Kimchi days

This article was published in early 1998 in a magazine called "Humanitarian Affairs" and this was the introduction: Marie-France Bourgeois worked as an expert in assessing and monitoring humanitarian aid for ECHO in North Korea in 1997 and 1998. Below is an exerpt from her diary.

" It's a cold, crisp October morning. The sun is shining and I am being driven along the deserted highway in a rented Mercedes - our official ECHO vehicle, the only car available. That's a first for me: a humanitarian aid worker in a Mercedes! We're five minutes from the national capital, Pyongyang, and we have yet to pass another car. The double white lines are redundant. There is no traffic at all just outside this city of a million people. What planet am I on?

PS: The photo represents a nurse at the Wonsan orphanage with one of the many orphans. In this particular orphanage I was taken to a room filled with 25 dying children on a gray autumn morning of 1997. I shall write on this difficult morning in a later blog page... 10 years after when I remember that dreadful morning tears fill my eyes... How can human do this to babies???

From a distance, alii can see on the road are blobs of blue and red. As our car rolls alongside, I realise I'm seeing children in uniform, hundreds of them, marching and chanting energetically. Some of them carry huge banners with slogans glorifying the Great Leader. Where are they going? I see no schools, no play grounds, no
buildings, only the highway and the surrounding fields.

"They're going to harvest kimchi in the fields,' Mr Yun, my interpreter explains. He is my shadow for the duration of my mission in North Korea. Kim what? Kimchi. Kimchi is for Koreans, from North and South, what wine is to the French: never a meal without it!

Kimchi is a long green and white cabbage which is harvested in October, pickled and then eaten until stocks run out in about July. You mean to say that the kimchi I have been eating since my arrival in August is not the real thing? Of course not. That's the stuff made with pickled cucumbers, eaten during the summer until the new harvest is in.

Making kimchi is a traditional family activity that predates communism. It gathers the entire family around the mother, each of whom has her secret recipe. As we go through the suburbs, I see big brown clay pots full of kimchi on everyone's balconies. They are full of finely shredded cabbage, radish, onions, garlic, ginger and of course, red peppers, a symbol of virility here. When a boy is born, Koreans hang a cord bearing red peppersoutside the house. The kimchi has to ferment for at least five days at 15 degrees centigrade to produce the authentic taste and texture. It supplies most of the vitamins in the diet during the winter.

Suddenly, we catch up with five heavily overloaded trucks. At last, we are not alone on the highway! They belch out dark fumes into the clear sky. They run not on diesel nor gasoline -- since the collapse of the communist system, North Koreans have little access to fuel -- but on a local concoction that makes the engines hiccup all the time. They are so overloaded that they sway under the weight of their cargo of kimchi, dropping cabbage heads along the highway in a trail.

It goes without saying that kimchi is the national dish, so national that the North Koreans have declared the harvest a national holiday. It's the only holiday not related to some communist remembrance date. From the excitement I pick up, I would say that kimchi days are the most significant, sociable holiday in the country's calendar.

In truth, the holiday is a means for the Communist Party to institutionalise some extra days of particularly hard work. The entire workforce and transport system, consisting mostly of trucks belonging to the army, are mobilised for the occasion. Some non-governmental organisations are complaining they cannot get essential drug supplies to targeted hospitals on time because all army trucks rented from the government have been requisitioned to carry goods other than ECHO's medical supplies. Blame it on kimchi days.

Even my monitoring visits are hampered by the frenzied activity. I go to a warehouse to check ECHO-funded stocks of High Energy Milk. No chance. The person with the key has gone to the fields to give a hand with the harvesting. Blame it kimchi days. I go to a centre for the elderly, and ask to see the group of single widows I know are supposed to be there. Sorry, not today. They've all gone picking_. yes, kimchi. Even my home help won't come to work - she says she has to go and pick kimchi too.

Like most people, I enjoy Asian food, even after the stress of missions to North Korea and a bout of hepatitis. Do not invite me for rice and kimchi.I've eatenn more than enough of them for a lifetime already."