A Hard Look At NoKo's Harsh Life

LATimes reporter Barbara Demming, who created quiet a stir with her puff piece on North Korea, North Korea Without the Rancor in March., is back today, but in better form, with a stark, unflinching and terrifying look at life in North Korea. (here)

It's a seven-jump story and I'm on jump three, but I thought I'd pass along a hint of what it's like:

In a working-class neighborhood in southern Chongjin, the 39-year-old coal miner lives in a squat, drab house. The homes in Ranam are organized in blocks, usually with five units on either side of an alley and an outhouse at one end shared by the 10 families.

His only piece of furniture is a wooden table with folding legs. He has one cooking pot. One knife. A couple of bowls. A cutting board that he made himself. A large urn to store water he brings from the well.

He has four pairs of chopsticks and four spoons — exactly enough for himself, his wife, 12-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. He traded away his extra utensils for food years ago.

When there is electricity, he screws a bare lightbulb into a wall socket. His children have no toys or books. Each member of the family owns two sets of clothes — one for summer and one for winter — that they store on a homemade hanger suspended from a nail in the wall.

On the opposite wall hang the obligatory framed portraits of Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, who seized power in the northern half of the Korean peninsula after World War II.

The government forbids people to put family photos or other decorations on the same wall. Party cadres used to drop by almost daily to make sure residents kept portraits free of dust, but that stopped two years ago.

"They don't worry so much about ideology now," he said. "All anybody cares about is finding enough food to get through the day."

Communism failed in the 80s. Somebody tell Kim Il Jung.