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
When Mrs. Song heard that Oak-hee was in prison, she was not surprised. Though she was resentful that she hadn’t heard anything from Oak-hee since she defected three years earlier, she knew she had to find a way to rescue her daughter. Over the years, Mrs. Song had learned that in an increasingly desperate atmosphere, one could bribe one’s way out of almost anything. She bought 10 cartons of cigarettes on the black market, asked around until she was able to get in touch with the security office in charge of the labor camp where Oak-hee was being held, and made the trade. Days later, Oak-hee was home—and though she was in tatters and rags, Mrs. Song could tell that Oak-hee had been eating well for years.
Mrs. Song never dreamed of defecting from North Korea herself—in spite of all she’d been through, she remained loyal to the regime. However, she’d learned a trick or two throughout the famine—and while she didn’t want to betray her country, she knew that there was more room now for behavior that had been unthinkable just 10 years ago. This illustrates that Mrs. Song had already reached a new point of desperation—opening up the possibility that as time went on and things got worse, she’d soon reach a breaking point.
Themes
Mrs. Song and her other daughters bathed and fed Oak-hee, and then they begged for stories about what things were like in China and South Korea. As Oak-hee explained how rich other countries were—and how Kim Jong-il had “turned [his people] into idiots”—her family grew both excited and apprehensive. They knew what kind of trouble they could all get into if Oak-hee was overheard speaking ill of the General. Mrs. Song felt her daughter’s speech wasn’t just dangerous, but outright blasphemy. Mrs. Song and Oak-hee argued for weeks until Oak-hee at last departed again—this time, she swore that when she crossed the border, she wouldn’t get caught.
Even though Mrs. Song was skilled in bribery and trading on the black market, she still refused to engage in or even entertain seditious speech against the regime. This hurt Oak-hee, who began to feel that even after all she’d been through, her mother still cared more for the Great Leader than for her own daughter. Even though Mrs. Song was witnessing a breakdown of the world she knew, she remained unable to surmount the ways in which life in a surveillance state impacted even her most intimate relationships.
Themes
After eight months of no word from Oak-hee, a woman showed up at Mrs. Song’s door and claimed to have news about Oak-hee. The woman claimed that Oak-hee was living near the Chinese border and doing well—she wanted to share some gifts and food with her mother, but she needed Mrs. Song to come to her. Mrs. Song hesitated—but when she learned that Oak-hee had arranged to have a private car ferry her there, she accepted. In 2002, Mrs. Song left for Musan with nothing more than an overnight bag.
Though Mrs. Song and Oak-hee’s relationship was strained, Mrs. Song was desperate to make things right with her daughter—though she was also tempted by the offer of foreign goods and plentiful food in the face of the continuing famine.
Themes
In Musan, the woman brought Mrs. Song to a house—Oak-hee wasn’t there. The woman said Oak-hee was in China. Mrs. Song would need to cross the border to see her. Mrs. Song was afraid, but she followed her handlers across the Tumen River and into a waiting taxi. In the early morning hours, the car rumbled through the busy streets of the border town, then sped through the countryside to a small farmhouse. Mrs. Song’s guides introduced her to the owner of the house and his daughter, ethnic Koreans who treated Mrs. Song kindly and offered her plentiful food and drink. When Mrs. Song asked where Oak-hee was, they told her she was off looking for work. Mrs. Song was terrified that she had been kidnapped, and that everything she was being told about Oak-hee was a lie—but she had no idea how to run away.
As Mrs. Song realized that Oak-hee was not waiting for her in either the first or second location she’d been brought to, she began to fear the worst. Even though it seemed that she was being taken care of and that the people who were guiding her through this strange journey were on her side, Mrs. Song had been made so untrustworthy of foreigners and so fearful of being caught that she began to believe that a nefarious plot was afoot.
Themes
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The next day, Oak-hee called. She told her mother she was in Hanguk—Mrs. Song had never heard of such a place. Hanguk, Demick clarifies, is what South Koreans call their country. When Oak-hee explained what she meant, Mrs. Song was terrified and furious. She hung up the phone and refused to take any more of the “traitor[ous]” Oak-hee’s calls. At last, after several days, she relented. Oak-hee begged her mother to come to South Korea and live with her. Mrs. Song refused—she said she wanted to return to North Korea.
Going to China was one thing—but the idea of defecting to South Korea, which Mrs. Song had always learned was a terrible, traitorous place, was quite another. Mrs. Song had so internalized the regime propaganda machine’s rhetoric of isolationism that she decided she would rather return to an atmosphere of scarcity and starvation than cross enemy lines.
Themes
Over the next few days, however, as Mrs. Song lounged around the safehouse eating, drinking, and watching soap operas on television, she learned from commercials—and the 2002 World Cup broadcast from Seoul—that South Korea was truly a free, wealthy country. The Workers’ Party lectures she’d attended over the years had always taught her that television broadcasts from other countries were false, and that they existed only to undermine the regime.
As Mrs. Song watched free, unrestricted broadcasts for the first time in her life, she found herself unable to see them as real or true. This illustrates how completely she’d accepted the regime’s propaganda about the evils of the outside world—and how dearly she clung to it in a time of great uncertainty.
Themes
The more Mrs. Song watched, the more she realized the broadcasts couldn’t be false—after all, she was able to see for herself what existed just in this small village in China. Mrs. Song thought of Chang-bo and Nam-oak—she missed them, and she felt ashamed of losing them. She and her family had all lost out on so much in the name of doing what the party told them, in the name of remaining loyal to the regime. Mrs. Song had always been taught that she had nothing to envy in the world. Now, at 57 years old, Mrs. Song realized she had wasted her life. She knew she had to go to Oak-hee—it was time to leave North Korea behind.
In this passage, Demick shows Mrs. Song reckoning with the pangs of survivor’s guilt, the anger of realizing she’d given her life to a regime that abused its people, and the fear of continuing to waste her life rather than embark on a new journey. Mrs. Song’s decision to follow Oak-hee to South Korea represents her complete disillusionment with the past, as well as her decision to take control of her life rather than hand herself back over to an authoritarian regime.
Themes
