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
In the fall of 1994, after graduating from teachers’ college, Mi-ran requested an appointment teaching closer to home. Food distribution in Chongjin had come to a complete halt, and she hoped she’d be able to eat better closer to home. Every day, Mi-ran walked nearly an hour to her new school, where happy signs and pictures of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il hung in each classroom—even though the school had no paper, no heating, no uniforms, and no food to serve aside from a thin soup. Mi-ran worried for her kindergarteners, whose tiny bodies shivered in the cold classrooms each day, yet she tried to remain optimistic and enthusiastic.
Even in the depths of a famine—and indeed a society collapse—teachers like Mi-ran were encouraged to continue spreading government propaganda and keeping up appearances so as not to draw attention from the regime’s surveillance forces. Even as children struggled and starved, they were daily placed in an environment where they were told that everything was as it should be.
Themes
Mi-ran played accordion for her students each day, singing them a familiar North Korean tune, “We Have Nothing to Envy in the World,” which glorified the Workers’ Party and the Great Leader while denigrating the rest of the world. “Even if a sea of fire comes toward us,” the song went, “sweet children do not need to be afraid.” Another song, “Shoot the Yankee Bastards,” encouraged children to kill the American aggressors who were trying to overtake their “beautiful fatherland.” Mi-ran read to her students from Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s many published books. Every lesson, no matter the subject, was peppered with references to the glory of the Great Leader and the evil of the outside world, specifically the Americans and the Japanese.
In this passage, Demick illustrates some of the ways in which government propaganda made its way into North Korean classrooms, like these dark, disturbing songs and propaganda-infused lesson plans. Through these examples, Demick highlights how the regime seeks to assail even young children with isolationist, nationalist rhetoric day in and day out. In this environment, violence is normalized, fear of death is denigrated, objective fact is no longer part of education, and the only thing worth living for is the regime. Living under these circumstances, Demick shows, people can be deceived into accepting and doing anything.
Themes
Mi-ran herself didn’t know what to believe about the content she was teaching. She herself had always been taught that the U.S. was the enemy—but her mother had often told her stories of American GIs giving out candy as they drove through North Korea during the war. The lessons Mi-ran was instructed to teach about Kim Il-sung’s life and his great exploits—including his nearly single-handed defeat of Japan, according to the regime’s propaganda—had increased in dramatic details and fervor since his death. North Korean calendars changed, reflecting the modern era’s beginning in 1912, the year of Kim Il-sung’s birth. The year was not 1994, but Juche 84. Though Kim Jong-il was now the head of state, Kim Il-sung was named the “eternal president” of the country.
Even as Mi-ran continued to dutifully spread Party ideology, she found herself questioning the things she’d been taught all her life: things she was now teaching to a new generation. The country’s obsession with preserving and maintaining Kim Il-sung’s legacy—and elevating him even higher in his people’s hearts and minds—raised some red flags for Mi-ran, who could see the changes in fact and rhetoric taking place before her very eyes.
Themes
When Mi-ran’s school, which already had a dedicated classroom that served as a kind of shrine to Kim Il-sung, was instructed to build a similar room for Kim Jong-il, a group of teachers devised a plan to take a trip to the port town of Nampo and trade pottery for salt, which they would then trade for glass to help construct a diorama at the center of the room. The plan seemed convoluted to Mi-ran—but she was grateful for the chance to get out of Chongjin and begin devising a way to sneak into Pyongyang and see Jun-sang. It was growing more and more difficult for them to stay in touch—mail service had slowed, and many suspected postal workers burned letters to stay warm at night.
This passage shows the great lengths people were willing to go to in order to glorify the regime in the wake of heightened patriotism after Kim Il-sung’s death. It’s unclear whether the teachers at Mi-ran’s school were genuinely motivated to do anything they could to build a shrine to Kim Jong-il, or whether they were simply afraid of what would happen to them if they didn’t express enough enthusiasm about the project. But regardless of their motivations, it is clear that ordinary people were ready to do anything to show devotion for their new leader.
