PART 12

Any Other Questions?

What happens if you have the same name as “the Marshal,” Kim Jong Un? Would you have to change it?

DT: There is a well-known photographer in South Korea named Kim Jong-il. And Before Kim Jong Un came to power, there was already a famous actress in South Korea with the same name. Obviously neither of these two had to change their names, though the latter is on record as having been shocked by the sudden appearance of a very unusual namesake. Jong Un (or “Jeong-eun” in South Korean Romanisation) is actually more commonly a girl’s name, too.

Je Son Lee:

I think you would have to.

Kim Jong Un rose to prominence after my defection, so I can’t talk specifically about him. But what I can tell you is that people with the same names as national founder Kim Il Sung, his wife Kim Jong Suk and his son Kim Jong Il had to change their names. You’re allowed to have the same given name as the leader or another important public figure. But you can’t share the full name of the Dear Leader.

For example, when you look at the name “Kim Jong Il,” “Kim” is the surname and “Jong Il” is his given name. You can be “Park Jong Il” or “Lee Jong Il,” but you can’t be “Kim Jong Il.” Therefore, people who had the same first and last name as the Dear Leader had to change their names after Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il rose to power. This didn’t affect me, of course; but I heard that the government changes your name immediately after the leader rises to power.

Since the government began deifying the Kim family, parents have taken extra caution to avoid naming their children after the leaders, even if they had different last names. They would have been too afraid to spell out first names such as “Il Sung” or “Jong Il” on the birth certificates of their children. In the West, I think parents would name their children after former presidents or royalty, hoping that they would grow up to possess their positive and admirable qualities. But in North Korea, you’re in deep trouble if you have the same name as the leader. Thus, parents wouldn’t dare to give even the first names of the leaders to their children.

One of my friends was named Kim Pyong Il—the exact same full name as one of the sons of Kim Il Sung, a half-brother of Kim Jong Il. As a result, local officials would talk about my friend—just because he shared the same name as Kim Il Sung’s son.

And there are still many people who have had to change their names for other reasons, including people with names commonly found in Japan. Such names include “Soon-ja” (“Junko” in Japanese), “Chun-ja” (“Haruko”), “Kyung-ja” (“Keiko”) or “Yang-ja” (“Yoko”). Even if they liked their names, they had no choice but to give them up under government order. A considerable number of people around me had these “Japanese-sounding” names and were all obliged to change their names, no exceptions allowed.

South Koreans don’t seem bothered about such trivial, petty things, as the wife of former President Chun Doo-hwan kept the name, “Soon-ja” (“Junko” in Japanese, as you’ll recall) while in the position of First Lady. Imagine if you were an American named Michael during the Cold War; would the existence of Russians using the name “Mikhail” have bothered you?

It’s not easy to change your name if you just wish to do so, though. Of course, if you have enough money to bribe the officials, you can. But if you can’t afford to do that, you’re stuck with the name you were given at birth.

As Hallyu (the Korean Wave of pop culture) flooded into North Korea via China, South Korean names became very popular among North Koreans. In North Korea, almost everyone had names that could be spelled out in Chinese characters. We liked to apply meaning to each syllable. But many South Koreans seemed to have pure Korean names, rather than from Chinese characters. Many North Koreans have recently started to follow this trend, too.

Many babies born after 2000 in North Korea have South Korean-sounding names. I hope the government does not force them to change their names in the future. The North Korean regime has made so much effort to “purify” the Korean language, yet most North Koreans have names that can be spelled using Chinese characters. Isn’t it ironic?

I like that more and more babies born in the 2000s have pure Korean names that sound South Korean. I hope this trend continues. I hope North Koreans are given freedom to choose the names they like some day.

Do North Koreans have cellphones?

