Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader Part 18

To put it another way in this view North Korea was a country that functioned to some extent under the rule of law or regulations, and written procedures. The wheels of justice normally ground exceedingly slowly, and that afforded time for people to antic.i.p.ate what was coming. They also had some opportunity for pet.i.tion and appeal, and where that was the case it was not always a totally empty formality. What made the DPRK a highly repressive country, a nightmare by human-rights standards, was not so much aspects of the formal system itself as the number and severity of the lapses from the officially prescribed standards.

Consider, by-way of ill.u.s.tration, the story of Yoo Song-il, an army supply colonel turned university administrator who fell afoul of the authorities over a chance remark. The elfin Yoo when I met him looked--with his big ears, big nose, high cheekbones and sleepy eyes-exactly like a cartoon hero of my teenage years, Alfred E. Neuman, the "What, me worry?" mascot of Mad Mad magazine. His hair combed forward over his forehead in the style so many men were displaying in Seoul in the late 1990s, Neuman-I mean Yoo--wore a brown, chalk-striped suit; brown, blue and white figured tie; white, starched s.h.i.+rt; gold, rectangular watch. His military career (-which figures in chapter 30) had taken place entirely along the DMZ in Kangwon Province's Kimhwa County, one of the closed counties I was inquiring about. magazine. His hair combed forward over his forehead in the style so many men were displaying in Seoul in the late 1990s, Neuman-I mean Yoo--wore a brown, chalk-striped suit; brown, blue and white figured tie; white, starched s.h.i.+rt; gold, rectangular watch. His military career (-which figures in chapter 30) had taken place entirely along the DMZ in Kangwon Province's Kimhwa County, one of the closed counties I was inquiring about.

"I was in the military for twenty-four years, until April 1992," Yoo told me. "It was only after I became a civilian that I realized how unequal everything was and starting thinking about Kim Jong-il's politics, which I decided were self-centered-not for the people.

"In June of 1992 I started work for O Joong-hup University as chief of general affairs, in North Hamgyong Province. It's a teacher-training university. One day in January 1995, when I went to work, there was a Nodong s.h.i.+nmun Nodong s.h.i.+nmun on my desk. One article told of students demonstrating in South Korea against imports of rice and beef from abroad. There were about thirty other employees in the office. People come to work at 7:30 A.M. and spend the first thirty minutes hearing lectures on the greatness of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. After I saw the article I said, 'Those sons of b.i.t.c.hes are too well fed and they're protesting about imported beef!? I wish they'd bring it up here and let us eat it!' After that, my colleagues started thinking South Korea must be doing much better than we were. I was jailed for ten days, accused of inciting pro-South Korean thinking. Besides my remark, there were other, personal transgressions. I used to wager with friends, with cigarettes and alcohol. That's prohibited. on my desk. One article told of students demonstrating in South Korea against imports of rice and beef from abroad. There were about thirty other employees in the office. People come to work at 7:30 A.M. and spend the first thirty minutes hearing lectures on the greatness of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. After I saw the article I said, 'Those sons of b.i.t.c.hes are too well fed and they're protesting about imported beef!? I wish they'd bring it up here and let us eat it!' After that, my colleagues started thinking South Korea must be doing much better than we were. I was jailed for ten days, accused of inciting pro-South Korean thinking. Besides my remark, there were other, personal transgressions. I used to wager with friends, with cigarettes and alcohol. That's prohibited.

"I was released, after those ten days, because I'd been a military career man and they said I didn't really know civilian society well. Others would have gotten much longer sentences. I returned to my job, but in December 1995 the North Hamgyong provincial office ordered me to move to the Kilju Ils.h.i.+n coal-mining area as a 'revolutionary laborer.' They told me that this is what they do-they send people to work with coal miners. They spend two to three years repenting, reforming their thoughts, and then return to their old jobs.' But in reality no one ever returns to his job."

Q. What actual work did you do at the mines?A. "I never went. I was only dispatched there. Once that happens, politically and otherwise you are finished in society. When I was given the a.s.signment I went and argued at the provincial office: 'I've dedicated my life to Kim Jong-il, spent twenty-four years in the military, didn't do anything wrong. I refuse to go.' I knew I'd be watched all the time. I didn't want to live like a dog. Suddenly I wasn't part of the society any more. I had always thought Kim Jong-il's policies were for the people. I was extremely disappointed. I wanted to live like a human being so I decided to leave. It took three months or so of back and forth but finally they told me I had to go to the mines. I refused, but they said, 'If you refuse, we'll give you a worse a.s.signment.' I said, 'Go ahead and do it, then. I didn't do anything wrong.' This all went on for about three months."Q. Is North Korea in any way a society of laws?A. "People in North Korea do have certain rights. You can buy time because of the layers of bureaucracy. Sometimes you have time to write to Kim Jong-il and argue with the authorities."Q. Did you write to Kim Jong-il?A. "To the Central Party, twice: once in August 1995, the second time in January 1996. I said that citizens' rights were part of the const.i.tution. 'This is not what I was taught. How could they be doing this?' Writing made me seem more of a troublemaker."Q. The top-down structure of the regime, with very little horizontal communication-is that a-weakness of the system?A. "I see it that way. Once the command comes down from the top, that's it."Q. Your order came all the way from the top?A. "Every province and other subdivision has a top authority who usually belongs to the central party. My decision came down from the provincial party. I got no answer to my letters to the central party. If the central party wrote to the provincial party, I never saw it."

I told Yoo the story of the woman who said she had been framed, Lee Soon-ok. She quoted central party people as telling her they had determined that her accusations against influential people in her office and community who had gotten her punished were true-but nevertheless she mustn't rock the boat.

"Yes, that happens a lot," Yoo said. "Everybody knows of a case like that: Many people are involved, and if the authorities wield the axe it will bring them all down. So they ignore cases like that. North Korea does have an organized system and they do check things out."

