The oppressed youth of North Korea
“The American bastards think we are savages sitting in pitch-black caves sharpening knives. Let’s show them. That we are youths who can dance.” (Image: iStock/redonion1515)
What does the word “youth” mean to us? Does it represent the most passionate period in the cycle of life? Or perhaps the most fun period? Or simply the time when we were young?
What we can say is that our youth will not be remembered the same way by everyone.
In North Korea, there’s a saying related to youth. It is that, If party members are embers, youth are the flames.
This saying is intended to demonstrate that the role of the youth is more important than even that of core party members. It’s another way of saying that for the hardest, most grueling tasks, young perple must be there.
And so, within the notoriously harsh nation that is North Korea, the youth occupy the lowest ranks of the social pyramid.
Thus for me – no, I would say for all in North Korea – youth is a chain of hardships.
Did you know that North Korea has a bizarre organization called the “Gyuchaldae”? It’s an organization in charge of regulating attire. The job of its officials is to stand on the streets and spend their time examining people’s – specifically young people’s – hairstyles and measuring their skirts and pants.
But while the official task is to crack down on inappropriate clothing, the true motivation is different. The state needs free labor, and if everyone dresses according to regulations, those in charge can’t meet their labor allocation targets.
In other words, when there’s a shortage of manpower for construction projects ordered by Kim Jong-un, they make up for it by rounding people up.
Countless youths are caught on the streets and shoved onto trucks and sent off as labor shock troops, without even time to notify their parents.
From the perspective of the Gyuchaldae, how can they easily let go of prey they’ve finally caught?
Watching those people getting dragged off to construction sites, you can’t help but think they make up a disordered, ragtag group. Here’s one who has been sniffling for 30 minutes. There’s another staring into space. A girl is holding down a fluttering skirt. Another girl is ruffling her carefully styled hair…
In the end, it is the curse of being youths that makes us have to face these trials. And then, all the oppression and all these imposed standards quickly fade once we’re no longer considered young. This is especially true for women. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say it all practically disappears.
It is no wonder my friend got married just to escape being considered a youth. The hardship of being young outweighs even the challenge of marriage.
In North Korea, we use the expression “boiling blood of youth” a lot. Honestly, North Korea has tried to boil everything with the blood of its youth for so long that there’s hardly any left.
What shocked me after coming to South Korea was that young people there live such comfortable and free lives. I often see them in cafés. Their main worry is what kind of coffee to order.
“I have a really serious problem these days,” I overheard a girl say. “I think I have decision paralysis. I just can’t choose from the menu.”
I don’t know why, but a wave of sadness came over me at that moment. How ordinary are the worries of young South Koreans.
I thought of North Korean children dressed in sweat-drenched military uniforms and carrying logs. Can you even imagine it? The fact that a highway was built by human labor alone in this way? The Nampo Expressway was built by young people carrying gunny sacks, holding stretchers and running, sleeping in cement dust, and pushing boulders with their bare shoulders.
That’s why they call it the Youth Hero Expressway. From that experience, a poem was born: “Sack, oh sack, let’s hurry up and go, Our General’s arrival day is being delayed.”
Their story is one that truly brings tears to the eyes. There are youths around the world who claim their future is the bleakest, but that’s because they’ve never heard of the lives of North Koreans.
In 2008, an American orchestra visited North Korea for a performance. Do you know what the youth of Pyongyang had to do then? The regime wanted to show Americans that their youngsters also live freely. So they selected university students in the city and ranked them by height and beauty. The chosen students spent over two weeks practicing dances. Then the directive that came down. They were to stand in alleys where the Americans were scheduled to pass by and perform the dances they’d practiced.
Ahead of this important event, the Youth League Secretary told the students: “The American bastards think we sit in pitch-black caves sharpening knives like savages. Let’s show them. Let’s show them we are youths who can dance.”
Amid this, though, there was one very welcome piece of news for the students. The Youth League Secretary told them they could wear whatever they wanted.
In red hoodies and jeans—things you normally couldn’t wear—they danced joyfully at the designated time and place.
For some, dancing might have felt shameful. One friend who participated described the atmosphere that day like this.
“We were not dancing. We were in a battle against the enemy. A silent battle to show our enemies just how civilized we are. But maybe the enemy saw through our intentions? The Americans who were scheduled to come somehow didn’t show up. So one friend, exhausted after dancing so long, asked, When are the Americans coming? It felt like my feet were on fire.”
In the end, they never saw any Americans, but later they received the news that a single American journalist had come and filmed the youth “having fun.”
They said we had completed our mission. After the event ended, the students who had dressed freely had to pay the price. The Youth League Secretary shouted and scolded them:
“Just because I said you could dress freely, you really went and dressed like that? You should’ve had the sense to dress appropriately.”
From that, youths learned once again to know how to read between the lines. That even our spontaneous dancing must be performed. What could be sadder than this?
We are youth who must act even our most instinctive movements and excitement. To some, youth is beautiful enough to bring tears. To others, it’s so tragic it’s laughable.
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.
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