I’d spent more than thirty years living in this “paradise on earth” created by Kim Il-sung; I’d been treated as little more than an animal and barely survived at the very bottom rung of society. At one point, I’d even tried to end my life to escape my miserable existence here. So why was I crying?
Had all of the state programming been partially successful? Ever since moving to North Korea, I’d never felt truly alive; part of me had been walled off, silenced. After a while, I felt that that part of me had simply withered away like a limb that atrophies from lack of use. I pondered the terror that had dominated my life—the never-ending surveillance; the lack of autonomy; the fear of expressing an opinion; the hopelessness and despair; the impossibility of improving my lot in life. Kim Il-sung’s menacing rule had invaded every single aspect of my life, like a bayonet inches from my throat.
I’d been saying, “Long live Kim Il-sung!” for more than thirty years—not ever meaning it, of course—but here I was crying. Had all the brainwashing achieved its desired effect? Or was I just responding to group hysteria? The people around me were completely distraught. “How are we going to live from now on?” they kept wailing.
When I got home, my children clung to me and cried. My wife wept too. I don’t know whether any of it was from sadness, or whether it was all rooted in fear. What would happen to us now?
The day after his death, people flocked to his bronze statue and placed flowers before it. Cinemas and cultural facilities hosted memorial gatherings. Attendance was compulsory. The police were everywhere, just to make sure that everyone turned up. But it wasn’t necessary. Everyone was eager to attend, to share their feelings with others, to feel a part of something larger and more meaningful than their own pitiful little lives.
Kim Il-sung died on the eve of what was supposed to have been the first ever North-South Summit. The party leadership had been delirious with optimism about the summit, claiming that the unification of North and South would soon become a reality and that our present difficulties would be over.
But that’s the trouble with propaganda. It constantly contradicts itself. We had been told that the collapse of farming and the demise of the economy were entirely the fault of US imperialists dividing the Korean Peninsula into two countries. If only the North and South could be unified, the threat of starvation would be over.
But that didn’t make any sense. If our troubles were purely the result of US imperialism, why weren’t South Koreans starving too? And besides, only the other day, hadn’t we been told that they were starving too? In that case, how would the unification save us?
As time went on, workers in the factory all began to ask the same question: How are we supposed to live now that the Great Leader is dead? I don’t think they were prompted by sorrow. The question was prompted by fear. You could see it in their faces. They were terrified. As well they might be. Starvation was staring us all in the face. Never mind that there was a sumptuous ceremony to celebrate Kim Jong-il’s inauguration as the new Great Leader.
As soon as Kim Jong-il took over, people began to complain about him. They blamed him for the deteriorating food situation. They were secretly contemptuous of him, saying he had become the country’s leader only because of his father. True enough. When Kim Il-sung was still alive, the propaganda machine had been cranked up to the limit. Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, peace be upon him, had liberated the people from the yoke of tyranny. More or less single-handedly. Why wouldn’t they trust and respect him? “This is the year of agriculture,” he announced in 1992. “The nation must realize the people’s century-long dream to eat white rice and meat soup, wear silken clothes, and live in tiled-roof homes.”
Trouble was, I’d heard it all before. The very same speech. Way back in 1961. Not long after I’d moved to North Korea. The very same idiotic speech! The same shameless lavish self-praise. But Kim Il-sung had never fulfilled any of his promises. Not one. He promised us “paradise on earth” and instead consigned us to its very opposite.
When I think of all the people he purged, all the people he starved, all the incalculable suffering he caused, I have to hope that his name goes down in infamy.
Ever since setting foot in North Korea more than thirty years before, I’d known nothing but hunger. Everyone had been halfway to starvation for decades. But things had taken a turn for the worse starting in 1991. From 1991 until Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, extremely cold weather wreaked havoc on the fragile food supply.
Under the food-distribution system, regular workers were officially entitled to one and a half pounds of grain per day. For some perverse reason, farmers were entitled to less than that. The actual amount, even for regular workers, was one pound, 70 percent of which was just cornstarch. Needless to say, party members received a much larger ration.
Rations were supposed to be distributed twice a month, but beginning in 1991, there were regular delays. In the end, we had to survive for half a month on three days’ worth of food. Inevitably, things turned nasty. People descended on the food-distribution stations, and violence broke out in explosive bursts.
The party started churning out more slogans, more propaganda. I couldn’t help but wonder where they even got all the paper for the posters—and whether I could eat it. And what did all these wretched posters tell us? They gave advice on alternatives to the standard food ration.
“Make the root of rice plants into a powder and eat it! It’s rich in protein! . . . Arrowroot contains a lot of starch! . . . If you eat and survive, we can definitely prevail!” Useless information, all delivered with the usual histrionic exclamation marks. By that time, we’d been scouring the ground for ages for anything edible—acorns, mugwort, pine-tree bark. It was hellish stuff. You can use bark to make something vaguely resembling a rice cake. It was a dreadful thing. People had eaten it out of desperation at the end of the colonial era and again just after the Korean War. Times when people had no other choice. Times like the ones we found ourselves in.
Here’s how to make it. First, boil the pine bark for as long as possible to get rid of all the toxins. (Many people botched this stage and died in agony as a result.) Next, add some cornstarch and steam the evil brew. Then cool it, form it into cakes, and eat it. This was easier said than done. The pine oil stinks to high heaven and makes it almost impossible to consume it. But if you wanted to live, you choked it down.
That’s when the real fun began. Crippling gut pain that brought us to our knees; constipation that you wouldn’t believe. When the pain became unbearable—there’s no delicate way of putting this—you had to shove your finger up your anus and scoop out your concrete shit. I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know that. Except you did. It’s the only thing that shows how desperate we were.
After the death of Kim Il-sung, everything ground to a halt. Farming. Industry. Everything. No raw materials of any kind got delivered to the factory. We had only a few hours of electricity, if we were lucky. Production gradually sputtered out. Workers collapsed on the floor before my eyes, weak with hunger.