the people discovered that the son was not up to the task, even though he had been running things behind the scenes for many years, they gave up on the regime and on socialism. It is difficult, after all, to unify around failure. Of course not everyone abandoned the regime: the political elites, including the top military officers, continued to support Kim Jong-il, and thanks to their support, North Korea remains in form much as it has been since its founding in 1946. But a closer look reveals that the country is eroding on the inside. The North Korean people are no longer socialists; nor do they respect their leader. It is not easy to describe what their political and economic beliefs are or how they live from day to day.

In 2000 we wrote a book titled
North Korea through the Looking Glass
.As the title suggests, the book illustrates how different North Korea is in terms of ideology, politics, economy, and foreign policy from the kind of society that most of us are familiar with. Not just different, theirs is in many respects the complete
opposite
of our society. Instead of individualism, they have a collective lifestyle; instead of a regulated market economy, a regime-directed economy; instead of democracy, a dynastic dictatorship; and instead of a foreign policy of alliance and influence, isolation and belligerent contradiction. Even the Chinese, who are North Korea’s strongest supporters and closest “friends,” admit that their neighbor is backward and strange.

Kim Il-sung’s social design is seriously flawed from the viewpoint of the millions of North Koreans who constitute the powerless “masses.” The “great leader” so dominated North Korea that when he died in 1994, the central government practically closed down for three years, during which time 5 to 10 percent of the population died of starvation brought on by severe floods and worsened by the country’s collapsed infrastructure. From the rubble of that economic collapse, a new North Korea is slowly taking shape, hidden behind the regime’s façade of ideological unity.

Those who survived the great famine of the 1990s did so because they ignored what Kim had taught them. They looked out for themselves—the very opposite of what he had always told them to do. If you will, they walked back through the looking glass to our side. Their survival techniques were unofficial and even illegal, including growing crops on patches of appropriated land and trading goods in neighborhood marketplaces. And because their everyday activities were hidden from outsiders, and often from the regime itself, the emergence of this new North Korea only became apparent when defectors began streaming out of the country in the late 1990s. In our previous book we described North Koreans as “double-thinkers” who, like citizens of other totalitarian states, had learned how to mouth the teachings of the regime even while harboring quite different ideas in their minds. When Kim Il-sung died and the government stopped operating, North Korea’s double-thinkers became double-doers.

A decade and a half after Kim’s death, North Korea is still surpassingly strange—strange in the sense of being different, not irrational or bizarre. Almost everything about North Korean society is designed to strengthen the control and further the longevity of the Kim dynasty. This top-down view of North Korea constitutes the counterpoint theme of our book. Even as the people are beginning to take responsibility for their own lives, the regime is doing its best to preserve the original social design. These two social forces, change and conservatism, create a drama in North Korea today. It is not the drama of a glorious revolution but rather a kind of guerrilla economic warfare that pits the politically powerless masses against an increasingly demoralized ruling political class. Chronologically, this book takes up where the last one left off, around the turn of the present century. The society we described in the late 1990s, that is, the society as it was designed and built by the two Kims, was to some extent a façade, but now even the façade is cracking.

The two books take up parallel topics. The earlier book focused on the society and the system, whereas the present book looks more closely at how people live and work. Instead of a chapter on ideology, this book has chapters on the range of information available to North Koreans and how that information challenges and shapes their beliefs, although ideology is still discussed because it plays an important role in the information environment. The chapter on North Korea’s economy has been updated and supplemented by an additional chapter on food, health, housing, and employment. The Kim regime’s social-control measures, which were the topic of a chapter in the first book, are now viewed in terms of human rights, the law, and the experience of the defectors who choose to escape that control. Instead of a chapter on North Korea’s military power, we now describe the life of North Korean soldiers. Both books devote a chapter to the North Korean leadership, but the present book focuses almost exclusively on Kim Jong-il. And finally, both books end with a brief chapter laying out our modest recommendations for American policy toward North Korea. Readers will find that these recommendations have not changed; nor, for that matter, have they been adopted with any conviction by Washington policy makers.

