In early 1998, a recruiter from the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee (FDRC) visited his university. Attending a general faculty meeting, he learned that leader Kim Jong Il had appealed to the United Nations for temporary food aid because several years of natural disasters had devastated DPRK agriculture. The FDRC had been established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to administer relations with UN relief agencies, non-governmental organizations and foreign bilateral donors. With the number of foreign aid workers now exceeding the number of interpreters available to the Foreign Ministry, professors with appropriate language skills could apply for sabbaticals to work with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and an assortment of European NGOs.
Not hesitating for a moment, Pak told recruiters that he was eager to hone his English skills. After easily passing the required language test, he was enrolled in a crash course on how to deal with foreigners: rules of engagement, security parameters, access requirements, reporting responsibilities, and above all, how to answer sensitive questions.
His first assignment was with an aid worker the authorities considered “non-problematic”. No sooner had he reached the WFP office than he found himself traveling in a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser, equipped with a short-wave radio capable of receiving BBC broadcast news. The driver headed out of the city and into a countryside he had never experienced before. The foreigner was friendly and verbose, delivering a steady stream of conversation about his own home country and the world outside the confines of the DPRK. For the next two hours, Pak thought he had gone to heaven.
The euphoria ended when they arrived at their destination. In the hill country of South Hwanghae province, they entered a small coal mining community, where the foreigner had arranged to visit a local nursery and some private homes.
At the nursery, the foreigner asked to see the “special care room”, where the most malnourished children were being spoon-fed a fortified porridge made of powdered corn-soya blend, donated by the WFP. The sight of the listless, emaciated children reminded Pak of his own deceased daughter. He could hardly concentrate as the foreigner gently pressed a finger into the skin of one child’s foot, then showed Pak the depression or “pit” that remained, explaining that this is an example of edema, caused by protein deficiency.
The home visits were no relief. In one apartment, they talked to the wife of a coal miner whose husband sat propped up in one corner, coal dust ground permanently into his skin. He was making wheezing noises, breathing with difficulty. The distraught woman explained that he was dismissed from the hospital because there was neither medicine nor food for him.
“Emphysema,” explained the foreigner to Pak. “It’s an occupational hazard. Coal dust in the lungs. You can get the same effect from smoking cigarettes.”
On the way back to Pyongyang, Pak was silent for a long time. The intensity of this experience caused him emotional turmoil. He had seen poverty as a child in the slums of Indonesia, but this was his own country. Sheltered in the protected environment of Pyongyang, he had always taken for granted that the glorious revolution had defeated poverty. He didn’t know on whom he should focus the embarrassment and anger he was feeling.
Pak was and still is a true believer in Kimilsungism. He considers the founder of the DPRK to be a god. He believes that the son of the founder, the “dear leader” Kim Jong Il, is the best and obvious person to succeed his father. These are articles of faith. His mind simply excludes the possibility that the leader or the system could be deficient. If his country experiences difficulties, the causes can only be insufficient commitment by lazy or disloyal fellow citizens, natural disasters, or outside interference. The latter had certainly been the case in Korea throughout history.
He remembered his instructions on how to deal with foreigners, and felt an urgent need to justify himself to the man sitting in the back seat of the vehicle.
“We are experiencing these difficulties because of several years of natural disasters,” he offered. There was no reply.
“Floods and droughts,” he added for effect. Still no reply.
His unspoken anger began to boil to the surface and came out in the words he had been taught to memorize:
“We would be able easily to solve all our problems if the Americans would not try to strangle us with their sanctions and military threats.”
He felt better having externalized his anger at a scapegoat acceptable to his faith, but in his heart he still bore a visceral awareness that for at least a decade, the system he still believed to be the best in the world had lost its shine.
“We haven’t come to your country to lay blame.” The foreigner finally spoke -- so quietly that Pak turned around to read his lips. “We’re only here to help you solve your own problems.”
Perhaps because of the death of his daughter, perhaps because of his wife’s bouts of depression, Pak somehow felt personally responsible. More than before his visits with the foreigner, he became aware of his own privileged status. In his political education sessions on Saturday mornings, which now included other North Korean staff members of the foreign affairs community, he began to urge his compatriots to intensify their commitment to the “Second Chollima Movement”, a restoration campaign initiated by leader Kim Jong Il, which Pak interpreted as finding innovative problem-solving ideas.
Pak was thrilled when in 1998 the DPRK launched what he had no doubt was a satellite into orbit, but was dismayed at the negative international reaction, particularly from Japan, which after all had its own satellite programme. But he was equally pleased that his country declared a unilateral moratorium on further launches and missile tests in view of the fact that US President Bill Clinton had at last authorized a meaningful, top-level dialogue with the DPRK.
Although Pak himself had assisted in the 1998 WFP-UNICEF nutritional survey, he was never able to believe the results published in the West, which suggested that the DPRK was one of the top three countries worldwide with the highest level of malnutrition. He knew from personal experience that the situation of North Korean children was grave. But what could possibly be gained by shaming his country with unfair comparisons, as though they were in some sort of contest for the top spot on a scale of disasters? He understood and supported his superiors’ decision never again to permit foreigners to dictate and conduct national nutritional surveys.
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