Ralph Hassig - The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

The Hidden People of North Korea

The Hidden People of North Korea

Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

Second Edition

Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2015 by Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh Hassig

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hassig, Ralph C.

The hidden people of North Korea : everyday life in the hermit kingdom / Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh. Second edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-3717-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-3718-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-3719-3 (electronic) 1. Korea (North)Social life and customs. 2. Korea (North)Social conditions. 3. Korea (North)Economic conditions. 4. Political cultureKorea (North) 5. Korea (North)Politics and government2011 6. Korea (North)Politics and government19942011. 7. Kim, Chong-un, 1984Influence. 8. Kim, Chong-il, 19422011Influence. I. Oh, Kong Dan. II. Title.

DS932.7.H37 2015

951.9305dc23

2014042790

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Preface to the Second Edition

After completing our first book-length survey of North Korea, which was published in 2000, we decided to write something specifically about the North Korean people, a difficult topic to research because few North Koreans could get out of their country and few foreigners could get in. This situation began to change after the turn of the century as thousands of North Koreans crossed the Yalu and Tumen Rivers into China to escape the famine that had begun in 1995. By the end of 2013, over twenty-six thousand defectors had eluded Chinese authorities and made their way to South Korea, where they provide valuable information about everyday life in the modern-day hermit kingdom.

Five years since the first edition of this book was published, it is time for an update. The Kim regime (referring to North Koreas dictatorial political system consisting of a dynastic ruling family, one political party, and the government it controls) has not adopted any political, social, or economic reforms. It is under new management (the founders grandson is now in power) and remains firmly in control of its people. However, society is changing in spite of the regimes wishes, following trends that emerged in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, for most North Koreans, living conditions have barely improved.

Because our writings have been uniformly critical of the Kim regime, we have not been permitted to visit North Koreaexcept for a brief visit to the Kumgang tourist area by Kongdan Oh, traveling as a special guest of South Koreas Hyundai company. Instead, we have let North Koreans come to us. Kongdan Oh has interviewed over two hundred defectors in recent years. In addition, North Korean officials attending international conferences are usually eager to talk with her, in part because her family originally came from North Korea (although she was born in South Korea). We have also consulted many North Korea specialists who live in South Korea, China, and Japan and studied thousands of news reports, travelers accounts, and direct transcriptions and translations of North Korean media reports and internal documents. We frequently quote from domestic North Korean sources as a means of illustrating the information environment in which the North Korean people live. Admittedly, a secondary motive for doing so is to convict the Kim regime with its own words.

North Korean society is gradually changing, and in any case it is impossible to be entirely accurate when describing a population of almost twenty-five million people. We believe our observations are substantially correct, although we would be the first to admit that a few of the details may not be entirely accurate. One defector we interviewed on several occasions was kind enough to read through the entire manuscript of the first edition of this book and told us that, based on his experience, our description is accurate in regard not only to the main themes but also in the details. We have done our best with what is at hand and we encourage interested readers to consult other sources as well.

Along the way we have become indebted to many people for information, insights, and materials pertaining to the North Korean people. We would particularly like to thank Dr. Seong Il Hyun, currently a senior research fellow at South Koreas Institute for National Security Strategy and formerly a North Korean diplomat, who was kind enough to read through the first edition manuscript. Some of the defectors we interviewed wish to remain anonymous to protect their identity (most of them have relatives still living in the North); others have gone public but write under the new names they adopted after arriving in South Korea. The former North Koreans, along with numerous researchers from other countries who have directly contributed to this book, are listed here in alphabetical order: Amii Abe, Seungjoo Baek, Stephen Bradner, William Brown, Jin-Sung Chang, Seong-Ryoul Cho, Charles Hawkins, Takeshi Hidesada, In Ae Hyun, Yoshi Imazato, Eun Chan Jeong, An-sook Jung, Chul Hwan Kang, Byeong-Uk Kim, Joong-ho Kim, Kap-Sik Kim, Koo Sub Kim, Kwang-Jin Kim, Kyung-Hie Kim, Sang-Ryol Kim, Kyuryoon Kim, Seung-Chul Kim, Tae Hoon Kim, Taewoo Kim, Doowon Lee, Duk-Haeng Lee, In Ho Lee, Won-Woong Lee, Young-Hwan Lee, W. Keith Luse, Mitsuhiro Mimura, Marcus Noland, Seung-Yul Oh, Young-Ho Park, Scott Snyder, Jae Jean Suh, Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, Chang Seok Yang, JeongSook Yoon, and Yeosang Yoon.

A few words about translating Korean into English. The Korean alphabet is a wonderfully transparent writing system that can be transliterated into roman letters in several ways. Until 2000, the most common method was to use the McCune-Reischauer System, which is familiar to several generations of Korean scholars and is also used by North Koreans to translate their works into English. We have simplified the system by dispensing with apostrophes (used to indicate aspirated consonants) and diacritical marks above vowels. The resulting simplification will be admirably suited to the needs of most readers, and those who are familiar with Korean will be able to translate back into Korean. In 2000, South Koreas Ministry of Culture and Tourism introduced Revised Romanization, which has met with some resistance but is now widely adopted in South Korea. However, because it looks somewhat strange to many foreigners, ourselves included, we have chosen to stay closer to the older system.

In Korean, the family name usually comes first, followed by one or two given names. Some Koreans hyphenate their two given names, others write them separately, and some combine the two (for example, the books second author). The official North Korean approach is to write them separately. Thus in North Korea the names of the three men who have led the country would be written as Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un. However, to make it clear to foreign readers which are the family names and which are the given names, we have decided to use an equally popular approach and hyphenate the first names: Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un. Throughout the book, Korean names are presented in this manner except where Koreans outside of North Korea specifically use another form.