Author: vibrantkrystle

North Korean doctors are expected to serve the people selflessly.

pg. 106

Doctors would donate their own blood and sometimes skin for skin grafts. They would hike around in the mountains to gather herbs to make pain killers and antibiotics. Doctors would grow cotton in order to make bandages. Doctors were to serve the people of North Korea…selflessly.

This chapter shows that the children seemed to be the most harmed by the regime. They were starving and unable to eat the weeds and bark that most of the people resorted to eat in order to survive. Their stomachs just couldn’t handle it.

Under the regime, people of North Korea were not allowed to choose their careers. They were chosen for them. A big example was the newest character Kim Ji-eun who was introduced in Chapter 7. She grew up wanting to be a teacher but her grades and demeanor landed her a job as a doctor, because she was told she had to be one. Even though that wasn’t her first choice, she did her job well. She worked around the clock and even when the pay and food rations stopped, she continued her work. She was doing what was asked of her. She worked through typhoid and starvation epidemics. Children were starving at rapid rates and there was nothing the hospitals could do. The hospitals were out of resources. Yet, Kim Ji-eun continued to work, because she cared.

When reading chapter six of Nothing to Envy, I found myself hurdled back in time to a memory of where I was when America was attacked. The feelings of raw emotion overtook me as if it were that day again in 2001. The way the author, Barbara Demick asked her interview subjects where they were on that given day that Kim Il-Sung was pronounced dead and was able to see the people perk up and “suddenly describe with great animation and detail their movements on that day,” gives me an understanding of what the North Koreans felt during what they deemed a difficult time.

I am not by any means comparing the two events, but simply stating that certain life events can forever be engrained into our minds and we can be sent back to a time with absolute clarity when asked to recant a memory. For the North Koreans, they came across as conflicted at the news of his passing. Some seemed genuinely upset and there was a lot of people clearly worried about their future. How were they going to be taken care of? Who was going to lead them and provide for them? When September 11th happened, I myself wondered about my safety and what was going to happen to our country. After reading half of this novel, I find we are similar to the North Koreans, maybe not through our politics but simply by our human nature.

While reading Nothing to Envy, I find myself being in shock throughout most of the chapters. There was a section that brought a smile to my face and made me appreciate that even when people are faced with hardships, people still can find joy and happiness.

In their giddiness, they paid little attention to what was happening around them.

pg. 89

When Mi-Ran and Jun-Sang are in their courtship, they find their conversations with one another to be a nice distraction from the world around them. Their lives seem to melt away and allow them a sense of peace. You can clearly see a love that is blossoming bright amongst the dreary landscape. For them, it was thrilling and a little rebellious. Not only did they lie to their parents and sneak around but they had in depth conversations about their insecurities. From these conversations, they forged a bond that allowed them to be supportive of one another. In this time where no one can be trusted, it must have been nice for these two people to be able to have their friendship.

It was a relatively safe way to rebel against the confines of their lives.

pg. 89

I found this section of the book really interesting simply because North Koreas leader was able to “ward off” natural human instinct. Through even more rules and regulations, the leader of North Korea enforced dress code policies for both men and women. It went as far as to determine the hairstyle a women can have based on status and age. There was rules for it all. At one point a ban on young marriage was implemented. He recommended that a man could not marry until aged thirty and a women couldn’t marry until aged 28.

The Motherland and nation hope and believe that the youngsters will uphold the beautiful tradition of marrying only after they have done enough for the country and people.

pg. 81

We as humans need the closeness of other humans to help us to want to keep going. To thrive and become a better version of ourselves. Mi-Ran had let her grades in High School drop because she didn’t understand the point of it all. It wasn’t until her boyfriend told her to have hope that she could make a better life for herself, that she realized if she failed it wasn’t going to be because she allowed herself to fail. She wouldn’t be the one to blame. Their relationship I believe helped to save her from giving up. It shows what a friendship can do even in hard times.

Even during a crisis, North Koreans were still fed lies about their food shortages. A catchy slogan was told to the people along with a video of how a mans stomach burst from eating too much rice. So the easy fix? Only eat two meals a day!

Enduring hunger became part of one’s patriotic duty.

pg. 70

I found this particular section of chapter 4 very strange, yet understandable. In agricultural production, supervisors would fabricate statistics about industrial output because they were so fearful of telling their own bosses the truth. They simply weren’t able to produce what they were supposed to. Then those lies climbed the chain of command. Lies were built upon lies. They even mentioned that Kim Il-Sung might not have even known when the economy took it’s nose dive because of all the lies he received about how well his country was doing in their productions. The fear that was instilled in the people, I think led to even worse conditions. Would their fearless leader provided them with more food or resources to grow more if he would have simply known the truth?

In Chapter four of Nothing to Envy, Ms. Song starts to realize something is amiss when the electricity starts to fade in and out. At first it was every now and then, and it progressed to where days would go by with no power. She had to alter her already daunting daily routine to now include fetching water because her running water was off during the blackouts. She became smart and would fill numerous buckets at a time, to make due during the outages. What else comes from not having any power? The train that Ms. Song would take to work was intermittent as well. She ended up just walking to work, an hour away, for fear of missing any work and not earning her food ration vouchers.

