Westerner’s book lifts lid on daily life inside North Korea

‘People don’t sit around talking about Kim Jong-un all day. People have lives’

‘You find yourself stuck in this cage, trying to have a conversation about something, but also about nothing’

Few people can claim to have heard the chilling sound of a North Korean ballistic missile flying overhead, but on Sept 15 2017, Lindsey Miller, a musical director living in the capital Pyongyang, recalls being jolted from her bed by a peculiar rumbling.

The unfamiliar sound was made by a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range test missile – designed to deliver nuclear warheads – which was launched near Pyongyang airport, flying 2,300 miles and setting off emergency alerts in

Japan. Ms Miller ran into the garden outside her home at the British embassy. “I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it and it was just like a plane going overhead, a very distant plane but it didn’t fade as quickly,” she said. “It was at a time when we were all on edge.” The anecdote features in her book, North Korea – Like Nowhere Else, a photographic exploration of the authoritarian state due to be released today. Ms Miller, an award-winning composer from Glasgow, was granted a window on life in the hermit kingdom when accompanying her husband on a diplomatic posting from 2017 to 2019.

The period was one of the most tumultuous in North Korea’s history, spanning a spike in tensions between Pyongyang and the US amid fears of nuclear war, to a sudden and unprecedented détente that led to Kim

Jong-un and US President Donald Trump meeting in Singapore.

Ms Miller’s book, the first of its kind by a Westerner, offers a snapshot of daily life and her interactions with ordinary North Koreans.

“I thought, this is an amazing opportunity to go somewhere in a capacity where hardly anybody else gets to go, in a way that few people get to go. And there’s got to be something there that I can explore,” she said in an interview.

As a foreign resident, she was able to roam without minders around the city, hike solo in the mountains and share beers and Netflix with train conductors on the long journey to China.

She could discuss Brexit and music with millennials, wander off the beaten track to impoverished, unseen corners, and enjoy the beauty of Mount Myohyang with picnicking families and their karaoke machines.

“People don’t sit around talking about Kim Jong-un all day. People have lives,” she said.

At times she was haunted by the deprivation of workers in the countryside, but also amused by the absurdity of sitting a driving test with an instructor whose breath stank of soju, the local alcoholic brew.

Ms Miller said she had to lay aside her preconceptions of the country.

“It’s easy to assume that we know on a very generalised, simplified level what life is like for people there,” she said. Her book explores the extent to which genuine relationships can exist under the oppressive scrutiny of the regime. “It’s really difficult developing relationships with people because there is no clear line between authenticity and falseness,” she explained.

Ms Miller also describes how relating to people can be a frustrating “diplomatic dance” that can never truly be free from the country’s harsh political environment, in which citizens are strictly controlled and face stiff penalties for resistance.

“You do find yourself, two people, stuck in the middle of this cage, trying to balance a natural curiosity, careful small talk, and have a conversation about something, but also about nothing, and then form some kind of friendship,” she said.

In one of her most memorable encounters, she tells how an older man

approached her in a Pyongyang water park, thrusting an inflatable ring in the shape of a duck into her hands.

“It had a tiny, brand-new North Korean baby, all swaddled up, fast asleep in the middle,” she said, recounting how they had tried to exchange pleasantries and a snatched conversation about family, until an official in a suit ended their spontaneous, joyful moment.

“Instead of relying on in-depth, emotional conversations with people, it’s actually more about smaller cherished moments where maybe that lid lifts and you do see a bit of someone that they are willing to share with you and you feel very privileged,” she observed about her time in the country.

Ms Miller said she hoped that her book would change the narrative about the pariah state away from politics, and open a window for readers to see people as human beings rather than products of their environment.

“It’s really important to shift the focus onto the human beings who are there and hopefully, in doing so, create a new kind of conversation,” she said.