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North Korea under lockdown: My COVID experience (Part 6)

Kim Yumi
Image / iStock/Mustafa Colak

Everything started changing in North Korea in January 2020, when the border was suddenly closed. At first, we thought it would just be temporary, that the authorities had shut everything down for a short while because of the virus. 

We thought if we just endured it, it would pass. But it dragged on for months, then years. The country had always been what you would call closed-off. But now it had become truly locked in.

Markets shut down, the flow of goods from China stopped, and food and clothing disappeared. We were supposed to produce everything domestically, but since production had depended on Chinese imports, once trade was blocked there were no raw materials. 

The government used COVID-19 as an excuse to tighten control even further.

At that time, even looking at my cellphone terrified me. I had to be careful about making a single call, and even more careful walking down the street. If we were caught with a phone in our hand, it would be confiscated. To get it back took time and money. It was an exhausting process. 

New enforcement bodies, like the “8.2 Commerce Bureau,” sprang up, stopping people right there on the street. Once they caught you, they would find any pretext to arrest you. That was because in North Korea everything is “don’t watch, don’t listen.” Almost anything can get you in trouble. 

But interestingly, the more people were pressured, the more their eyes began to open.

In the past, many believed whatever the Party said. But after COVID-19, rumors spread: “We North Koreans have a special constitution that makes us immune to the virus,” or “Our bodies are physically trained, so we don’t catch COVID.” Listening to this, I thought, “How could this possibly make sense?”

In truth, people were starving, physically broken, and yet the claim was that we were somehow strong. It felt like an admission of suffering more than a boast. That was what I thought. So did people around me. As government pressure tightened, fewer people trusted the Party. Instead, they began trusting only themselves. They judged, acted, and survived on their own because there was no one else to rely on. I was one of them.

When the markets shut and survival became impossible, all imported goods vanished. Even soap for laundry was gone. The elderly went back to old methods of digging up roots in the mountains, boiling them, and using the extract as detergent. I tried it myself. It really worked. The clothes came out white.

Fabric also stopped coming in, so clothing production halted. People turned to old clothes, mending and reselling them. The markets may have died, but people invented new survival strategies. They had to live creatively.

And that was the surprising change. People began shifting from living by the Party’s word to living by their own judgment. I believe this wasn’t just survival. It was a sign of real social change. 

In August 2022, North Korea declared, “We defeated COVID,” and slowly lifted restrictions on masks and movement. In May 2023, I left the country. That August, trade with China began reopening, and Russian tourists started coming in.

Of course, North Korea remains closed. Information is restricted, communications are limited, and movement is not free. But inside, people’s hearts are changing. I saw it with my own eyes. I experienced it myself. 

Everything was cut off. Even basic ingredients such as matnaegi. You know, to cook a meal, you need seasoning, but there wasn’t even cooking oil. In North Korea we call it matnaegi, but in South Korea it is called miwon. In North Korea you can say that there isn’t a household that does not use it. They don’t use much, just a little bit, but it’s what they rely on to bring out flavor. Sugar is also used sparingly. So people would add a little matnaegi and a little sugar, and with oil, matnaegi, and sugar as the basics, that’s how food was made to taste decent.

​​In South Korea, there are countless ingredients. Instead of sugar, you have all kinds of things that can add sweetness, like plum extract, tuna extract, fish sauce, really just all sorts. There are endless options.

But in the North, none of that exists. So if you don’t have sugar, miwon, or oil, it’s impossible for food to taste good. The prices went way up. Back when oil was being imported from China, 1 kilogram cost around 9,000 to 10,000 North Korean won. But once COVID started and everything was cut off, even that imported oil from China disappeared. After that, in North Korea, they started extracting oil from soybeans.

Before, soybean oil wasn’t really sold much. But now people began pressing oil from the soybeans they grew on their farms. 

Meanwhile, the imported oil shot up to 55,000 won per kilo. To put that in perspective, in North Korea 1 kilo of rice generally costs around 5,000 to 5,500 won. So just to buy 1 kilo of oil, you had to give up the money that could buy about 10 kilos of rice. That meant people couldn’t really afford oil at all during that time.

It was the same with miwon. Before COVID, a 350g pack was just 5,000 to 6,000 won. But once the pandemic began, that same pack went up to 35,000 won. Then it skyrocketed all the way to 80,000 won. 

Sugar used to be about 8,000 won per kilo, but then it shot up to 40,000 or 50,000 won per kilo. Thus there was no way to put any seasoning in food at all. People completely lost their appetite and couldn’t eat properly. You know, in life, eating tasty food gives you strength to go on. But at that time, when there was barely any food to begin with, and on top of that no seasoning to make it taste good, people couldn’t use anything in abundance, and living honestly didn’t feel like living.

With information blocked, movement restricted, and even the markets shut down, people had no choice but to wonder how they could possibly survive. In the end, they found ways to think for themselves, to act for themselves, and to figure out how to live.

Even though North Korea may not look very different on the outside today, I believe that in people’s hearts, the seeds of change are definitely sprouting. They’re small, careful, not easily noticeable, but I believe that one day they can become the strength to build a better society.

Kim Yumi
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