could see the pilots. During the daytime, Mrs. Song’s mother would drag her six small children up to the mountains to keep them out of harm’s way. By night, they’d return to sleep in a shelter the neighbors had dug outside their house. Mrs. Song used to tremble under her thin blanket, snuggling next to her mother and siblings for protection. One day her mother left the children alone to find out how their father was doing. The night before there had been heavy bombing and one of the factories that made railroad parts had been demolished. She came back weeping, falling to her knees, lowering her head to the ground. “Your father has been killed,” she wailed, gathering the children around her.
Her father’s death gave Mrs. Song a pedigree as the child of a “martyr of the Fatherland Liberation War.” The family even got a certificate. It also stamped her psyche with the indelible anti-Americanism that was so central to the country’s ideology. Having spent her impressionable years in the chaos of war, she was ready to embrace the meticulous ordering of her life by the Workers’ Party. And she certainly was poor enough to qualify as a member of the downtrodden underclass that Kim Il-sung claimed to represent. Itwas only fitting that a girl with such impeccable Communist credentials would make an excellent marriage. She was introduced to her future husband by a Workers’ Party official. Her intended, Chang-bo, was also a party member—she wouldn’t have dreamed of marrying a man who wasn’t. His father had a good war record as a member of the North Korean intelligence; his younger brother had already joined the North Korean Ministry of Public Security. Chang-bo was a graduate of Kim Il-sung University and was headed for a career in journalism, a highly prestigious profession in North Korea since journalists were considered the mouthpieces of the regime. “Those who write in accordance with the party’s intention are heroes,” Kim Jong-il proclaimed.
Chang-bo was a strapping man, exceptionally tall for a North Korean of his generation. Mrs. Song was barely five feet and could nestle under his arm like a little bird. It was a good match. This handsome, politically correct young couple would have easily qualified to live in Pyongyang. Because Pyongyang is the only North Korean city frequented by foreigners, the regime goes to great lengths to ensure that its inhabitants make a good impression with their appearance and are ideologically sound. Instead, it was decided that the couple was needed to fill out the ranks of the stalwarts in Chongjin and so they were settled there with certain privileges in the best neighborhood in town.
For all the supposed egalitarianism of North Korea, real estate is doled out according to the same hierarchical principles as the class-background registers. The less-desirable neighborhoods are in the south near the coal and kaolin mines where the working stiffs lived in squat whitewashed harmonica houses. Farther north, everything becomes more imposing. As the main road runs through Nanam, the buildings are taller, some up to eighteen stories, the height of modernity at the time they were built. The builders even left shafts for elevators, although they never got around to installing the elevator cabs themselves. The architectural designs for many of the postwar apartments came from East Germany, with adaptations for Korean culture. Between the stories, extra space was provided for the Korean underfloor heating system, and apartment buildingswere equipped with loudspeakers in the individual units to broadcast community notices.
Chongjin is far from the modernity of Pyongyang, but it has its own aura of power. Now the capital of North Hamgyong province, it has large administrative offices for the province and Workers’ Party. The bureaucratic center is laid out in an orderly grid. There is a university, a metallurgy college, a mining college, an agricultural college, an arts
Her father’s death gave Mrs. Song a pedigree as the child of a “martyr of the Fatherland Liberation War.” The family even got a certificate. It also stamped her psyche with the indelible anti-Americanism that was so central to the country’s ideology. Having spent her impressionable years in the chaos of war, she was ready to embrace the meticulous ordering of her life by the Workers’ Party. And she certainly was poor enough to qualify as a member of the downtrodden underclass that Kim Il-sung claimed to represent. Itwas only fitting that a girl with such impeccable Communist credentials would make an excellent marriage. She was introduced to her future husband by a Workers’ Party official. Her intended, Chang-bo, was also a party member—she wouldn’t have dreamed of marrying a man who wasn’t. His father had a good war record as a member of the North Korean intelligence; his younger brother had already joined the North Korean Ministry of Public Security. Chang-bo was a graduate of Kim Il-sung University and was headed for a career in journalism, a highly prestigious profession in North Korea since journalists were considered the mouthpieces of the regime. “Those who write in accordance with the party’s intention are heroes,” Kim Jong-il proclaimed.
Chang-bo was a strapping man, exceptionally tall for a North Korean of his generation. Mrs. Song was barely five feet and could nestle under his arm like a little bird. It was a good match. This handsome, politically correct young couple would have easily qualified to live in Pyongyang. Because Pyongyang is the only North Korean city frequented by foreigners, the regime goes to great lengths to ensure that its inhabitants make a good impression with their appearance and are ideologically sound. Instead, it was decided that the couple was needed to fill out the ranks of the stalwarts in Chongjin and so they were settled there with certain privileges in the best neighborhood in town.
For all the supposed egalitarianism of North Korea, real estate is doled out according to the same hierarchical principles as the class-background registers. The less-desirable neighborhoods are in the south near the coal and kaolin mines where the working stiffs lived in squat whitewashed harmonica houses. Farther north, everything becomes more imposing. As the main road runs through Nanam, the buildings are taller, some up to eighteen stories, the height of modernity at the time they were built. The builders even left shafts for elevators, although they never got around to installing the elevator cabs themselves. The architectural designs for many of the postwar apartments came from East Germany, with adaptations for Korean culture. Between the stories, extra space was provided for the Korean underfloor heating system, and apartment buildingswere equipped with loudspeakers in the individual units to broadcast community notices.
Chongjin is far from the modernity of Pyongyang, but it has its own aura of power. Now the capital of North Hamgyong province, it has large administrative offices for the province and Workers’ Party. The bureaucratic center is laid out in an orderly grid. There is a university, a metallurgy college, a mining college, an agricultural college, an arts
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