The Hidden People of North Korea (21 page)

The authorities have relaxed the ban on street vending. In Pyongyang and other cities, food stalls sponsored by party, government, and military organizations sell snacks. On the back streets, women squat on the sidewalks with a few articles for sale: a couple of chickens, a half-dozen fish, some knitted socks, a few bottles of homemade liquor, herbal medicines, and so forth. The scene is reminiscent of South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, and the variety of goods is so vast that it is said, “You can buy everything except cat’s horns.” Merchants also conduct business in houses and apartments located near the markets, especially when they have been chased off the street by the police.

Workers also sell their labor. Referred to variously as
ppolppori
(“people who sweat for a living”),
sakbari
(“people who receive small wages”), and
ilkkun
(“ordinary workers”), these individuals assemble at informal day-labor sites and hire themselves out for 1,000 to 2,000 won a day, far more than the official government wages of 4,000 to 6,000 won a month.
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Because private enterprise is antithetical to socialism, people who engage in business activities are walking on thin ice, politically and legally, and thus are easy prey for those in a position to demand bribes. Small businesspeople bribe local officials; big businesspeople bribe higher-level cadres. Whether sitting on the sidewalk, standing in a street stall, or selling in a market, people must bribe police officers and market officials for permission to sell, and (at least in the markets) it is also necessary to share a portion of the profits. Raids conducted by inspectors sent down from Pyongyang temporarily disrupt business. While the visiting inspectors are in town, merchants lie low, hence the term “locust markets,” referring to markets whose vendors flee like locusts at the sight of inspectors. If the visiting inspectors stay for long, the merchants become acquainted with them and buy them off just as they do the local officials.
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Working Abroad

An estimated fifteen to thirty thousand North Koreans work abroad legally, not counting diplomatic and military personnel.
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One large group of workers includes the five to ten thousand laborers employed in the Russian Far East to work in North Korean–run logging camps, at construction sites, and on fishing boats. Approximately seven thousand North Koreans are engaged in construction work in the Middle East, primarily in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Several hundred workers are also employed in Eastern Europe, mostly in the garment industry, and North Korean waitresses staff hundreds of North Korean–owned restaurants in China and Southeast Asia. And then there are the thousands of North Koreans employed by South Korean companies in the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

Foreign and South Korean companies hire North Korean workers from a labor pool supplied by the North Korean government, and workers’ wages are paid to the government, which then pays the workers only a portion of them. Even in the Kaesong zone, the South Korean government does not know how much money the workers actually receive, and the workers themselves do not report their earnings for fear of being excluded from the labor pool.
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It has been estimated that their take-home pay is a quarter to a fifth of their wages. Still, because North Koreans working for South Korean and foreign companies are able to escape the stifling conditions of the North Korean economy, they are extremely grateful for the opportunity. Even difficult jobs such as logging in Siberia are much sought after, and only politically reliable people are sent abroad. For example, the attractive singing and dancing waitresses working in North Korean restaurants in China and several other countries are likely to be the daughters of high-level party officials in Pyongyang and certainly not working-class women from the provinces. Applications for jobs with foreign companies in Kaesong or abroad far outnumber the available positions, and in order to be accepted into the job pool, workers must bribe North Korean officials.

Foreign employers are enthusiastic about North Korean workers because they do whatever their government handlers tell them to do, typically working ten hours a day or longer, seven days a week, with no absences. A Polish foreman supervising several North Korean welders working in Gdansk told news reporters, “They are perfect welders. They do not cause any problems and never come to work with a hangover. Do not write anything bad about them because my department will come to a standstill if those Kim Ir Sen [Kim Il-sung?] guys take them away. One North Korean is worth five Poles.”
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North Korean guest workers live in crowded dormitories, are not permitted to associate with foreigners, and go to work in company vans or on foot, accompanied by North Korean security agents. Foreign human rights organizations and labor departments have tried, usually unsuccessfully, to investigate their wage payments and working conditions, but neither the employers nor the North Korean government is willing to release information. Nevertheless, the situation where North Korean “prisoners” are working in the midst of a democracy is anomalous and, to many, morally wrong. In 2007, the Czech government decided not to renew work visas for North Korean laborers because of negative reports about their working conditions.

Even though they are thousands of miles away from their country, North Korean workers are expected to behave as if they were back home. They are required to write letters of loyalty to Kim Jong-il on his birthday and to donate money to the various campaigns glorifying their leader. North Korean workers rarely defect not only because they come from the loyal political class but because their families are held hostage in Pyongyang. After a few years abroad, they are called back home, bringing with them some hard currency and foreign-made goods. For them, the overseas work experience is just a taste of what the outside world is like, but that is better than nothing. As one North Korean welder in Gdansk said, “We are well fed now and enjoy a glass of beer every day. Every day seems to me like my birthday.”
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A Soldier’s Life

In the late 1990s, Kim Jong-il designated the military as the leading political force of the revolution, replacing the working class. “No other people in this land today are bigger, more precious, and more sacred than soldiers.”
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A 2004
Nodong Sinmun
essay titled “Love Gun-Barrel Families” states that “the gun-barrel family is a new type of family for mankind, where all the family members regard wearing a military uniform and holding a gun as the greatest happiness and the best family tradition and where they all become soldiers.” The article goes on to claim that the “three generals of Mt. Paektu” (i.e., Kim Jong-il and his parents) were the first gun-barrel family.
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Kim’s heavy reliance on the army does not, however, translate into a better life for soldiers. Conditions in the Korean People’s Army (KPA) have materially worsened since the 1980s. Formerly, soldiers were fed, clothed, and housed about as well as the general population, but in recent years, despite Kim’s “military-first” policy, soldiers in the enlisted ranks must scramble to find food to eat and suitable clothing to wear, with the consequence that military morale has plummeted. Foreign analysts estimate the size of the KPA, which includes the country’s navy and air force, at 1.2 million out of a population of 23 million. If the various police and security agencies are included, the number is closer to 1.8 million. Adding reserve units, including 1.7 million in reserve training units, 4 million in the Worker-Peasant Guards, and 1 million in the teenage Young Red Guards, the total number of North Koreans ready to bear arms is over 8 million. This large military force is consistent with Kim Il-sung’s Four Military Lines of 1962, which called for the entire country to be fortified, the entire population to be armed, the military to be modernized, and soldiers to become absolutely loyal to the regime.

