How the social system deteriorates
“We can never destroy absolute truth. We only destroy ourselves by thinking we can destroy the truth.” (Image: iStock/boggy22)
What is the function of a society? Each country, each person may answer this in a different way, but there is one thing we can all agree on. That is, that the function of a society is to uphold stability and order.
Society, through laws and institutions, seeks to prevent chaos. But what if a society moves in the opposite direction? What could be the explanation for that? Was it designed that way from the beginning? Or did it evolve?
If someone were to ask me what shocked me the most after escaping North Korea, I would say it was South Korea’s administrative system. Of course, many things left me astonished, but the administrative system was beyond anything I could have imagined.
Perhaps this was because the first place I encountered in South Korea was the local government office. Once called the “dong” (neighborhood) office, this place is now known as the jumin (residents) center. Isn’t there a saying that a baby bird believes the first thing it sees after hatching to be its mother? In that sense, the jumin center was the world I first saw after defecting and being released as a free person into South Korean society. It was South Korea. It was capitalism. It was there that I received my second card identifying me as the resident of a nation.
If I recall correctly, the entire process was completed in less than 30 minutes and in that brief span of time, I was left utterly astounded by the system’s efficiency and simplicity. I wondered, is that it? Could it really be this easy? Like a child confronted with something too astonishing to believe, my mind swarmed with questions.
And then, I recalled the day I received my first resident’s card in North Korea and the administrative system I had known there.
The endless waiting, the sharp, impatient voices of security officers, the desperate pleas of civilians. In North Korea, obtaining a single document called for boundless patience and effort. Someone once said that waiting is the hardest thing in the world. At least if waiting yielded results, it might be bearable, but more often than not, after hours of waiting, people were simply told, “Leave and come back tomorrow.”
I think it was during my university years that I grew utterly sick of North Korea’s administrative system.
The policy was for students attending university to have their residential registration changed from their home to the university. As a result, even when returning home, we were considered visitors and had to report to the security office.
In other words, we had to file a lodging registration at the local security office. And if someone failed to do this, then they might be woken up in the middle of the night and taken away by security officers for a nighttime interrogation.
The irony was unbelievable. I could not even sleep in my own home in peace. And that’s not all. When leaving home to return to university, we had to visit the security office once more to obtain a document confirming that we had caused no issues during our stay.
The problem was that security officers never issued these documents easily, even for routine matters. They could not, would not, tolerate the sight of us resolving things too smoothly.
I truly cannot understand why such unnecessary regulations were created. Honestly, who in their right mind would voluntarily report to the authorities just because they came home for a visit? It’s truly unnatural. It’s absurd. It is as if the entire system was designed not to function, but to obstruct.
So why did the North Korean system evolve in such a manner? It all begins with the fact that people do not receive wages. No matter how hard people work, they are never paid. If the outcome of tireless dedication and of idleness is the same, then why bother putting in any effort at all? People might as well conserve their strength, focus on survival.
But here is the most perverse irony of all. Those who refuse to work often earn more than those who do. By receiving bribes. Exhausted by endless waiting, worn down by repeated visits, people pay bribes to expedite the process. And thus, a grotesque environment takes shape, whereby the officials who do not do their jobs receive the most money.
And so, the system mutates and evolves—not to facilitate, but to prevent work from getting done.
Occasionally, those who lack money resort to pleading, but their pleas are meaningless. How absurd it is to have to beg, to have to bribe, for something that is rightfully yours. And yet, in North Korea, this is simply how reality works.
When you register your residence, but they will not let you deregister when you leave, when you register your marriage, but they will not let you divorce.
What can people do? They adapt and devise new methods. To avoid deregistration issues, they stop registering their residence. To avoid divorce problems, they stop registering their marriage.
I am reminded of the story of two friends, one who lived by honesty, the other by deceit. One was a man of integrity, so upright that those around him would say, “He’s the kind of man who doesn’t even need laws to live by.” The other was a man adept at evading responsibility, so slippery they called him “Eel.”
Both married at the same time, and by some twist of fate both decided to separate from their spouses at the same time. But here is where their paths went in different directions. One had registered his marriage. I suspect the readers can guess which one.
At the time, under Kim Jong-un’s orders, divorce laws had been tightened that anyone seeking a divorce was sentenced to six months of forced labor. The law-abiding friend became a scapegoat for the government’s campaign to prevent divorces and was dragged into a public trial. There in the crowd, watching his humiliation, stood Eel. It was as if the lawbreaker was now judging the law-abiding citizen.
Those who registered their marriage were punished, while those who illegally married multiple times faced no consequences. Some were even revered. Of course, Kim, being above the law, never had to register his marriages. The hypocrisy is staggering.
This story reveals how people survive in such a place. The honest friend, of course, was the loser and the deceitful friend was the victor.
In North Korea, sincerity and diligence are not virtues. They are liabilities. When I was a child, I was taught that kindness, righteousness, and sincerity were good values. Books said so. My parents said so. But the reality I lived in said otherwise.
The honest lived in poverty and the swindlers and the manipulators flourished. Was the morality I believed in different from the morality the world demanded? I will never forget the despair of that realization. I saw it with my own eyes. That which should have been praised was punished. The result is that people stopped following the law.
The residency registration system collapsed, and the marriage registration system collapsed. The entire social order began to crumble.
What drives the evolution of North Korea’s system? It evolves for the sake of power, for the sake of extracting more bribes. Can a society that evolves through corruption ever be just?
In such a society, people solve unjust problems through shortcuts and illegal means. A rotten system breeds a rotten consciousness and rotten people.
That is an upside down world. And in that world, I once doubted even my own beliefs. But truth can never be destroyed by fire, water, or oppression. As Stephen Covey wrote, “We can never destroy absolute truth. We only destroy ourselves by thinking we can destroy the truth.”
Perhaps, then, North Korean society will one day destroy itself.
Born in Chongjin in 1990, Jang Mi was not a studious child, but under her mother’s influence, she graduated from high school and went on to university to take math and science. She worked as a wedding video editor for seven years until her defection in 2019.
Latest posts by Jang Mi (see all)
- Why North Korea has not collapsed - April 24, 2025
- Where does patriotism come from? - April 17, 2025
- How the social system deteriorates - April 1, 2025