Health care in North Korea is supposedly free, but in reality it isn’t free at all. Poor people can’t get treatment without some form of payment. If you don’t have any money—bring some alcohol. Bring some cigarettes. Bring some Chinese medicine. Or forget it.

Kim Chan-bon character and Kim Il-sung had been brothers-in-arms. Kim Chan-bon had become a powerful figure in the party and the author of some major military innovations. Everyone around me kept dwelling on that, but it still didn’t explain what he was doing in our village with his merry band of men.

In the black market, your birth and background meant nothing. You could be an ex-military man. You could be nobility. Japanese . . . Korean . . . It didn’t matter. Your birth or background meant nothing. All that mattered was your physical strength, and my father knew how to live by violence. But later on, when the war ended and everything returned

profligacy.

Everyone in North Korea had to join a group affiliated with the Workers’ Party. These groups and unions didn’t produce anything. Their sole purpose was to indoctrinate members. Everyone had to understand the words of Kim Il-sung and have a thorough knowledge of party policy. The big difference between regular workers and farm laborers was that the

Kim Il-sung died on the eve of what was supposed to have been the first ever North-South Summit. The party leadership had been delirious with optimism about the summit, claiming that the unification of North and South would soon become a reality and that our present difficulties would be over. But that’s the trouble with propaganda. It constantly c

We were taught that Kim Il-sung was “the king who liberated Korea from colonialism.” He’d waged a war against US imperialists and their South Korean lackeys—and had won. It was thoroughly drummed into us that Kim Il-sung was an invincible general made of steel. I could tell the teachers were proud of his role as the Great Leader of an emerging nati

When

Week after week, we were inundated with the thoughts of Kim Il-sung, the heroic history of the Korean Workers’ Party, or earnest analysis of some ridiculous party newspaper article. And after the meeting, we were forced to stay for further discussions and presentations that always boiled down to the same thing: the brilliance of Kim Il-sung’s polit