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A few years ago I coined the terms “marketization from the bottom up,” and “grassroots marketization.” Maybe not the greatest phraseology, but I was on to something. Now, the rest of the world is catching up. Every time I open up the newspaper, I see the word “donju.” A prospectus for a conference held at IFES is emblematic:
“A nascent class of nouveau riche (‘donju’) has emerged in society. As a result, trade, business, and investment in infrastructure projects of varying scales are being backed by private moneylenders, revealing a form of public-private partnership—and indeed, commercialization and privatization of even state-run enterprises—in a landscape of inchoate quasi-capitalism. Over the last three years, the economic improvement measures taken by the successor regime in Pyongyang may even be causing private finance to expand, making the nouveau riche a driving force of the country’s economic development…What is the reality of ‘finance’ in today’s DPRK? Who are the ‘donju’ and what types of entrepreneurial activities and public-private partnerships are they engaged in? Are the government’s recent economic policy measures a sign of the regime adjusting and bending to this new reality?”
Actually, it sounded like an interesting conference; I wish that I could have gone. And while I’m sure that I will turn to more serious dongjuology sometime in the future, today is Friday, I’m in Hawaii, and while it’s not yet August…well, you get my drift: Time to party like a donju!
Steph Haggard passed along an article by Lee Chul-Mu from New Focus International, titled the “The secret nightclubs of North Korea.” Haggard: “you have the gay franchise;” “you have the drought franchise;” ”you have the Laibach franchise;” what, now, I have the "Molly-addled raving donju kids franchise"!?
Actually, the article is pretty good.
It describes the utter regimentation of acceptable forms of music and dance and young peoples’ predictable chafing at such strictures. As one young refugee, Na Sung-min, now a university student in South Korea described it, “Nightclubs or karaokes in North Korea are not the kinds of spaces they are in the South. You can’t just sing and dance with abandon as it pleases you. The most of that you do is when you are called up to be mobilized, where you must act out the collective swinging of arms to repetitive music at state events.”
Buzz kill.
But not to worry, where there is a will (or at least raging hormones) there is a way.
Na continues: “Sometimes, after such events, like-minded friends gather to listen and dance to personal favorites. The group goes to the household of a most trusted friend to sing and dance. Trust based security is key, as enforcement against South Korean music and dance can be very harsh.
“Another thing to consider is that the music might be heard from the outside, so homes in isolated areas are considered better hideouts. We have fun dancing, even though we know we are risking our lives by doing so. At the start, the volume is turned down to the lowest level, but as the night progresses and people have had one or two drinks, the music gets turned up louder and the atmosphere loosens more.
“We take turns standing guard. We also have extra CDs prepared, just in case authorities and nighttime surveillance patrols demand to carry out a sudden search of the place. The CDs will be a mixtape of songs praising the state.”
And not to make this a sole-source piece, NFI quotes another recent escapee, Han Eun-Kyung, “In North Korea too, there are places where lovers can share one another’s feelings and hold each other while dancing. But those places must be secret and trusted. It’s also better if you are near a friend whose family members include a powerful official. Why? Because it’s a lot safer, in security terms. Nighttime surveillance patrols don’t check the homes of officials.
“In these places, South Korean music is played often. South Korean music makes you move naturally and trigger deep emotions within. And in that moment, lovers can slip into fantasies together, enjoying the thrill of capitalist culture while living on socialist territory.”
Boo-yah!
As I told Steph, this is horrible…but in a bizarre way it’s also sort of cool: I can imagine being 20 at some secret rave with the lookouts and the approved mixtape at the ready, trying to seduce a high official’s daughter whose papa, if we get busted, could either spring me or have me castrated. Talk about a rush. And I can imagine being 50 and comfortably settled in South Korea and drinking beers with my old running buddies and thinking “those were the days.”
Now, if you want to go down market for that old biker’s beer-and-crank high, I have some bad news for you: Michelle FlorCruz at International Business Times reports that tightened border controls have impeded the methamphetamine trade—here’s the odd part—and disrupted local supplies as well. I would have thought that if North Korean crank producers couldn’t ship their stuff to China that they would dump it on the local market, increasing supply and driving down price. Maybe this was the initial reaction. But the story claims that the difficulties of moving meth into China has led to a reduction in production and reduced availability locally. According to one unnamed source, “Some people who use meth will travel to Hamhung and then climb through the mountains on foot to get back to Hyesan,” reportedly a 360-mile journey. I dunno: personally, I think that one would have to have some very serious issues to hike 360 miles through the mountains for crystal meth.
