I would like to introduce you to my
acquaintance Miss Kim (this may or may not be her
surname). She is now happily residing in Seoul
where she will soon graduate from a rather
prestigious university. She was born in North
Korea, though, and moved to the South only four
years ago.
Miss Kim's story is from the
luckier part of refugee society - even though such
stories lack drama and do not usually attract much
attention from journalists. Miss Kim and her
family were once successful in North Korea, and
their adjustment to South Korean society was quite
successful as well.
Miss Kim, being born
in the early 1980s, belongs to what can be
described as the first post-socialist generation
of North Koreans. When she was in her early teens,
the Public Distribution System
- long the main provider of
food to the average North Korean - ceased to
operate. For decades, North Koreans lived on
heavily subsidized (almost free) food rations,
which were issued to them through the regimented
government bureaucracy. However, in the mid-1990s,
state-run agriculture went belly up, rations
ceased to be delivered and all the old certainties
of socialist life disappeared almost overnight.
For many North Koreans, the collapse of
the distribution system meant a death
sentence:more than half a million perished in the
resulting famine of 1996-99. Miss Kim's family
though, did quite well in the period. They lived
in a large provincial city; her father was
professor in a local college, while her mother -
like many married North Korean women of this
generation - was a full-time housewife.
When times got tough, Miss Kim's mother
found work as a manager in a food storage facility
- her family connections helped a lot. Like the
vast majority of petty (and big) officials, she
helped herself to government funds, and the family
did not starve - she even managed to amass some
capital, which she was able to invest into
small-scale trade operations.
Miss Kim's
mother was quite successful at market trade, and
in the early 2000s she decided to turn to the big
time. She spent about $1,000 (a huge amount of
money at the time) to bribe the local police
office and was issued official permission to go to
China in order to visit her relatives (actually
she had no relatives in China whatsoever).
Miss Kim's mother had taken the risky
decision to invest all the money she had in buying
garments and cosmetics in China, as well as
bribing all the relevant officials to ensure that
her voluminous cargo would safely reach her native
town. She was lucky and things worked as intended.
She began to go to China regularly,
roughly once a year. Miss Kim's mother was careful
not to put all her eggs in one basket, and decided
to hire a trusted friend to run a small business
(a shop, ostensibly registered as a state
property), which provided the family with some
additional income and security against possible
troubles.
This story might sound like
something from Zimbabwe or El Salvador, but such
stories are common in today's North Korea, where a
majority of the population has lived in the world
of petty capitalism for nearly two decades.
Meanwhile, it was time for Miss Kim to
think about her future. Her father wanted her to
get some technical training. He openly explained
that learning a technical skill would be a good
investment for an uncertain future. He said to his
daughter, "Sooner or later, our system could
collapse. If and when it happens, all these party
officials and propagandists will be worth nothing.
On the other hand, a good engineer will always
succeed". This was a rare political
candor, since in most cases Miss Kim's parents -
being the cautious North Koreans they were - kept
their political views and opinions about their
country's future strictly to themselves.
Miss Kim got some basic technical training
and for a while worked at a private workshop (due
to obvious reasons I cannot be too specific about
Miss Kim's technical skills, since her occupation
was somewhat distinctive). The money was good, but
her mother told her not to worry too much about
income.
Her mother was earning a lot of
money, and Miss Kim's massive (by North Korean
standards) salary of a $200 to $300 a month would
make little difference to the family's income.
Miss Kim's mother had a different set of
worries about her daughter. Miss Kim was in her
mid-20s, but still unmarried. This was seen as a
problem because in North Korea it is a common
assumption that all women must be married by the
time they turn 27 or 28.
Miss Kim's
parents did not want her to marry the son of a
successful black-market operator. As Miss Kim's
mother said a number of times, "Nowadays, power
does not mean much without money. But neither does
money mean much without power".
So in a
move somewhat reminiscent of 18th
century-bourgeois families who wanted to marry
their daughters into aristocratic clans, Miss
Kim's parents wanted her to find a husband from
North Korea's power elite - ie a party official,
police officer, or better still, a bright upstart
in the secret police hierarchy.
As a part
of the plot, they had to find their daughter a
legitimate and prestigious occupation: she had to
be presented to the community at large as an
eligible bachelorette. This is why Miss Kim's
mother arranged for Miss Kim to get a job as a
computer typist at the City Hall (or as it is
officially known in North Korea, a "People's
Committee").
Work was not demanding, but
it was also essentially unpaid. Miss Kim's entire
monthly salary would not suffice to buy a bowl of
decent hot noodles in one of the private
restaurants in the city. However, this was not an
issue - by the standards of her city, Miss Kim was
a successful heiress with a respectable job (and
it was widely assumed that she, like nearly all
North Korean women, would quite official job after
marriage and will perhaps work in her mother's
business).
Miss Kim herself did not mind
her mother's ambitions for her. She told this
author that at the time, she hoped to marry an
official from the secret police. Her parents
managed to find two or three possible marriage
candidates, but the final deal remained elusive.
No doubt, the family was doing well, they
by all regards an upper middle-class North Korean
family. Every family member had a bicycle, there
were two TV sets in the house, and in the kitchen
visitors could see a fridge (due to constant power
cuts, the fridge was almost never switched on, but
its presence was seen as a sign of success). They
had a DVD player and also a tunable radio -
actually, an illegal but increasingly common
contraption. Miss Kim's family could feast on meat
and fish whenever they wished, and they even had
hired help when they wanted it.
In most
cases, though, it was Miss Kim's father, professor
Kim, who did the housework - unlike many North
Korean males, he was quite willing to assist his
wife, the family's sole breadwinner.
One
day though, her parents declared that they had had
enough: enough of the instability, enough of need
for bribery and general fear of the future. The
family therefore decided to escape. It seems that
they had entertained such an option for years, but
had not indicated to their daughter that such a
possibility had been discussed and quietly
prepared. She learned about the plan at the last
moment, but accepted it instantly and without much
resistance.
The escape to the South was
planned by the formidable Miss Kim and went quite
smoothly. One should not be surprised: escapes
were not difficult a few years ago, if you had the
money required to pay off officials, guides and
brokers. (Recently things became tougher, but
money still helps).
It seems that the Kims
have adjusted to their new lives very well. Miss
Kim's mother is no longer a businessperson, but
she does not feel sorry about it: she is getting
old, and she believes that stability is more
important than anything else. She is also happy
that her daughter is getting a good education and
will live in a developed, modern society.
Miss Kim did well at university in the
South. It helped that back in North Korea her
family could afford private tuition and that hence
she is much better prepared for the South Korean
educational environment than nearly all her North
Korean peers. As is often the case, people who
were once successful in the North tend to adjust
much better to life in the South. Recently Miss
Kim told me that she is going on to MA studies,
and I wish her all the success.
Dr
Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of
Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia.
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