Social Regimentation

North Korea has not experienced anything like the political, economic, and social changes that swept through the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe a decade ago or even the more gradual economic and social changes that have been transforming China since the early 1980s. North Korea remains the world’s most regimented society. And it is also the most secretive. According to one defector, Kim Jong-il has told his people that if they wrap themselves in mystery, their enemies will be filled with uncertainty, and by “enemies,” Kim means
all
foreigners.
³
For many centuries, Koreans jealously guarded their privacy, repulsing invasions from Japan and paying tribute to the distant imperial Chinese court in order to preserve a measure of Korean sovereignty—hence the nickname “hermit kingdom.” Korea has never been the destination of waves of foreign immigrants; nor until South Korea industrialized in the latter part of the twentieth century have Koreans actively participated in the international community. Even today, North Korea, unlike its neighbor to the south, has established relatively few commercial, political, cultural, or social ties with other peoples.

Although North Korean society is largely hidden from view, in some respects, North Koreans are easier to describe than, say, Americans because they have preserved in large measure their cultural and racial homogeneity. There are ever so many Kims and Lees and Parks but hardly any families with foreign names. The Korean people, especially the North Korean people, are proud of their cultural purity, as is illustrated by a heated exchange that took place in May 2006 at a meeting between North and South Korean military officers. The two lead negotiators were engaged in small talk about farmers going out into their fields for the springtime planting, and the South Korean general noted that because the rural population in South Korea was declining, farmers sometimes took foreign brides (usually from Mongolia, Vietnam, or the Philippines). At this, the North Korean general snapped, “Our nation has always considered its pure lineage to be of great importance—and I’m concerned that our singularity will disappear.” The South Korean replied that this influx of foreigners was “but a drop of ink in the Han River” (referring to the river that runs through Seoul), whereupon his North Korean counterpart yelled, “Not even one drop of ink must be allowed to fall into the Han River.” And so another inter-Korean dialogue got off to a rocky start.
⁴

Regimentation in North Korean society is most obvious when people are gathered in large groups. When the 687 deputies of the Supreme People’s Assembly vote, they do so unanimously by all holding up their deputy cards. To do otherwise, especially if Kim Jong-il were in attendance holding up his card, would be counted as treason. North Korea is justly famous for its military parades and its special displays, like the Arirang Festival, where a hundred thousand students perform gymnastics in almost perfect synchronicity, backed up by a card section of twenty thousand students creating ever-changing pictures that look like a gigantic computer screen.
⁵

Faced with such sameness, outside observers are often tempted to depersonalize the North Korean people, but of course individual differences, rooted in personality and the pursuit of self-interest, add variety to their private lives. Today, not only has the ideological dye faded throughout North Korean society, but people are becoming more individualistic in their appearances and lifestyles. Comfortable, Chinese-made, cotton clothing in bright colors is replacing drab clothing made out of the domestic synthetic fiber Vinalon and worn with a Kim Il-sung badge over the heart. Women experiment with a variety of hairstyles and have taken to wearing cosmetics. Young people are attracted to foreign music, dances, and consumer goods.

To the extent that the North Korean people have not accepted the idea of single-hearted unity around their leader, the Kim regime has imposed uniformity by employing an arsenal of social-control measures, although these measures are not as strong as they were before the 1990s because police officers and party officials are spending more time looking out for their own welfare and less time doing the bidding of the government and the party. One of the more effective means of controlling people is to group them together so that they can watch each other and feel accountable to the group for their behavior. School children often assemble in their neighborhoods and march to school like little soldiers. Workers in the same factory or office may be assigned to the same housing development. Before and after work hours, coworkers are required to attend political meetings and self-criticism sessions. At the local level, neighborhood committees (
inminban
) and cells of the Korean Workers’ Party keep an eye on what people are doing, even in their homes. As
Minju Choson
, the government newspaper says, “There is not a person who is not affiliated with a neighborhood or people’s unit. . . . When all people’s units become a harmonious group in which the members help and lead one another, the strength of our society’s single-hearted unity will be demonstrated even further.”
⁶

If the Kim family cult propaganda were totally effective in creating social unity, surveillance and punishment would not be needed to enforce loyalty. Kim has tried to put himself, his father, and his mother at the political, ideological, historical, and cultural center of North Korean life. The people are told that without the Kim family, there would be no North Korea. Yet it seems clear that most people have not taken this propaganda to heart. Like people everywhere, they gripe about their leaders—but in private, never in public. Thus, while North Korean society appears to be unified around the Kim regime, the disappearance of Kim Jong-il might expose the true sentiments of the elites and the masses.