Q. Did they tell you, too, that you shouldn't rock the boat?A. "Because I was in my hometown, Chongjin, I knew the provincial officials. Throughout the argument process they were saying, 'Let's see if we can try to give you a post in Chongjin as a laborer.' That gave me a little more time to plan my escape. I finally crossed the border on March 4, 1996."Q. Was your whole family supposed to go to the coal district?A. "Of course."Q. Did you bring them out?A. "Yes. My mother, my six-year-old son, two daughters and my wife all went to China with me. Mother died while we were in hiding there. We lived around the Beijing train station about a month. I thought once we got to Beijing we could go to South Korea through the emba.s.sy. But I found that was impossible. My wife and I argued a lot during that time. She was resentful that my prediction hadn't worked out. It was pretty bad. I think the North Korean emba.s.sy people found out we were there and started following us. My wife said she was going to keep trying to come to South Korea through the emba.s.sy. But I took the children and left. I don't know if she's still there or back in North Korea."When we were in China I started listening to KBS. That's when I learned that the route to South Korea was to go to Guangzhou, then Hong Kong, and thence to South Korea. I didn't have money and needed to earn some to do that. Some Chinese-Korean people helped me. With their help I got on a s.h.i.+p January 22, 1997, with the children. We landed on a deserted island and got help from the South Korean Marine Police. From there we took a helicopter to Inchon."Q. Tell me about hunger and starvation in Chongjin.A. "People were dying of starvation. I saw them. I heard my friend's father was sick. I visited him and the doctors told me he was just malnourished. He was skin and bones. They said if he ate he'd get better. But there wasn't any way to feed him. He died three days later. I didn't see people dying on the streets, though."Q. What about conditions in the coal mines?A. "I don't know much about it. I don't think their rations were better than others."Q. What about the estimates of two to three million dead?A. "That's probably very true. By the time I left in 1996 we were getting only two days' worth of food per month. People who didn't have money or anything to sell could only starve."Q. Who were they?A. "Laborers, people without power. Usually the officials and party members have food."Q. How about prisoners?A. "Usually prisoners are treated like dogs. When I was jailed for ten days I got a corn ball with three beans in it, this big [shows six finger joints] three times a day with a small bowl of salt soup, just enough to sustain life. I lost eight kilograms during the ten days. I didn't eat the first four days, the food was so disgusting."

Stories like Yoo's made more plausible the claim of First Lieutenant Lim Young-sun (chapter 31) that the regime's increasingly careful and deliberate system of investigation and punishment had enabled him to have months of warning that he was likely to be arrested for distributing anti-regime leaflets and must make plans to defect. In April 1993, Lim wrote in his second book, "I went to check the Onchon underground run-way construction site, and the political committee member instructed me to stay overnight. The next day some officers arriving from my corps informed me that the security guard had gone through my things. I realized that I was in for it. But, fortunately for me, they couldn't find definitive evidence of my guilt, so they just increased surveillance of me.

"Why did State Security waste all that time trying to find incriminating evidence, when past practice had been to arrest and execute anyone considered even slightly suspect? In the past, many innocent people had been killed that way-because once a person was taken to a secret place it didn't matter whether he or she was guilty or not; even an innocent person would have seen the inner workings of State Security by then and would have to be executed to preserve security. But from the mid-1980s, to end such abuses, concrete evidence was required for an arrest.

"Why did the investigation take so long? This was because of structural problems among security organizations. The head of North Korea's authority system is State Security. Under it there are provincial and city security authorities. The People's Armed Forces security is [formally] under the direction of State Security but the PAF maintains its own security department and trains its workers at its own security school. For State Security to investigate or arrest an army member it needs the cooperation of the military security authorities. They usually don't work well together. In my case, State Security requested cooperation from the PAF Security Department but the PAF authorities didn't cooperate. That left it to civilians in State Security to investigate me with no help. Military security authorities hoped State Security would give up due to lack of evidence so they could then solve the case, arrest and charge me and keep all the credit for themselves."

One American involved with private relief efforts took note of the somewhat less harsh face the justice system had begun to present. "North Koreans break the rules on internal pa.s.sports for the starving," he said. The authorities had been permitting unprecedented freedom of movement so that desperate people could search for food. "They're not shooting people for cutting trees on the hills or farming on slopes even though it causes erosion and means deforestation that will deprive the military of hiding places." Meanwhile, he said, "enlisted men are almost starving."12 There had been a policy since Kim Il-sung's day to "root out three generations" of the families of disloyal subjects, and the prisons continued to be used for that purpose. (See the testimony of Ahn Myong-chol in chapter 34.) However, as other researchers also have found,13 apparently that did not translate into a special starvation regime for prisoners once the famine began in earnest. While more and more inmates died as a result of malnutrition, the political prison camps continued to be run more as slave-labor and slow-death camps than as instant-death camps. It may seem a small distinction, but it shows that in this regard at least Kim Jong-il was no Hitler. apparently that did not translate into a special starvation regime for prisoners once the famine began in earnest. While more and more inmates died as a result of malnutrition, the political prison camps continued to be run more as slave-labor and slow-death camps than as instant-death camps. It may seem a small distinction, but it shows that in this regard at least Kim Jong-il was no Hitler.

Choi Myung-nam defected in 1995. I asked him what he thought had happened to the family he left behind. "I believe they would have been resettled to a rural area in the mountains, maybe in South Pyongan Province," Choi said. "From 1993, families of defectors are not sent to prison camps but just resettled in the mountains. From 1993, unless a person actually commits a crime he's not sent to prison camp. It's just a policy of Kim Jong-il's."

That sort of leniency, as opposed to the crackdown that Robert Collins would have predicted if the regime were entering his fourth phase, suppression, in the process of collapse, suggested to me that the regime might be around for a while.

In fact, although of course he had not used those terms, reversing the local independence of Phase Three and avoiding Phase Four had been main thrusts of Kim Jong-il's December 1996 speech. As for local independence, his argument was: "If the party lets the people solve the food problem themselves, then only the farmers and merchants will prosper, giving rise to egotism and collapsing the social order of a cla.s.sless society. The party will then lose its popular base and "will experience meltdown as in Poland and Czechoslovakia." Kim clearly feared that party officials were opting for suppression. Instead, he insisted, they must persuade the people that "this is the time of the march of hards.h.i.+p" and thus permit the regime to "control the situation without resorting to using law enforcement bodies."14 One can see in his handling of the situation hints that in the aftermath of his father's death he had become an effective national leader in his own right, correctly a.n.a.lyzing the reasons for communism's collapse elsewhere and taking steps to avoid that outcome in North Korea. One can see in his handling of the situation hints that in the aftermath of his father's death he had become an effective national leader in his own right, correctly a.n.a.lyzing the reasons for communism's collapse elsewhere and taking steps to avoid that outcome in North Korea.

