Why not go to bed and resume the harvest the next day? The rice wasn’t going anywhere in the next six hours. What was the big hurry? The answer was simple: bureaucracy.
The village farms were administered by local “instruction committees.” These committees were in charge of everything—machinery, irrigation, materials. Farmers had no choice but to follow the committee’s instructions. The system was known as the “feasibility concept.” Feasibility concept! That’s what happens to language in countries like North Korea. A totalitarian dictatorship is a “democratic republic.” Bondage is known as “emancipation.”
But back to the “feasibility concept.” Bureaucrats in charge of farm production paid no attention to location whatsoever. North, south, east, west—it made no difference. They couldn’t have cared less about the unique features of a particular area. Rigidly uniform agricultural policies were passed off as universal truths. They completely ignored any local environmental conditions and issued the same order to everyone. “Finish planting the rice seedlings by such and such a date!” “This is the deadline for the harvest!” No matter how bizarre the directive, farmers had to keep to the schedule. And so sometimes we worked all night.
If a farmer had the audacity to object to the absurdity of some directive, he was told, “The reason you can’t get the job done on time is your total lack of loyalty to Kim Il-sung and the party.” And everyone knew what that would mean. So no one dared to complain.
Soldiers and members of the Youth League were sent to work on farms just twice a year, but the real farmers had to work under these ridiculous conditions all the time. They knew that, however long they worked and however much effort they put in, they wouldn’t be rewarded for their labors; their pay would be the same. And they had to follow the instructions of amateurs who didn’t know what they were talking about. So of course they lost all motivation. Who could blame them?
Working on the farm was physically tough, but I was a teenager at the time, so I could cope with it. The thing I hated most about the work was that I couldn’t take a bath or shower at the end of the day. I’d come home caked in mud and smelly with sweat, and all I wanted was to wash it all away. But our house didn’t have a bathtub. Nobody’s house did. In 1960. In paradise on earth.
In the end, we cobbled together our own makeshift bathtub and tried to make the best of it. I imagine other “returnees” did the same thing. But did they sit in their jerry-rigged tubs, as I did, reminiscing about the past? I remembered the funny washtub of my childhood; I remembered gazing up at the clouds and dreaming of a future of untold possibilities. Instead, here I was, gazing out on hell. I guess I should have wept at the sadness of my plight. But I didn’t. Even back then, I was past weeping.
Our ramshackle bath drove our neighbors wild. To them, it was a symbol of Japanese decadence. Bathing was an act of bourgeois self-indulgence; so was changing our clothes every day. Our older neighbors accused us of acting “like landlords.” At first, I didn’t understand what they meant, but I gathered from their hateful looks that they were referring to some long-lost upper class.
The people around me hardly ever seemed to change or wash their clothes. They hardly ever showered or cleaned themselves. The dirt was ingrained on their bodies, and they were filthy.
From time to time, a hygiene outfit carried out a lice check at school. If you were dirty, you got told off for poor hygiene. But if you admitted you bathed frequently, you were equally told off, in this case for “Japanese decadence.” As usual, you couldn’t win.
I couldn’t let the matter go and said to one of my friends, “They told us to keep ourselves clean, right? If they mean it, then they should be encouraging us to bathe every day.”
“What are you talking about? A bath every day? Only a Japanese bastard could advocate something like that,” he replied, as though I’d proposed something insane.
I was shocked. Not by his opinion so much as his tone. I’d thought he was my friend. How could he call me a “Japanese bastard” to my face?
Looking back on it, I don’t think people even realized it was an offensive term. To them, calling Japanese people bastards was just a statement of fact. North Koreans had been indoctrinated to think that all Japanese were cruel. And to be fair, I tended to call North Koreans “natives.” Most of the returnees did the same.
When we weren’t working on farms, the Youth League had other jobs, like collecting any resources that could be reused—scrap iron, rubber, empty cans, used paper, and the like. Sometimes we were instructed to search for scrap that could be used in tank or aircraft production. Our teachers would go on about the latest “tank production drive” or “aircraft production drive.” Targets were set every month for the number of pounds we had to collect.
But in North Korea, no one threw away anything of value or use. So it was impossible to meet the targets they’d set for us. Even so, if you failed to meet them—as you inevitably did time and again—you were severely reprimanded. As were your parents.
Although this may sound strange, the hardest things for me to collect were the required two rabbit pelts a year. These were used for making hats, earmuffs, and gloves to protect soldiers from the bitter cold. Kids were encouraged to keep rabbits and scavenge food for them on their way to school. This was nothing short of ludicrous, since our chances of catching a rabbit were incredibly remote. And anyone who did manage to trap a rabbit ate it immediately and then sold its skin at the farmers’ market. So, what did students do if they couldn’t catch rabbits? They had to go to the market and buy a skin. But one skin cost four or five won, a staggering amount when you considered that an average worker’s annual salary was only seventy or eighty won.
Needless to say, the teachers scolded any students who couldn’t come up with the requisite two pelts. How I remember their hectoring remarks: “If you can’t get rabbit skins, get some cement! If you can’t get cement, get some bricks!”
Cement and bricks were of course valuable as construction materials. If teachers could present a decent quantity of cement and a sufficient number of bricks to high-ranking party members, they would be in the officials’ good graces. So they piled pressure on their students to come up with the goods.
Parents of students who struggled in school gave teachers cigarettes or alcohol as a bribe. But the bribes were never enough. The teachers aggressively pressed for more and more. Students who couldn’t offer any further bribes didn’t want to go to school.
In winter, we were also tasked with gathering a set quota of firewood and charcoal. Some families didn’t bother with collecting wood and simply came up with alternative solutions. They made their own peat or even contrived to steal electricity for cooking purposes. Those kids had no way of meeting their targets. As a result, they’d run around the village the night before the deadline, stealing whatever firewood and charcoal they could lay their hands on.
Once beyond school age, individuals were all expected to carry out two functions: to contribute to production and to take part in military operations. The whole system was based on the “Four Military Lines.” The key tenets were “arm the entire people,” “fortify the entire nation,” “build a nation of military leaders,” and “complete military modernization.” So various militias were formed.