The Most Dangerous Contraband in North Korea Isn’t a Weapon. It’s a Wish.
By: Jihyun Kang
Growing up in North Korea, Jihyun took inspiration from the smuggled South Korean dramas she watched to create her own unique clothing. After reaching freedom in 2010, she has continued to pursue her interests in fashion and culture as a catalyst for change. She runs several business ventures, practices fine art under the name “Da Gyeol,” and works with the Ministry of Unification as an advisor. She’s pursuing her Masters in Entrepreneurship, Dept. of Future Science & Technology Business, at Korea University.
I grew up in North Korea, and at fifteen, I encountered a Westerner for the first time at the top of Mount Paektu. He stood over 190 centimeters tall with a thick beard, wearing ripped jeans and a frayed T-shirt. In North Korea, worn-out clothing was a symbol of deprivation. Yet my father whispered, "He is wearing that for style." With that single remark, the worldview I had been taught, began, the first time, to crack. And I thought: I want to dress like that, too.
Fashion is more than clothing. It is the moment when individual desire moves faster than collective command. People follow taste before ideology, and express themselves through what they wear long before any political declaration.
A state can enforce a dress code, but it cannot manufacture desire. That is why North Korea's fear of blue jeans was not irrational—it was the regime recognizing, however dimly, that something it could not control was already growing.
Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, argued that transformation always begins at the margins—in forms so crude and insignificant that those in power dismiss them entirely. Christensen built his theory around corporations, but the logic applies to any system that holds a monopoly over its people, including a state. North Korea's regime was so focused on maintaining ideological control at the centre that it ignored what was happening at the bottom.
That bottom was the jangmadang—the spontaneous, bottom-up market ecosystem created by ordinary people to survive after the collapse of North Korea's state-led distribution system. When that system imploded during the Arduous March—a famine in the mid-1990s that killed hundreds of thousands—people built informal markets out of sheer necessity: not revolution, not ideology, but survival. Yet by 2018, a CSIS study found 436 officially recognized markets operating across the country. What began as a desperate improvisation had quietly become the infrastructure keeping North Koreans alive.
These markets did not merely sell food. They became conduits for Chinese clothing, USB drives loaded with South Korean dramas, and glimpses of a world no one had taught them existed. When a system ignores what people actually want, the market finds the gap.
The act of choosing—what to eat, what to wear, what to watch—may seem trivial. But a person who has tasted choice cannot fully return to obedience.
The jangmadang was the first place where North Koreans learned they could survive without the state. That desire did not stay underground—it surfaced. People began wearing jeans, dyeing their hair, and pulling on T-shirts printed with foreign letters. The regime could no longer ignore it. Authorities branded jeans and Western fashion as 'anti-socialist infiltrations' and deployed street patrols. Teenagers caught in these sweeps were sent to re-education camps; in severe cases, their names and home addresses were read aloud on state broadcasts as public shaming (Radio Free Asia).
In 2024, state-run Korean Central Television went so far as to blur the jeans worn by British TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh during a broadcast. The ruling party's official newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, warned that a country could 'become vulnerable and eventually collapse like a damp wall' if it failed to preserve its own way of life (Newsweek, May 2021).
Regulations cannot extinguish human desire; they only raise the price of the forbidden. This is the inflection point Christensen identified: by the time an incumbent recognizes the threat, it is already too late.
To date, more than 34,000 North Koreans have resettled in South Korea (South Korean Ministry of Unification, 2024). At the start of each of those journeys, there was something like my pair of jeans—not ideology, but desire; not a declaration, but a taste; not revolution, but the market.
No government in history has ever successfully suppressed the human impulse to trade, to choose, to want more. Not the Soviet Union. Not Cuba. Not Mao's China. North Korea will not be the exception.
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Jihyun is a participant of the LiNK English Language Program (LELP), which serves to not only help North Korean defectors build confidence and skills in English, but develop their capacity as advocates for this issue. To that end, we partnered with select LELP “columnists” to write and polish personal essays through multiple rounds of external feedback and revision. Our goal is to have more North Koreans share their stories directly and lead efforts to change the narrative.
We believe the North Korean people can achieve their liberty in our lifetime.
Opportunities like LELP invest in the people building that future now. Help more North Koreans find their voice, reach their goals, and lead change on this issue.
