LITTLE ROCK — THANK goodness for the New York Times. (Now there’s a phrase you won’t see in this column all that often.) Not long ago the newspaper many think of as this country’s paper of record published a lengthy story about life in North Korea, based on interviews with North Koreans themselves. Naturally the interviews didn’t take place in North Korea, but in mainland China-where the refugees from across the Yalu could talk freely. Imagine having to go to Communist China to talk freely. Now you know what kind of police state the Kim dynasty runs from its penthouses in Pyongyang.
We were reminded of the caseof a young reporter from the Times who, back in the bad old days, had come to Arkansas to dig into some scandal or other at the state prison, and then heard he was about to be subpoenaed by a Jefferson County grand jury; his nervous editor advised him to gethimself across the nearest state line, whereupon the intrepid young man, determined to protect his right to free expression, took off for . . . Mississippi.
This may have been the first and last instance in recorded history of a journalist’s taking refuge in Mississippi, which says something about how bad the bad old days were in Arkansas. Just as it says a lot when North Korean dissenters seek sanctuary in still Red China.
But freedom of speeh is a limited thing when you’re North Korean: The names of the interviewees in China were withheld to protect the innocent. These folks still have family back in their gulag of a homeland. Also, you never know when some commissar will decide the time has come to ship you back to hellish home from the (relatively) friendly confines of Red China.
AS THE pudgy little dictator, Kim Jong Il, grows weaker, older and less pudgy, the economy of North Korea wanes, too. Korea-watchers begin to wonder what rock bottom could possibly look like. After all, this is the same country that, for years, has been turning down army recruits because so much of the population has been malnourished since childhood. By now many of these people just don’t have the mental capacity to learn how to move, shoot and communicate. This is the same country in which people have had to eat grass to supplement their diets. This is the same country in which millions starved in the 1990s. How could things possibly get worse?
Well, they did. In a command economy like North Korea’s, things can always get worse.
Last November, the regime devalued its currency. It was some sort of gimmick designed to stabilize the economy by undermining the black market. North Koreans who had been saving money for years-it’s a habit among people in the East, this “saving money” thing that so many Americans don’t seem to get-watched their savings dive-bomb overnight. One man interviewed by the Times had managed to sock away more than $1,500 throughout his entire working life. The next day his nest egg was worth $30.
He’s now one of many “visitors” to China, having managed to cross the border without being shot.
Even for those who watch North Korea-like a hawk-the details in this exposé were surprising. Well, as surprising as news out of North Korea can be. This is, after all, the same government that told its people to save their own waste to fertilize crops, only to have the scheme fail because North Koreans don’t eat enough to produce that much waste.
Some of the details of North Korean life now known to the Western World:
-One in three children in North Korea is malnourished. Which may surprise because the figure, to those who know the regime there, seems low.
-A teacher said it was hard leading her classroom because some of the students were so hungry that sitting at a desk might be too much for them.
-Many workers go to state-assigned jobs, where they are rarely paid, andsign in to avoid punishment. Then they pay their supervisors so they can leave. Whereupon they proceed to a real job-trading in some sort of merchandise smuggled in from China, most likely. That’s one way they can make enough money to feed theirfamilies and keep starvation at bay. For another day.
Here’s what wasn’t surprising: The absence of widespread instability. You’d think in a country like North Korea, the peasants would be taking up their pitchforks. But the brainwashing is so complete that, even as the Times was interviewing these subjects in prosperous China, complete with its teeming restaurants and growing excess, several of the visitors echoed The Party’s standard line: North Korea’s problems are the result of a capitalist conspiracy against Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and his loyal people. It’s all a plot by the United States and South Korea, and maybe Japan, too. The sinking of that South Korean ship? It was just a ploy to pull the North into a war.
Here’s what struck us as the saddest part of this sad story. It was also the spookiest, given the North Korean regime’s hair-trigger finger on The Bomb. A mother was talking about her son back home:
“My son says he wishes the war would come because life is too hard, and we will probably die anyway from starvation.” THE PASSIVITY of Dear Leader’s subjects (maybe it has something to do with all that malnutrition) may not last forever. The people being interviewed say that folks in North Korea are beginning to whisper about the regime’s failures and crimes. And not just whisper. It’s said the criticism of their rulers can be heard out in the open now-at markets here and there. There’s no telling what risks some people will take when their stomachs are aching. Or when their children start wishing for war-just to make the misery stop.
Now may be the best time in years to tighten the vise on Kim Jong Il’s murderous regime. His military just killed three Chinese nationals on the border, and Beijing is not pleased. If the regime in Pyongyang, not satisfied with tormenting its own, starts killing Chinese, Big Brother across the Yalu might not be willing to act as Dear Leader’s enabler much longer.
Oh, would it be so. Then how much longer would we have to read these sad, spooky stories out of North Korea? Maybe not too much longer.
There are 24 million hungry people in North Korea, and if they’re wishing for war to ease the pain, that should spook everybody.
Red China included.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 06/24/2010