Nothing to Envy: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Demick writes that though Mi-ran’s “tainted blood” threatened her future in North Korea, her family ties to South Korea proved invaluable when she arrived in Seoul. Unlike the other defectors, Mi-ran had family waiting to receive her and to help her adjust. After crossing the Tumen into China, Mi-ran and her family called the municipal office in the South Korean province where her father was born as soon as they could. The municipal office gave them the address of Tae-woo’s younger sisters. Sok-ju wrote a letter to them, informing his aunts of where he and his family were staying.

Within a few weeks, one of the aunts called—she was skeptical that Sok-ju and his family were who they said they were, having not heard anything from Tae-woo for decades. After a DNA test to confirm their relation, both aunts came to China with more relatives in tow. The reunion was joyful—and the DNA tests, both parties saw, turned out to be unnecessary. Mi-ran and her siblings were awed by the uncanny physical and emotional similarities between them and their new relatives. Mi-ran’s relatives began the long process of slowing bringing Mi-ran and her family, one by one, from China to South Korea by forging paperwork for them. By January of 1999, everyone was settled in Seoul.

Mi-ran was socially positioned to get into a good graduate program and make lots of new connections—having a built-in support system in the form of her relatives was an invaluable resource. Mi-ran soon married and, in 2004, gave birth to her first son. Mi-ran, Demick observes, quickly achieved “the Korean dream.” Still, when Mi-ran and Demick met for their interview sessions, Demick observed that while Mi-ran outwardly appeared like any other upwardly mobile working mother, deep down, she was still the same young woman whose earliest years had been shaped by her “tainted blood.” Mi-ran was still racked with guilt about what she’d had to do to survive and reach this point in her life.

Whereas many defectors experience this sense of guilt and shame, for Mi-ran, these feelings were real and concrete. She learned that six months after she and her family defected, her older sisters Mi-hee and Mi-sook were taken away to labor camps in the middle of the night. Though they were loyal to the regime, they were punished for their family members’ actions. Mi-ran never learned what happened to her sisters—by 2004, she’d begun to assume they were dead.

Mi-ran also thought frequently—and spoke to Demick often—about Jun-sang and what she believed he’d become. In October of 2005, Demick received a call from an excited Mi-ran: Jun-sang was in South Korea. Demick met up with both Jun-sang and Mi-ran in a coffee shop just a week later. She learned that Jun-sang had already been in South Korea for nearly a year, but that he hadn’t reached out to Mi-ran after learning that she was married. Jun-sang, it turned out, remained pained about the absurdity of their situation—they’d never been able to talk openly and honestly in North Korea. If they had, both of them believed, they might have been able to come up with a solution together.

Jun-sang made a relatively comfortable life for himself in North Korea—but his doubts about the regime gnawed at him. He refused to socialize or attend extra lectures, spending his free time watching illegal broadcasts on his television. In 2001, he left Pyongyang and returned to Chongjin, where he began saving money for his escape and planning the details of his trip. In June of 2004, he used a broker to cross the Tumen. In China, he worked hard in a brick factory, saving money and trying to find a way to South Korea. After nearly being arrested at a South Korean consulate, he turned to the internet to find an alternate way out—eventually, he read about a pastor in Incheon who helped defectors out through Mongolia. He took the same route as Kim Hyuck, arriving in South Korea in October of 2004. 

During his debriefing, Jun-sang asked his NIS agent about Mi-ran. The agent looked up information about her, moved by Jun-sang’s story of his first love. When Jun-sang learned Mi-ran was married, he decided not to contact her—but just a month later, he ran into Sok-ju at an informal gathering for new refugees. A week later, Jun-sang and Mi-ran met up at last. She picked him up in her car, and they drove to a restaurant just outside the city. Everything they talked about over their meal led them down the road to tragedy—especially when they discussed Mi-ran’s abrupt defection. Mi-ran asked Jun-sang why he hadn’t come sooner. He had no answer for her. What could have been lingered between them, still painful and raw after so many years.

Demick notes that by the time she met up with Jun-sang and Mi-ran, they’d seen each other several times and seemed “exasperated” with each other. Mi-ran admitted to Demick that now that they could call or text each other and communicate instantly, the slow-burning nature of their epistolary relationship in North Korea had changed. More than that, their social dynamic was altered: Mi-ran was now the wealthy and well-connected one, while Jun-sang was a loner who worked odd jobs and had few friends. Demick wasn’t surprised by the change in Jun-sang—North Korean defectors, she notes, often have a tough time settling down. With so many new choices before them, it becomes difficult and even paralyzing to choose one single fate.

Demick also notes that many defectors still dream of returning home. Many left in the early 2000s, she states, believing the regime would soon fall—the persistence of the regime is not just an oddity but a tragedy for those individuals who now have no chance of seeing their families unless the regime collapses within their lifetimes. There is nothing these individuals can do, Demick writes, but wait.