Nothing to Envy

Like other occasional visitors to Pyongyang, I am reluctant to make pronouncements about the state of the nation based on my observations because the government goes to such extraordinary lengths to choreograph what foreigners see of their country.

Hairdressers were all state employees who worked for an agency called the Convenience Bureau. It was also responsible for bicycle and shoe repairmen

Visitors to Pyongyang in the 1990s reported that the stores sometimes put plastic fruit and vegetables on display for foreign window-shoppers.

apartment buildings were equipped with loudspeakers in the individual units to broadcast community notices.

Those who write in accordance with the party’s intention are heroes,” Kim Jong-il proclaimed.

It is a North Korean phenomenon that many have observed. For lack of chairs or benches, the people sit for hours on their haunches, along the sides of roads, in parks, in the market. They stare straight ahead as though they are waiting—for a tram, maybe, or a passing car, a friend or a relative. Maybe they are waiting for nothing in particular, just waiting for something to change

THE SAD TRUTH is that North Korean defectors are often difficult people. Many were pushed into leaving not only because they were starving, but because they couldn’t fit in at home. And often their problems trailed after them, even after they crossed the border

THE QUALITIES MOST PRIZED IN SOUTH KOREA—HEIGHT, FAIR skin, affluence, prestigious degrees, designer clothes, English-language fluency—are precisely those that the newly arrived defector lacks

IN ARTICLE III OF its constitution, South Korea holds itself out as the rightful government of the entire Korean peninsula, which means that all of its people—including North Koreans—are automatically citizens.

North Koreans call their country Chosun and their estranged neighbor Nam Chosun, literally South Korea. The South Koreans use an entirely different name for their country. They call it Hanguk