In Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick investigates the lives of ordinary people who have defected from North Korea. Throughout the book, Demick shows how a constant stream of state propaganda has been used to deceive and control a population of over 25 million. By exploring the use of propaganda as a means of deception and control, Demick suggests that when the concept of objective truth is eradicated, people can be completely controlled by misinformation.
First, Demick shows how propaganda is an effective means of control in North Korea in part because it’s so constant. Demick explains that propaganda constantly bombards North Koreans in the form of billboards, state television, and even loud, chipper public service announcements which Workers’ Party members blare from megaphones mounted to vans that drive through cities and villages. Although this constant stream of propaganda, Demick says, “invites parody” and makes it seem as if the North Korean people are willing to buy all too easily into the idea of their leaders’ greatness, she urges her readers to understand the effect this constant saturation of propaganda has on the vulnerable, often starving population of North Korea. Their “indoctrination” begins during days spent in factory daycares; as adolescents, their school curriculum revolves around the deification of their leaders; the only forms of edification and entertainment available to adult citizens are films, songs, and articles that glorify the regime.
Another reason that the propaganda machine is so compelling is that it frames North Korea’s leader as not just a powerful politician but a divine figure. Kim Il-sung positioned himself as a benevolent, mystical father figure, and likewise positioned his son, Kim Jong-il, as Christ. Indeed, the media proclaimed that Kim Il-sung had the ability to calm seas in times of trouble and enshroud himself in fog in the presence of his enemies—and even defy death. After Kim Il-sung’s funeral, North Korean media suggested that ordinary citizens might be able to bring him back to life if they cried hard enough over his loss. All North Koreans are required to keep pictures of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un hung on the walls of their home and maintained pristinely. Taking the photos down is punishable by a sentence to a labor camp. The adornment of these images on the walls of every home in North Korea is reminiscent of icons in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy: a way for practitioners to always remember that God, through Jesus, made himself flesh. In this way, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un position themselves as sacred, divine, and worthy of constant supplication.
Next, Demick illustrates how it is not just the frequency and fervor of North Korea’s propaganda that make it so difficult to resist—it is also the fact that regime replaces objective truth with pointed misinformation in order to create disorientation, fear, and anger. Thus, the propaganda machine is able to clinch the regime’s ability to manipulate and control the masses by sowing discord and confusion. Demick focuses specifically on the ways in which the government used propaganda throughout the notorious famine of the 1990s in order to convince citizens that things weren’t as bad as they seemed—and that North Korea’s misfortune was the result of the actions of bad actors abroad. The government broadcasted messages about how food was being stockpiled to feed “the starving South Korean masses on the blessed day of reunification,” that the U.S. had blockaded North Korea to starve them out, and that enduring hunger was a “patriotic duty.” None of these things were true: South Korea was, by the mid-1990s, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, while North Korea’s famine was due to fractures in North Korea’s relationships with China and the Soviet Union, not a U.S. blockade.
Demick points to this new propaganda campaign as a distillation and new weaponization of the decades of indoctrination the North Korean people had already weathered. Convinced as they were by state materials that their Great Leader was benevolent, generous, and indeed in possession of magical, God-like powers, the North Korean masses were poised to believe any message he passed down. Knowing that the people could be manipulated, Kim Il-sung and his government fed the masses lies and excuses in order to make starving seem not just unavoidable, but noble. Demick sees the famine as a turning point in the state propaganda machine: a national crisis provided a test they could not afford to fail. By piling on even more fawning ideology about Kim Il-sung’s intelligence, benevolence, and staunch defense of his people against outside aggressors, the government was able to keep its people in the dark about what was truly happening in their country and manipulate them into complacency even as food rations stalled, jobs dried up, and electricity cut out.
