Famine to feast: North Korean defectors awestruck by food choices in South

The Manchester Guardian ^ | December 24, 2018 | Benjamin Haas in Seoul

[2ndDivisionVet]

Lee Oui-ryuk was on the verge of dying of starvation when he stole a block of tofu in a market in North Korea at the height of a nationwide famine. Too weak to run away after he swiped the food, Lee continued eating as the seller cried and beat him with a metal rod, staining the white tofu red with his blood.

At nine years old he knew the theft would end in violence, but in his head he repeated over and over: “Even if you are beaten, keep eating.” He eventually passed out and when he awoke, took a morsel that remained on his hand to his sister.

“Even today I don’t have the words to describe the hunger,” Lee said. “My head was too big for my body because I was so malnourished and my neck couldn’t support the weight, which meant my head was always at a slant.”

More than two decades later Lee is no longer starving. The 31-year-old lives in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, where he can have virtually any dish delivered to his home with a few taps on his smartphone. But his experiences in the North forever changed his relationship with food and he often craves dishes invented by a chronically hungry nation.

“In North Korea every single thing I ate was related to my life, and even the smallest things would seem really big,” he said. “But here I just eat food because it’s a part of living.”

Many of the roughly 30,000 North Korean refugees living in the South are awestruck when they first arrive at seeing supermarkets stocked with items unseen back home. But they also find it difficult to cope with the plethora of choice and still carrying the trauma of growing up hungry.

[daniel1212]

Yup. I think of that scene frequently. We have so much choice, it can be overwhelming. I’ve stood mesmerized in front of shelves of food myself at times.

And we complain the most, to our own hurt.

[Ladysforest]

Thank you. It has made me genuinely thankful for food.

[Ladysforest]

Yes, the south can be a bit like that. Appearances are extremely important to many in the south. In my case we were just flat out poor in every regard. Except that the step father (*spit* on his grave) ate very well every night while we children had almost nothing. He also wore nice suits to work. We wore mismatched socks.

LOL. But I lived. I have the distinct privilege of knowing how fortunate I am now, as well as how little some people really have, and what that is really like.