DT: Especially in Pyongyang, the answer is “yes.” When I visited in 2014, I met an Egyptian engineer working for Koryolink, the national mobile network 75 percent owned by Orascom, an Egyptian conglomerate. He said they had 2.5 million subscribers. As of late 2016, there are now 3 million. Koryolink has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profit on this—but unfortunately for Orascom, they haven’t been allowed to collect any dividends yet. Some wonder if they ever will…

Cho Ui-seong:

One of the things that was of the greatest help to me in adapting to this unfamiliar country [South Korea] was my smartphone. Without the help of Naver or Google, I would have settled in much more slowly. But what about cell phone use in North Korea?

Even before I left in 2014, many North Koreans were using cell phones, and a small number had smartphones. The price of phones in North Korean varied from $150 to $700, depending on each phone’s design and features. Back then, North Korea’s own “Arirang” smart-phone was very popular. At that time, the government advertised that such LCD touchscreen phones could offer banking and delivery services through an intranet, but I haven’t seen that working in practice.

Cell phones in North Korea began to enter common use in 2009. Prior to that, it was said by many North Koreans that the Guinness Book of Records had named North Korea as the only country in the world without mobile phones. If that was true, the Guinness Book of Records has done a great favor to the people of North Korea.

The introduction of mobile phones dramatically increased access to information for North Koreans. The people most in need of phones are the traders. No one feels the informational backwardness of the country as desperately as them. North Korea already has a fixed-line telephone system, but this is ineffective due to chronic power shortages. Even when the power is on, if it is windy or rainy, lines become crossed and callers are connected to the wrong people. Landline owners have to wait a month for repairs, and there are always many repairs that need making. This is so inconvenient for traders, who need to know what is going on in the market on a daily basis.

As market logic spreads through North Korean society, information becomes money. Prices used to be fixed and economic activity slow, but nowadays the market system (though only tacitly acknowledged) has highly variable prices and a very dynamic economic flow. If traders can make calls on their cellphones regardless of time, place, or the availability of electricity, they can enjoy great opportunities. The cellphone is a big factor in helping those who are taking advantage of the magic of the “invisible hand” of the market.

Due to the practicality of mobile phones, subscriber numbers have increased massively, in spite of the cost. Over 200,000 people joined in the first year of service, and seven years on, there are 3 million subscribers.

But now the phone is a sort of accessory, going beyond practicality and showcasing the wealth and status of the owner. North Koreans, especially young people, are crazy about cell phones. Among young people who don’t have them, there is a common expression—“only dogs and me don’t have cell phones.” This self-deprecating phrase shows the strength of the desire to own a phone.

University students have a special affection for mobile phones, and even those without much money feel they have to have one. When I was in college, more than half of the students had one, so I think almost all students will by now. Students say that those who have phones are going to be 12 times more successful at dating than those without.

It was funny, but I had friends who seemed to think their phone completed their identity. Think of it as being like those who are so proud of driving BMWs. The funniest thing is that most of them couldn’t even use their phones. North Korea’s tariff system offers 50 text messages per month, and talk time of 200 minutes. For anything more than that, you’ll have to pay extra, and in dollars. Two hundred minutes is shorter than you think, so those who are dating will go through that time in a week. It is quite amusing to talk with friends who whinge about spending lots of money on talking to their girlfriends.

When making a phone call, you tend to keep it short. Even when talking to parents, it is common to cut out basic pleasantries. Sometimes I would let friends who didn’t have phones take calls from their parents on my phone, and it really ate up my minutes. When it was someone who kept on talking because they hadn’t spoken to their parents in a long time, I would just glance at them with a look urging them to hurry up.

In any case, the cell phone has undoubtedly made a significant contribution to informing the mentality of people in North Korea, the most closed country in the world. It will result in great changes in the future as well. When will the day come when people in the South and the North can talk freely? Let’s try and add this to the list of once enormous hopes that have become ordinary daily reality.

Is there anything good about living in North Korea?

DT: This is a provocative question, but having visited myself, I can say that there isn’t that much. Or rather, there’s nothing much good about how the state or “the system” works. That said, North Korean defectors will usually say that people back home are warmer and kinder. The lack of industrial development also means that the air is clean and you can see the stars at night.