Demick argues that the use of propaganda in North Korea has created a vicious cycle in which the North Korean people cling desperately to what the state tells them as the only path to salvation—even as state messaging is manufactured expressly in order to create more desperation, instill greater control, and muddy the line between truth and deception. Demick suggests that by eating away at the concept of objective truth—and by isolating North Koreans from access to outside media—the North Korean government is able to exert an almost baffling measure of control over ordinary citizens.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Propaganda, Misinformation, Deception, and Control ThemeTracker
Propaganda, Misinformation, Deception, and Control Quotes in Nothing to Envy
Jun-sang had been […] the person in whom [Mi-ran] confided. […] But she had nonetheless withheld from him the biggest secret of her life. She never told him how disgusted she was with North Korea, how she didn't believe the propaganda she passed on to her pupils. Above all, she never told him that her family was hatching a plan to defect. Not that she didn't trust him, but in North Korea, you could never be too careful. If he told somebody who told somebody . . . well, you never knew—there were spies everywhere. Neighbors denounced neighbors, friends denounced friends. Even lovers denounced each other.
The red letters leap out of the gray landscape with urgency. They march across the fields, preside over the granite cliffs of the mountains, punctuate the main roads like mileage markers, and dance on top of railroad stations and other public buildings.
LONG LIVE KIM IL-SUNG.
KIM JONG-IL, SUN OF THE 21ST CENTURY.
LET’S LIVE OUR OWN WAY.
WE WILL DO AS THE PARTY TELLS US.
WE HAVE NOTHING TO ENVY IN THE WORLD.
Yet for all their wealth, the Japanese Koreans occupied a lowly position in the North Korean hierarchy. No matter that they were avowed Communists who gave up comfortable lives in Japan, they were lumped in with the hostile class. The regime couldn't trust anyone with money who wasn't a member of the Workers' Party. They were among the few North Koreans permitted to have contact with the outside, and that in itself made them unreliable; the strength of the regime came from its ability to isolate its own citizens completely.
North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years' every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity Who could possibly resist?
The propaganda machine launched a new campaign, playing up Korean pride by recalling a largely apocryphal fable from 1938-39 in which Kim Il-sung commanded a small band of anti-Japanese guerrillas "fighting against thousands of enemies in 20 degrees below zero, braving through a heavy snowfall and starvation." […] The Arduous March, as they called it, would later become a metaphor for the famine. […] Enduring hunger became part of one's patriotic duty. Billboards went up in Pyongyang touting the new slogan, "Let's Ear Two Meals a Day." North Korean television ran a documentary about a man whose stomach burst, it was claimed, from eating too much rice.
"How are we going to live? What are we going to do without our marshal?" The words came tumbling out.
[Chang-bo] didn't react. He sat pale and motionless, staring into space. Mrs. Song couldn't keep still. She was pumped up with adrenaline. She rushed down the staircase and out into the courtyard of the building. Many of her neighbors had done the same. They were on their knees, banging their heads on the pavement. Their wails cut through the air like sirens.
Now, surrounded by sobbing students, Jun-sang wondered: If everybody else felt such genuine love for Kim Il-sung and he did nor, how would he possibly fit in? […] He was alone, completely alone in his indifference. He always thought he had close friends at the university, but now he realized he didn't know them at all. […]
This revelation was quickly followed by another, equally momentous: his entire future depended on his ability to cry. Not just his career and his membership in the Workers' Party, his very survival was at stake. It was a matter of life and death. Jun-sang was terrified.
Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world.
Our house is within the embrace of the Workers' Party.
We are all brothers and sisters.
Even if a sea of fire comes toward us, sweet children do not need to be afraid,
Our father is here.
We have nothing to envy in this world.
ln 1997 a few aid officials were allowed entry to Chongjin, with even greater restrictions than in Pyongyang. An aid worker […] wrote in a journal that she was not allowed to leave the Chonmason Hotel. […] The agency pulled out soon afterward, reporting that it could not verify that aid was getting to the intended recipients. […] While big ships laden with donated grains from the U.N. World Food Programme started docking at Chongjin's port in 1998, the relief was offloaded into trucks by the military and driven away. […] Much of it ended up in military stockpiles or sold on the black market.