It turned out that Kim Jong-il in 1998, only shortly before I started inquiring into the mystery of the thirty-nine counties, met with j.a.panese-Korean representatives of Chongryon and spoke to them enthusiastically about what he saw as the need for more attention to legality in North Korea. "Our people have incorrect understanding of how our laws should work," Kim complained. "In a socialist country, party organs, government officials and social groups are keen on political indoctrination but little attention is paid to the laws of the land." It appears that although some of the examples of leniency during the famine would prove to have been merely temporary expedients, Kim contemplated changes of a more permanent nature that could make the system less arbitrary15 The immediate impetus for Kim's new stance apparently had been an incident at Hw.a.n.ghae Steel Mill that forced him to confront the extent to which corruption had taken hold since the 1980s. "I will tell you what really happened at the Hw.a.n.ghae Steel Mill," he said to his visitors from j.a.pan. "We spent three years mourning the death of our Leader Kim Il-sung and coinci-dentally were hit with natural disasters. We found ourselves in a dire situation and could not provide enough electric power to the Hw.a.n.ghae Steel Mill. The mill had to stop operation. Some bad elements of our society in cahoots with the mill management began to dismantle the mill and sell its machines as sc.r.a.p metal to Chinese merchants.

"By the time we got wind of what was going on, more than half of the mill had been stripped away. For nearly a year, the thieves took over the mill and stole the people's property at will. They bought off party leaders and security officers and, consequently, no one had informed us about their thievery. Everybody was on the take at the mill and we had to send in an army to retake the mill. The army surrounded the mill and arrested the thieves. The army recovered the people's property from the thieves. Some of our trading people were involved in this ma.s.sive fleecing of the mill."

Was Kim extolling the rule of law because he wanted to crack down on the leniency that rank-and-file officials had exercised in the face of the population's difficulties? Perhaps the facts of the mill incident as he recited them could permit the interpretation that local officials had been trying heroically to raise cash with which to feed the population of unemployed mill employees. Suggesting a different interpretation, however, is the fact that people connected with the mill incident were by no means the only ones made to answer for corruption around that time. There were high-level targets, some very close to Kim himself. South Korean intelligence chief Lee Jong-chan told his country's National a.s.sembly in July 1998 that seven members of the Kim Il-sung League of Socialist Working Youth had been executed in the fall of 1997 while the league's chief Choe Yong-hae, had been dismissed for corruption. That's the same "Jerkoff" Choe who, as we saw in chapter 11, hung out with Kim when they were youngsters. Chang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and the man rumored to be his closest friend and advisor, had been sent off to atone for corruption by going through a "revolutionary education" course and had already returned to Kim's good graces, the Southern spy boss reported.16 In his talk with Chongryon representatives Kim spoke with evident respect about the legal systems of capitalist countries. In North Korea, he complained, "party cadres and security officers operate outside the law without exception." In capitalist nations, on the other hand, "people abide by the law from cradle to grave," he said. "All persons must obey the law and the law is enforced universally." That praise was in contrast to his father's dismissal of legal impartiality as nonsense.17 To be sure, Kim Jong-il's interest was thoroughly mixed with caution, as he then emphasized. "Revisionists," he said, using the term applied to anti-Stalinist communist reformers such as Khrushchev, "weaken socialist systems by overemphasizing laws and ignoring political indoctrination. Gorbachev brought down the Soviet Union using this tactic. Today, the Chinese leaders are on the same path." To be sure, Kim Jong-il's interest was thoroughly mixed with caution, as he then emphasized. "Revisionists," he said, using the term applied to anti-Stalinist communist reformers such as Khrushchev, "weaken socialist systems by overemphasizing laws and ignoring political indoctrination. Gorbachev brought down the Soviet Union using this tactic. Today, the Chinese leaders are on the same path."

But he quickly resumed praising Western systems: "As you comrades know so well, having lived in a capitalist nation for so long, people in a capitalist society must obey the law no matter where they live. Chongryon, too, must obey the j.a.panese laws, otherwise the j.a.panese police will crack down." A North Korean s.h.i.+p calling frequently at the j.a.panese port of Ni-igata was under official j.a.panese scrutiny at the time, in view of evidence it was being used for smuggling prohibited items, among other infractions. "I hear that our cruises.h.i.+p Mangyong 92 Mangyong 92 has to cater to j.a.panese businessmen and bribe the police with large sums of money in order to get anything loaded," Kim told his visitors. "In our country, a few hundred dollars are enough to bribe some security officers. This shows in a way how bad our judicial system is in comparison to that of a capitalist nation." has to cater to j.a.panese businessmen and bribe the police with large sums of money in order to get anything loaded," Kim told his visitors. "In our country, a few hundred dollars are enough to bribe some security officers. This shows in a way how bad our judicial system is in comparison to that of a capitalist nation."

Kim observed, "In a capitalist nation even the prime minister and the president are prosecuted if they break the law. We must study how to strengthen our legal system. j.a.panese police fear the prosecutors. Whom do the prosecutors fear? Do they fear the police? You said that the police will go after any prosecutor who breaks the law. Few prosecutors have been arrested in j.a.pan. The main reason is the strict process of selecting prosecutors. Law graduates take tough exams to become lawyers, judges or prosecutors. Only the best get to become prosecutors or judges."

Thus, Kim said, "cops and prosecutors are miles apart in qualifications. [But] in our nation, any college graduate can become a prosecutor, if the college so wishes. Because of this, prosecutors in our nation carry no special authority. In a capitalist nation, prosecutors are sworn to uphold the law and defend the nation. Kakuei Tanaka, a former j.a.panese prime minister, was arrested by a prosecutor."

Kim wanted a system in North Korea in which "law graduates must pa.s.s a special exam in order to become prosecutors, and only the best qualified people should become prosecutors. Currently, prosecutors are appointed just like other jobs and they stay chummy with their former cla.s.smates. It is tough for prosecutors to wield any authority in this kind of system."

In the same conversation, Kim talked about food and agriculture policy. North Korea's agriculture minister, So Kwan-hui, had been executed in September 1997, accused of intentionally ruining the country's agriculture as a spy in the service of the United States. At the same time the regime had dug up the remains of Kim M.an-k.u.m, So's predecessor and mentor, from the Patriots' Cemetery and subjected them to ritual execution by a firing squad-a modern update of the feudal custom of exhuming and decapitating the corpse of a posthumously disgraced official. The two officials' fate had then been held out to officials, the military and the public as examples of what would befall any other "traitors."18 Kim alleged to his visitors that So as agriculture minister had "failed to introduce higher-yield seeds and distributed non-existent fertilizers to our farms. This traitor ensured that our farms failed to produce enough food for our people." The minister "was a long-time party member and did everything he could to ruin our agriculture," Kim said. "For a long time, So refused to send a farm delegation to j.a.pan using one excuse after another because he feared that they might receive better seeds from Chongryon. Better seeds would have worked counter to his plan to starve us slowly. So became a traitor in 1950. He would hardly do anything at the party meetings for discussing farm problems. Even when he was the party secretary for agriculture, he had precious little to say about farming. He was a filthy traitor loyal to his masters to the very end.

