Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea

Contemporary Asia in the World

by Sandra Fahy

Marching Through Suffering is a deeply personal portrait of the ravages of famine and totalitarian politics in modern North Korea since the 1990s. Featuring interviews with more than thirty North Koreans who defected to Seoul and Tokyo, the book explores the subjective experience of the nation’s famine and its citizens’ social and psychological strategies for coping with the regime. These oral testimonies show how ordinary North Koreans, from farmers and soldiers to students and diplomats, framed the mounting struggles and deaths surrounding them as the famine progressed. Following the development of the disaster, North Koreans deployed complex discursive strategies to rationalize the horror and hardship in their lives, practices that maintained citizens’ loyalty to the regime during the famine and continue to sustain its rule today. Casting North Koreans as a diverse people with a vast capacity for adaptation rather than a monolithic entity passively enduring oppression, Marching Through Suffering positions personal history as a critical lens for interpreting political violence.

Genres: Nonfiction, Asia

272 pages, ebook

First published April 1, 2015

Reviews

[Queralt✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's plenty of books and academic papers that examine what caused the Arduous March, but there are few works that cover what North Koreans went through during the famine. Sure, they were hungry and either 1) unhappy because of the dictatorship or 2) brainwashed.

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea offered a new take on North Korea and dedicated a few sections to the famine itself - drawing from interviews with North Korean refugees she offered a more personal view to what people actually went through. We're not only talking about being hungry, but also their resilience, resourfulness, frustration, etc. We're additionally talking about North Koreans waking up every day to new neighbours who had died, being imprisonned for trying to take a train to find food elsewhere, executions, and a big etcetera.

Fahy's book takes a similar approach (less narrative, more academic) and draws the famine from the personal experience of refugees whom she interviewed. Because her sample was larger than Demick's, she not only offers the 'frustrated' side of North Koreans, but also from those who somehow believe(d) the regime's narrative of the situation.

Some of the interview bits were really interesting as they seemed irrational/nonsensical - refugees explaining how they were following the regime's orders: "well, we'd sleep instead of eating breakfast, skip lunch, and then have sleep for dinner, every day." But this echoes the nonsensicality of what the government asked from citizens. This was not a famine, this was just an arduous march, a difficult time that NK would survive. A couple days ago I was looking through how many times the word "famine" has appeared in NK media since 1997, it has been mentioned 0-8 times a year, but only to cover famines in Africa or South Korea (!). However, the "arduous march" is mentioned more than 2,000 times a year.

NK people did not use the word famine for what happened nor talked about being hungry or dying from hunger. They used other words to avoid repercussions. Fahy dedicates a whole section to the famine's hidden transcripts (the "'he died because he was in too much pain" instead of saying he starved and so on) and importance of language under a totalitarian regime. Fahy also writes about what pushed refugees to escape, their 'breaking points', which I think it's great because someone here is doing her research about something related to escaping North Korea.

Rated 4 stars and not 5 because (as many reviewers pointed out), yes, it could have been more engaging. Otherwise, I think it was great - Fahy said once that researching the famine also turned her into a human rights activist and you can tell that by how she writes. Which for me is a big plus because NK writing has too much politics and not enough human rights advocacy.

Now, I wouldn't suggest this to people who aren't academically-interested/curious or know much about NK. If you're mostly curious about the famine, I think Demick's book (linked above) it's a better "NK 101" to get you started.

[circle · Rating 3 out of 5]

the author uses big words and writes in a way that is hard to understand at times. i think if you know nothing about north korea it might be hard to follow. i did learn stuff about the famine that i didn't learn or maybe forgot from other books that cover north korea.

[Lesley Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have had so much more impact if the author and an editor had been able to collaborate to tell this story in a more compelling way. The raw material is there in the author's research and there are hints of what could have been in some passages, but academic language and theory mostly got in the way of connecting with the material.
Theoretical frameworks are fine in a thesis but this book should have opened Fahy's insights up to a wider audience.
An obvious start would have been to move the chapter on the history of the famine to the front of the book, to set the scene, not have it at the END as if it were assumed knowledge and just an addendum for the record. I knew the background but others would want to read this chapter first.
I'd love to re-edit this book so it got the audience it deserved.

[Noémie Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who's read a lot of books about North Korea, this one was definitely unexpected because of how much it goes into the language that defector's use. As someone who goes in blind when I read books, this was a very pleasant surprise! The book can be a bit long at times and repetitive, but it's very interesting.

Thank you Sandra 😘😘😘🦍🦍🦍

[Emily D · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't very good. The sample size of interviewees for this book was too small. I also felt qualitative data was relied on too heavily. This is such an interesting time in North Korean history and this ended up being boring and dry.

I know it's fiction/memoir but Every Falling Star is set during this same time period and is a much better read if you're looking to learn more about the NK famine.

[Luke Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but thorough book on the North Korea famine of the 1990s this offers great insight into survival and the human spirit.