Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nothing to Envy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Propaganda, Misinformation, Deception, and Control
Isolationism and Self-Reliance
Surveillance, Trust, and Relationships
Scarcity, Starvation, and Desperation
Escape, Trauma, and Survivor’s Guilt
Summary
Analysis
After Nam-oak’s death in 1998, Mrs. Song’s mental state collapsed. She could not return to the shack where he had died; she wandered the streets, weeping and moaning, until she collapsed in a starved, hypothermic delirium near her the building where her daughters lived. The girls brought her inside, pooled their money, and bought enough food to nurse their mother back to health. Even once she had recovered, however, Mrs. Song still felt responsible for the three deaths that had taken place within her family in just three short years. Though Mrs. Song wanted to give up, she managed to pull herself together and start a new business.
Mrs. Song, Demick shows, felt deeply and profoundly responsible for the deaths of her mother-in-law, husband, and son. Even though she’d done everything she could to try to save them from starvation, it wasn’t enough—and she had to make impossible decisions about their well-being that she continued to question long after each individual passed away. Though Mrs. Song hadn’t yet left North Korea, she was suffering from palpable survivor’s guilt.
Themes
All over the country, those like Mrs. Song who had hit rock bottom began to find, inexplicably, a new, enterprising spirit. People became fishmongers, butchers, and bakers, selling their wares on the black market—even though Kim Jong-il had taken an even harder line against the illegal buying and selling of goods than his father before him, seeing commerce as a “stab in the heart of Communist ideology.” Mrs. Song, for example, began baking batches of cookies with the help of her youngest daughter, the newly divorced Yong-hee. Their first batches were terrible—but as the women practiced, they were able to make a sellable product that Mrs. Song could take to the market. The cookies were a hit. Though she usually made just enough to break even and buy supplies for another batch, she was no longer going to bed hungry.
In this passage, Demick shows how many North Koreans found themselves doing unthinkable things during the famine. Though North Koreans were taught from an early age that capitalism was destructive and evil and that all resources should come directly from the state, many found themselves turning to previously unimaginable behaviors in order to get by. Not everything North Korean citizens had to do to survive was painful or degrading—but much of it did fly in the face of all they had been taught.
Themes
Many other women like Mrs. Song continued opening small businesses, though they still harbored a great deal of shame and suspicion after a lifetime of propaganda about the evils of a free-market economy. People began collecting and selling medicinal herbs; physicians like Dr. Kim provided medicine, procedures, and notes to help people get out of grueling work shifts at low costs; Mi-ran’s mother and father began operating a mill where people could grind up corn. Many women resorted to prostitution, and though Oak-hee did not turn to sex work, she made a deal with a local prostitute in which the woman would pay Oak-hee to use her home for privacy with clients.
This passage, which fills in the blanks about what several of Demick’s interviewees were doing to survive during the famine, shows how people had to do the unthinkable to get by. Lines between what was legal and illegal, acceptable and unacceptable were profoundly blurred. North Korea’s isolationist, Communist core wasn’t breaking down, but its people were.
Themes
People began growing fruits and vegetables in small (and illegal) backyard plots. Foreign countries—the United States included—flew in grains and rice, which flooded the black market. China sent toiletries, batteries, lighters, paper, and pens; colorful, soft, and ultra-modern clothing came in from South Korea, which North Koreans euphemistically called “the village below.” The market in Chongjin grew and grew in size, drawing customers from the countryside who wanted food, dry goods, haircuts, and more. The market vendors were mostly women—men remained stuck in state jobs that paid nothing, while their wives went out into the market to provide.
Demick shows how even in the midst of an unbelievably dark time, many North Korean citizens took to heart the core values of self-reliance they’d been taught all their lives and found ways to survive. The exposure to goods from the outside world, however, flew directly in the face of the juche ideology. Demick, then, presents the conflicting drives and desires that were motivating North Koreans at a time of unprecedented turmoil and widespread uncertainty.
Themes
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Things were changing in Chongjin—but still, Mrs. Song harbored suspicion about the greed and ambition that the buying and selling of goods was inspiring in her neighbors. The wealth gap was widening; restrictions on those who would have been “economic criminals” a decade ago were loosening; inflation was out of control. The seriously poor were still starving and dying. Mrs. Song watched a young boy succumb to acute food poisoning after eating spoiled fish entrails cast off from a seafood stall at the market, and one night on the way home, she saw two men pulling an ox cart piled with bodies. Not all of the people piled into the card were even dead yet—some were still on the very brink.
Even as things got better for those who were able to participate in the emerging micro-economy unfolding in the illegal marketplaces of North Korea, this passage illustrates that the level of death, destruction, and dehumanization was still pervasive and unprecedented. The sudden influx of capitalism was not the solution to North Korea’s profound and widespread devastation.
Themes