Jae Young Kim:

Although media and news only show the negative side of North Korea, there are positive aspects about life in the DPRK. Of course there are differences between individuals, but compared to my current life in the South, life in the North was mentally rich—even if it was materially insufficient. The reason for this is because of the pure heart and affection of North Koreans. Though there are lots of kind people in South Korea, affection between neighbors is very pure and deep in North Korea, especially in rural areas.

Families and neighbors gather on birthdays and national holidays and share with each other. My mother used to cook a lot for our neighbors. Even though she had to wake up early and cook, she never refused. I used to wake up early and help her. On major holidays, we invited our neighbors (we used to call my mother’s friends “aunt”) and shared food and stories with them. My mom was really good at making “Jong-Pyun rice cake,” and I can still remember my aunts exclaiming how good they tasted. During nights, we gathered together, turned music on and danced. On days when electricity went out, we used to play the accordion, sing, dance and have fun. I used to have so much fun and danced so hard that my socks had holes when I checked them in morning. My father used to be respected as a gagman (comedian).

Moreover, North Korea’s excellent natural environment is another nice aspect of life. Air in North Korea is very fresh. In spring and fall, my school used to go on field trips. Every year, we went to a cool valley. Water was very fresh and lots of flowers were in bloom. For the whole day, we played scavenger hunt, swam, then ate packed lunch, cooked by my mother. After lunch, we had talent shows.

Although from a material perspective things were often lacking, I sometimes miss the pure heart and sharing culture so common to my life in North Korea.

There is another side to your question… In North Korea, although it isn’t common, there are some ordinary people who receive gifts directly from the state. Some people earn the “hero” title and receive televisions and other goods. These people get better gifts than other people on national holidays. But there aren’t many of these people—I rarely saw a “hero” in my town. There was one, but he didn’t get as many benefits as other “heroes.” In truth, the main people who really get benefits from the government are civil servants, such as party officers, police officers, government agents and a few other people. These are the people who live with consistent privileges and have an easy life.

Everything was suffocating and pitiful in North Korea, but it is a country of which I have many positive memories. So if someone asks me “What is North Korea like?” then I say “North Korea is a nice place with plenty of love.”

Tell me about student life in North Korea.

DT: Student life is about becoming an adult—making choices for yourself, taking your first strides out into the world, and also experiencing new types of fun. Not so much in North Korea though, where the university is more like a military academy.

Kim Yoo-sung:

I will walk you through what it is like to study at college in North Korea. In order to sit the college entrance exam in North Korea, you must have a reference letter and be endorsed by the National League of Students and your high school. The university makes an admissions decision based on your family background, extracurricular activities and your grades. The Department of Education sends an admissions letter to students who are successful.

One very interesting thing here is that you don’t choose a major for yourself. The authorities at your university choose your major for you! Once the university notifies you what you will be studying, you spend the next four years studying that subject. (Just for your information, the major they chose for me was Wood Processing.) It is very rare for a student to take a gap year in North Korea. Most students study for four full years straight until graduation.

Being enrolled at a North Korean college is like being enlisted in the military. Every class has a leader, vice leader and secretaries below them. Each class has a strong, rigid hierarchy with positions held by students along the power pyramid. Those student leaders at the top of the pyramid make sure that students stick to the school rules and code of conduct, and that the students stay disciplined.

Classes begin at 8 a.m. and students must enter the premises by no later than 7:25 a.m. If a student arrives later than 7:25, that student is forced to make a public apology in front of the entire school after the school assembly. School assembly takes place every morning from 7:30 a.m. and lasts for 20 minutes. Assembly at North Korean colleges is held every morning from spring to winter.

There is also a dress code at colleges in North Korea. You must wear a suit and tie and you shouldn’t forget to wear a hat that has been especially designed for college students when you go. There’s no way around this dress code. A league of college police—not military police—stand at the entrance to enforce the dress code. If you don’t comply, you aren’t allowed to enter the campus.

