“How’s North Korea on snowy days like today? There are more snow falling in the North. You should have had more fun there.” Asked by my South Korean friend, it made me reminiscent of my old days in North Korea.
‘What did I do for fun when it was snowing in North Korea?’
After a brief moment, something came up in my mind. In the wintertime, I used to go out to field and gathered firewood. And, what else?
Hyesan City in Yangkang Province, in which I had lived, was famous, or infamous, for its cold and snowy whether in the winter. Even though temperature often drooped below -20 Celsius, I drank and played with my friends on the Lunar New Year’s Days.
We could buy about 70 pieces of Chinese traditional firecrackers with 300 NK won. OK, let’s skip one bottle of drink and buy the firecrackers. And my friends and I bought firecrackers and played with them on the Lunar New Year’s.
Some naughty boys (I was one of them) tried the firecrackers on other people. When they tossed a few firecrackers into laundry bags of village women, they popped and the women screamed (it was not dangerous, because the firecrackers were small and just created huge sound when they popped). Then, after a moment, police, having heard the sound, scurried to them. Boys ran away.
Even if the boys were caught, they were just punched by policemen, and that was it.
We had fun most on the Lunar New Year’s Day. As naughty boys as can be, we threw small firecrackers to girls who dressed up for holiday. Bang! Then girls were scattered, crying. We shouted, as if we were innocent, “Who did this, bastard! You? You?”
In January, 2003, there happened a funny episode involving human feces.
After the Joint-Editorial (North Korean version of the State of the Union) of that year released, local authorities ordered each work place to give 300kg of human feces (natural fertilizer) in two days.
But our factory’s dear Comrade Manager and Comrade Local Party Secretary could not occupy a toilet because of negligence. So our factory only garnered less than half of what we should achieve on the first day.
Nervous, our manager promised the workers, “With whatever means necessary (implying stealing), get enough human feces, and those who succeed will receive two weeks vacation.”
My comrade and I, desperate for the vacation prize, looked around for human feces, and then our effort was paid off. A nearby paper manufacture factory stockpiled human feces with a little security.
I gathered another friend who could bring a truck and two ladies. The ladies approached a guard of the factory that night and asked for exchange of four bags of human feces with two bottles of alcoholic beverage. The guard might have thought ‘No one can even notice such small loss.’ So he agreed.
The problem was that alcoholic beverage was specially brewed to be 50% alcohol. The guard was drunk and fell asleep. Then my friend and I sneaked into the factory and filled our Seunri 3 ton-pickup truck. That night, snow fell and covered our work.
We were young and never afraid of doing some misconduct, not serious ones though.
When it snows in Seoul, I often recollect those days of feces gathering, firecracker in North Korea.
