Barbara Demick’s recent book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, is an excellent account of daily life in for ordinary people in one of the world’s two remaining unreformed communist states. It’s based on extensive interviews with North Koreans who were fortunate enough to escape to South Korea through China.
As described by Demick, life in North Korea is similar to that in other communist dictatorships. There is the same type of secret police, censorship, gulag-style concentration camps, massive personality cults glorifying the dictator, poverty, and starvation. But each of these miseries is noticeably worse than even in the USSR. For example, the North Korean government has rigid family categorizations that hold people responsible for the supposed “class origins” of their family far more comprehensively than even in the Soviet Union under Stalin. In the USSR, dissidents were often sent to prison or Gulags, or incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals; but, at least after Stalin, some of them could survive long enough to attract attention in the West. Not so in North Korea, where the squelching of any sign of dissent is even swifter and more thorough. And even Stalin didn’t have a personality cult that went as far as that of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il.
One story in Demick’s book particularly struck me as illustrating the way in which North Korean repression went beyond that in the USSR. A North Korean college student who later defected and told his story to Demick was admitted to an elite university in Pyongyang. Because he was one of the best and most trusted students at the school, he was allowed access to certain foreign books in the library that were off limits to ordinary people. One of those books (which made a great impression on him) was Gone with the Wind. The Soviet Union also had a long list of books that were restricted to a small elite. Indeed, the North Koreans probably copied this institution from their Soviet teachers. Gone with the Wind, however, was freely available in the USSR (in Russian translation). My late grandmother recalled reading it back in the 1950s, even before the limited liberalization of the “Khrushchev Thaw.” It’s possible that the Soviet censors simply made a mistake, and accidentally overlooked the fact that Margaret Mitchell’s view of the Civil War was very different from the Marxist account endorsed by the Communist Party. Even so, it’s telling that they were less through in this regard than their North Korean counterparts.
This is just one small example of the scope of North Korean repressiveness, even compared to other communist states. But as Demick describes, it has parallels in almost every other aspect of North Korean society. It isn’t easy to surpass Lenin and Stalin in the field of totalitarian oppression. But the Great Leader and Dear Leader managed to pull it off.
NOTE: I should perhaps mention that I am not endorsing the the views Mitchell advocated in Gone with the Wind, many of which I think are abhorrent. I actually spent a good deal of time discussing the book with my grandmother, and explaining that Mitchell’s account of noble slaveowners and contented slaves was far from accurate.
WF says:
It’s possible that the Soviet censors simply made a mistake, and accidentally overlooked the fact that Margaret Mitchell’s view of the Civil War was very different from the Marxist account endorsed by the Communist Party
I doubt you could say that it was a “mistake.” Lots of the Russian classics had views in them that are very different from the Marxist account, and weren’t censored.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:34 amdwight says:
Evidence from a defector is a little like evidence from a disgruntled ex-employee or dumped ex-lover.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:38 amIlya Somin says:
I doubt you could say that it was a “mistake.” Lots of the Russian classics had views in them that are very different from the Marxist account, and weren’t censored.
Actually, some of them were. More to the point, however, the Soviet government thought it would look bad for them to ban major Russian literary classics of the past. They didn’t have any similar compunctions about banning contemporary foreign works.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:39 amraoul says:
Is Cuba the other? The Wash Post had recently a story about a grandmother who “believed” in the system but changed her views after her family died and she ended up in South Korea. North Korea may well be the most oppressive regime on Earth. It is almost a concentration camp. BTW on another post-I can tell you that Mex-Ams are not only vastly underrepresented in law schools but also in much of the power structure that originates in the Northeast.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:46 amIlya Somin says:
Evidence from a defector is a little like evidence from a disgruntled ex-employee or dumped ex-lover.
If a firm had hundreds of thousands of ex-employees who thought working there was so bad they were willing to risk their lives to escape, their testimony would be very probative indeed. Unfortunately, defectors are the only North Koreans who can speak freely about their lives in that country, which is in itself a telling point about conditions there.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:47 amdwight says:
raoul: Maybe Myanmar is the other
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:51 amIlya Somin says:
Is Cuba the other?