"The food problem is creating anarchy," Kim Jong-il complained in a December 1996 speech delivered at Kim Il-sung University. […] As well as any of the world's strongmen, he understood perfectly the cliché that an absolutist regime needs absolute power. Everything good in life was to be bequeathed by the government. He couldn't tolerate people going off to gather their own food or buying rice with their own money. "Telling people to solve the food problem on their own only increases the number of farmers' markets and peddlers. In addition, this creates egoism among people, and the base of the party's class may come to collapse.”
Listening to South Korean television was like looking in the mirror for the first time in your life and realizing you were unattractive. North Koreans were always told theirs was the proudest country in the world, but the rest of the world considered it a pathetic, bankrupt regime. Jun-sang knew people were starving. He knew that people were dragged off to labor camps; but he had never before heard these figures. Surely South Korean news reports were exaggerated, just like North Korean propaganda?
Jun-sang knew the song by heart from his childhood, except the lyrics had been updated. In the verse "Our father, Kim Il-sung," the child substituted the name of Kim Jong-il. It was beyond reason that this small child should be singing a paean to the father who protected him when his circumstances so clearly belied the song. There he was on the platform, soaking wet, filthy, no doubt hungry.
He reminded himself: You don’t talk politics as long as you live in North Korea. Not with your best friend, not with your teachers or your parents, and certainly not with your girlfriend. Jun-sang never discussed his feelings about the regime with Mi-ran. He didn't tell her he was watching South Korean television, and reading pamphlets about capitalism. He certainly did not tell her that he had begun to harbor fantasies of defecting.
Mi-ran told herself they were going just for a short trip to make the telephone call, but in her heart, she knew she might never come back. […] After they were gone, they would be denounced as traitors. "She received an education through the benevolence of the party and she betrayed the fatherland," she could almost hear the party secretary saying. She didn't want her guilt to rub off on Jun-sang. After she was gone […] he could find himself a suitable wife, join the Workers' Party, and spend the rest of his life in Pyongyang as a scientist.
He'll forgive me, he'll understand, she told herself. It's in his best interest.
Dr. Kim was incredulous. Her entire life, her behavior had been impeccable. […] She was always the first to volunteer for extra work and to attend extra ideological sessions. Her father had come from China and still had relatives there, but Dr. Kim had never met or corresponded with them.
It had to be a mistake, she told herself.
Eventually the truth sank in. Comrade-Secretary Chung was stringing her along, exploiting her hard work and talent with absolutely no intention of letting her join the party. Even worse, Dr. Kim began to suspect that she was indeed under surveillance.
She thought of Chang-bo especially when she was eating. How that man loved to eat! He would have so enjoyed the sausage. […] Then her thoughts drifted to her son. Her memories were so tinged with guilt and shame that she couldn't even speak about him. So strong, so handsome—such a tragedy to have lost him at twenty-five. How much life he had missed. How much they had all missed, herself too, her daughters, locked away in North Korea, working themselves to death. For what? We will do as the party tells us. We will die for the general. We have nothing to envy. We will go our own way. She had believed it all and wasted her life. Or maybe not.
Deep down, however, Mi-ran was the same person who had occupied the lowest rung of North Korean society, the poor, female progeny of tainted blood. She had been shaped by a thorough indoctrination and then suffered the pain of betrayal; she'd spent years in fear of speaking her mind, of harboring illicit thoughts. She had steeled herself to walk by the bodies of the dead without breaking stride. She had learned to eat her lunch, down to the last kernel of corn or grain of rice, without pausing to grieve for the children she taught who would soon die of starvation. She was racked with guilt.
I have found that, over time, the North Korean defectors I know in South Korea become more reticent. They worry about spies within the defector community who might try to blackmail them. They fear that speaking on the human rights circuit or giving interviews to journalists will result in retaliation. One can leave but never completely escape the terror that is North Korea.
