Nothing to Envy

Oak-hee, Mrs. Song’s eldest daughter, decides to defect when she hears her husband in their apartment with another woman. She goes to China as a hired bride, requesting to live with a man who speaks no Korean so as to avoid detection. After two years, she returns to North Korea well fed and with money, in the hopes of reuniting with her children. She is arrested for illegal border crossing, but is released after two weeks, perhaps due to prison overcrowding. Arrested again, she is put in a labor camp, where she, like the other mostly-female prisoners, muses on the reality of life in North Korea: “Our lives are lies. The whole system is a lie” (232). She sends a note to her mother to help her get out. 

Mrs. Song uses bribery to get Oak-hee out of prison. At home, Oak-hee tells the neighbors about what a paradise China is. Mrs. Song worries about her vocal condemnation of their nation, and the two often fight. Oak-hee leaves again, and then sends word to her mother that she has money to repay the bribes that got her out of jail, if Mrs.