Yes. My understanding from the literature on Cuba is that the oppression there is roughly equal to that in the pre-Gorbachev USSR, and therefore not quite as bad as North Korea. I discussed Cuba in more detail in this series of posts.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:52 amvassil_petrov says:
A book is a good account, but what about a documentary with interviews with
North Koreans? Bulgarian journalist Elena Yontcheva did just that. Of course,
all the people were either instructed what to talk, or closely watched or party officials, but it was telling:
http://catalogue.bnt.bg/pdf_stranici/rs2/eng/2_0_17.pdf
Quote
January 11, 2010, 3:34 amNick says:
There’s a novel by Don DeLillo called Cosmopolis that assumes, in the background, North Korea’s not a communist state.
Reading it the first time, it’s jarring, and I wondered, Does Don DeLillo mean to write that?
But then again, if it’s the near future he’s describing, it’s a hopeful idea. No doubt Don DeLillo wasn’t aiming for that. The book is, apart from that, otherwise very bleak.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 3:42 amdwight says:
I’d much rather live in Cuba than Myanmar. Any day of the week. Cuba is a paradise compared to Myanmar.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 3:45 amMartinned says:
Why is this news? North Korea has all the fun of communism, combined with the additional fun of confuscianism. Of course they’re going to be worse than each of these separately. Czarist Russia, for all its totalitarian flaws, was still in some sense a European country, at least from the time of Pushkin onwards. (Actually, that’s one of the things about Russia I’ve yet to figure out: how European they really are.)
Quote
January 11, 2010, 4:43 amScott Lazarowitz says:
Hmmm. Are you sure you’re not talking about life in the USA under Barack Obama?
Quote
January 11, 2010, 6:38 amA. Zarkov says:
I’ve heard this before about the USSR. You should think carefully about the implications of such an assertion. It works both ways. Of course we have a lot more evidence than the testimony of defectors as to the nature of the South Korean regime. Any regime that turns a country into a prison camp must be regarded with the utmost suspicion. Even some nasty governments like Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile didn’t do that.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 7:38 amA. Zarkov says:
Albania under Hoxha was a worse dictatorship than the USSR.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 7:44 amPunditKix says:
The Volokh Conspiracy » North Korea: Communist Oppression Even Worse than the USSR...
Trackback from PunditKix...
Widmerpool says:
Is that the totalitarian version of being more Catholic than the Pope?
Quote
January 11, 2010, 8:03 ampireader says:
North Korea is similar to that in other communist dictatorships
There’s something odd about calling a hereditary monarchy “communist”.* And apparently the North Korean regime has abandoned Marxism-Leninism in favor of home-grown weirdness. But they’ve clearly modeled themselves on the Stalin regime’s worst habits (as did Saddam Hussein). And they’ve convincingly defended their reputation as the worst government on earth.
*Same problem with Cuba, which has apparently become a family fief of the Castro Ruz clan.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 8:17 amJoe T. Guest says:
There is a pretty good cataloguing of many of NK’s human rights abuses published by an NGO with a fairly serious and bipartisan looking board, here, if anybody cares to read about the details.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 8:27 amAbdul says:
You’re right. Why don’t we interview a representative sample of North Koreans instead?
Ohh, that’s right, because they’re locked up in the most repressive tyranny in Earth’s history.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:08 amMaryanna says:
@ 12: You’ve hit a 10 on the troll-meter before 7am. That’s pretty good.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:24 amh says:
Eternal Bosom of Hot Love.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:27 ampublic_defender says:
The only thing worse might be to live in a libertarian paradise like, say, Somalia. Governments that are too strong are clear threats to liberty. But so are governments that are too weak or that don’t exist at all.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:33 amDave N. says:
I guess the good news is that Albania seems to be shaking off the Hohxa Era. Hopefully, once North Korea collapse (I believe it is a matter of when, not if) a united Korea can shake off the Kim Era in the North.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:46 amAri Tai says:
Another soul rending tale: The Aquariums of Pyongyang.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Aquariums-of-Pyongyang/Chol-Hwan-Kang/e/9780465011049
100 million and counting murdered and billions of lives wasted by those who believe we can perfect mankind if only enough coercion is used.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 10:08 amMark Field says:
And here I assumed that the Soviets allowed Gone With The Wind because they saw it as a blueprint for their own government.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 10:11 amtheobromophile says:
It’s always seemed rather strange to read GWTW and see a rather progressive view of women coupled with an entirely backwards view of slavery. You have a main character who comes to the realisation that she is just as mathematically apt and business savvy as are men, in a society that deems women to be simple-minded fools in need of male protection, but who cannot make the tiny step to understanding how the condescending description is not more fitting of slaves than it is of women.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 10:35 amTed says:
Does anyone know if there will be North Koreans in South Africa to support their team? If so, I hope to meet some of them.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 11:19 amDerHahn says:
Maryanna says:
@ 12: You’ve hit a 10 on the troll-meter before 7am. That’s pretty good.