Once a week, students take turns to guard the campus. That means you’re obliged to stay up from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning. In South Korean colleges, guards are hired to watch the buildings and safety of the campus. But in North Korean colleges, it is students that are obliged to perform such duties. Another difference is that cleaners are hired by South Korean colleges to keep the buildings clean and tidy. However, as you can probably guess, it is students at North Korean colleges who have to clean the school buildings themselves.

In addition to taking lectures on the academic discipline chosen for you, you continue to take courses on the three generations of the Kim family and Kim Jong Il’s mother, Kim Jong Suk, throughout your four years of college. In other countries, you usually sign up for classes yourself. But North Korean colleges make a timetable and class schedule for you and you don’t get to choose. On average, a North Korean college student attends three to four lectures a day. On Saturdays, they attend one or two lectures followed by North Korea’s famous self-criticism sessions. You don’t get to go home after the self-criticism session; it is followed by a public lecture which is heard by entire school in the auditorium.

There are other activities. Although not necessarily mandatory, you feel pressured to attend, as people can easily notice who is missing. In the second year of college, students must spend six months training with soldiers at their barracks. Therefore, it takes four years and six months for North Korean college students to graduate from college.

In order to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, you must write a thesis and pass exams on the subject of Kim Jong Il. A professor is chosen to help you with writing a thesis and, of course, your thesis must pass in order to meet the requirements for graduation.

As I’ve already graduated from a North Korean university and I’m currently attending a South Korean university, I’ve found universities in North and South Korea to be very different. In fact, the similarities are few and far between.

What is it like to perform in the Arirang Mass Games?

DT: You’ve surely seen clips of tens of thousands of North Koreans all moving and holding up cards in unison, making a kind of “human pixel” display at the Workers’ Stadium in Pyongyang. Strangely enough, such infamous “card section” performances have also been used in South Korea—in praise of 1980s dictator Chun Doo-hwan, and also by workers at Samsung. Nobody does it anywhere near as scarily perfect as North Korea, though.

Mina Yoon:

In case you haven’t heard of it, the Arirang Festival might be the most famous mass performance in the world. It is an absolute masterpiece of performance art, mobilizing about 100,000 people, from kindergarten kids to college students. The Arirang Festival was even listed in the Guinness World Records for its record-breaking scale. However, behind its overwhelming visual spectacle are the painful efforts and hardships of the performers, who must endure repetitive practice and training.

I haven’t participated in the Arirang Festival, but I did participate in similar mass gymnastics events in other cities that also used ribbon and card (human pixel) systems. When the performance date was approaching, schools would cancel afternoon classes and train students for the upcoming performance. And when the performance was imminent, schools canceled classes for the whole day. Instead, students gathered in the schoolyard and repeated rehearsals endlessly. The school would not distribute the equipment for the mass games, such as ribbons or cards. The performers were responsible for preparing all those things by themselves.

I still remember how I once made a very special ribbon for the performance. I had to procure fabric to make a ribbon, which was not easy to get. One day, I came home around lunchtime to prepare a ribbon for the mass game I was participating in. There was no one at home. My mom had gone out to work in the farm that belonged to my father’s military unit. I had to have a ribbon by the afternoon, but there was no way to reach her. There was no home phone and, of course, no mobile, so I started to go through my mom’s closet; but it looked like there was no decent fabric left.

After a while, I finally found a lovely purple blouse of my mom’s. She’d had it for a while. I hadn’t seen her in this blouse, and from the many layers of papers that my mom packed it with, I could see it was one of her favorite outfits. I couldn’t bear to destroy it, so I put it back in the closet. But then I thought of my teacher, who would scold me if I didn’t bring a ribbon. I concluded that I would rather be spanked by my mother than insulted in front of all of the students. There was no way I could stand that much humiliation, so I took the blouse out from the closet. I cut it into 1.5-inch-wide pieces and sewed the pieces together to make a long ribbon. I stuck the purple ribbon on a wooden stick and carried it to training.