Themes
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On the long train journey to Nampo, Mi-ran devised a plan. She told the teachers she was traveling with that she was having family problems and that she needed to get off the train at Pyongyang to meet a wealthy relative and ask for money. Her fellow teachers understood her plight and didn’t ask questions. At the station, Mi-ran questioned her own plan—her travel papers didn’t permit her to wander through Pyongyang. She stopped a station officer and complained that she was going to visit a sick brother but had forgotten her papers. The officer asked for Mi-ran’s name and address, in hopes of seeing her again, in exchange for turning a blind eye. Mi-ran wrote down fake information and left the station for Jun-sang’s university.
This passage shows how much things had changed in North Korea in just a few short years. Before the famine, sneaking into Pyongyang without papers would’ve been impossible—but as famine and lack took hold of the country, people’s priorities shifted and even officials’ attentions were directed elsewhere. Demick begins here to track the ways in which the food crisis in North Korea changed the sociopolitical atmosphere there in small and large ways.
Themes
At the university, Mi-ran claimed to be looking for her “brother” Jun-sang. An official made her sit alone in a guardhouse until Jun-sang came to collect her. When Jun-sang at last arrived, he was thrilled to see Mi-ran, and the two of them left campus to take one of their long walks. Jun-sang was impressed by Mi-ran’s audacity in pulling off such a stunt. They sat together on a bench and talked. Jun-sang put his arm around Mi-ran’s shoulder—it was the most physical touch they’d ever shared. As midnight rolled around, Jun-sang walked a tired Mi-ran to the station so that she could catch the next train to Nampo.
Again, Demick shows how the famine served to embolden some people—especially people like Mi-ran and Jun-sang, who had already begun questioning the regime while things were still relatively good. With things in such a state of chaos and disarray, Mi-ran and Jun-sang perhaps felt they had little to lose—they decided to take some risks in order to feel some happiness and security.
Themes
After making their deals in Nampo, Mi-ran and her fellow teachers prepared to return to Chongjin. The night before their train journey back, they slept outside the station. Mi-ran was startled from sleep by a group of people making a ruckus—there was a man nearby who was curled up, dead, beneath a tree. Soon, people pulling an ox cart came by, loaded the man’s body onto it, and wheeled him away. Mi-ran knew the man had died of hunger. She feared that the same fate would soon begin to befall her own students, whose bellies had begun to swell, whose hair had lightened in color from malnutrition, and whose abilities to stay awake through a single class were compromised. Back in Chongjin, Mi-ran noticed that many students simply stopped coming to class. She didn’t want to know what had happened to them.
The incident at the train station in Nampo awakened Mi-ran to a shift in the toll the famine was taking on the nation. People weren’t just hungry—they were dying of starvation. As Mi-ran continued noticing her students’ suffering intensifying, she found that she had to embody the same distance and disaffection as at the train station: she couldn’t possibly take on the weight of all her students’ stories.
Themes
That winter, Jun-sang came home to Chongjin and surprised Mi-ran by visiting her at her school. As Mi-ran told Jun-sang about what was happening to her students, she felt a profound sense of guilt—she and Jun-sang were eating relatively well, but still her students were suffering. Years later, Demick writes, Mi-ran would tell her that she still felt sick over having eaten well while her own students were starving. Mi-ran’s calculated indifference, Demick says, was a survival skill—in time, Mi-ran would learn to look past starving children on the streets as well as in the classroom.
Demick uses this passage to hint at the long-term ramifications of the things Mi-ran and Jun-sang had to do both physically and psychologically in order to survive as the famine worsened. Mi-ran, Demick shows, would carry the guilt of surviving when so many died through the rest of her life. With this, Demick emphasizes how when people are pushed to the brink, they can do unthinkable things—including coldly ignoring the plight of others in order to keep themselves alive and focused.
Themes
