Yeon-mi Park reflects on her experiences as a North Korean refugee. As changes take place from “the bottom up,” Park expresses hope of returning to her home country one day.

The Jangmadang, also known as the Black Market Generation, is the driving force for this bottom-up change. It is comprised of three main characteristics: greater concern among North Koreans for themselves and less for the Kim regime, a wider access to external media and information, and a more capitalistic and individual-minded society.

Although Park grew up brainwashed to believe the juche ideology and to endlessly praise its founder Kim Il Sung, she notes that those in her generation now only do so to keep their “loyal” status in the songbun caste system. Additionally, due to the growing spread of such items as USBs, DVDs, and South Korean movies and K-pop, the private market is expanding far beyond just food and clothing. Park recalls watching everything from “Cinderella” and “Pretty Woman” to WWE Wrestling.

This has compelled the younger Jangmadang generation to dream about what life could be like beyond their communist confines. In spite of the government’s harsher crackdowns on the flow of information and ideas from outside, especially from capitalist countries, changes are already taking place.

For North Koreans like Park, this means that from the ashes of a dying and increasingly irrelevant juche ideology, a new, much more promising way of thinking is rising through the Black Market generation. Park looks forward to the day when she will be able to meet her friends again in such a freed and reformed North Korea.

SOURCE: The Washington post