Daily life in North Korea

Kim was the only child born to a college professor and homemaker. Her mother passed away from liver cancer when Kim was in primary school. After her father remarried, Kim moved in with her grandmother and dropped out of school. At only 14 years old she began selling liquor on the black market.

 “After Kim Il-Sung died, we went into the starvation period,” says Kim. “The government’s slogan was ‘self-reliance.’ You had to take care of yourself. You had to feed yourself.”

Even as a child, Kim had a knack for running a business. She bribed local officials with cash. They turned their heads and allowed her illegal business to grow. Kim began exchanging soju (rice alcohol) for grain and moved it across the Chinese border. When she ran out of soju, she would make it herself. Business expanded, and she had more money than she could spend.

Before the Korean War, Kim’s family lived closer to the border of North and South Korea. After the peninsula was divided, the new North Korean authorities sought out families who didn’t fully support the government. Those families were sent to northern provinces and treated as political criminals.

Kim found out that her family had sympathized with South Korea.

“In school we were taught that Americans were devils that kill people,” says Kim. “But when I asked my grandmother if that was true, she said no – the Americans gave us chocolates.”

Kim watched television to learn Mandarin her first few weeks in China. Eventually, she started up her business again, but she was anxious. Anyone could report her to the Chinese authorities.

“I had this fear like what if I die here, and no one knows who I am? I didn’t cross the river to have fear,” says Kim.

Kim lived in China for nearly two years, before she arranged travel with a broker across southern China and into Thailand. The broker guided an entire group of North Koreans from safe point to safe point. While other North Koreans shared their grand hopes about a new life inside South Korea, Kim thought to herself – “All I want is my own name.” She had lived in China without any documentation, and was eager to receive a South Korean passport.

Finally, Kim made it to South Korea. Her first six months were spent in government facilities. She says her time at the women’s resettlement centre Hanawon wasn’t meaningful. She was too exhausted to absorb the trainings about South Korean culture and capitalism. And she was too overwhelmed to make friends. But she says no training could have prepared her for Seoul.

“After leaving Hanawon, I came to the realization that I was alone. I had no idea where to go. I didn’t know how to take a bus or how to make a cellphone call. I didn’t know what to do with my life,” Kim says.

“There was one lady who offered me English classes and she was very good to me, she was like my mom. She was the one person I could talk to. She was really kind and I confided in her like a mom,” says Kim.

Kim says there are times when she wishes she could go back to North Korea and visit her parent’s burial sites. But she doesn’t want to live under the regime anymore.