SEOUL, South Korea — By North Korean standards, Yeonmi Park, 20, grew up in affluence, the daughter of a party loyalist who traded in gold and silver with Chinese customers.
Accustomed to privilege and security, in the mid-1990s her family suddenly found themselves struggling when a famine left hundreds of thousands of North Koreans dead. The crisis crippled the old communist apparatus, which guaranteed that loyal subjects were fed and clothed, while transgressors were exiled to the countryside for minor infractions.
Having to fend for themselves, the Park family opted to become part of a nascent class of merchants, a controversial group in a communist country which traditionally rejected any free trade.
While refugees poured across the border to China telling stories of starvation and torture, in the other direction — thanks to the merchants — came foreign films, television shows and music stored on DVDs and USBs, a link to the prosperity and ways of the outside world.
These shifts gave rise to North Korea’s very own millennials, a generation born in the 1990s who are independent, pragmatic and less politically attached than their predecessors, says Park.
They’re also known as the “Black Market Generation.”
After a period of tolerance, the regime eventually strengthened its grip over the new economy, fearing a threat to the Kim dynasty’s absolute control. Yeonmi’s father was arrested, and upon his release in 2007, she and her family fled to China.
Two years later they were in Mongolia — where she says they were prepared to kill themselves if Mongolian guards repatriated them.
Yeonmi and her family eventually made it to South Korea, where she now campaigns against the North with the knowledge, from South Korean police, that Pyongyang’s intelligence agents track her television appearances and articles.
GlobalPost sat down with Yeonmi to discuss the changes underway in North Korean society, what it means to be a “North Korean millennial,” and why these young, affluent women go wild for Leonardo DiCaprio and not Kim Jong Un.
The interview has been condensed and edited by GlobalPost.
Could you tell our readers about what you mean by a “North Korean millennial?”
For North Koreans who were born in the 1990s, things are very different from what many people would expect. Before, we [North Koreans] thought that we were the best people in the world. But now this new generation has very different characteristics from our parents.
Our generation thinks about money: How do we make more money, make our lives better? Our parents think differently: How can we make our regime strong? How can we help our leader? How can we protect North Korea against the Americans?
This is what we mean by North Korean millennials. They grew up with no loyalty to the regime and they are focused on their own lives.
Tell us how you went from being in a party family to a member of the black market generation?
At first I thought everybody was living like we did in North Korea. The propaganda didn’t tell us the full story. We thought that life under capitalism was hard and that people were homeless and struggling.
My father was a trader who made a lot of money, and he was a party member. My family was doing well and my future was bright. I was going to become a doctor.
So you could see that there were no problems, and we truly believed our system and that our people were the best in the world.
But North Korea was changing and its people were seeing the outside world through DVDs and movies. We had the famine. There were more movements across the border to China, more traders and refugees, who could see the outside world.
As for movies, Titanic was always a popular one, and the women really loved Leonardo DiCaprio. Everybody thought he was so handsome and they all had a crush on him. The men really loved Julia Roberts and “Pretty Woman.” Oh, she was so beautiful.
We got a taste of the world and, you know, North Korea was always a closed off country so this was pretty new. In Pyongyang, life was so good. When I was younger I thought, this is a paradise. When I went to school I couldn’t think about anything else, criticize anything, question anything. We really believed the world should be like us.
But after the famine I saw bodies on the streets. I saw bad things every day, but I didn’t really understand what it was all about. At first, I thought that our leader must be great, and that there must be something wrong with the workers.
Later I realized that everything was wrong with our country and that we needed to open up like China did. I thought Kim Jong Un was good but the workers were bad, and that’s why we had a hard time.
But after I was exposed to the outside world and my father was arrested, we began to understand all the problems we were facing. North Korea was a terrible place. It was built on lies. That’s why we left, because we sought a better life on the outside, and we knew that the world was not the same as what the government said.
But life in South Korea can be hard for defectors, no?
We spent three months in prison in Mongolia, and then we were in South Korea. But Hanawon [the government’s re-education center for newly arrived North Korean refugees] felt like a prison again.
I was depressed. The teachers told us all about South Korean society. They said that South Korean kids were so smart, so high achieving. Hanawon taught us everything we needed to survive, like using a TV and the internet and an ATM. We felt like we were not made for this society, as if our reputations were bad. It was overwhelming.
After I got out, it was good to know how competitive this place was. With the help of the government we got our first apartment in the countryside and a stipend.
The area was totally rural and empty. We had no TV, and none of those luxuries.
Still, I was so excited to go out and see people. But things were disappointing at first. I went to the internet café and tried to use the computers, but I couldn’t figure out everything.
When I asked the man at the desk for help, he was surprised and just said, “Are you a foreigner?” and asked me to get out of there. Around town, people would always ask if I am Chinese or a Joseonjok [an ethnic Korean from China]. They would ask why I came here, with suspicions of outsiders.
At 17 [years old], I had to start elementary school because the North Korean education system was so bad, but I moved quickly to middle school. Everybody saw me as the animal in the room. All the little kids came up to see me, made fun of me, called me stupid, and asked if I ate human flesh because I was North Korean.
I quickly finished the GED exam [to finish high school] and moved to Seoul to study criminal justice at Dongguk University. Nobody knew I was from the DPRK, and I learned to adapt to this society. Later I went on the Korean TV show “On My Way to Meet You,” which is a talk show for defectors.
Throughout all this I had an identity problem as a Korean. I was scared of South Koreans for a long time. But I am Korean too.
What will happen when this generation grows up and gets into power? Will North Korean society change?
Oh, definitely. There will be big, big changes. I think it’s not that long now from the current moment.
Kim Jong Un is trying to show the people that he’s taking care of them. But he’s not really taking care of the people’s lives. He’s building a swimming pool here, a park there, a ski resort there. It’s nothing related to developing the country.
When foreigners travel to North Korea, they see all that. It’s propaganda.
Now the problems are getting worse for defectors. The government is shooting the people who cross through the river [to China]. Now, nobody can go in the water. They just shoot them immediately.
The government wants to make sure there is no change. But this cannot last forever. People are aware of the world now.