HOW LOVE TRANSCENDED HARDSHIP
Former North Korean resident bares all in her account of life in hermit kingdom
Stars Between the Sun and Moon is the first account of the country by a North Korean woman, one who suffered human trafficking, imprisonment and forced labour before escaping to Canada. Authors Lucia Jang and Susan McClelland provide a unique perspective on the brutality of the North Korean regime and the desperation it breeds. We speak with them about their work.
Q Susan & Lucia: Tell us about your book.
A Lucia: My book is about my family and how I came to be here. I wanted to write this book to share what life was like growing up in North Korea and life is like today. I also wanted to show the love between us in North Korea as other accounts from the country do not do this. These accounts are all about the brutality people faced at the hands of the regime and of each other, including family members. I did not experience such brutality. In fact my family was close, and while bad things happened to us and we did things to each other that were not good — like people do here — in the end, we had great love.
Q Lucia: Why did you decide to write Stars Between The Sun & Moon?
A Lucia: I wanted to share what life was like in North Korea, during when Kim Ilsung was alive, and how things changed during the famine and how people struggled to survive. I wanted readers to hear an account of an average woman and how she survived remarkable experiences and, as a result, found love and meaning in it all. My story may seem remarkable, but many North Korean women have lived it.
Q Susan & Lucia: Can you describe the process of working together to write the book? How did you develop the story and work together, especially with a language difference?
A Lucia: The process of working with Soohyun and Susan was one in which I felt bad often, knowing how hard they were working. It was also hard to recount so many of these memories, but once we got going on a scene or a story, it felt like therapy at the same time too.
A Susan: Every Saturday morning for nearly a year, Soohyun and I would head to Lucia’s apartment. As we sat on the floor in front of a round table nibbling on fruit and sipping corn- tea, Lucia would tell her story, while Soohyun translated. Lucia is a born storyteller. It took little less than a month before I could just arrive and Lucia, with just a small reminder, would continue on where she left off the week before. She was an extremely animated storyteller and very detailed. It was not hard to work through a translator at all.
Q Lucia: At the beginning of the book, and throughout your childhood, you viewed Kim Il- sung as a god. Can you describe your process of beginning to doubt the goodness of the regime, and the leader? When and how did this begin to happen?
A Lucia: When I was repatriated from China and sent to jail, I began to see a different North Korea, one that was cruel, one that was lying to the people. Even though my life was hard before this, I still had faith in North Korea and the government and our leaders.
Q Lucia: What was the hardest part about writing your memoir of life in North Korea?
A Lucia: Reliving so much of what I went through. There were things that happened to me, things I did to survive that I am not proud of. Things that paint me and all of us, including my family, in a bad light. But we were living in a time and place where we were like dogs doing what we could to live. Without baring all, I felt it would not be an accurate portrayal. So that was hard: baring all. Baring everything.
Q Lucia: Many people who read the book will be shocked at the trauma you experienced, and your bravery throughout your life in North Korea. Can you tell us what got you through those harrowing situations?
A Lucia: Love. I don’t think I was thinking much at all about anything, but I was feeling something pulling me forward, something that I realized was love, something bigger and more beyond me. There were times I could have given up, like when I was imprisoned and the government wanted to take my baby. But I had nothing to lose so I could take risks, like when I stood up to the authorities. I was living right on the edge, so that helped get me through. I knew I could die or be imprisoned forever at any moment, so I let go of attachments, including fear, my ego, and held on tight to just the feeling of love that I saw in my dreams. That couldn’t be taken away from me. Q Lucia: What do you hope readers take from the book? A Lucia: I hope readers take away great hope, that no matter what they are facing, we are human and we have the capacity to thrive and become even better human beings — not better people, with more things, more diplomas under our belt, more money — but
When I was repatriated from China and sent to jail, I began to see a different North Korea, one that was cruel, one that was lying to the people.
LUCIA JANG AUTHOR, STARS BETWEEN THE SUN & MOON
better human beings, humble, compassionate. Life is so fragile and can be gone in an instant. Here in the west, readers won’t feel it is that fragile, but for me and for the lives of women all over the world, who don’t live in societies where our interests are protected, our lives are like the flame of a candle and can be gone in an instant. The sacrifices I made for my children are what women make every day all over the world. The west, who are consumed with things and the east who are all alone in their struggles, I hope take away from my story that we’re not alone, a middle path — like my poplar tree dream — that the things we value are not really that important in the end, and that none of us are truly alone.
Q Susan & Lucia: Art and literature have the ability to awaken people to human rights violations or the importance of action. Susan’s other books also call attention to often traumatizing events elsewhere in the world. Can you tell us how stories and books can provide greater understanding of others’ plights?
A Susan: I am not sure I can add much more on to what Lucia has said above. These stories have the capacity to jolt readers from their own lives, transport them somewhere else, and have a viewpoint and find a courage they, themselves, hadn’t experienced before. On a human rights level, I think these stories transcend markets. People who otherwise wouldn’t be drawn to stories of human rights are drawn to these stories for its literary component and messages. In that, they learn things happening in the world that they didn’t before.