But he was nearly as bewildered as I at the answer he gave me.—They don't have homes, they are living there. For Bhupendra, it was the first trip back to Mother India in thirteen years. He was shocked. Everywhere we went, we were surrounded by desperately thin children who begged for the humblest of items: coins, chewing gum, even ballpoint pens—a

Ever since setting foot in North Korea more than thirty years before, I’d known nothing but hunger. Everyone had been halfway to starvation for decades. But things had taken a turn for the worse starting in 1991. From 1991 until Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, extremely cold weather wreaked havoc on the fragile food supply.

If his father's absence had been unique, perhaps it might have caused Bhupendra more grief. But in fact, few fathers were present in the neighborhood, and it had been that way for a long time. Bhupendra knew that paternal migration had begun at least two generations earlier, with his grandfather Motiram. Now, almost all of his uncles and older cous

By the summer of 1995, we were truly terrified that we might die of hunger. Then in August, disaster struck. A devastating flood hit South Pyongan Province, an important grain-producing area. That meant the end of our grain ration. When autumn came, we started to collect acorns in desperation. With no grain, acorns were the only things that might s