To play ice hockey in North Korea, 200 to 300 students form a water bucket brigade to transform an open field into a rink. With only one indoor ice arena in the nation, teenager Uiseong Jung skated outside in -13 degree weather and dreamed of qualifying for the national team. But then he learned he was ineligible to travel or represent his country because of an incriminating photo of his grandfather holding a knife at a Japanese police station, which was a double offense – being outside the borders and wielding a weapon.
After escaping the North, Jung now lives in South Korea, where he told part of his story on the “Moranbong Club,” a South Korean talk show that hosts North Korean defectors. Since the weekly series began in September 2015, runaways have told heartbreaking and sometimes funny stories: one woman abandoned her four-year-old son to escape, another paid two months’ salary to buy a pack of Japanese cigarettes and still another got a sex toy confiscated by a lascivious airport official.
Each episode stars different panelists dishing about different themes – female soldiers, North Korean doctors, Korean pop culture as a drug and 17-year-old missile-making girls. The show, which airs every Tuesday on TV Chosun, known for its documentary-style productions, faced backlash in July, after former panelist Jee Hyun Lim returned to her homeland and said producers forced her to “tell fake stories by reading from scripts full of lies about North Korea.” But “Moranbong Club” officials responded swiftly, in newspaper interviews and on their show, insisting that they always write scripts based on interviews with each defector, which they then thoroughly fact check with multiple sources before filming. South Korean viewers accused Lim of spying, but the show survived its mini scandal because, after all, South Koreans remain extremely curious about their neighbors.
In a nod to the two North Korean figure skaters who recently qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the episode with Jung also featured defectors who had competed in boxing, field hockey, softball, gymnastics, race walking, judo and table tennis.
Defector Hyun Mi Choi, the current female World Boxing Association super featherweight champion, described training with 19 peers as an 11-year-old at a facility in North Korea. “Competition began from the moment we opened our eyes and continued until the moment we fell asleep,” she said, matter-of-factly. “All twenty of us fought against each other in tournaments each week. On the last Saturday of the month, the winning players received 700 won [about 60 cents] as a prize and an increased ration of food. We fought hard because winning meant we could bring rice and money back home to our families."
Athletes, who even woke up in the middle of the night to sneak in extra training, said North Korean officials eliminated entire sports that didn’t seem promising. Myeong Ok Cho, a former North Korean race walker, endured bloody practices, including beatings, and made it to the national team, only to find that it no longer existed. “My dream was crushed, but really, the hope I had for my family was gone,” she said. “It felt like a tsunami.”
Fortunately, a field hockey coach visited her and offered her a job as a goalkeeper. He told her that she’d be traveling to many games abroad – she’d always wanted to go on planes – so she accepted. From a bundle of old clothes, she sewed her own uniform, which she wore for practices on an unforgiving asphalt field. Every day, she told viewers, balls smashed her face and body hundreds of times. At home, she examined her purple bruises and tried not to sit because it was too painful. After three years, with no money and no plane trips, she gave up.
Each week “Moranbong Club” gives North Koreans a forum to clarify and explain some misconceptions about their country and gives South Koreans a window into a mysterious land. Both the defectors and hosts often talk about their hopes for a peaceful unification of the two Koreas.
“People always say that at least in sports, we must be united,” said Gayoung Kim, a former kindergarten teacher in North Korea. "Sitting here in the studio today, I now understand why people say that. I was moved today, seeing everyone clap for each other without having to only cheer for one side. I hope that one day, we’ll get to see North and South Korea as a united team at the Olympics."
With President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to South Korea on November 7, last week’s episode, starring former North Korean military officials, focused on stories about the country’s military world, with everything from North Korea’s missile obsession to suicide squads literally trained to death from dangerous drills to Kim Jong-un’s potential next move. The episode was shot and aired before 200 people were estimated to have died from the collapse of tunnels at a nuclear test site in North Korea.
Schoolchildren and adults are raised to celebrate their country’s missiles, according to defector Gayoung Kim. They even teach a saying from a young age: For our leader, we will become bullets and bombs. Bakers even sell cakes decorated with models of the missiles.
Soldiers are not excluded from the brainwashing – Kang Jin Lim, an ex-colonel who guarded the border (DMZ) in North Korea, shared the time when he and his fellow soldiers thought the South Korean apartment buildings they saw through their binoculars were fake, a trick to fool the North Koreans at the border, because they were more developed and fancier than the houses they were used to in their country. “When I looked at the buildings [in the south], no one was walking around, and there were no chimneys or smoke coming out from them,” he said. “North Koreans didn’t understand this. For us, houses had to have chimneys, and chimneys had to have smoke. When I asked another soldier, he told me the south made fake houses for show. [We didn’t know] south had so much electricity.”
The North Korean soldiers trained with the mindset to put their country’s needs before their own lives. Chun Yong Lim, a former officer of the North Koran Special Forces, talked about his time with the Suicide Squad. (The literal translation of its name is the Storm Army.) “We were trained to kill when told to kill and to kidnap when told to kidnap,” he said. “Our mental training teaches us to first, we must be prepared to die for the mission. Second, to never be captured alive by the enemy. Third, to never let the enemy take the corpses of our soldiers. And fourth, to kill anyone who realizes who we are.”
Lim also explained that even the training to crawl through a low, underground tunnel to cross the border killed many soldiers. Of the three official methods of infiltrating South Korea (air, water, underground), the tunnel is the go-to option for secret missions that require soldiers to enter different cities. To practice this, drills forced the soldiers to wriggle through about 2.5 miles of tunnel in 30 minutes, and gas was released inside to practice for combat situations. Soldiers died during these drills because the practice tunnels lacked vents. “On the last day of December, we sigh in relief,” Lim said. “We think, ‘I stayed alive this year.’ Then the next morning, on the first day of January, we are worried. We think, ‘Will we stay alive this year?’”
Even the female Special Forces team sacrificed their lives during training. One defector told stories of the drills that involved climbing on a rope tied hundreds of feet above the ground between two mountains, with nothing but a net far underneath as a safety guard. Soldiers fell into it, but often bounced off of it, plummeted into rocks below and died. The defector’s neighbor, who had joined the female Special Forces, lost her life, along with the 69 other women who trained with her, just from doing drills.
Would Kim Jong-un attack the United States, South Korea or Trump during his visit this week? Panelists failed to reach a consensus. ”North Korea likes to focus on holidays and other important days [to make a move],” said Sung Mook Moon, the director of the Center for Unification Strategy in South Korea, who believes an attack is likely. “It’s about making the world focus on [North Korea] and remind[ing] everyone of its presence by making headlines…Politically, and to show dissatisfaction toward the U.S., [November 7] will probably be the best time to strike.”
Yet defector Il Kook Kim, now a CEO, who moved to South Korea just two years ago, argued that an attack this week is impossible. “The president of a country – of the world’s most powerful country – is visiting. And North Korea’s going to strike? This leads to serious consequences, so North Korea will lay low and stay informed. What crazy man would [attack]? The most important point is that Trump is visiting China after South Korea. North Korea’s fate depends on what deal he makes with Xi Jinping. And you think North Korea will attack without seeing this through first? No way.”
The next episode will air Tuesday, focusing on the border between North Korea and China that defectors use to escape. The teaser at the end of the army episode showed glimpses of the next set of panelists talking about their getaway. Defector Jeeyoung Kim said, “One man, who used to save and help the North Korean runaways, was stabbed to death.” So much for happily ever after.
*All quotes and names are translated from Korean to English by me.
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