What happened when I got back home later? You really don’t want to know. Anyway, I think my mom deserved to be angry after seeing her precious blouse torn to pieces.

Usually, the training for the mass games took place in the schoolyard. The practice was so grueling that the performers were literally knocked out when it was over. The idea was that a large group of people should be able to move just like a single person, and endless training was therefore a must. Even worse than the very tiring training itself were the dust storms from the ground. The schoolyard was covered with soil, and when large numbers of people made a series of rapid movements on it, a heavy cloud of dust rose up from the ground. Blinded by the thick fog of dust, it was impossible to look ahead in line. When I got home and blew my nose, I could see the black dust coming out. In my mouth, I could feel the grains of sand that had blown into my mouth while we were singing. I think it was a miracle that I did not get pneumonia.

The same went for the card section. It was the performers who had to prepare cards that would be used in the performance. At that time, in North Korea, even toilet paper was hard to find. So I tore up my used notebooks, separated all the pages from them and glued them together to make thick cardboard. I then put them under my bed and slept on them, to make them flat. In the morning, I sewed the flattened cardboard and put the pieces together like a big notebook. Finally, I colored the cardboard.

Let me explain briefly how the card section works. We were trained in the actual stadium of the performance. In the card section, there is a conductor standing in front of the group of performers. The conductor would hold numbered plates and blow a whistle. When the conductor raised up a numbered plate, the performers would unfold the color that matched the number. Even though the conductor would show just one number at a time, there would be different colors assigned to the number according to the performer’s groups, so that it would form a huge picture, moving and changing when you watched from a distance.

The performers were divided into many layers of groups, like squadrons, companies and platoons, just like the army. For example, I was number 7 in the 3^rd platoon, 3rd company in the 2nd squadron. Squadrons were assigned by school location, companies by schools and platoons by grades. Squads, the smallest units, were divided by classes.

Because the performers were assigned to their spots according to schools and grades, when anyone made a mistake, it was easy to find out who did it. For example, if a performer named Hong Kil Dong accidentally unfolded blue when he was supposed to unfold red, the conductor would call him by name through a loudspeaker, saying something like, “Hong Gil Dong in School A made a mistake. We’re repeating this part again.” It might feel awful if thousands of students had to start over because of you, so all the performers tried their best not to make a mistake.

As a performer, the most painful thing in the card section was the uncomfortable posture I had to bear for such a long time. We had to crouch and hide under the cards for a better picture. The performers sat down, put the cards on their laps and unfolded them following signals from the conductor, but it would not look very pretty if the audience could see the faces of the performers. Therefore, once we put out the cards, everything beneath our eyes had to be completely hidden under the cards. After curling up like that during day-long rehearsals, my legs felt numb and my neck was practically paralyzed. When I tried to stand up after the rehearsals, I could hear the cracking sound from my joints.

I took part in smaller mass games, but I could imagine how much harder Pyongyang’s mass games would be. The most difficult part must be that it has to be accurate and flawless. Just imagine thousands of people moving, but they have to move as one. They have to move simultaneously, depending solely on the sound of music. How would it be even possible? Only endless repetition of exhausting practice and training could increase their accuracy. The burden the Arirang performers felt seemed very heavy. There are thousands of foreign tourists watching them. And they understand that what they are doing is not merely a performance. They know it is an official event to affirm the national status of North Korea in front of the outside world.

I heard of a student who died of appendicitis because he could not leave his spot in the middle of the performance. His appendix burst but he dared not leave his position. Even when the performers are sick, not many of them would think about skipping the performance. They knew they would not be excused. This kind of obedience must be the result of the brainwashing and repressive politics seen in North Korea for so long.