"We continue to ask the International Red Cross for food a.s.sistance, because we are in fact short of food; but the main reason is that our seeds have degraded thanks to So Kwan-hui's treachery. Our production has declined steadily because of the bad seeds. We are replacing them with better seeds but it will take about three years to fully recover. We need food aid to tide us over during this transition period.

"You may have received letters from your relatives living here about the food shortage. The situation is not as bad as it may appear. We make sure that the army has enough to eat, and the farmers and government workers get less food. The residents of Pyongyang receive many benefits from the government and they live better than the people in the rest of the country. For this reason, we cut back rations to the Pyongyang residents and at the same time, increased rations for the rest of the people. Ignorant of this, some people panicked and wrote you that our nation had only a week's supply of food left, and so on.

"Last year, the whole army was mobilized to grow food. The main finding ofthe army is that the seeds must be replaced, and we have began to bring in better seeds. But it will take two to three years at the least to replace the old seeds with the new. Until then, our food shortage will persist.

"We have been on a forced march for several years now and we are finding a number of structural problems. Had we held a Party Congress or the Supreme People's a.s.sembly plenum before the end of the three-year mourning period after Leader Kim Il-sung's death, we would be facing food shortages for ten years or more. The lesson learned is that you need to know who is who. Today, all of the senior leaders are old revolutionaries who had worked with Leader Kim Il-sung. We have to ensure that they stay on for a long time to come."

The previous year, high-ranking defector Hw.a.n.g Jang-yop had reported that even an arms factory in Chagang Province had received no food rations for nine or ten months straight. Despite the emphasis placed on military security, the state had permitted some two thousand weapons engineers to starve to death, according to Hw.a.n.g.19 Kim Jong-il tried to knock down such reports in his conversation with Chongryon representatives. "Our enemies report almost daily so many millions have starved to death and so forth, and do all they can to defame and demonize us," he said. "You comrades are here to witness the truth and report what you have seen here when you are back in j.a.pan. That is why I took you along on my on-the-spot guidance trip to an armament factory in a remote village. I wanted you to see how the factory workers lived and how they differed from the residents of Pyongyang. I wanted you to see if there were people dying on the roadsides from hunger. As you have seen from your auto trip, there were no starving people on the roadsides and the factory workers are healthier than the people in Pyongyang. I hope that you saw the might of our nation and the optimism of our workers." Kim Jong-il tried to knock down such reports in his conversation with Chongryon representatives. "Our enemies report almost daily so many millions have starved to death and so forth, and do all they can to defame and demonize us," he said. "You comrades are here to witness the truth and report what you have seen here when you are back in j.a.pan. That is why I took you along on my on-the-spot guidance trip to an armament factory in a remote village. I wanted you to see how the factory workers lived and how they differed from the residents of Pyongyang. I wanted you to see if there were people dying on the roadsides from hunger. As you have seen from your auto trip, there were no starving people on the roadsides and the factory workers are healthier than the people in Pyongyang. I hope that you saw the might of our nation and the optimism of our workers."

Nevertheless, Kim explained, it had been necessary that pride before foreigners give way to begging for food. "Previously, only our foreign service people cried for help but now all people do so," he said. "Thus, all of us tell foreigners about this shortage or that shortage, and take them to the worst place for them to see. In the past, foreign visitors were taken to the best show places and people were taught to say that they were living well. But now, faced with the economic isolation forced on us by our enemy, we need foreign aid and so we present sad pictures to foreign visitors."

There were, of course, no sad pictures of Kim's own table to be presented. Throughout the period of the famine, Kim had been dining like the king he was, according to a j.a.panese who claimed to have been his personal sus.h.i.+ chef since 1988. Kim kept a 10,000-bottle wine cellar and liked shark's fin soup several times a week, Kenji Fujimoto (that's a pseudonym) told the j.a.panese weekly magazine Shukan Post. Shukan Post. "His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days." "His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days."

All this still leaves us without a final solution to the mystery of the thirty-nine counties-most of-which, according to the World Food Program's Web site, remained closed to the agency. I suspect that most of the theories related above--with the exception of my worst-case scenario involving a genocidal plot to starve to death immediately the people suspected of lack of loyalty to the regime-are partially correct.20 But a full answer probably-would have to emphasize national pride and the East Asian concept of face. "The nature of North Korean society is not to admit that things do not function properly," the World Food Program's Jean-Jacques Graisse said. His Foreign Ministry contact, a vice-minister, had told him that national pride was behind much of the denial of access. The official "admitted I had seen only 50 percent of the problem," he said. But a full answer probably-would have to emphasize national pride and the East Asian concept of face. "The nature of North Korean society is not to admit that things do not function properly," the World Food Program's Jean-Jacques Graisse said. His Foreign Ministry contact, a vice-minister, had told him that national pride was behind much of the denial of access. The official "admitted I had seen only 50 percent of the problem," he said.

Another aid worker, who requested anonymity, told me she had spoken with an anguished North Korean official who told her: "Our country's not Africa! We used to a.s.sist some African countries!" The aid worker added: "They believe it's just a natural disaster, not a structural problem, and therefore it is not fair to compare them with Africa. Extending the argument, they're probably afraid that if we take note of these places [in the off-limits thirty-nine counties], the only medium of communication is the oxcart."

After all, even where that aid worker had been permitted to visit, soldiers walking around "don't even carrry a stick, much less a gun. They're in the fields, or repairing the truck. The cities look like car repair shops." Even in the fancy Pyongyang guest house where she and some other visiting aid workers had stayed, there was no running-water. Relatively privileged women had to manage to stay presentable despite lack of water. They used a lot of foundation makeup, she told me. Female aid workers were experiencing gynecological problems due to lack of water. Just imagine, she said, what conditions must be in the thirty-nine counties.

Then again, Kim Jong-il's boast to his Chongryon visitors about well-fed armaments workers in a remote village suggested one last, if fanciful, theory. Maybe counties populated by invisible people, living and working underground with their machinery21 like H. G. Wells's Morlocks, were so well off at the expense of citizens above ground that they had no need of foreign aid-much less of monitors to see to its proper delivery. like H. G. Wells's Morlocks, were so well off at the expense of citizens above ground that they had no need of foreign aid-much less of monitors to see to its proper delivery.

