Only a handful of memoirs and reminiscences by North Koreans make it into print in South Korea, and far fewer still reach the rest of the world. Naturally, those that do are written by defectors — which makes it very hard to obtain a critical view of the North Korean regime from someone who has not yet left. It is this that makes “Expose,” published in May by the same conservative imprint that gave Jang Jin Sung an outlet for his memoir, so intriguing.
The manuscript was smuggled out of North Korea by a female relative of the author, hidden within copies of the writings of Kim Il Sung. Apparently a member of the Chosun Writer’s Union, the author writes under the pen name “Bandi” — meaning “Firefly” — to protect his identity. Published in May 2014, the book contains seven short stories drawn from a mix of the author’s own experiences and accounts gathered from others.
Under such conditions, it is impossible to distinguish between firsthand knowledge and secondhand testimony. But the writing leaves no doubt about the author’s contempt for the North Korean ruling system. The stories parody society across the full spectrum — from the Pyongyang elite down to those in the lowest social strata. While it is easy enough to label North Korea a tyranny, this book dissects that claim, explaining what makes it one and giving tyranny a human, though by no means humane, face.
A system built on inherited guilt
Perhaps the greatest injustice the book tackles is the country’s entrenched class system. North Korean society is officially divided into three classes: “core,” “wavering,” and “hostile.” The core constitutes the elite, most of whom live in Pyongyang, while the wavering and hostile classes make up the bulk of the population. The hostile class is subject to systematic discrimination based on family background — to be labeled “hostile” typically means that a relative was deemed an “enemy of the people” at some point in Korean history, whether by being a landowner or fleeing to South Korea during the Korean War.
In “Talbukgi” (Escape), a man is haunted by his father’s accidental destruction of a new rice crop during postwar reconstruction. He faces discrimination at every turn and is barred from joining the Chosun Workers’ Party. In “Balgan Beoseot” (Red Mushroom), a successful cadre is purged after concealing the fact that a relative had fled to the South. Expelled to the countryside, he falls prey to corrupt local officials who frame him for poor production. Both stories probe the injustice of being punished for an ancestor’s supposed failings, and the ease with which those at the bottom of society can be made into scapegoats.
Other stories explore the regime’s paranoia-driven control over everyday life. “Yuryeongui Doshi” (The City of Ghosts) follows a child who cries out in fear whenever he sees a portrait of Kim Il Sung — a portrait visible from his own window. His mother begins closing the shades to spare him the sight, but the repeated opening and closing attracts the suspicion of a local official, who decides she must be signaling to subversive elements. She tells the truth, which the cadre takes as a lie or worse, and the family is expelled from Pyongyang. In another story, a man denied a travel permit tries desperately to reach his dying mother, hitching a ride and then walking the final stretch on foot — only to be arrested just short of his destination. His mother dies alone.
Taken together, Bandi’s stories lay bare the many tyrannies North Koreans navigate every day, from the simple act of visiting an ailing parent to the lifelong burden of a relative’s political taint. The stories were written around the time of Kim Il Sung’s death, just before the famine years of the “Arduous March,” and their age shows — North Korea today is a society shaped less by ideological loyalty than by money and corruption. The choice of publisher may raise eyebrows in some quarters as well. But these stories carry deep truths about North Korean society, and add meaningfully to the growing literature on that country’s painful reality.