Why have mass games? First, the government believed that, successfully performed, the mass games would elevate the national status of North Korea. North Korean mass games started in the 1970s for honored guests from foreign countries. They disappeared during the era of famine of the mid-1990s, and were then revived in the 2000s to attract foreign tourists. However, there was a far greater purpose than tourism. The mass games in North Korea were designed to highlight the legitimacy and consistency of the regime by showcasing its strong spirit of community for the outside world to see.

Second, these performances were believed to increase the morale and the pride of North Korean people. The government wanted its people to believe that North Korea was the most strongly united country in the world, and the praise earned by the mass games seemed to inspire pride.

And, finally, there might have been some economic boost expected from increased tourism. You may or may not like to watch the mass games, but one thing is very clear: North Korean mass games are the grandest circus that you could ever see in the modern world. They are only possible under a totalitarian ruling system. In societies where individual human rights are respected and freedom of choice is valued, this kind of performance is impossible.

This year, the North Korean government decided to cancel the Arirang Festival. My guess is they canceled it because they could not afford the minimum budget for the performance to replace old costumes and give snacks to the performers. Since North Korea has been isolated due to its nuclear issues and tourism has shrunk, it seems to me like the mass games literally went bankrupt.

I must say I am glad to hear that this year’s Arirang Festival has been canceled. At least this year, North Korean students do not have to go through all the tiring training I did. I don’t know whether or not the North Korean mass games could be appreciated as meaningful achievements in performance art, but when I think about the price that the North Korean people have had to pay for them, I really hope they will disappear soon. I shall do my share to make it happen sooner.

What is “fashionable” in North Korea?

DT: When researching my book North Korea Confidential, I heard that skinny jeans had become popular among young women. They usually wear black jeans rather than blue though, as blue jeans are considered too Western by the authorities. Nowhere are skinny jeans more popular than in Chongjin, a port city that receives big shipments of secondhand clothes from abroad. Chongjin is in fact the fashion capital of the country—even more so than Pyongyang, which is a little more conservative due to increased state control there.

Je Son Lee:

I lived in North Korea for 20 years and while I never paid serious attention to fashion, I can tell you a few things about the different fashions I saw during my time there.

When I was born in 1990, the North Korean economy was experiencing difficulties and wasn’t able to produce enough for its people. Despite this, many government officials still had access to products, mainly through a very small black market that existed even back then. As a result of the black market, people in my area began to buy and sell products (including clothes and shoes) obtained from the nearby factories they worked at. This was the start of independent fashion, as I knew it.

Although during the early 1990s, most people wore North Korean-made clothes, Chinese products started to appear in around 1995. Because of those Chinese products I vaguely remember my first day of kindergarten—I wore a dress with frills that was made in China, and shoes with flowers on them. I got a lot of attention from my teachers that day!

You see, in those kindergarten years the government was supposed to provide students with free food and snacks. But when the economy collapsed in the mid 1990s, all the supplies were cut. This meant students from rich families would stand out, wearing nicer clothes than the other kids. And students from rich families would be looked upon by the kindergarten as a jackpot, their parents being able to help out with supplies and food for the others.

From a fashion perspective, things really started to change during my elementary school years. That’s because in North Korea, students from elementary school up to university have to wear school uniforms.

Because of the uniform regulations, a brigade of student guards used to stand at the front gate of my school each day, and students who refused to wear school uniform would be subject to punishment. But many students—including myself—didn’t like to wear school uniforms, as we were much more used to wearing pretty clothes made of soft fabric from China. People like me simply didn’t like the dark, stiff school uniforms that we were expected to wear.

So, even though students were subject to corporal punishment for ignoring the rules, we often preferred to wear something different to the uniform. Personally, I hated wearing my skirt, so I wore jeans from China and avoided punishment by jumping over the wall to get into class. Fortunately, the brigade of student guards only stood at the front gate in the morning and were given free time in the afternoon. Because other students were doing the same thing, a sort of competition over who had the most expensive, beautiful clothes soon developed.

