# North Korean Defectors ## Refugee Testimony from [[Anna Fifield]], 2017 ### Recommendation by [[Peterson Institute for International Economics|PIIE]] https://www.piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/new-refugee-testimony-anna-fifield Marc Noland and I have always argued that testimony from North Korean refugees—simply letting them tell their stories—speaks volumes more than any analysis outsiders can do (some previous posts on refugee narratives are linked below). Ann Fifield at the _Washington Post_ proves this point with an extraordinary piece of long form journalism entitled simply [Life Under Kim Jong Un](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/north-korea-defectors/?utm_term=.3b586110fbe8). The article includes videos—from propaganda pieces to glimpses of the markets—and provides links to the voices of those interviewed embedded in the text. Read it and weep. The core message: Don't be taken in by the smiling public persona of the Great Successor or the gleaming buildings on Ryomyong Street. Life in North Korea could well be getting more oppressive. Yet on the hopeful side, Fifield also documents growing cynicism and an uptick in political motives for getting out. Fifield's survey covers 25 defectors. All left during the Kim Jong Un era, thus providing a kind of update. Some things are constant, including the fact that money talks. Fifield's subjects not only confirm the vibrancy of the market economy, but also the fact that the state socialist sector continues to wither. One subject reports working on a construction site and not getting paid for six months. A doctor spends most of his energy on his underground activities, which do not even include medical practice. With these developments comes not only illicit activity, such as drug use and smuggling, but also corruption and graft. Particularly striking were two interviewees who independently noted the necessity of paying teachers to assure fair treatment of their kids. Several noted the extortion-racket quality of the state as lower-level officials demand bribes. ### Life Under [[Kim Jong Un]] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/north-korea-defectors/ Selectable text: https://archive.fo/Lwlnv [[Anna Fifield]] for [[The Washington Post]] ### Intro Increasingly, North Koreans are not fleeing their totalitarian state because they are hungry, as they did during the 15 or so years following the outbreak of a devastating famine in the mid-1990s. Now, they are leaving because they are disillusioned. Market activity is exploding, and with that comes a flow of information, whether as chitchat from traders who cross into China or as soap operas loaded on [[Flash Drives for Freedom|USB sticks]]. And this leads many North Koreans to dream in a way they hadn’t before. Some are leaving North Korea because they want their children to get a better education. Some are leaving because their dreams of success and riches in the North Korean system are being thwarted. And some are leaving because they want to be able to speak their minds. ### Footsteps - [[Kim Jong Un]]'s song [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyWVOrgdokA) ![[Screen Shot 2022-01-08 at 11.14.21 PM.png]] *We heard the song “Footsteps” and we were told to memorize it so [we] knew that he was going to be the leader after Kim Jong Il. We were told how great he was, that he could ride a horse when he was 5 years old and shoot a gun when he was 3. Of course we didn’t believe these things, but if you laughed or said anything, you’d be killed.* ### Money talks The hairdresser: *I had to drop out of teachers college when I was 19 because my father became ill so I needed to work. I started doing people’s hair at my house. All the women wanted perms. I charged 30 [Chinese] yuan for a regular perm or 50 yuan for a perm with better products. But it was still hard to make money. [Thirty yuan is about $4.50.]* The farmer: *We lived in the city center, but we rented some land in the foothills of the mountains and grew corn there. During planting and harvest season, we would wake up at 4 a.m. and walk three hours to reach the farmland. We’d take a little break for lunch or a snack, then work until 8 p.m. before walking home again. Doing the weeding was the hardest because we had to get rid of them by hand. And we’d buy beans from the market and make tofu that we’d sell from our house. Our profit was less than 5,000 won [60 cents at the black market rate] a day. But because the bean price fluctuates, sometimes we were left with nothing at all.* The bean trader: *I had an aunt in Pyongyang who sold beans in the market there. I would buy what she needed from various farmers and get it to her. I’d pay people to pack up the beans into sacks, pay porters to take them to the station, get them onto the train. You have to smooth the way with money. My uncle is in the military, so his position provided protection for my aunt’s business. Of course, my aunt was the main earner in the house. It’s the women who can really make money in North Korea.* The drug dealer: *I did so many things that I wasn’t supposed to do. ==I worked as a broker transferring money and connecting people in North Korea with people in South Korea through phone calls. I arranged reunions for them in China. I smuggled antiques out of North Korea and sold them in China. I sold ginseng and pheasants to China. And I dealt ice [methamphetamines.]. Officially, I was a factory worker, but I bribed my way out of having to go to work.== If you don’t operate this way in North Korea, you have nothing.* ^c69188 *The salary for doctors was about 3,500 won a month. That was less than it cost to buy one kilogram of rice. So of course, being a doctor was not my main job. My main job was smuggling at night. I would send herbal medicine from North Korea into China, and with the money, I would import home appliances back into North Korea. Rice cookers, notels, LCD monitors, that kind of thing.* The farmer: *Technically, you don’t have to pay to go to school, but the teachers tell you that you have to submit a certain amount of beans or rabbit skins that can be sold. If you don’t submit, you get told off continuously, and that’s why students stop going to school. The kids are hurt just because the parents can’t afford it.* The young mother: *I used to pay the teachers at my daughter’s school so they would look after her better than others. I would give them 120,000 won at a time — that’s enough to buy 25 kilograms of rice — twice a year. If you don’t pay the teachers, they won’t make any effort.* Fisherman: *I lived through all three Kims, but our life was not getting any better for any of us. We all have to pay for Kim Jong Un’s projects, like Ryomyong Street [a residential development in Pyongyang]. We had to contribute 15,000 North Korean won per household [more than four months’ salary] to the government for that street.