Until the 1990s, soldiers could at least look forward to the opportunity to join the Korean Workers’ Party on completing their military service, and in order to attain this goal, they were more concerned about pleasing the political officers than the units’ commanding officers (every unit has a parallel political-military command). Today, however, party membership has only limited economic value, so the decade of military service is increasingly seen as a waste.

According to the law, all able-bodied men are required to serve in the military. Men serve for ten years (formerly thirteen years), and women who choose to enlist (comprising 5 to 10 percent of the army) serve for six or seven years. It is possible to get a deferment if one has good political connections or has been accepted by a top university (which in itself requires good political connections), and defectors say that by paying a few hundred dollars in bribes, it is possible to obtain an early release from military service.

Local security officials begin tracking males when they reach the age of fourteen, and when they graduate from middle school at age seventeen, they receive a draft notice. In addition to those with educational exemptions, men who come from families with unfavorable political backgrounds (one member has a criminal record or the family is registered in a low rank of the “hostile” class) or who fail to meet the minimum height requirements (148 centimeters or 4 feet, 10 inches) and weight requirements (43 kilograms or 95 pounds) are passed over. Since the famine of the 1990s, the North Korean soldier has been “downsized.” The robust soldiers that tourists see at the Panmunjom truce line are the best of the best. In photographs surreptitiously taken by tourists traveling in other parts of the country, soldiers look like scraggly Boy Scouts in baggy clothes and cheap sneakers. Those North Korean youth who do not meet the minimum physical, mental, or political requirements for enlistment are sent directly into the workforce, and their failure to serve in the KPA will be a black mark against them.

During their long years of service, soldiers are granted only one or two home leaves, for example, to attend family funerals. Training can be brutal, and afterward life in the barracks is tedious, with the added burdens of having to undergo political indoctrination and struggling constantly to find enough to eat. Ironically, this struggle takes place in peacetime—for, to its credit, the North Korean army has not engaged in large-scale combat since the Korean War.

The daily life of a soldier is not much different from the regimented life of the civilian population. After morning exercises, soldiers sit through a newspaper-reading session and a talk delivered by their political officer. Then there follows breakfast, morning duties, lunch, afternoon duties, and dinner. After dinner, soldiers attend political-criticism sessions, followed by “cultural” activities, often with a political purpose. Saturday mornings are filled with military duties, and the afternoons with camp-cleaning chores. Sundays are free, but soldiers are rarely permitted to leave camp.

The KPA takes the lead in many of North Korea’s major construction projects, building dams, tunnels, roads, bridges, buildings, and the thousands of monuments honoring the Kim family. Most of this work is manual labor done without the aid of heavy machinery. Like civilians, soldiers are drafted to help out on farms during planting and harvesting seasons.

For soldiers, the greatest sources of stress are lack of food and lack of female companionship. Beginning in the 1990s, the government shifted much of the burden of feeding the troops onto the individual military units, so an important part of a soldier’s duties includes provisioning the camp by working on farms attached to it. Even so, enlisted men rarely get enough to eat. Except on special occasions, meals consist of rice or some other grain, with side dishes of vegetables, peppers, and radishes. Bean paste is sometimes available, and occasionally there is fish. A small piece of low-quality pork is served once or twice a year. Soldiers constantly seek means to supplement their diet. A sample of food-related article titles in military magazines includes “Raising Rabbits in Summertime,” “Smoke-Drying of Catfish,” “Growing Bean Sprouts in Caves,” “Pickling Mountain Garlic,” “Ways of Cooking Cabbage,” and “Beans Are Multiple Vitamins.” Soldiers who become too malnourished to perform their duties are housed in a special barracks where they can rest, although they still do not receive sufficient food. Those who become seriously ill are returned to their homes for a few months of recovery. Officers get more food than enlisted men because they are able to siphon off the best of the rations and accept bribes from soldiers in return for special assignments, promotions, and leaves.

Under the “military-first” slogan, soldiers sometimes go into the markets and demand food. Acting alone or with the connivance of their officers, they also erect checkpoints to rob traders and travelers and raid farms for food—sometimes the very farms they are supposed to be guarding. In an internal document smuggled out of the country in 2003, Kim Jong-il issues the following instructions to his soldiers: “Never lay hands on the people’s belongings; do not commit acts of violence against the people; do not engage in inappropriate relationships with women.”
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Another internal document from 2003 warns, “Officers must not commit such un-party-member-like crimes as organizing soldiers to steal farm produce under various pretexts.”
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Soldiers posted along the border with China are subject to particularly severe temptations, with a land of relative plenty just across the river. Notes for lectures to be delivered by officers to border guards complain that “[soldiers] peek over at the splendid facade of the neighboring country [China] and thoughtlessly belittle the things of their own country.”
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The lecture document accuses guards of holding border crossers for ransom, overlooking smuggling and human trafficking, and engaging in illegal activities by selling government property. Reference is made to the raids that North Korean soldiers occasionally stage across the border into China: “Because of the improper behavior of some soldiers, citizens of the neighboring country have scorn for the People’s Army and even swear at them with abandon.”