In North Korea a Mother's Love Doesn't Have a Name

Yeonmi Park shares what life is like in the "socialist paradise"

When I was pregnant with my son, there was no question of how I planned to feed him after his birth. If my body couldn’t provide sufficient nourishment, then luckily we lived in an area where access to formula was as easy as choosing between powder, concentrate, and ready-to-use. 

As it turned out, I didn’t even make it to the end of a full week of breastfeeding before cracking open one of the emergency ready-to-use bottles stashed away in the pantry. The snap of plastic was a healing balm to my fried nerves after the constant worry my son wasn’t receiving enough food. But even with the stress of breastfeeding alleviated, I still could not shake the fear of his belly being less than full in the months that followed. 

When my son began transitioning to solids, I exchanged formula for a packed-out lunch box for every outing. A cornucopia of veggie straws, applesauce pouches, dried cherries, and Nutri-grain bars was within reach at the earliest stages of fussiness. Now when my picky toddler pushes his food away at mealtimes, I glance at his lean body and try to shove a few last forkfuls in his mouth. 

The desire to feed and nourish my child is a primal instinct shared by many mothers. A nurturing spirit transcends socioeconomic and geographic boundaries. And yet, in certain countries, those same boundaries can determine whether that shared motherly instinct is fulfilled or not.

It may be challenging for those of us who have not experienced true food scarcity to comprehend a scenario where a system of government denies certain classes of mothers (and fathers) the freedom to provide basic nourishment to their children; yet in North Korea, a mother’s fear of her children going without food can be a daily manifestation. These mothers do not have the option to pack bulging lunch boxes or encourage their children to fill their little bellies at mealtime; instead, they are compelled to ration what they have to ensure there is sufficient food for their entire family at the next meal.

Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector who escaped the country at 13 with her mother, has been speaking out the last few years about the suppression of her people in the socialist state where millions have starved to death. In her memoir, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, Park details one of the country’s worst famines in the 1990s known as “The Arduous March” when her family relied on her father’s trading business in the legal and illegal markets.

“It seemed normal to me that there were times when we had food to eat, and other times when there was only one meal a day and we went hungry. While they worked to keep us from catastrophe, my parents often had to leave my sister and me alone. If she couldn’t find someone to look after us, my mother would have to bolt a metal bar across the door to keep us safe in the house.” 

 Many North Korean families like Park’s who were not members of the higher class and had a lower “songbun” (social status ranking), resorted to smuggling goods over the border from China or made items to sell in the unofficial markets called “jangmadangs” just to have money to buy food. Sometimes Park and her sister foraged for insects and plants in the woods. She says her mother “carries guilt to this day that she was not better able to enjoy my childhood; she was too busy worrying about getting us enough food to eat.” 

On August 3, 2021, during a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, Joe Rogan asks Park about another dynamic of North Korean life when she states, “There’s no word for love in North Korea.” 

“So, your mother never told you she loved you? You never told your father you love him?” Rogan replies.

“In North Korea, there’s even no word for “I” so they don’t want people to be individualistic…”. 

Park explains that whenever a North Korean makes a statement that should be spoken with the word “I”, such as “I like water,” they will replace “I” with “we”.  

She discusses the concept further in her book:

“North and South Koreans have the same ethnic backgrounds, and we speak the same language–except in the North there are no words for things like “shopping malls,” “liberty,” or even “love,” at least as the rest of the world knows it. The only true “love” we can express is worship for the Kims, a dynasty of dictators who have ruled North Korea for three generations.”

Later in the conversation with Rogan, Park comments on how death and malnutrition were an everyday occurrence in North Korea to the point where she would walk by dead or suffering individuals on the street and not feel anything. She associates her lack of compassion to human nature’s adaptability, which allows one to conform to evil if it’s the only experience one has ever known. 

“When do you think you started to feel things?” Rogan asks. 

Park replies, “With my son.” 

Through his birth, she learned how to feel compassion and unconditional love for the first time toward another.

“All I felt was love, and zero, zero fear.”

I’ve attributed plenty of things to freedom throughout my lifetime, food, clean water, and prosperity to name a few, but I’d never considered the act of telling my son “I love you” to be one of them. I thought that right belonged to every parent who’s ever raised a child. Instead, on the other side of the world, mothers like Park’s are speaking very different words to their children to help ensure their survival under a communist regime. “Remember, Yeonmi-ya… even when you think you’re alone, the birds and mice can hear you whisper.” 

A few days after learning Yeonmi Park’s story, I was preparing to leave my house for a late evening Walmart pick-up order when I received a notification on my phone that my son’s favorite juice was not available. Frustration grew as it was the item I needed most for the following morning. Then, I remembered the people of North Korea and Yeonmi Park. 

I was grateful I was able to feed my son.