Nothing to Envy: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

When Mi-ran was in high school, she began to notice people from Chongjin and even other parts of the country coming to the countryside where she and her family lived to scavenge for food and firewood. Mi-ran’s father’s paychecks had dried up, and Mi-ran’s mother had quickly gotten to work inventing a new recipe for ice cream made of tofu, red beans, and sugar that she could sell on the black market in order to make some money. Mi-ran and her family were thus able to sustain themselves—the food shortage was not yet a full-blown famine.

Jun-sang, too, was insulated from the worst effects of the food shortage. With money from his paternal grandparents in Japan—and the privilege of a private yard in which they could clandestinely begin a garden—Jun-sang’s family was able to eat better than most. Jun-sang had been accepted into a good university in Pyongyang, which was an enormous achievement for a young man without good songbun who lived far from a major city. Jun-sang was proud and optimistic, and he’d found a way to introduce himself to Mi-ran after making friends with her older sister, Mi-sook.

Once Mi-sook orchestrated a meeting between Mi-ran and Jun-sang, during which Jun-sang confessed his feelings for Mi-ran, Mi-ran somewhat reluctantly agreed to begin a secret relationship with him. Jun-sang went off to college, and the two stayed in touch by sending letters. Paper was a luxury for Mi-ran, but she did whatever she could to procure it for herself—she’d quickly become deeply invested in Jun-sang and drew great happiness from writing him letters. They both knew—but never spoke of—the fact that Mi-ran’s beulsun would keep them apart in real life, and so they funneled all of their feelings into melodramatic letters.

There is no real dating culture in North Korea, Demick notes, and premarital sex is frowned upon. Though women often get pregnant before marriage and have abortions to erase the evidence, Demick writes that “prudishness is part of traditional Korean culture.” Couples never touch or kiss in public, women dress conservatively, and young people are encouraged by government propaganda to hold off on marriage until their late 20s or early 30s—partly to preserve an atmosphere of chastity, and partly to keep birth rates down so that there are fewer mouths to feed.

Whenever Jun-sang was home from college, he would meet up with Mi-ran after dark to take their long, private walks through the barren, dilapidated countryside. Jun-sang and Mi-ran were both shyer in person than in their letters, but still Jun-sang managed to offer Mi-ran a glimpse of his life in Pyongyang through his detailed stories. Mi-ran was jealous of Jun-sang’s good prospects, and admitted she felt she had no purpose in life. Jun-sang optimistically encouraged her to believe in herself and chase her dreams. She began studying hard, and, at the end of her senior year in 1991, she was admitted to a teachers’ college in Chongjin.

At college in the city, Mi-ran found herself in for a rude awakening. The dorms were unheated, dark, and dank; the cafeteria, reeling from the food shortage, served only thin soup made of water and turnip leaves twice a day. Mi-ran, horrified as her malnourished classmates dropped out one by one, secured permission to live off-campus with a relative and visit home each weekend. Jun-sang, meanwhile, lived in a heated dorm with electricity and running water; he ate well and enjoyed his studies. Still, however, he longed to be finished with school so that he could be with Mi-ran. Jun-sang returned home for his sister’s wedding in the fall of 1993, and, during the break, he and Mi-ran saw each other frequently. The two of them enjoyed the giddiness they got from sneaking around—and from their affair’s ability to distract them from the starvation happening all around them.