Granta Books Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea

'We are a shrimp among whales'. That is how Koreans have described themselves and for me it sums up the dilemma of Korea, a little country that existed for a thousand years and more in much the same way as China, but then became a pawn in other's games. Did you know that the dropping of those nuclear bombs on Japan freed Koreans from 25yrs of occupation by the Japanese? I didn't. As a boy I would hear about the 'Korean war', but it meant absolutely nothing to me. I was surprised to learn that 3M Koreans died as the US fought to make this little country an outpost of the West and stop it becoming communist like it's neighbours Russia and China before reaching a stalemate and dividing the country in two. How strange it is, and what an amazing experiment, that all our most prized electronic possessions - from flat screen TV's to laptops and mobiles - come from South Korea, made by people with the same history and genetic makeup as those in the North with such a different way of life!I'm so glad I found this book. It's a gripping read. But it's important to remember that it's author bases it on the stories of defectors who 'escaped' from N Korea. We come to understand their backgrounds and their reasons, but not all Koreans want to escape (as the book also points out), and those who do are left with fond memories of their life in a place where the stars shine brightly in an unpolluted sky with no light pollution (no streetlights). Where, if you accept the system, there are a great many less things to worry about than we are used to. The defectors have their own grudges based on their individual backgrounds, but are they proof that the regime is all bad?There's something wrong with the story we are given; some things that don't 'add up'. During the terrible famine of the 1990's it's shear lack of food that is the underlying problem. Then, when things start to pick up, we are given a heart-warming story of how everyone sets up as an entrepreneur, cooking biscuits, gathering firewood, cutting hair and so on, and it is the stirrings of small-scale capitalism that save the day. But cooking biscuits does nothing to increase the food value of the basic ingredients - no amount of work and cooperation can help people get out of a famine; the basic problem is simply lack of food. Some entrepreneurs start growing vegetables by creating terraced gardens, but how come they didn't do this sooner? We have been told that N Korea was not always struggling. In the early years after the country was divided it was N Korea that had the best standard of living, and S Korea struggled - until the explosion of the consumer electronics industry there. What actually caused N Korea's famine was not communism, or mismanagement, but a series of quite exceptional droughts and floods that damaged the crops; with little external aid. What rescued the situation was better weather and more foreign aid, especially perhaps from China as it found better times. It's a pity that the peoples resourcefulness could not be directed into simply growing food by whatever means during the bad years, and I would like to have heard what was going on in the official farms and workplaces. The biscuit baking brings relief through profit, but only because there were people to buy biscuits who had money, and because there were basic ingredients to be had if you had money to buy them. Who were these people, in this poor region of Chongjin? Who were the men with money to pay for prostitutes? We don't seem to be getting the full story! If they were simply the better off favoured classes who got better rations, then why was such trading not going on during the disaster? Are we being fed American propaganda regarding the wonderful power of capitalism to rescue people from famine?I'm left with a very interesting puzzle that seems to incorporates all the politics, tactics, wars and history of the world - what do you do if you find yourself in charge of a country that is 'a shrimp among whales', with borders against Russia and China, and Japan just across the sea? You value your country and it's former ways, and understandably you hate the USA which killed so many of your people in order to create a Western outpost. You see the people of S Korea and the West with their own problems - overwork, stress, mental illness, drugs, pollution and so on, not to mention the breakdown of families that seems to be accelerating as children use Facebook and view pornography, while Facebook monitors the entire population, unchecked, to a degree never before known anywhere in the world! You see protests about the 'one percent' with all the wealth (N Korea, despite the injustices, is a much more equal society) Is there any way that you can preserve what you value while letting the people talk to, and be enticed by, that other, purely hedonistic, world. It's a hell of a problem, and it goes a lot deeper than just communism vs capitalism or dictatorship vs democracy. If there is a way, I think it rests with education - a proper understanding of the good and the bad in both systems along with a questioning of what human beings are, and what they really want (evolutionary psychology is now giving us many of the answers). In N Korea, education is valued, and free, while in the USA school kids now live in fear of their lives. We need to understand both sides, and this book is a great start. How ironic that it won the BBC Samuel Johnson prize, yet the BBC tells us practically nothing about N Korea, other than that it is a 'rogue state'! Now that I know the names of some places in that country, and their distinctive backgrounds, I'd love to see an honest documentary showing me the places and discussing the issues impartially. A sort of 'David Attenborough life on earth' but about humans! From what I know, Korea's leaders would like this too, but understandably, they're terrified.

