Who digs through the garbage?
In a land where toys came from trash and dignity bowed to hunger, even a rain of secondhand underwear could feel like a miracle. (image: iStock/znm)
When I lived in North Korea, which was until recently, anything related to South Korea was completely taboo.
All we knew was that it was a place located south of our Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Thus, its official name – the Republic of Korea – was unfamiliar to most of us.
That said, there was one thing we were educated about as we grew up and that was South Korean children. They frequently made an appearance in the illustrations in our textbooks. They wore hats that looked like they had been trampled several times and kicked around tin cans.
They stared up at the sky. Wild goose, wild goose, where are you flying to? This was the depiction of their apparent envy toward the geese, which had wings and could freely fly to North Korea.
Of course, questions like the one above were ones I would later ask, as an adult, to the swallows flying south.
As a child, I felt heartache thinking about South Korean children rummaging through trash bins, which is what we were told in school. And I never forgot the determination I made then.
That reunification will be achieved and the ragged and starving children of the South will be rescued.
The ironic fact was that my reality – no, the reality of almost all North Korean children – was not much better. At the time, it was hard to find a single child who had a toy. In the early 2000s, when we didn’t even have enough to eat, toys were an unimaginable luxury. In our childhood, we played with mud, stones, seashells, and such.
Then, something miraculous happened. In every home parents started bringing French-made toys. Hands that had only touched dirt and sand were now feeling soft fur and the velvet clothes of the dolls that looked almost human.
Happiness was not something in the distance after all. What surprised us even more was that there weren’t just one or two of these toys. There were many. Where had they all suddenly come from?
The truth was they hadn’t fallen from the sky. They were, in fact, rescued from garbage belonging to other countries which North Korea had agreed to dispose of in exchange for payment.
North Korean ships brought the waste into Chongjin Port by the ton. There was so much that there were literally mountains of garbage.
At that time, the UN decided to conduct inspections to assess North Korea’s situation, and for the government, cleaning up this waste became an urgent matter. Pressed for time, the authorities told the people of Chongjin to take whatever they wanted from the heaps.
Crowds swarmed over the waste piles and were shocked to find the trash in surprisingly good condition. Buckets, water containers, tires, toys. People eagerly scavenged, afraid someone else might grab the best pieces first.
It was like the “dignified” North Korean people were helping sort the “rotten” enemies’ recyclables.
Piled high were items never before seen, or at least considered extremely rare. The only flaw, and presumably the reason their original owners had discarded them, was that many containers were dented. But then collective intelligence kicked in. Someone said that if you poured hot water into a dented container, it would pop back to its original shape. This remedy turned out to work.
But, frankly, even if something was dented, it was okay for North Koreans. As long as it wasn’t broken, it was usable. How it actually looked didn’t matter.
Thanks to this trash, children got dolls with blue eyes and teddy bears with curly fur. Even if one eye was missing or a bit of fur had been ripped out, the kids were ecstatic. We were grateful to our parents who had dug through the filth for us.
If there was any good news for North Koreans after the notorious “Arduous March” famine of the 1990s, it was that they could now engage in trade with Japan.
All sorts of goods came into the country aboard the Durubong-ho from Japan. People came into contact with Japanese products for the first time. They were filled with envy, which led them to envy the people who transported those Japanese goods. Throughout society, those sailors became figures of admiration, respected by all and emulated by many.
These sailors usually brought back secondhand clothes from Japan. They were either extremely cheap or could even be acquired for a disposal fee. It was the perfect business model for them.
However, not all trading in Japanese clothing was profitable. Outerwear, for instance, was not popular. This is where we must make an important clarification. The concept of clothing in Japan and North Korea differs greatly. In North Korea, people wear clothes to cover their bodies from others or to protect against the cold, while in Japan, people dress to lift their spirits or to express their sense of style to others.
In North Korea, clothing is utilitarian. In Japan, it’s fashion. That’s why most North Koreans look at Japanese clothes and wonder, “Where on earth are there people who would wear something like this?”
But when it comes to Japanese underwear, it’s a completely different story. It’s high quality, perfectly suited to the needs of North Koreans, and incredibly popular. In other words, bringing in underwear from Japan is a far more lucrative trade than any other type of clothing.
Of course, trading ship crew who are aware of this fact focus especially on women’s underwear when they go to Japan.
As cranes unload bales of clothing from Japanese ports, the first thing the crew does is inspect the contents to see what kind of clothes are inside.
Here’s a story from one of those much-envied trade crew members. One member once opened up a tightly packed bale. Because the clothes were compressed, as soon as he opened it, the contents exploded into the air. Panties and bras of every kind went flying.
As underwear rained down from the sky, he was so thrilled that he gave a thumbs-up. To him, this was more valuable than any other type of clothing. Good, good. But if only that scene could have remained a private memory.
Unfortunately, it was witnessed by South Koreans aboard a neighboring ship. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t even acknowledge our presence. Opposing ideologies and loyalties have made people who share the same language and ancestry hate each other.
But maybe it was the absurdity of the scene? The captain of the South Korean ship clenched his fists and rushed toward the captain of the North Korean vessel.
“When did you throw away the spirit of the Korean people?” he yelled. “Why are you giving a thumbs-up to underwear worn by Japs?”
The South Korean captain reportedly ordered that all the underwear be thrown into the sea. Then he gave brand-new clothes to the North Koreans.
The North Korean crew thanked him profusely and returned home. Of course, they brought the discarded underwear with them anyway. This is the reality of what happens to those considered elite in North Korea.
I know about this episode because one of the crew members shared it with my father.
“Thanks to that South Korean captain, we made a killing,” he said. “Brother, but honestly it was humiliating. If there’d been a rat hole, I would have climbed into it.”
Such was the shame felt by someone from a poor country. Can you expect dignity from someone who is poor and hungry? If you yourself went hungry for a few days, you wouldn’t be able to laugh at Jean Valjean either.
And one more thing. This whole story reveals the unspoken secret that underlying the ideology held by North Koreans is Kim Il-sung’s promise to feed them white rice and meat soup for the rest of their lives. That is why, if someone were to come along today and offer to make them wealthy, North Koreans might throw away their hoarse-throated loyalty in an instant.
Just like the sailor who dreamed again of that moment when he wanted to crawl into a hole. Honestly, he was still eager for another windfall like that to come his way.
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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