Nothing to Envy: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

After Nam-oak’s death in 1998, Mrs. Song’s mental state collapsed. She could not return to the shack where he had died; she wandered the streets, weeping and moaning, until she collapsed in a starved, hypothermic delirium near her the building where her daughters lived. The girls brought her inside, pooled their money, and bought enough food to nurse their mother back to health. Even once she had recovered, however, Mrs. Song still felt responsible for the three deaths that had taken place within her family in just three short years. Though Mrs. Song wanted to give up, she managed to pull herself together and start a new business.

All over the country, those like Mrs. Song who had hit rock bottom began to find, inexplicably, a new, enterprising spirit. People became fishmongers, butchers, and bakers, selling their wares on the black market—even though Kim Jong-il had taken an even harder line against the illegal buying and selling of goods than his father before him, seeing commerce as a “stab in the heart of Communist ideology.” Mrs. Song, for example, began baking batches of cookies with the help of her youngest daughter, the newly divorced Yong-hee. Their first batches were terrible—but as the women practiced, they were able to make a sellable product that Mrs. Song could take to the market. The cookies were a hit. Though she usually made just enough to break even and buy supplies for another batch, she was no longer going to bed hungry.

Many other women like Mrs. Song continued opening small businesses, though they still harbored a great deal of shame and suspicion after a lifetime of propaganda about the evils of a free-market economy. People began collecting and selling medicinal herbs; physicians like Dr. Kim provided medicine, procedures, and notes to help people get out of grueling work shifts at low costs; Mi-ran’s mother and father began operating a mill where people could grind up corn. Many women resorted to prostitution, and though Oak-hee did not turn to sex work, she made a deal with a local prostitute in which the woman would pay Oak-hee to use her home for privacy with clients.

People began growing fruits and vegetables in small (and illegal) backyard plots. Foreign countries—the United States included—flew in grains and rice, which flooded the black market. China sent toiletries, batteries, lighters, paper, and pens; colorful, soft, and ultra-modern clothing came in from South Korea, which North Koreans euphemistically called “the village below.” The market in Chongjin grew and grew in size, drawing customers from the countryside who wanted food, dry goods, haircuts, and more. The market vendors were mostly women—men remained stuck in state jobs that paid nothing, while their wives went out into the market to provide.

Things were changing in Chongjin—but still, Mrs. Song harbored suspicion about the greed and ambition that the buying and selling of goods was inspiring in her neighbors. The wealth gap was widening; restrictions on those who would have been “economic criminals” a decade ago were loosening; inflation was out of control. The seriously poor were still starving and dying. Mrs. Song watched a young boy succumb to acute food poisoning after eating spoiled fish entrails cast off from a seafood stall at the market, and one night on the way home, she saw two men pulling an ox cart piled with bodies. Not all of the people piled into the card were even dead yet—some were still on the very brink.