* *My main business was selling ice. I think that 70 or 80 percent of the adults in Hoeryong city were using ice. My customers were just ordinary people. Police officers, security agents, party members, teachers, doctors. Ice made a really good gift for birthday parties or for high school graduation presents. It makes you feel good and helps you release stress, and it really helps relations between men and women. My 76-year-old mother was using it because she had low blood pressure, and it worked well. Lots of police officers and security agents would come to my house to smoke, and of course I didn’t charge them — they were my protection. They would come by during their lunch break, stop by my house. The head of the secret police in my area was almost living at my house.* ^692058 The construction worker: There were long periods where we didn’t get paid. I once went for six months without getting any salary at all. We lived in a shipping container at the construction site. We were given rice and cabbage and one egg per person per day, and we had an electric coil in our container that we could cook on. We needed some protein because our work was so hard, so we started buying pigskin at the market because it was cheap. Washing was like a special occasion. But if you went to the bathhouse, you would miss out on work. Once I didn’t bathe for two months. We didn’t think anything of it. It was just the way we lived. ### On punishment The phone connector: *The first time I went to prison, I had been caught helping people make phone calls to their relatives in South Korea. I was sentenced to four months’ hard labor, building a road on the side of a mountain that they said we needed in case there was a war. The men did the digging and the women had to carry rocks and soil.* ^7e81dc The money man: *In 2015, a money transfer went bad — the woman I’d given the money to got caught and she ratted on me — and I was put in detention. I spent two months there. I wasn’t treated like a human being — they beat me, they made me sit in stress positions where I couldn’t lift my head. Two times they slapped my face and kicked me during interrogation, but I was not beaten up badly. Maybe because I was not a nobody, maybe they feared that I knew someone who could get back at them.* ^90f2ee The teenage prisoner: *We got up at 6 a.m. every day and went to bed at 11 p.m., and in between we would be working the whole time, shoveling cement or lugging sacks, except for lunch. Lunch was usually steamed corn. I was too scared to eat. I cried a lot. I didn’t want to live.* ^cf1639 The drug dealer: *If you make problems, then your whole family gets punished. That’s why people don’t want to make any trouble. If I get punished for my wrongdoing, that’s one thing. But it’s my whole family that would be put at risk if I did something. **North Koreans have seen that Kim Jong Un killed his own uncle, so we understand how merciless he can be. That’s why you can’t have an uprising in North Korea.*** The phone connector: *If you speak out against the system, you will immediately be arrested. And if you do something wrong, then three generations of your family will be punished. In 2009, I heard there was a going to be some kind of coup launched in Chongjin and that all of the people involved were executed. When you hear about cases like this, of course you’re scared. So instead of trying to do something to change the system, it’s better just to leave.* The repatriated wife: *I had lived in China for 20 years, but someone must have reported me. I was sent back to North Korea, and I spent two and a half years in a prison camp. [After she had left once more for China], I knew I couldn’t be repatriated again. I thought that it would be the end of my life.* ### On escaping The accordion player: *I was ambitious. I wanted to be a party member and enjoy all the opportunities that come with that. My dream was to make lots of money and be a high-ranking government official. Family background means so much in North Korea, but I had family in China and I realized that this would stop me from being able to follow my dreams. I left because I didn’t have the freedom to do what I wanted to do.* The meat delivery guy: *We were told in school that we could be anybody. But after graduation, I realized that this wasn’t true and that I was being punished for somebody else’s wrongdoing. I realized I wouldn’t be able to survive here. So for two years I looked for a way out. When I thought about escaping, it gave me a psychological boost.* The doctor: *I hoped to work abroad as a doctor in the Middle East or Africa. But to work overseas you have to pass security screening to make sure you’re ideologically sound and aren’t going to defect. That’s a problem that money can’t solve and that’s where I got blocked. I was very angry, very annoyed. I cursed our society. I am a very capable person, and I was a party member, but even I couldn’t make it.* The construction worker: *I worked for three and a half years, but I made only $2,000 during that time. We were allowed to work overseas for five years maximum, and I was hoping to save $10,000 and return home proud. I realized it wasn’t going to happen, so I started looking for a chance to escape.* ## [[Seohyun Lee]] (Pyonghattan) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvvjSQORbKxnfK8JtnscJjQ - High class, elite - Went to [[China]] for university - Left because her loyal friends were sent to the prison camp for being in the same *department* as someone who did 'wrong' ### Why I Left Pyongyang, North Korea? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5AoGDxLGuU&t=2s ## The case of [[Zhu Xianjian]] Confirmed: - North Korean defector - He was sentenced to 10 years of prison in [[China]] and had served 8 years of it - He stole clothes and cell phones, and stabbed an elderly woman - He was set to be deported back to [[North Korea]] after his term was up - $100,000 bounty on his head ### Coverage by [[Yeonmi Park]] (Disturbing) - Tweet thread: https://twitter.com/YeonmiParkNK/status/1465877168722952197?s=20 - [[YouTube]]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EiuAVKFB0 - Clip of his arrest (on [[Twitter]]): https://twitter.com/YeonmiParkNK/status/1465877740033298432?s=20 ![[Pasted image 20211209092440.png]] ![[Pasted image 20211209092503.png]] ![[Pasted image 20211209092449.png]] ### Coverage by [[BBC]]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59456540#:~:text=Zhu%20had%20been%20initially,avoid%20being%20sent%20back "Court records showed he had crossed a river separating North Korea from China in 2013 and raided several houses in a nearby village, stealing money, mobile phones and clothes." ### Coverage by [[The Telegraph]] https://archive.md/XGWuC ![[Pasted image 20211209092253.png]] "He was convicted of illegal entry into China, as well as theft for raiding several houses in a border village to steal a mobile phone, money and clothes. He also reportedly stabbed an elderly woman who discovered him."