North Koreans were not paid wages that could sustain a person with enough food, shelter and possessions. What they were paid was more like an allowance. Everything they needed was provided by their government.

North Koreans were not supposed to shop because everything they needed was supplied by the government in the name of Kim il-sungs benevolence.

pg. 62

When the power started to fade, so did work at the factories for Ms. Song. They were eventually dismissed and told that they would need to find other means to feed their family. Some women took to the black market, selling things that were allowed to be sold. Ms. Song didn’t agree with the black market. She felt it was “not the place for a proper communist.”

I find it intriguing that Ms. Song can remain so proud and wouldn’t stoop so low as to sell things, considering it might help her to provide food and other necessities for herself and her family. I feel that if times were in such dier straits, I would do whatever necessary to provide food to my family. But then again, she believes in communist ways and to her the government shall provide!

Reading this article makes it even more clear on the ramifications of war on it’s people and future generations.

Hardly Known, Not yet forgotten, South Korean POW’s tell their story is an article by Radio Free Asia. This article talks in a statistical way of how many POW’s there were in North and South Korea and how their lives were forever changed by this. I can further understand the need for the North Koreans depicted in Nothing to Envy, to keep their heads down and to hold their tongue.

Based on the numbers in the articles, many did not survive the imprisonment and if they did they were then told where to live, where to work and their children would follow in this same way. South Koreans who were released were given citizenship to North Korea, allowed to marry North Korean women and start families. They worked for years knowing they would never be granted promotion.

I feel that the author of Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick, was drawn to this particular article because of the sheer volume of POW’s and how it shows the life of one after the war was over. It explains how the POW’s were left in the dark for years, not even knowing the war was over. It gives her more of an idea of why people would become defectors. It’s an eye opening article on how future generations of these POW’s are not granted a life of their own because of who their father was.

More times that I care to count, I cursed in disbelief, out loud while reading the assigned reading to pg. 56 in Nothing to Envy.

“All those years of sleep deprivation, all those lectures and self criticisms-the very same tools used in brainwashing or interrogations-had wiped out any possibility of resistance.”

pg. 43

My heart goes out to the people in North Korea that are depicted in this book and to those whose stories go untold. The sheer magnitude of the burdens the families carry and do so without argument, had me shaking my head in anger. Mrs. Song was introduced to in chapter 3 as an inminban  (an informant) and revered for her devotion to the fearless leader, Kim Il-sung.  She was proud of what she learned and was happy to oblige in all that was expected of her. Not only was she to work 8 hours in factories that women were expected to keep going because 20% of the working age men were in the armed services, she then had to spend SEVERAL hours in “ideological training” in the factories auditorium. Reading that I instantly thought “BRAIN WASHING Venue”?? From there, her day was no where near done. She would then go home and prepare food and do her chores and do it all over again in the morning.

What really had me going was the fact that each household had to have portraits of Kim Il-sung & Kim Jong-Il in their homes with NO other portraits of even family hung on the same wall. I could not believe I was reading that a special Public service was in charge of random inspections to make sure the portraits were clean and kept tidy.

“…every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung.” “Who could resist?”

pg. 46

I guess when you are taught from infancy that he is to be celebrated, honored and loved as one of your own family and that you owe everything to him, who could resist??

• 

Kim Il-sung took the least humane elements of Confucianism and combined them with Stalinism. At the top of the pyramid, instead of an emperor, resided Kim Il-sung and his family. From there began a downward progression of fifty-one categories that were lumped into three broad classes-the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class.

page. 27

As I read chapter two, I couldn’t help but re-read sentences multiple times to try and fully grasp the ranking system. It amazes me how countries outside of Korea can come in and dictate how land was to be separated, and just handed over to other countries as what appeared to be a bargaining chip.

Reading Tae-woos’ story about how his way of life was simply taken from him and he was left to start a new life in a country that once was one nation. How he went from being a out-spoken child that others looked up to, to a quiet man afraid to be denounced for his thoughts. I admire his tenacity in evolving into a man who wanted to simply survive. I can understand his need for silence, for fear of the inminban – a “people’s group” whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood. Mi-ran couldn’t see that her fathers passivity was simply a survival mechanism.

They were placed in the one of the lower of the 51 groups, sub categorized in the “hostile class”. Once here, there was no improving ones rank. It became your families legacy. The ranking system was hereditary. If your grandfather was a part of the hostile class, you were then born into it as well.

The strength of the regime came from it’s ability to isolate its own citizens completely.

pg. 34

I couldn’t imagine knowing that no matter how hard you worked, kept your head down and never spoke ill of the leader or the countries ways, you never could improve your social class.

1/11/19
What do you think is noticeable in the assigned reading? Why?

There is no telephone service between North and South Korea, no postal service, no email.

Pg. 10

The most noticeable thing to me as the reader, is how a once developed country turned into what appears as a poverty stricken country. A country that has “fallen out of development”. Once a thriving tourist destination, residents of North Korea have seem to be merely forgotten. No electricity, no sense of urgency to have help getting it restored and no rush to become “developed” once again.

As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean.

Pg. 9

When night falls, it is simply black. No power to read, watch television or have restaurants or simple pleasures. Things simply worn out and malfunctioning. I can understand just in the first 10 pages of why people would want to become defectors.