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| image of the Koreas from space |
An what a great conversation we had! The author's style of writing, based on the detailed research and clear prose of a newspaper reporter, combined with really engaging personal stories about everyday people in North Korea. To learn so many details about everyday lives in a country that is one of the most closed societies in the world was really fascinating. Most of us had no idea how bad the famine was, how advanced the North Koreans had been at the end of the Korean War, or how expansive government control really was.
One interesting question that came up in discussion was the question of how to understand this strange country, and the people who live in it. Were they all brainwashed? Based on the stories in the book, North Koreans are born and raised into a political system that is based on a cult of leader worship, and extensive monitoring. Every home is supposed to have framed photos of the leader and his father displayed. They have a special cloth to dust the photos with. Television, radio and film is all tightly controlled and censored, and listening to forbidden media would probably mean torture and the death penalty. The accepted position is that the leader of the nation is the provider of all that is good, that the North Koreans want for nothing and are better off than the rest of the world, and that they are a special people, the last communist society in a hostile world. However bad it is in North Korea, the rest of the world is to be pitied, since they are worse off and do not have such a great leader to protect and guide them. Even asking questions or expressing a small amount of skepticism about the government position can lead to a lengthy sentence in a labor camp. Neighborhood monitors or unannounced police checks serve to enforce the rules.
How much personal choice and autonomy can you attribute to people who have been born and educated into such an all encompassing ideology? It is a very tricky question. We struggled to find comparisons in the rest of the world that would help us understand what was going on in North Korea. The fear of being spied on by a family member or neighbor, the danger of dissent, and the methods of social control were familiar to the strategies of other communist countries, for example in East Germany. The strategy of authoritarian leader worship is familiar not only in communist figures like Stalin (curiously enough, it is rising again), but also for example in countries like Syria, where people were subject to state propaganda that insisted that the President was infallible and all knowing. But scholars like Lisa Wedeen argue that people in Syria understand the strategies of the government, and have ways of expressing dissent. In North Korea, society is so closed that we simply have no idea whether there are spaces for such strategies to survive. Perhaps most of the people who have tried are in the massive labor camps, where the guilt of one (very small) transgression condemns an entire family to punishment. In a society where dissent can mean that your entire family, including children, are imprisoned and tortured, it is hard to imagine the coexistence of personal autonomy or dissent. But still, there are glimmers of it in Nothing Left to Envy.
There was much more to the conversation, but should be a good taste!
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There really is very little information on North Korea, but this reporter conducted many interviews with people who left. The result is an amazing look inside this very secretive and closed society, with some historical reach and good factual information while also bringing us some detailed personal stories of people who left North Korea. They are stories of people who defected from their country, where they grew up believing that they had 'Nothing to Envy' in this world, but discovered the world had left their country behind.
North Korea has certainly been on the news recently, because of the recent South Korean military drill off Yonphyong Island and the North Korean military response of threats and return fire. Read the North Korean statements at this Wall Street Journal blog.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer recently went to North Korea with the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. They spent six days there. Their experiences are the official version of North Korea, and they saw the people in North Korea who are the counterweight to the people we will read about in Demick's book: the people Wolf Blitzer saw are the chosen, the well fed and clothed, the educated, the employed. Watch the video or read the short description of the trip here.
North Korea has also made the news recently because of signs that Kim Jong-il’s youngest son Kim Jong-un is his most likely successor. There are significant doubts, however, that the hand-over of power will go as planned. Of course, North Korea has proven experts wrong many times in the past. Regardless of the outcome, there are some serious human rights issues in this country, and the ramifications of the policies of the DPRK will haunt the region for a long time.