What did #2 at 2:38am hit? 11?
Quote
January 11, 2010, 11:28 amAnother guy named Dan says:
One of the most disturbing videos I had ever seen was a clip from NK. After several years of negotiations, a Western medical team was allowed into the country to perform eye surgeries. After one of these surgeries restored partial sight to a farmer’s daughter, the farmer literally dropped to his knees in thanks and praise with a devotion that would have even made a southern revivalist preacher nervous. The object of his reverence: Kim Jong Il.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 11:29 amMartinned says:
All I know is that the matches will only be broadcast on North Korean TV if their team win. (I’m not sure if the story below means “win the whole tournament”, or only “win the match”. Not that it matters, since either is quite unlikely.)
Quote
January 11, 2010, 11:54 amFub says:
As was arguably Romania under Ceauşescu. And Mongo under Ming.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 12:16 pmNathan says:
Right, because you wouldn’t be free to emigrate from Somalia like you would North Korea.
Oh wait....
Quote
January 11, 2010, 12:39 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Or to defend yourself. Oh, wait....
Quote
January 11, 2010, 1:52 pmMenshevik says:
A recent important North Korean technological development is shown in the following youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-hyVzTVDLg&feature=response_watch
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:02 pmgeokstr says:
Perhaps. But then how do you explain the awesome power of Mongo, which gave him the ability to drop a horse with but a single right to the jaw?
Quote
January 11, 2010, 2:03 pmLarryA says:
Theoretically, perhaps. However, any government run by a minority tends to be hereditary, if only because children of the elite get elite educations and have elite connections. See: “Kennedy.”
Quote
January 11, 2010, 3:05 pmpireader says:
However, any government run by a minority tends to be hereditary, if only because children of the elite get elite educations and have elite connections. See: “Kennedy.”
Remarkable that “Kennedy” was the first name to occur to you. “Bush” comes so much earlier in the alphabetical ordering.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 3:44 pmDave N. says:
pireader:
Adams comes earlier still.
Though the Bush Dynasty (if you want to call it that) is comprised of exactly four politicians (Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, the two Presidents Bush, and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida). Additionally, I don’t think that the fact that GHWB’s father was a Senator from Connecticut impressed that many people in either Texas or Florida.
The Kennedy Dynasty (if you want to call it that) is comprised of the father, Joseph Kennedy, three sons who were U.S. Senators (John, Bobby, and Ted), one of whom became President, two grandsons who were members of Congress (Joseph and Patrick) and that does not count those who ran and lost, such as Mark Shriver), a son-in-law on a national ticket (Sargent Shriver) and a grandson-in-law who is currently Governor of California (Arnold).
Which seems more like a dynasty to you?
Quote
January 11, 2010, 4:16 pmA. Zarkov says:
Ceauşescu had everyone fooled including Nixon and Kissinger. Other the hand, Ming... well, I know how do deal with him.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 4:46 pmSeaDrive says:
Adams.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 4:50 pmRoy says:
“Gone with the Wind” has an interesting history in communist Asia. During the 1960s and 70s, GWTW was one of the few Western books that was not banned in Communist China. I know many Chinese who grew up during the cultural revolution, all of whom had read it, and thought very highly of it. It was often explained to me that it was a very “Chinese” story. With great resonace for them, when I expressed surprise at this, the universal response was that GWTW did nothing to challenge the system, and was basically apolitical. Which if you think of it divorced from the context of American race based slavery, it really is.