Unfortunately, when I got to third grade the government imposed an even stricter dress code, so we had to think of new ways to get around it. The best way was to buy clothes of a color and design that looked similar to the school uniform. Many students practically refused to go to school unless they had such clothes. So when white and soft fabrics and frills made their way into North Korea from China, it became a fad to make a blouse with frills to wear to school.

By the year 2000, South Korean dramas were slowly becoming popular. In those early dramas most of the female characters wore bootcut jeans, and soon enough they were not only being worn by North Korean adults, but also by young kids. Of course, many schools tried to stop students from wearing them, but despite their efforts the bootcuts only became more popular.

In the end, the adults who tried to ban all these sorts of clothes at my school gave up. However, by the time 80 percent of students were wearing bootcut jeans, many of us started to lose interest in the style, and soon the trend died out on its own. Bootcut jeans didn’t disappear completely, but no one was obsessed with them anymore. Perhaps it was just because the government was no longer trying to prevent people from wearing them so much.

It would take between three to five years for copied versions of South Korean dramas to be smuggled into North Korea via China. As a result of the lag, we did not realize that the fashions we were seeing had often already gone out of style in the South.

Most people I knew made jeans out of colored cloth. Custom-made clothes were always expensive but people paid big money for them, as they were often very competitive about fashion. But nobody had clothes as pretty as my own blue jeans, I used to think. You see, I got hand-me-downs from my mom, who had owned a pair of blue, bootcut jeans—from a designer brand—since she was young.

So what about other designer brands?

While residents of other towns near the border liked to buy Chinese clothes and home appliances, designer brands from European countries became increasingly popular in Pyongyang. Since my grandfather was a high-ranking civil servant in Pyongyang, my parents used to visit the city frequently. Thanks to this, my dad bought designer brands for me, such as Adidas and Lacoste, at the so-called dollar shops (foreign currency shops that couldn’t be found outside of Pyongyang). As a result, everyone near Mt. Paektu was jealous of me and my branded clothes.

Of course, not everyone could afford brand new designer clothes in North Korea. Some would buy secondhand clothes from China—which were often much more stylish and of better quality than the new clothes being sold in North Korean markets at the time. I was dying to buy those secondhand clothes myself, but I changed my mind when some adults told me that they had probably been worn by dead people. “Why else would they give away such beautiful clothes?” I was told. Since religion isn’t permitted in North Korea, people tend to be very superstitious, you see.

Five years before I left North Korea, Hallyu (South Korean pop culture) began to dramatically spread across the country. Ever since then, many North Korean conceptions about fashion have truly changed. Lots of the major characters in the dramas and movies were owners of big companies and so they had lots of different clothes. By watching those dramas and movies, we began to realize that the secondhand clothes we were buying from China weren’t being given away by the families of the deceased, and that people gave them away simply because they just had too many clothes.

Many people preferred secondhand shoes, too. Because the new shoes available on the markets were often homemade by individual shoemakers and were of poor quality and wouldn’t last long, young people often preferred to wear imported secondhand shoes.

As for adult fashion, well, adults aspired to look elegant rather than cool. Among thirty- and forty-somethings, secondhand clothes from Japan were the most popular. They were not only of better quality, but also looked classier than the cheap, tacky clothes being made in China. The price of Japanese secondhand clothes was therefore double that of the Chinese secondhand clothes.

How about elderly people and fashion? In my opinion, older men in North Korea tend to dress in a classier way than older women. They refuse to wear bright colors or logos, instead preferring to dress in a way that meant they might be mistaken for a high-ranking official. Tailored clothes that look like the ones Kim Jong Il used to wear are expensive, but look so much better than ordinary clothes if they fit the owner well.

Funnily enough, some North Korean clothes were nevertheless popular. A few years before I left North Korea, so-called “general winter clothes” (padded jackets) became popular. Although made in North Korea, they were of a surprisingly good quality and expensive. While a one-kilogram bag of rice would cost 3,000 won, a made-in-North Korea general winter jacket would cost between 100,000 and 150,000 won. Unless you were a high-ranking official or a successful vendor with a big business, you simply couldn’t afford one.

