Hard Times in the North
Report: North Korea cuts state rations, forced to lift market restrictions after China fails to deliver on aid. Assuming this report is accurate, my guess is that those who suffer most from this will be the enlisted ranks in less-favored military units and lower-ranking state workers. Most people are already cut out of the ration system and dependent on the markets, and the regime always seems to find enough food for the Inner Party, the officers, the internal security services, and the special forces.
Meanwhile, conditions in the North sound atrocious, though it’s always hard to say if they’re unusually atrocious:
Chinese villagers along the northern border told the Herald of North Koreans plundering their livestock, tools and any other objects not nailed down. They told of women crossing the river to trade backpacks full of soy bean paste for luxuries like nail clippers, shoes and rice. Wilson Im survived his adolescent years in South Pyongan by scavenging aluminium pots, pans and cutlery, of which his bauxite-rich neighbourhood had relative plenty. He would pack them in his school bag, and stow away on south-bound trains to trade for rice on the flatter and more fertile fields closer to Pyongyang.
Lately the regime has been battling to reimpose its tight-fisted control by restricting street markets and launching a campaign against imported Chinese goods. It has slowed the refugee traffic to a trickle by increasing patrols.
Refugee activists in China told the Herald they had grown reluctant to help arrivals because they could no longer tell a genuine refugee from a North Korean secret agent who had starved themselves to infiltrate their networks. [Sydney Morning Herald]
I have just read a review of Barbara Demick’s book, Nothing to Envy, by a woman called Isabel Hilton. It appears in the London Review of Books and wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows that publication.
The reviewer praises Ms. Demick’s book but takes a lot of sidewipes about it having a “Manichean” view of North Korea (Hilton seems to be of the there-is-no-such-thing-as-evil-and-anyway-George-Bush-is-so-totally-evil persuasion). Hilton also trots out a meme I have seen and heard from various LRB types which is that North Korea was doing just fine until the 1990s and everyone got their rations! And is otherwise at pains to point out that South Korea was no bed of roses in the sixties and seventies while being apparently uninterested about the comparative fortunes of both countries since then (unless it is to point out that South Koreans with their wealth have become inauthentic and snooty towards their Yankee-blockaded brethren).
In other words it takes the usual stroky chin approach towards the possibility that North Korea’s leaders are simply very bad people and attempts to “relativise” all the problems there or bring them back to the fault of the US or its
running dogsallies.Apparently she’s fairly famous but I’ve never heard of her before. She also had a discussion with Barbara Demick once in what sounds like an attempt by Hilton to sow seeds of skepticism regarding defectors testimony.
The article is only available to subscribers (I have a deadwood copy):
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/isabel-hilton/how-to-defect
But here is a link to a talk the two apparently had. Does anyone know how it went?
http://londonkoreanlinks.net/2010/02/07/barbara-demick-talks-about-her-book-nothing-to-envy-real-lives-in-north-korea/
A sketchy write-up of the event is here:
http://londonkoreanlinks.net/2010/02/20/nothing-to-envy-it-brought-tears-to-the-eyes-of-a-jaded-cynic/
I struggled to find much to say about the evening. But I think most people I’ve come across who’ve read the book have been impressed by it.
Isabelle Hilton helps present Nightwaves on Radio3, and this does sort-of surprise me as it’s a reliably Transatlantic output.
She’s a fluent Mandarin speaker, and was on the MI5 watchlist which prevented many from gaining employment at the BBC in the 1970s (which is not suggestive of Commie sympathies in itself).
I should add that’s Radio3 on the BBC.a
Philip, thanks for that. Hilton does acknowledge that Barbara Demick is aware of the hazards of defectors testimony. Apparently Demick solves this by using testimony of those from one particular city and cross-referencing them to see how much coheres. I might be slightly overdoing the tone of the review but when I get a chance I’ll give you some choice quotes from it.