THIRTY-THREE.

Even the Traitors Who Live in Luxury Interviewing North Korean defectors, it did not take me long to realize that quite a few of them had practiced an occupation that would have been rare earlier. They had been traders, in some cases entrepreneurs. They had often earned very large incomes from buying, selling, bartering, deal-making. Trading companies had been set up in response to Kim Jong-il's demand for foreign currency. The companies had multiplied. Not only high-level government and party organizations but military, agricultural and industrial units at lower levels, as well, had their own trading subsidiaries.

Trading is a challenging occupation even for those who are trained for it. North Korea's new traders had no training in business. Most had only military or police experience. Some traders who ended up defecting did so because, ultimately, they had failed at their new jobs. But many had succeeded.

The new occupation attracted people from the highest to the lowest levels of society. Kang Myong-do grew up as a member of the Pyongyang elite. His father headed the capital's construction department and his mother taught party history at the Potonggang district party headquarters. Kang majored in French at Pyongyang Foreign Languages University, graduating in 1979, and joined the staff of the League of Socialist Working Youth, guiding foreign V.I.P. visitors. I asked him if he knew the crude nickname of the league's top boss, Choe Yong-hae. He did not-the age gap was considerable and the two men were not on intimate terms-but he did tell me that Choe was reputed to like women.

In 1982, Kang went to work in party headquarters' Room 39, which was in charge of foreign exchange schemes. He became a party member the following year. In 1984, Kang-described by other defectors who knew him in Pyongyang as the playboy type-married a mansion "volunteer," a waitress at the Majolli palace in Hamhung, against his parents' opposition. They soon split up. He got in some sort of sc.r.a.pe around that time. "I was on the losing side in a power struggle in the KPA between the military and political officers, siding with the military officers," was the way he described it to South Korean reporters. He was sent off to the No. 18 Revolutionary Work Cla.s.s to have his thinking corrected. Most elite officials eventually got sent to such a camp, Kang said. The drill was mainly study of the leaders' history. The usual term was two to three years but a friendly member of the bodyguard service recommended Kang's release after one and a half years. Although he had a fairly soft life in that revolutionary work camp for the elite, next door was a camp for ordinary detainees and they did hard labor. Kang said he began to dislike Kim Jong-il during his stay. After his release he moved to a rural area as vice director of the local party management department.

Kang married a daughter of the former and future prime minister Kang Song-san in 1992. She also had been married once, during her father's first term as premier, to another graduate of the Foreign Languages University someone Kang knew. When her father was demoted and sent off to be governor of North Hamgyong Province, her husband started treating her cruelly, Kang Myong-do said, and her father urged her to divorce that man. Kang and his bride-to-be met on a blind date, a son. son. Kang Myong-do's uncle had been a schoolmate of Governor Kang's at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, so there was no opposition from either family-although someone did mention as a drawback his having gone to revolutionary work cla.s.s. Kang Myong-do's uncle had been a schoolmate of Governor Kang's at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, so there was no opposition from either family-although someone did mention as a drawback his having gone to revolutionary work cla.s.s.

His father-in-law arranged for Kang to become a cadre in the Presidential Palace Accounting Department, "but outside the North I was known as the vice-president of Neng-Ra 888 Trading Company," he said. He seemed well cast in the role, pleasant and charming while displaying an authoritative manner.

"This Neng-Ra 888 Trading Company is a nominal company, an alias for the department," Kang said. "It took care of everything for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, including their clothing and food. It would import televisions, refrigerators, suit fabrics, spices, soy sauce, beer and whiskey all from j.a.pan. Kim Jong-il likes Kikkoman and other j.a.panese brands. The department also owned a factory and a farm exclusively producing snacks and cookies and pastries for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, as well as meat- mutton, beef, pork-for their bodyguards. Inside the department was a special division called 'Presents.' Anyone who attended a political event involving Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il always received a present-usually a bag, some sort of luggage."

Using startup capital of $600,000 provided by the state, Kang imported j.a.panese cars through the Chongjin and Rajin ports and then exported them across the Tumen River to China, which lacked a seaport convenient to the more remote parts of its northeastern region, the former Manchuria. He specialized in high-end Toyota Crowns, three to four years old, which he could buy by the hundreds for around $3,000 each and then sell in China for $8,000 to $12,000. He gave port officials cigarettes to ensure smooth pa.s.sage. When Beijing asked Pyongyang to halt the imports in 1993 due to oversupply Kang simply switched from legal exports to smuggling. He made $600,000 profit dealing in cars, he said, and used those proceeds to import petroleum, earning him an achievement award from Kim Il-sung.

Taking home about $2,000 a month, Kang was rich by North Korean standards. (A Kim Il-sung University professor's salary was only the equivalent of around $10 a month.) He was living well, in a six-room home on Pyongyang's Changkw.a.n.g Avenue, and frequented the Koryo Hotel. When groups of officials got together for drinking and carousing, he said, they always made it a point to include one trading company official like him because they needed his dollars. In the company of his impecunious pals, Kang-despite his newlywed status--was dating actresses, buying them clothing and lingerie.

"Personally, this was the greatest time of my life," he said. "Many times people came to me to ask favors. Their family members were sick or something. I gave them $100 or $200-it was nothing to me. In North Korea there's always a big shortage of beer, liquor and cigarettes. The presents I gave were a big deal to the recipients. Even a high official in North Korea couldn't have the kind of lifestyle I led-if they did, government officials would always report on them. A couple of times I gave money to my father-in-law, who went to the foreign goods store to buy a rice cooker, a ma.s.sage machine and snacks for his grandson." Kang Song-san, who by then was prime minister again, was able to boast: "I've been to a foreign goods store for the first time, thanks to my son-in-law."

In May 1994, Kang went to Beijing, and got into trouble. "There were two reasons for my business trip to China," he said. "One was to come to an agreement about a fertilizer plant joint venture with China. With China we usually traded bags, pollack, automobiles and steel. But as trade increased, the Chinese proposed a joint venture with North Korea. They proposed building a composite fertilizer plant in h.o.e.ryong. The second reason I went was to collect overdue payments from the Chinese automobile merchants."

