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| Former top North Korean actress builds new life as South Korean bar maid |
| 2004-02-26 |
| Tip o’ the hat to Conrad. EFL. Before she defected, Joo Sun Young was one of North Korea’s rare "Class-One" actresses, hand-picked to play the coveted role of the regime leader’s wife and "mother" of all North Koreans. Today, she sells beer and sings songs for drunken South Korean businessmen at a low-rent Seoul bar. The crowd knows she once performed for North Korea’s inner circle, which is in part why they like hollering for her to fill their glasses. "I sometimes feel humiliated at how my life has been downgraded. But I thank my customers for coming to my place. This is my life. I have come a long way," she says. Somehow I think you’re better off. Joo’s journey from the spotlights of Pyongyang to the dim lights of backstreet Seoul mirrors both the dreams and fears of many who flee totalitarian North Korea. Joo was a 16-year-old violin student in 1981 when communist party talent scouts came to her high school in the northeastern town of Kyongsong and took her away. She was handed a baggy military uniform and told she was joining the military. Reminiscent of the screenings of maidens for the kings of ancient Korea, party officials inspected "every inch" of her body for imperfections. She did not mind. "I was proud and excited that the party chose me," Joo says. Ew-w-w-w-w-w-w. For six years she served in the Pyongyang Garrison Command’s esteemed performing arts troupe -- and was allowed to visit her parents only once. Joo got a powerful boost when Kim Jong Il, son and heir of then President Kim Il Sung, handed her the "Class-One" title, reserved for the few actors portraying members of the Kim family. The job was so sacred she was barred from taking other roles. Prolly just as well; once you’ve played the Great Leader’s Wife, what else is there? Joo’s best-known film was the 1983 epic "Far and Away from the Command Post," in which she played Kim Jong Suk, Kim Il Sung’s wife, as a young guerrilla fighting Japanese colonialists. Joo’s exalted life changed after Kim Il Sung died in 1994, famine struck North Korea and actresses scattered to find new jobs. By then she was married with a son and daughter. To earn extra cash she overstayed a travel visa to China in 2000 to run a border town coffee shop. Twice she was deported, but bribed North Korean guards to let her back into China. Finally, a South Korean government agent in China realized who she was and arranged her flight to Seoul in January 2003. In August, she borrowed $60,000 from a bank to open her bar, Taedongkang Hof, named after the river that runs through Pyongyang. She hired two North Korean women, who, like her, left children behind. That has to suck. Her background is her attraction, and she entertains customers with nonpolitical South and North Korean ditties, including the popular "Women Are The SKors don’t want to know. "I want to be a rich businesswoman," Joo says. "I concentrate on work not to think about my children, but when I see delicious food, I can’t help crying. I wonder whether my children are not starving." Okay, tough call -- stay in North Korea and starve with the kids or escape to the South and maybe, just maybe, work something out. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 Interesting example of bias in this article. Read just the first half and you get the clear impression she was much better off in NK and she has to work in a sleazy bar to survive in the South. Its only when you get to last couple of paragraphs you find out that this is a hard nosed business decision she has freely made in order to fulfil the capitalist dream and get rich. Good luck to her! |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-2-26 7:36:29 PM |
| #3 Nora makes her final comeback has an RB Meme. Fitting. We are big picture oriented. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-2-26 4:57:08 PM |
| #2 Blame it on the Joos! |
| Posted by: mjh 2004-2-26 1:07:50 PM |
| #1 "I am big. The pictures got small." |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-2-26 8:41:11 AM |