Barbara Demick is an authority on the everyday lives of North Koreans. Formerly the Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent in Beijing and Seoul, and acclaimed author of Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea—the harrowing account of six North Korean defectors. Demick’s responses are quiet, yet assertive, the emotional weight of the stories of loss, sadness and desperation is evident.

“I read a poll somewhere that said that one quarter of North Korean defectors had thought about going back. I was surprised it wasn’t all of them.” For those tenacious and desperate North Koreans who evade armed guards and wade through the icy cold Yulan river—the thin vein of water separating North Korea from China—their lives in South Korea are often troubled. Adapting to the consumerism, capitalism and democracy is challenging when you’ve come from a country that adheres to an inhumane and depriving ideology.

"I think any exposure to the outside world is positive for North Korea"

“They’ve left their country, their families and their professions. It’s a big loss.” Having moved from one of the world’s most antiquated countries to the world’s eleventh largest economy and a hub of consumerism, it’s completely disorientating: “the light, the colours, the traffic, the pollution, the individualism—though North Koreans can be pretty individualistic too—the density. The competition and the choice. North Koreans, like people from other communist countries, sometimes have a hard time coping with the freedom of choice and occupation they have.”

Nothing to Envy, Demick’s acclaimed 2009 book, is the story of six ordinary North Koreans living in Chongjin in the north-east of the country, and who eventually defect to South Korea via China. Their testimonies are extensive and detailed—they unequivocally describe the horrors of the regime that they lived under, and the brutal impact this had on them. Given the specificity of the defectors’ stories, Demick defends their veracity: “I’m sure they’re accurate because for all of the people in the book, I interviewed others who knew them. I think there was one only person who I wasn’t able to confirm.”

“I interviewed everyone separately”, Demick continues, “and they confirmed each other’s stories. One of the reasons I picked defectors from one city was as a way of checking what they said, because it’s true that defectors and refugees have a tendency to exaggerate—North Koreans no more than anyone else—but if you have everybody from the same city and they say “I saw dead children behind the train station in 1994”, it corroborates with what the others say. Also, they are ordinary people. They don’t claim to be nuclear scientists or to have been tortured in prison camps. They really were ordinary.”

Kim Jong-Un, who assumed the leadership of the hermit kingdom in 2012, has been keen to promote and increase tourism, especially to Pyongyang—dubbed a ‘show city’ due to the disparity between it and the actual economic and social condition of the rest of the country. Jong-Un’s tourism drive is motivated by one consideration: the need for foreign currency. By charging tourists considerable sums to visit the world’s most secretive country, tourists’ foreign currency can be used to support the elites’ lavish and kleptocratic lifestyles. But Demick is in favour of tourism: “I think it has a net positive effect.”

"Don’t fall asleep on the bus and look at the people carefully... none of the parading soldiers were wearing socks"

“The amount of money that comes in through tourism is relatively minor, and I think any exposure to the outside world is positive for North Korea. It is corrosive to the North Korean regime, but positive for the people.” That said, Demick is keen to emphasise the responsibility that tourists have, “I think tourists need to be briefed in advance and understand that they are representatives of ‘the West’ and are watched very carefully. In a way, tourists are ambassadors.”

Information is increasingly seeping into North Korea, across the Chinese border in the form of foreign DVDs, through mobile phone conversations with the outside world, and snippets of the unimaginable prosperity seen on South Korean TV shows. And, yes, it is coming through tourism: “the North Koreans see how you’re dressed, the kind of camera you have, your shoes—they see the prosperity of ‘the West’.”

Despite tourists being very closely monitored in North Korea, Demick says “If you go in with your eyes open there are things you can see”—you can witness the real North Korea: the brutal authoritarianism in all its cruel and decrepit glory. “If you pay attention on the drive through the countryside, don’t fall asleep on the bus and look at the people carefully. At the statue of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, none of the parading soldiers were wearing socks.”

North Koreans still believe in the sycophantic ideology that their regime peddles, regardless of the evident wealth of the tourists who peer at them curiously from the windows of their bus. “I don’t think there are zero believers. Though certainly the number of believers is diminishing. In the last 20 years, since the famine, we have seen that the regime can’t feed its own people. Despite the information blockade, and the lack of outside television or communication, there is word of mouth.”

“People know that China is much wealthier; China is the most corrosive force against North Korea, because while there isn’t much transmitted through the DMZ, there is traffic between China and North Korea. And North Koreans always thought they were superior and richer than the Chinese, and now they see that the Chinese eat rice everyday and they’re dramatically wealthier. People know that their own regime is to blame. But because they’re powerless to change it, they try not to think about it, because thinking about it would make them crazy. So, they march in step.”

“I could imagine a situation where North Korea evolves economically but doesn’t open up politically.” Demick is gloomy and pessimistic about the prospects for North Korea, and skeptical about potential unification with South Korea: “I don’t think it’s an inevitability. I used to, but now I see how successful the Chinese system is, without political liberties. The arrogance that we once had about the inevitability of democracy is wrong.”