Kang had not received permission from the North Korean authorities to go as far beyond the border area as Beijing, and once he got there he stayed for such a long time that they feared he was preparing to defect. "I didn't intend to defect at all," he said. "It was accidental. While I was trading with the j.a.panese, one guy said he was going to Beijing. I wanted to meet that j.a.panese. He was old, so it was hard for him to go to the North Korean border to meet me. I stayed in Beijing twenty-five days, waiting for the guy. I was heading back to the border, when I called a friend and he said to be careful because there were forty people out to catch me." The search party had been sent from Pyongyang to make sure the prime minister's son-in-law would not defect. "I knew if I got sent back to Pyongyang I wouldn't be able to leave again and would have a hard life," he said. "If I could have gone back voluntarily it would have been no problem. But if I had gone back after they sent men to capture me, it would have been like they caught me and forced me to return." So he boarded a plane and escaped.1 Kim Myong-chol, former bodyguard for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, ended his. .h.i.tch in the bodyguard service in 1985 and went to work for a laser arms factory at Kim Il-sung's home village, Mangyongdae. There his job was to trade, to acc.u.mulate foreign currency. He exported seafood to j.a.pan in exchange for yen. The proceeds were to go to the party for use by the top leaders. I told him I was surprised to find that around 15 percent of the defectors I had met had done similar work. "We got more access to outside information," he said, explaining why traders might be more likely than others to defect.

"Because of my job I had lots of foreign currency and foreign products," Kim Myong-chol said. "Lots of higher-ups pressed me to bribe them. In 1992, I had a success and acc.u.mulated a lot of foreign exchange. There were around 1,900 people working for me, exporting clams, fish, sea cuc.u.mbers and red fish roe. To boost morale in view of the food situation, I inported three tons of sugar from China and distributed it to those workers. That caused a problem. The party said that whatever I got from business must be given to the party. I couldn't put up with it.

"I decided that with my ability I could make a good living in China. So I went to China. I went over the Tumen first, walked across the ice in winter. I wanted to get into business in China. I wasn't in great danger. I just didn't like where the system was heading. I believed that I'd done something good for my workers but the party was criticizing me. I ran away before I could be punished. I would have had to go to a reeducation camp for a year. Then my career would be ruined. I wouldn't be able to get a good job. I left for China January 29, 1993, but I found I couldn't be a legal resident and couldn't go into business there. Now I work for Donghwa Bank in South Korea."

Like Kang Myong-do, Choe s.h.i.+n-il seemed "well cast as a wheeler-dealer in imports and exports. A handsome, slender man of middle age with a nice haircut, Choe the day I met him wore a gray suit and a necktie, gold watch, gold-rimmed spectacles and a gold ring with a big stone. He was tanned, and he spoke with a deep voice that could have had something to do with the Dunhill cigarettes he smoked. Cementing the impression that he was someone who got around, he told me he had seen me at the Koryo Hotel in 1992. He had worked for the trading arm of a major government agency. Choe s.h.i.+n-il is not his real name; he was the only defector I interviewed who asked to be identified by a pseudonym. This, he said, was to protect his family from reprisals.

"When I look back I have to say that from the moment I graduated from the university I had a very good lifestyle compared with others," Choe told me. "I changed cars four times in eleven years. My last car was a Toyota with a 2,400-cubic-centimeter engine, which I got as a commission from some j.a.panese." That commission was a kickback. If Choe's employers asked him to sell a certain product for 1,000 yen, he might tell the j.a.panese buyers the price was 1,200. After haggling, he would let them have it for 1,000 plus his "commission." Such a procedure is illegal in North Korea, "but it happens anyhow," Choe said. "And if I got a commission of, say, $50,000, I couldn't keep it all for myself. I had to bribe high officials to keep their mouths shut. The biggest commission I ever got was $120,000. That was in 1986 when I was trading mushrooms.

"All departments have their own trading companies. Every government and party organization has at least one. From the 1970s the central party had its secret Room 39. In the 1980s Kim Il-sung said to gain foreign exchange, so this expanded from the central party through the ministries. In 1985 and '86 there were only about fifty of us doing that sort of work. But entering the 1990s, Kim Il-sung said that everybody must go and gain foreign currency, so there are lots more traders nowadays.

"Starting in 1986 I traveled a lot on business to China, j.a.pan, Hong Kong, Russia. I stayed home only three months out of the year. When I went on a business trip inside North Korea I always stayed at a hotel. Women knew we were from trading companies and had dollars, so we could have any woman we wanted: hotel employees, movie actresses, dancers. North Korea is basically run on dollars. The higher up you are in the hierarchy, the more important dollars are. My salary was 137 won won a month. The company president got 148 a month. The company president got 148 won won a month. We just laughed at it. To me, the North Korean currency is just valueless paper. It would take 10,000 a month. We just laughed at it. To me, the North Korean currency is just valueless paper. It would take 10,000 won won to equal $100. Since production has virtually stopped, there's almost nothing you can buy in the store with North Korean currency. Only dollars-you can use those at the dollar store. to equal $100. Since production has virtually stopped, there's almost nothing you can buy in the store with North Korean currency. Only dollars-you can use those at the dollar store.

"There is a feeling of animosity and jealousy toward the returnees from j.a.pan. People call them call them han-joppari han-joppari-half-j.a.panese dwarves. You say you saw a wedding in the Koryo Hotel. Not even high officials could have a wedding there. Either they couldn't afford it or there would be too much gossip. Only people whose relatives in Chongryon would come and arrange the wedding and pay for it could do that. Most of the Korean-j.a.panese are very stingy. If the line to j.a.pan is cut they have no recourse, so they're very frugal. They're called unpatriotic, perceived as having run away to j.a.pan during the colonial period. But now the att.i.tude has turned from jealousy to envy: 'How come my my grandfather wasn't in j.a.pan?' grandfather wasn't in j.a.pan?'

"Ordinary people don't even have soap to wash their clothes, coal for the public baths. So people aren't clean anymore. The people who are well off are concerned, on the one hand, because they have relatives in the rural areas. But to a greater extent they're proud of themselves for having this lifestyle, very condescending to the rest of the population.

"The first factor that led to my defection was discrepancies between what I was taught and what I later learned in China and the Soviet Union. When I was little I was taught Kim Jong-il was born on Mount Paektu, but Russians told me 'No, he was born here.' Also life in North Korea is very stressful with its emphasis on group teamwork. I couldn't adjust after trips abroad where I had felt such freedom.

"Before I defected to South Korea I had many business trips to rural areas. I was astonished to see Kim Chaek Steel Works. It was totally shut down. I thought, 'If this factory isn't working, what's the situation in the rest of North Korea?' After the fall of the Soviet Union, North Korea totally disintegrated. Just before I left I estimated about 70 percent of the economy was dead.

