First resolution of 2012 that I broke: no more buying books. There’s the library, there’s online books – it seemed like a good way to save a few extra bucks. English books in Hong Kong are notoriously expensive, as the audience is small and boutique compared with the Chinese book consumer population. Second hand book shops (check out FLOW, newly relocated to 7/F of Hollywood House, 27-29 Hollywood Road) are a haven amongst the few chains of book shops that have dwindling presence in the SAR: Dymocks, PageOne and The Commercial Press. While doing some gift shopping in Kowloon following a recent stand-up comedy show in Shenzhen, I wandered into The Commercial Press looking for trouble, and found it in a big way.
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick is a real treat. Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize (2010) for non-fiction, this book opens the iron curtain and provides first-hand insight into the real lives of everyday people in North Korea. It takes a chronological flow of what life was like with glimpses as far back as pre-Korean war during Japanese occupation, into the years of Soviet support from 1960s-1980s, the difficulties with the fall of communism around the world in the early 1990s, the post-Kim Il-Sung years and North Koreas famine, into the 2000′s with greater push by Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, and as recent as 2009 when the book was published, looking at succession planning and the contemplation of a barely known Kim Jong-Eun taking over the country in his mid to late 20s. What a far flung reality THAT would have been (is).
What’s really lovely about this book is that it looks at North Korean life on a micro-scale. Through series of interviews with many defectors, conversations with those foreigners who work in North Korea, time spent in country and in the border towns in China, Barbara Demick describes the harsh realities in this backward land.
It is a riches to rags history: until the late 1980′s, North Korea was significantly more advanced than its namesake to the South. With the help of communist benefactors near and far (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Cuba), North Korea was able to leap frog domestic innovation and receive modern technology and preferential trading for staples in consumption and production. As the bloc fell, North Korea found itself isolated with no one to turn to for affordable goods. As if in a depressed Giligan’s Island: No food, no fuel, no salaries: not a single necessity – without Comrades from afar, it’s primitive as can be.
The societal hierarchy described within the book follows the many characters. The highest level are members of the Workers Party, membership being applied for one people are into their 20s. Below that you have your military personnel, which hold a lot of power in terms of control over resources. Then there is a layer of the population who are not accepted members into the workers party, who live in a purgatory of almost blessed but constantly watched for downwardly mobile thoughts. Below those you have the people with foreign relatives, many with ancestry in China or Japan. They live well better than most, because their relatives can remit hard currency to them from abroad – but their families may be prevented from opportunities such as university and better jobs because of their heritage. Then you have those who are enemies of the state: South Korean POWs who were never returned following the armistice; instead, they were patriated by North Korea and put to work. At the bottom are the political prisoners and criminals. So many levels for such a stalwart of the Communist ideal, breathing life into the classic line from Orwell’s animal Farm: some are more equal than others.
The stories of the individuals are at times inspiring, at times beguiling, frequently astonishing, often depressing, but always insightful. The operations of individuals during the famine, the steps taken to escape the country, the prison life for those who go caught, the need to escape China for fear of being caught and shipped back to North Korea, and the difficulties with adjusting to life in Korea del Sur once they were able to make it back successfully.
Amazing, hard to put down, and eye-opening.
I wish I could say it diminished my desire to visit the North and see even the mock-up life that foreigners are allowed to see of this preserved Stalinist state, but reading Nothing to Envy has not helped that one bit. If anything, it raises my desire to see the country first hand: even though I’ll only get the watered-down Disney version. If you’re gonna go: Go Koryo.
Note on the Author: Barbara Demick is a Foreign Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and was the Korea correspondent for five years. She is currently based in Beijing.
Watch Barbara Demick talk about Nothing To Envy in January 7th, 2010 with Asia Society’s John Delury.
Nothing to Envy
News for Kim Jong-Eun / Kim Jong-Un
More NEW literature on North Korea: The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers
That’s a great book. I’m glad I was able to read it this year.