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
Demick writes that though Mi-ran’s “tainted blood” threatened her future in North Korea, her family ties to South Korea proved invaluable when she arrived in Seoul. Unlike the other defectors, Mi-ran had family waiting to receive her and to help her adjust. After crossing the Tumen into China, Mi-ran and her family called the municipal office in the South Korean province where her father was born as soon as they could. The municipal office gave them the address of Tae-woo’s younger sisters. Sok-ju wrote a letter to them, informing his aunts of where he and his family were staying.
Returning to Mi-ran’s story, Demick begins to explain how Mi-ran and her family, though disadvantaged because of their South Korean heritage back in North Korea, would find the tables profoundly turned after leaving the country. Though their family ties were a liability in their home country, they found that having a support system in the form of South Korean relatives would greatly influence the ease of their adjustment to their new worlds.
Themes
Within a few weeks, one of the aunts called—she was skeptical that Sok-ju and his family were who they said they were, having not heard anything from Tae-woo for decades. After a DNA test to confirm their relation, both aunts came to China with more relatives in tow. The reunion was joyful—and the DNA tests, both parties saw, turned out to be unnecessary. Mi-ran and her siblings were awed by the uncanny physical and emotional similarities between them and their new relatives. Mi-ran’s relatives began the long process of slowing bringing Mi-ran and her family, one by one, from China to South Korea by forging paperwork for them. By January of 1999, everyone was settled in Seoul.
As Mi-ran and her family reunited with their distant relatives from South Korea, they found themselves experiencing the joy of recognition and belonging. All her life, Mi-ran had been held back because of her ties to extant family in South Korea, taught that the outside world was full of evil and temptation—now, she was able to see how much happiness and freedom was available to her.
Themes
Mi-ran was socially positioned to get into a good graduate program and make lots of new connections—having a built-in support system in the form of her relatives was an invaluable resource. Mi-ran soon married and, in 2004, gave birth to her first son. Mi-ran, Demick observes, quickly achieved “the Korean dream.” Still, when Mi-ran and Demick met for their interview sessions, Demick observed that while Mi-ran outwardly appeared like any other upwardly mobile working mother, deep down, she was still the same young woman whose earliest years had been shaped by her “tainted blood.” Mi-ran was still racked with guilt about what she’d had to do to survive and reach this point in her life.
This passage hammers home Demick’s central argument about the nature of trauma and survivor’s guilt. Though Mi-ran enjoyed an enhanced social position in South Korea and quickly accomplished goals that many people spend their whole lives dreaming of, she remained haunted by her desperate actions in North Korea—and by the pain of remembering what she’d left behind.
Themes
Whereas many defectors experience this sense of guilt and shame, for Mi-ran, these feelings were real and concrete. She learned that six months after she and her family defected, her older sisters Mi-hee and Mi-sook were taken away to labor camps in the middle of the night. Though they were loyal to the regime, they were punished for their family members’ actions. Mi-ran never learned what happened to her sisters—by 2004, she’d begun to assume they were dead.
Mi-ran had to contend daily with the shame and pain of knowing that her family members in North Korea paid the price for her and her other siblings’ defections. In this way, Demick suggests, the North Korean regime seeks to punish those who leave from afar, preying on their sense of guilt and loyalty even as they forge new lives for themselves far away.
Themes
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Mi-ran also thought frequently—and spoke to Demick often—about Jun-sang and what she believed he’d become. In October of 2005, Demick received a call from an excited Mi-ran: Jun-sang was in South Korea. Demick met up with both Jun-sang and Mi-ran in a coffee shop just a week later. She learned that Jun-sang had already been in South Korea for nearly a year, but that he hadn’t reached out to Mi-ran after learning that she was married. Jun-sang, it turned out, remained pained about the absurdity of their situation—they’d never been able to talk openly and honestly in North Korea. If they had, both of them believed, they might have been able to come up with a solution together.