"I started having positive, optimistic thoughts about capitalism and freedom. Starting in 1990, I listened to KBS-AM radio. I could listen on my car radio to the social-educational broadcasts.

"I can't say there's no one who truly believes in the regime, but belief is mostly based on self-interest. There are people who still believe in the regime because they-want to maintain their status. From 1993, the authorities taught people, 'Look at Eastern Europe. Former high officials are beggars in the streets. If our regime collapses, you are also doomed.' This is strictly taught to high officials only, in high officials' conferences.

"During New Year's Kim Il-sung always made his annual speech. People stopped believing in those speeches. The content never changed. People are so desperate they want war. They're sick of their life and they want things to spill over. They want a new something to come.

"I was in China when Kim Il-sung died. When I heard the news, I couldn't believe it at first. I never expected Kim Il-sung to die. I thought it was the end of North Korea. It could last at most four or five years-that would be the end. I have no faith in Kim Jong-il's rule. He doesn't have the capability to rule. Kim Il-sung had charisma. People thought of him as a G.o.d. n.o.body reveres Kim Jong-il. High officials don't revere him, but only fear him, because his character is very bad. He's very mean, cruel. He doesn't show respect to elders. He acts impulsively. If he's in a good mood he can be very generous. He is is very smart. In history many people who came to power were the sons of later wives. Kim Jong-il is the son of the first wife, so he must have some intellect to maintain his power. very smart. In history many people who came to power were the sons of later wives. Kim Jong-il is the son of the first wife, so he must have some intellect to maintain his power.

"From the 1980s Kim Jong-il told people, 'We should help the old father in economic, political and cultural life.' Every report had to go through Kim Jong-il before reaching Kim Il-sung. In the summers Kim Jong-il didn't work-he'd go to Mount Paektu or other resorts. In 1988, South Korea had the Seoul Olympics. Kim Jong-il wanted to top that, so he put on the youth festival. That's an example of poor economic decision making. They invested in buildings, hotels, Kw.a.n.gbok Road. The deficits were so immense, North Korea never got out of the slump.

"I knew Kang Myong-do very well when he was there, although he was younger than I. Now that we're here I look for a lot of emotional support from him. I defected when I was in China for the trading company. Things weren't working well. At that time I heard the news that Kang had defected to South Korea. I thought I should do the same. The government had set a price for the commodity I was trying to sell, but I couldn't get it. There was a gap of a couple of million dollars. So I thought if I returned to North Korea I'd be in trouble."

In chapter 21, we met Ko Chung-song, an employee of a district office for preservation of revolutionary historical sites. Ko's work there was supplying coal, food and other necessities for the office's forty-five or so workers and managers. To do so, in the circ.u.mstances of the 1990s, he had to become a small-time trader.

"I had to find the materials that the people in my office needed," he told me. "It was difficult to buy those directly. By the 1990s there were shortages and the government couldn't supply what we needed. At my workplace they had extra money. On my business trips, besides dealing with the government, I did my own trading. I played around with the money and bribed people. I went to another company, bought materials from it and brought them to our unit.

"For example, to get coal once I started by trading tires for silk-worms. Tires were scarce, but I had access to some, so I was able to trade them for two tons of silkworms. I took the silkworms to another company, which accepted them in exchange for 220 meters of fabric and 150 pairs of shoes. One pair of shoes was worth three months' salary for the average North Korean. With those I was able to continue trading until I got the coal that the unit needed. I had a pa.s.s to travel around the country on business, and I traveled about two hundred days a year doing that sort of trading.

"I decided to defect when I was put under surveillance because they suspected me of being 'anti-socialist.' The head of one company I had bought from was caught [for accepting a bribe] and reduced in rank. I was sure they would come after me next. Sure enough, lots of phone calls came to the office, asking that I go to State Security. But my colleagues told them I was away on a business trip. The office was very appreciative of my work. They also knew that if I got nailed everyone there would be demoted or fired along with me.

"Anti-socialist is the term they used for a competent businessman like myself. Lots of North Koreans operated as I did. It started in the '90s with the shortages. It's impossible to manage an organization in North Korea without doing that. They say the society is communist, but internally there are many capitalist aspects. I believe they'll open their markets slowly. Pyongyang fears it, so it formed an Anti-Socialist Surveillance Committee.

"Since I had a pa.s.s for business travel, no one would have been too surprised that I didn't show up for several days. Taking advantage of that, I went to the Tumen River. I first tried to cross to China at Sosong, but couldn't make it so went to h.o.e.ryong and failed there, too. I thought of returning home. I went back to Musan and tried to bribe a guard but couldn't. I stayed close to the border then, and for two days watched the way the guards walked their rounds until I knew their pattern. When I saw my chance, I ran for it across the river, which was frozen then, about 50 meters across. I could run 100 meters in thirteen seconds, so probably it took me only six and a half seconds to get across. It was 7:30 P.M." Ko grinned as he recounted his adventure.

"I didn't have money. I starved for about five days in China. In Beijing, at a diner in front of the train station, I met a South Korean who gave me some money. Then I went to Dairen and stowed away on a s.h.i.+p. When we got far out of port I revealed and identified myself. In South Korea I want to become a businessman, but as yet I lack the capital. Now I'm just sightseeing and making speeches." I asked if he had thought of going to business school. "In North Korea I couldn't apply for university because of the forced labor on my record," he replied. "Now I'm too old." I told him Americans would not consider thirty-two too old for business school.

Some who took up this new occupation did so because other avenues of advancement were blocked. Kim Dae-ho, whom we first met as a China-born member of a youth gang, ended up as a trader after having become a model soldier and a worker in the atomic energy industry. "Basically I had no prospects due to my family background," Kim told me. "I decided to partic.i.p.ate in the raising of foreign currency for North Korea. I was working on the western coast. Officially I was supposed to be selling clams, sea cuc.u.mbers and oysters to buy equipment for the atomic energy industry. But I was also trading on my own account, selling Korean antiques to j.a.panese businessmen."

Kim ended up a failure at that unfamiliar game, he said, when some people he dealt with tricked him out of $25,000-money belonging to the state. "First, I was conned by the brother of someone who was working for me. He said he knew of a gold antique that he wanted to buy so he could resell it to a j.a.panese trader, but he didn't have enough money. He asked to borrow it. I went to the trading company and borrrowed $25,000, saying I would use it to make foreign currency profits for the state. The guy took the $ 15,000 I advanced him and never came back."

