Title: Jia: A Novel of North Korea
Author: Hyejin Kim
I chanced upon this book when I went to the local library the other day. I was just browsing, and this book was just sort of there. The title sounded really familiar and the cover art too. On the back cover, the blurb says that it is reminiscent of Red Azalea. I’ve read that book before, and although I didn’t like the writing style of Anchee Min, I like the insights to the historical background. So I borrowed the book.
The extended introduction reminds me of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. It gives you a feeling like this is a non-fiction, biographical book. For a while, as I was reading it, I thought I was reading some Korean woman’s life story, her memoirs, when in fact, the subtitle already tells you that this is in fact a novel. Granted, the story of Jia is based on the people that author Kim has met due to her involvement with North Korean refugees as well as real events in North Korea’s history, but as Kim puts it in her biographical sketch, the novel “was inspired by her human rights work with North Korea refugees in northern China.”
I say this because the life that the protagonist Jia leads is too charmed to be real. Ah, but then that can also be said about Anchee Min’s life as told in Red Azalea. And as someone completely ignorant of the hermit kingdom, I guess I’m in no place to pass that kind of judgement. But still, as I was reading the book, which I must say I thoroughly enjoyed and had difficulty putting down, I couldn’t help but feel that the circumstances are kind of incredulous. Examples of Korean drama-type scenarios:
- Jia’s parents are star-crossed lovers – her mother, a talented dancer is of good up-bringing (“core-class”, her father having a high position in the army and her mother a principal of a college); her father was a lowly school teacher with a difficult background (reactionary element) who had committed political treason which had landed the family (Jia’s paternal grandparents, her mother [who was pregnant with her when they first got there but subsequently died giving birth to her - how very very Korean drama], her sister and herself) in a political concentration camp.
- Encounter with Uncle Shin leading to her escaping from the concentration camp and arriving at Pyongyang. I can really picture this escape scene on screen.
- Ending up in an ophanage after being rejected by her mother’s parents in Pyongyang.
- Coming under the tutelage of Teacher Song, who happens to be her mother’s teacher as well, for the World Festival of Youth.
- Her relationship with Seunggyu whose contempt for people with her background and his suspicion of her led to her decision to cross the border into China.
- Jia’s friendship with Sangwon, a little boy who helped her to cross over to China.
- Sub-plots involving Sunyoung (a fellow dancer who prostituted herself to foreigners) and her neigbour Sun and her boyfriend Gun who was coerced into spying for the North in China.
- Finally, getting help from Jin Xuezhen, a Korean-Chinese who had grown up in England, who had rescued her from the karaoke bar she had been sold to in China.
But it’s all these scenarios that make for a great dramatic read, although I felt like I had to take everything with a pinch of salt, as I wasn’t sure how much to believe.
I guess that’s my only complaint, if you can call it that. I really want to know more about the situation in North Korea and what life there is like. While the book has given me a glimpse of it, there are bits that are so dramatic that I find it hard to take seriously. In the end, although the inspiration for the story may be drawn from real people, the events and circumstances are too far-fetched to really touch me deeply. But as my first book on North Korea, I think it is a good introduction to this reclusive country. As much as I feel the circumstances are over dramatic (well, actually only Jia’s charmed life I find hard to swallow), I’m sure there are indeed North Koreans living that kind of living hell, and the saddest part is that they aren’t even aware of it. But maybe ignorance is not such a bad thing afterall in this case – what you don’t know can’t hurt you, something like that.
I’m looking forward to reading more books on the North. One of them is The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea by Charles Robert Jenkins. Jenkins is the US Army deserter who married Soga Hitomi, the Japanese who was kidnapped by the North. Soga is from Sado Island near where I was at. I think I’ve seen her daughters Belinda and Mika around town before. The other is Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle. I reckon it will be like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi which I have also read recently (which I intend to write a review of when I have the time).
Incidently, doing a search on the author, I found out that she might actually be based here in the same city as I am right now! And from her blog, it seems she probably lives pretty near me too… Well, I hope she doesn’t think that I’m cyber-staking her (I’m not, honestly) for digging up this piece of info.
Finally, came across an entry on Youth.Sg by Pek Yipeng on a trip to North Korea by the Singapore Students Association (SSA) in Beijing University. Interesting account and pictures.
やっぱり、チョコケーキ。。。