This passage illustrates how the highly surveilled environment in which Jun-sang and Mi-ran first began their relationship continued to affect the way they related to one another even after defecting. The memories of how being surveilled prevented them from truly connecting seemed not just sad but patently absurd in the light of their new existences.
Themes
Jun-sang made a relatively comfortable life for himself in North Korea—but his doubts about the regime gnawed at him. He refused to socialize or attend extra lectures, spending his free time watching illegal broadcasts on his television. In 2001, he left Pyongyang and returned to Chongjin, where he began saving money for his escape and planning the details of his trip. In June of 2004, he used a broker to cross the Tumen. In China, he worked hard in a brick factory, saving money and trying to find a way to South Korea. After nearly being arrested at a South Korean consulate, he turned to the internet to find an alternate way out—eventually, he read about a pastor in Incheon who helped defectors out through Mongolia. He took the same route as Kim Hyuck, arriving in South Korea in October of 2004.
By charting Jun-sang’s journey to South Korea, Demick illustrates how much he was risking in defecting. He enjoyed an elevated social position and the potential for even more success in North Korea, had he stayed the course—but ultimately, Jun-sang could not ignore the truth about the regime. He risked everything—including his very life—for passage to South Korea, believing that he would have a far better life there.
Themes
During his debriefing, Jun-sang asked his NIS agent about Mi-ran. The agent looked up information about her, moved by Jun-sang’s story of his first love. When Jun-sang learned Mi-ran was married, he decided not to contact her—but just a month later, he ran into Sok-ju at an informal gathering for new refugees. A week later, Jun-sang and Mi-ran met up at last. She picked him up in her car, and they drove to a restaurant just outside the city. Everything they talked about over their meal led them down the road to tragedy—especially when they discussed Mi-ran’s abrupt defection. Mi-ran asked Jun-sang why he hadn’t come sooner. He had no answer for her. What could have been lingered between them, still painful and raw after so many years.
This passage suggests that a large factor in Jun-sang’s willingness to risk so much to come to South Korea was his hope of reuniting with Mi-ran. Demick highlights the devastation they both felt—but that hit Jun-sang especially hard—when they were both forced to reckon with how secrecy and surveillance had derailed their relationship and prevented them from truly connecting with one another. Jun-sang perhaps believed that in coming to South Korea, he and Mi-ran would at last get to have the kind of relationship they’d always wanted—but it was too late for them both.
Themes
Demick notes that by the time she met up with Jun-sang and Mi-ran, they’d seen each other several times and seemed “exasperated” with each other. Mi-ran admitted to Demick that now that they could call or text each other and communicate instantly, the slow-burning nature of their epistolary relationship in North Korea had changed. More than that, their social dynamic was altered: Mi-ran was now the wealthy and well-connected one, while Jun-sang was a loner who worked odd jobs and had few friends. Demick wasn’t surprised by the change in Jun-sang—North Korean defectors, she notes, often have a tough time settling down. With so many new choices before them, it becomes difficult and even paralyzing to choose one single fate.
Demick uses this passage to illustrate how many North Korean defectors—not just Jun-sang—find that life in South Korea is different and more challenging than they expected it to be. North Korean defectors trade one set of pains and indignities for another. While the struggles in South Korea are arguably easier to deal with and certainly less life-threatening, many individuals still find themselves working hard to cope and stay afloat as they reckon with a new set of social rules and simultaneously try to process and understand their past traumas and lingering survivor’s guilt.
Themes
Demick also notes that many defectors still dream of returning home. Many left in the early 2000s, she states, believing the regime would soon fall—the persistence of the regime is not just an oddity but a tragedy for those individuals who now have no chance of seeing their families unless the regime collapses within their lifetimes. There is nothing these individuals can do, Demick writes, but wait.
The survivor’s guilt that many defectors feel, Demick suggests, influences the ways in which they think about the future. Many still hope for the fall of the regime and reunification.
Themes