Scarlet is a fantastic model of Confucian filial piety as actually culturally practiced in a Confucian society, as opposed to the theoretical. Every action of hers is based on securing her families survival and in defense of the patriarchal order. These are things that even most Maoists completely apprived.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 7:21 pmRoy says:
I should add that the film version of “Gone with the Wind” with Vivian Leigh, was a personal favorite of Jiang Qing, a.k.a. Madame Mao, whose approval even extended by proxy to such films as “Waterloo Bridge.”
So its restriction in the DPRK is more interesting than might otherwise appear. My own personal discussions about the communism of the DPRK with Chinese and Cubans who had dealings with that country is some of the most horrifying anecdotal information I have encountered. North Korean students in Cuba were not allowed to speak or interact with anyone other than each othe and their section leader, even in class, though they were in Cuba in order to learn Spanish. Chinese I know whose families occupied party or technical posts that brought them into contact with the DPRK, always described the place with horror. With stories of midnight expulsions of even senior PRC officials and the disturbing commonplace that Chinese experts who went to North Korea always came back having lost considerable weight, even in the 1970s and 80s.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 7:29 pmJohn Moore says:
I find the comparison odd... which USSR are we comparing with? Post-Stalin? Stalinist? How about a comparison with Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution — that was pretty awful. Pol Pot’s Cambodia?
It isn’t hard to find horrible Communist regimes. It is impossible to find any that were not at least awful.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:02 pmNorthern Dave says:
I think of Russians as if they are the child of East and West. My children are a fusion of my wife and myself and with ever shimmering flavours of ourselves and our parents and grandparents. From moment to moment reflecting their different heritage in different aspects of their lives. I think Europeans ought to look at Russians as cousins they can work shoulder to shoulder with into the future yet who live in separate dwellings to allow for the privacy to accomodate their differences (and to retreat into when time to cool off becomes necessary).
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:37 pmNorthern Dave says:
Amen. The 20th Century teaches clearly Communism simply does not work.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 9:40 pmBleepless says:
Professor Somin:
Regarding mistakes by Soviet censors, take a look at Soviet science fiction. Some of it, such as the very popular works by the Strugatsky brothers, was a sustained Aesopian attack on the USSR itself. When the Party discovered what had happened, the genre almost disappeared.
Also, a popular-science magazine was running a serial of Arthur Clarke’s 2010 until the Western press pointed out that four of the five Soviet characters bore the same last names as prominent Soviet dissidents.
As to Communist publishing oddities, North Korea has published a translation of The Diary of Anne Frank. Go figure.
Quote
January 11, 2010, 10:39 pmmarkm says:
Dave N.: Also, there’s the Massachusetts Senate seat that has been kept in the Kennedy family through Joe, Jack, and Ted (with a family retainer holding it for one term until Ted was old enough). IIRC, now another family retainer is holding it for the next generation.
Even the Adamses didn’t go that far — and the population of possible competitors was much thinner for them than for the Bushes or Kennedys.
Quote
January 12, 2010, 7:23 amMartinned says:
Well, if you’re going to be pedantic, the 20th century only teaches that Communism has never worked. If you want proof that Communism does not work, full stop, you need to combine the empirical data with a theory, like Hayek (1945), ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 519–530.
On what basis do you say that? Surely the founding-era US was much more oligarchical than in the present day? Only a minority of the people had the right to vote, senate seats were awarded by state legislatures, etc.
Quote
January 12, 2010, 12:16 pmliamascorcaigh says:
Ilya Somin But the Great Leader and Dear Leader managed to pull it off.
Why does practically every post end up referencing Obama?
Quote
January 12, 2010, 4:18 pmMikeT says:
You’re right about Jack and Ted, but Joe Kennedy (I assume you’re talking about Joe Kennedy Sr) never was a Senator.
Quote
January 12, 2010, 10:18 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Debating Ayn Rand’s Philosophy says:
[...] the status quo, or at least not taking the risk of becoming open dissidents. Eliminating the horrible oppression of North Korean communism is surely desirable. But it just as clearly runs counter to the egoistic interests of North Korean [...]