“America is the cause of our poverty.” What they say about life in the DPRK its people
Talk to ordinary citizens of North Korea is almost impossible, as visitors to the country accompanied by police, and communication with the outside world is blocked. However, two inhabitants of the DPRK agreed to talk with journalists of the programme, Victoria Derbyshire, despite the threat of death or imprisonment.
In North Korea, where leader Kim Jong-UN has the status almost of a deity, out loud can doubt it is for many unthinkable.
Citizens are taught that he is all-knowing, and forced to inform on dissenters, including members of his own family.
The saleswoman at the market sun Hee (name changed) knows that, while she’s risking her life.
“Often people criticize Kim Jong-UN because he is engaged in the business,” she says about the discontent in the country.
People say that he acts like us, but takes our money. [They say], the little man uses his head to suck money like a vampire.
Within a few months of Bi-bi-si used secret communications channels, sending the questions of ordinary North Koreans. Bi-bi-si has taken care about hiding their identities and keeping anonymity.
“America divided”
If the North Korean authorities found out the real name soon-Hee, she was waiting for severe punishment — the conclusion in one of the hard labor camps or even execution. In addition to her prison sentence could put three generations of her family.
Sun-Hee lives with her husband and two daughters. They eat three times a day, if the trade goes well. When things are not so rosy, they have to settle for rice with corn.
In the market where she works, sold by street food, clothing, and contraband equipment.
More than five million people depend directly or indirectly on such markets, according to estimates by South Korean newspaper the Daily NK, a writer on life, and North Korea.
Market trade in the country is directly contrary to the rigid Communist model, however, allows the population to live in conditions of ration system of food supply and economic sanctions.
The government can not prevent the recurrence of the “heavy March” — the so-called famine in the mid-1990s, when North Korea killed more than a million people.
Sung-Hee said that the number of citizens positively assessing Kim Jong-UN, is growing, because he did not touch the markets and “not tightening the screws, no matter what we did.”
Markets that sometimes are hundreds of pans, and become a gossip.