This book is not an easy read, but it is a fascinating insight into the lives of six North Korean defectors (unrelated, but all living in Chongjin) written by an American journalist Barbara Demick who has interviewed them and who kept in touch with them at regular intervals in South Korea to see how they’re getting on. The author has spoken to hundreds of North Koreans in the course of her career, but chose these particular individuals because she thought they would be more representative than people living in the capital Pyongyang.The first two thirds of the book describes their lives in North Korea (DPRK) and the last third describes how they escaped and their new lives in the south. First hand reports about N Korea are extremely had to come by, and while newsreader Ri Chun-Hee has become something of a celebrity in the west for her impressive declamatory style – she actually says next to nothing. So hearing from real people who can speak freely for the first time in their lives is fascinating. The overwhelming feeling at the end is that North Koreans must be amazingly resilient, resourceful and adaptable to keep going, despite living, as they do, in such dire circumstances.Life has always been hard in the North, but the famine of the 1990s killed at least one million people – around 4% of the population - and whole families were wiped out. An ill-advised policy of self-sufficiency (juche), propped up by energy supplies and chemical fertilisers from the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s with the demise of the USSR. leaving the DPRK isolated and frozen in time. In the chaos that followed, it was common for older generations to save their only food for their children who survived, but who were left parentless and with stunted growth. These young children are known as ‘wandering swallows’ (kotjebi) because they are constantly on the move looking for food and shelter.Following the misery of the early chapters – people having to walk for hours into the countryside to forage for grass and tree bark to eat - you think that at last there is light at the end of the tunnel when they risk everything to escape, but unfortunately their lives in South Korea are not always ones of undiluted joy either.Some adapt better than others, but they all find it hard to adjust to consumerist South Korean society in different ways. It’s overwhelming to be faced with so many choices when you are used to a government deciding everything for you. Some feel guilty about the family they have left behind, some of whom have been locked up in labour camps as a result of their relative’s defection, and some even feel a certain amount of nostalgia – they miss the sense of community that exists in the north because everyone was in the same boat – equally starved and poor. Some feel angry and defensive when their country is criticised by South Koreans, even though they hate the regime themselves. This is a difficult book to read, but an important one if you want to find out more about life in North Korea.The title ‘Nothing To Envy’ comes from a song that North Korean children are taught to sing at school.

Nothing to EnvyThe layout makes it easy to understand. There are 20 chapters and at the back of the book a short introduction to each chapter.Barbara Demick had travelled to North Korea many times but had always been disappointed that it was difficult to get information from people because they are constantly watched by the security police. In the end she concentrated on speaking to people who had escaped N.K. and settled in China or South Korea. It is obvious that she has spent a huge amount of time speaking to Koreans over more than a decade. She chronicles how some although they have escaped N.K. are still afraid to speak because they have relatives still living under what must be the most inhuman regime in the world.The famine of the 1990,s is researched in great depth to show how some people started to have doubts about the regime whilst others maintained an absolute faith in “their dear father”.This is certainly the best book on North Korea that I have come across.

It is difficult to imagine a country where the people are so controlled that they are not allowed to cook with electricity, watch tv programmes made outside North Korea, banned from the only smart city due to deformity, disability, dwarfism or special needs. Hell on earth? This is worse than anything I have heard about the hell mentioned in religious books.The innocence and bravery of the people of North Vietnam are deeply moving. The author tells how people she interviewed managed to survive starvation, brutality, snobbery and the crushing of their hopes and dreams.Communism for a fairer society? No! Communism is for the ruthless, greedy psychopathic slave masters to have a wonderful life at the heartbreaking expense of the poor.

I visited North Korea in 2005, and came across this book after that. So it probably resonated more with me as a result of my experience and might not have the same effect on everyone.But one of the things I really liked about this book was the way it was written and structured. It would be difficult for me to really explain what I mean by this without giving away some of the magic, and so I won't attempt to (helpful, I know).Suffice to say that the stories which Ms Demick tells are poignant, relatable and mostly very, very sad. I'm not someone that will shed a tear easily, but I'll confess that there's a particular story which really did jerk a tear from my eye - and that was on a commute to work at 8 in the morning!The descriptions are vivid, clear, and authentic because there isn't a particularly strong political message behind it - though of course the stories speak for themselves. But Ms Demick has a way of telling these stories in a way that is both articulate and transparent. It made me thing that this is how stories are supposed to be told - you know there's a narrator, you hear her, but somehow you really don't notice her.If you're interested in real stories, and especially if you're interested in anything North Korean, I would highly, highly recommend this book. It's an excellent read and I guarantee you will feel touched by it at the end.