I think that North Koreans are even more obsessed with fashion than South Koreans because the clothes they wear indicate their economic status. This notion is still found among North Korean refugees, with some of my refugee friends having bigger wardrobes than my friends who were born and raised in South Korea! That trend is especially prevalent among those who only recently left North Korea.

Funnily enough, some North Korean refugees are still trying to follow trends that have long gone out of fashion in the South, but are still popular back home. I guess old-fashioned trends bring back forgotten memories to us North Koreans in the South.

How do you make yourself pretty in North Korea?

DT: South Korea is a world leader in the production and consumption of cosmetics—for both women and men. In fact, South Korean men spend more on cosmetics than men from anywhere else in the world. This is due to the extremely competitive nature of life south of the border. North Koreans are, like anyone else, interested in looking good, but they have neither the wherewithal or inclination to take it as far as the South Koreans. Often, those who defect to the South feel huge pressure to raise their game…

Jae Young Kim:

In North Korea only people with time and money can really care about beauty. That’s why it isn’t the serious business it is in South Korea, where I live now. In my opinion, the North Korean standard of beauty isn’t therefore on the “outside;” instead, it’s on the “inside”—the beauty that allows a woman to take care of both her household and husband.

When I lived in North Korea there was a famous actress named Miran Oh who was extremely beautiful and very feminine. She was popular with girls who all wanted to be like her, and with guys, too (for obvious reasons). I think it’s fair to say that Miran Oh must have been the beauty standard for many North Korean women. But as I mentioned, the ability for a woman to be strong and maintain her livelihood is sometimes viewed as a more important form of beauty in North Korea.

When I was young, I wanted to be like my mother—a woman who even many of our neighbors admired. She was really good at housework, calm, and helped my father a lot. For me, she was a proud woman and the type of woman I most wanted to be like. But now I’m in South Korea I have to care more about external beauty, too, since that’s such an important part of being a woman here. That’s not to say that some of us didn’t think in the same way back in North Korea, though.

At one time, double eyelid surgery became very popular among girls in North Korea and even my mother suggested I get it done. But I was really scared about it! You see, there are no professional plastic surgery hospitals in North Korea. Often, you have to get these types of operation done at someone’s house. They aren’t the most hygienic of places for surgery, but nevertheless many women are on waiting lists to get these kinds of operations. It became so common that the government actually started regulating these types of places.

There are many, many regulations in North Korea on how a woman should look. You’re not meant to put your hair down, skinny pants are frowned upon, jeans aren’t allowed, and there are definitely no short pants. If you’re ever caught breaking these rules you’re forced to write a self-criticism report; or if you have long hair, risk having it cut short. Nevertheless, some girls turn a blind eye to these penalties, all in the name of beauty.

While it is a lot poorer than South Korea, just like everywhere in the world women in North Korea want to look pretty. But unlike other countries, there is a lot less foreign influence when it comes to beauty and fashion. Really, China is the only country that really has much influence over us.

Chinese fashions get into North Korea because of the strong trade between the two countries and the fact that we are able to legally watch some Chinese soap operas and movies. So we see what is popular in China through TV shows or through what people crossing the border are saying. The cosmetics and fashion choices of North Korean girls are therefore influenced by Chinese trends.

North Korean women care a lot about cosmetics and usually Chinese products are more popular than the North Korean ones (I personally always used the Chinese ones). Because my family had a better quality of life than many of our peers, they had the resources to care about my beauty. So from time to time they’d treat me—once, for example, my mother bought me an expensive Chinese cosmetic product for whitening the skin (we don’t like to tan like Americans!).

I think it is normal that women in both Koreas make an effort to look pretty, but I guess the main difference between the two countries is economic. That, combined with all that I mentioned above, is why there are such obvious differences in the standard of beauty between North and South.