The second time, Kim said, "I was swindled by the head of the Tae-kwondo Department along with Chang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's sister's husband. I wanted to pay back the $25,000 I had borrowed from my employers, but I needed to have my own import department to make enough money for that. Those two said, 'Give us money to bribe officials. We can help you set up a trading company' I gave them the remaining $10,000. Chang's elder brother was in State Security then, the head of the political department. So I had no way of getting my money back from them. Then I decided I was really in trouble and had to defect." Kim defected via China, in 1994.

Kim Kw.a.n.g-wook as a university junior became a black market dealer in antiques. He did not look the part. With his crudely cut hair, big black-framed gla.s.ses and acne he looked more like, say, a computer nerd.

"I applied for a fellows.h.i.+p to study in China," Kim told me. "Although I believed I was qualified, I was rejected. I checked it out and found the reason was my relatives in China. My parents had lived in China and had come to North Korea before I was born. I realized this family background would keep me from becoming a high official like a policeman or journalist. I could only go so far as an administrator. So I figured the only way to succeed in the society was to earn money so I could bribe officials, and then I could be somebody.

"I sold North Korean antiques to Chinese and j.a.panese merchants in Pyongyang. These were the antiques rich people had owned before the Korean War. After the war they had hard lives. They sold them for money-or one could excavate rich people's tombs to find antiques. I didn't excavate them myself, but I bought, cheap, from those who did. Then I resold them to j.a.panese porcelain merchants.

"I continued to work in antique trading even while I was a Three Revolutions team member. [His experiences as a team member are related in chapter 15.] Then a lot of the people who worked with me in the antique business got caught in the act and sent to prison camps. During interrogation they told about me. Since I was an antique dealer I had a lot of money. Money buys friends. I had friends all over, including police. One policeman warned me I had been reported. My friends got caught in July, and in September I learned that I had been fingered. I defected the next month, October.

"I crossed the Yalu River secretly at night. Just before crossing I was apprehensive, but looking back on it now I think it was pretty easy. Even if I'd been caught, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. I had a certificate saying I was from a Three Revolutions team, signed by Kim Jong-il's secretary's office, and I also had a counterfeit travel permit. To get by in China I had plenty of foreign exchange left over from my antique business. In fact I never had a hard life after I started dealing in antiques. I never intended to come to South Korea. I just wanted to live in China. When I first defected I really believed the North Korean propaganda that said South Korea was full of economic strife, and I didn't want to come here. While I was in China I realized South Korea is a democratic, wealthy country.

"I'm certain North Korea can't last long. Kim Il-sung and O Jin-u are dead. Kim Jong-il's reputation is bad. Hunger is so prevalent. I give it three to five years. When you look at South Korea there were lots of demonstrations during the 1980s. That was possible because South Korean students could compare their situation with those of other countries. North Koreans couldn't, but by the time I left in October 1993 people had more perception of the outside world. So I think these complaints will swell and explode. They learn about reality mainly from Siberian loggers and from Chinese and j.a.panese merchants visiting North Korea. At the moment the economic situation won't permit the regime to kick those merchants out. It can't do without the foreign exchange they bring."

Bae In-Soo's father studied tractor design at a Chinese university and became the chairman of the metal and steel industry inspection department in the government division of the Workers' Party Central Committee. His mother ran the accounting department at the k.u.msong tractor factory-the factory that had produced the famous tractor prototype that only moved in reverse. In 1968, the father was one of many members of the Yenan (Chinese) faction who were purged. He was sent to political prison camp-Bae did not know which camp-and was never heard from again, Bae said, even though many political prisoners were released between 1984 and 1986. Eventually Bae, his mother and his elder brother were exiled from the port city of Nampo, where they had lived, to a rural area in South Pyongan province.

"Most of our belongings were confiscated," Bae, a handsome, thoughtful-seeming man, told me. "We still had our color TV We were the only family in the area who had one. After four months someone set fire to our house. Everything was lost except the underwear we had on. Probably it was a villager, one of those people who were calling us anti-communists. After our property was set on fire, Mother kept demanding an investigation. The Central Party said she was crazy and put her in a mental hospital when I was seven, in 1976. For three years she stayed there while my brother and I dined only on small rations. I had eyesight problems. I couldn't see. I couldn't attend the elementary school because schoolmates would call me anti-communist and teachers would hit me. My brother taught me a little. But if anyone had offered us help, that person would have gotten in trouble. No one helped.

"My uncle on my mother's side was vice-commander of the Second Army Corps. He met the governor of the province and asked him for clemency. The governor arranged for us to be resettled. In 1980, we moved to Maengsan County, 120 kilometers east of Pyongyang, where Mother worked as farmhand. People who were deemed anti-communists, capitalists or landlords, or who had helped South Korea during the war, were resettled in Maengsan County. Seventy percent of the people there are like us. It was a difficult place to survive. The soil was poor. Transportation was poor. It was in remote mountain terrain. The nearest train station was 30 kilometers and the way to get there was on foot.

"Every time I start talking about the past I just start crying," Bae said. "I don't recall any good experiences. When I was in senior middle school, my only hope was that some day I could enter the army. I had no hope of going to a university. But by the time of graduation, I realized that I could not even enter the army because of my father's status. So I had lost all hope in life. North Korea should be called the Feudal State of Korea. It's like during the Yi Dynasty, when it was the yangban yangban [n.o.bles] against the ordinary people. We started bribing authorities and I was allowed to go to Maengsan County automotive school, where I learned to drive. I went to work driving a truck for a truck-and-driver-hire organization. I did that from 1988 to May 1993. [n.o.bles] against the ordinary people. We started bribing authorities and I was allowed to go to Maengsan County automotive school, where I learned to drive. I went to work driving a truck for a truck-and-driver-hire organization. I did that from 1988 to May 1993.

"On the side I was making money by trading. Normally, on Kim Il-sung's birthday, each family got a fish. They sold them instead of eating them. I bought those fish for 10 won won each on the black market and dried them at home. My workplace sent me to get fish for employees. I would barter 50 liters of liquor, 140 kilograms of oil and 100 of coal for a truckload of fish. The barter was unofficial. We would steal some of the load on the way back. each on the black market and dried them at home. My workplace sent me to get fish for employees. I would barter 50 liters of liquor, 140 kilograms of oil and 100 of coal for a truckload of fish. The barter was unofficial. We would steal some of the load on the way back.

Eventually, I would drive to the border with a full truckload of dried fish and trade. The company head and the rest often partic.i.p.ated. I was not fooling anyone in the company.

"For three years I made strenuous efforts to show my loyalty and enter the party. But when I tried to sign up, the official in charge said: 'Look at your background. How dare you apply to join t