Nothing to Envy - Real Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
As a former South Korean soldier, Tae-woo's ranking was toward the bottom of the heap - not the very bottom, because those people (about 200,000 or 1 percent of the population) were permanently banished to labor camps modeled after the Soviet Gulag.
North Koreans of the lower ranks were banned from living in the showcase capital of Pyongyang or the nicer patches of countryside toward the south where the soil was more fertile and the weather warmer. Tae-woo couldn't dream of joining the Workers' Party, which, like the Communist Party in China and the Soviet Union, controlled the plum jobs.
People of his rank would be closely watched by their neighbors. North Koreans are organized into what are called the inminban - literally, "people's group" - cooperatives of twenty or so families whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood. The inminban have an elected leader, usually a middle-aged woman who reports anything suspicious to higher-ranking authorites. It was almost impossible for a North Korean of low rank to improve his status. Personal files were locked away in local offices of the Ministry for the Protection of State Security and, for extra safekeeping , just in case someone dared to think of tampering with the records, in the mountainous Yanggang Province.
The only mobility within the class system was downwards. Even if you were in the core class - reserved for relatives of the ruling family and party cadres - you could get demoted
for bad behaviour. But once in the hostile class, you remained there for life. Whatever your original stain, it was permanent and immutable. And just like the caste system of old Korea, family status was hereditary. The sins of the father were the sins of the children and grandchildren.
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