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Life in Freedom: A Conversation with Brian
For many years, Brian lived a charmed life in North Korea. He had a loving family, a university education, and a full stomach, but everything changed when the government stopped providing rations and wages for work. To make extra money, Brian's father began working as a broker, helping desperate North Koreans escape to China.
When his father was outed in a newspaper for helping a high profile defector escape, the entire family was put in danger. Brian's parents immediately fled to China. He followed soon thereafter, but was captured upon arrival by Chinese police. He spent the next two weeks in a detention center in China, where he was routinely beaten. Thankfully, LiNK was able to pay for his release so he could avoid repatriation.
Since resettling in South Korea, Brian's been very busy. He began attending university shortly after he arrived, hoping to become a journalist in the future so he can write about North Korea for an international audience. This year, he got married to another North Korean defector and they're now expecting their first child.
Our resettlement coordinator Jihyun was able to catch up with Brian recently to talk about what his life has been like since resettling.
Jihyun: What is the best thing that happened to you this week?
Brian: My pregnant wife and I found out that we are having a daughter! Yeah, we are so happy!I felt so bad watching my wife going through morning sickness. She couldn’t eat properly until recently.
Jihyun: So did you not eat when she couldn’t eat because you felt so bad for her?
Brian: Oh, no. I still ate well, because...you know, I was hungry. Haha.
Jihyun: Oh yeah, I understand. Of course you had to eat well so you could protect and take good care of her when she couldn’t eat. (Brian, his wife, and the photographer laugh.)
Jihyun: What was the most difficult thing when you got out of Hanawon (resettlement center for North Korean defectors)?
Brian: When I first graduated from Hanawon, I still had a thick North Korean accent so people looked at me whenever I started talking, which made me so uncomfortable.
Jihyun: What was your biggest challenge in North Korea? What's your biggest challenge in South Korea?
Brian: In North Korea I didn’t have a lot of difficulty because I was lucky to have a well-off family there. In fact, after I came to South Korea I started having a lot of difficulties because I had to adjust to the new society.
I think getting a job is one of the most difficult challenges for many resettled North Korean refugees. Especially since I am about to graduate from college and have a wife and a baby coming, I feel a little pressure. I just want more South Korean companies to hire more resettled North Koreans without discrimination/stereotype. I have heard from many of my North Korean friends that they have a hard time getting jobs because many companies have negative stereotypes about North Korean people, so they don’t want to hire North Korean candidates.
I am not saying that they have to hire us because we are from North Korea, but I want more companies to willingly hire us if we are qualified regardless of our background.
Also, I believe North Korean defectors in South Korea are still underprivileged in society and have a lot of obstacles. I hope there will be more effective job training and employment programs until more resettled North Koreans settle down in their specific work fields.
Jihyun: What is it like living in freedom in South Korea?
Brian: I really appreciate the freedom that I have here. In some of my college classes, I got to study the South Korean constitution that guarantees our freedom. There are so many types of freedom that I can enjoy. I can’t even count them because there are so many. One thing is the freedom of traveling anywhere I want. Back in North Korea, even traveling to another area was so difficult. Here, as long as I don’t cause trouble or break the law, no one can take away my freedom of movement.
Jihyun: Have you helped any other defectors resettle in South Korea? How?
Brian: Well, I wish I could do more, but right now what I can do is to help other resettled North Korean refugees who want to go to college by sharing my experience and giving them useful tips and advice about college life.
Jihyun: Have your perceptions of Americans and South Koreans changed?
Brian: In North Korea I didn’t really think South Koreans were very different than us because I thought we were all Koreans—the same blood. However, my perception of Americans changed a lot especially after I met LiNK staff and learned about LiNK's supporters.
I used to think Americans were so weird and selfish, because that was how I was taught about Americans in North Korea.
When I was caught by the Chinese police in China, LiNK helped me so much to be released and come to South Korea. I was so moved by that.
Jihyun: What advice would you give to a friend who just arrived in South Korea?
Brian: I want to share everything I have learned with him. I would say to him that he has to do what he wants. There are many options that you can choose for what you are going to do in this new society. If you don’t want to regret your decision in the future, you have to do what you like.
Jihyun: How often do you think about North Korea? What do you think about?
Brian: Not quite often, but I start thinking about North Korea when I am stressed out about my studies or finding a job, because I didn’t really worry about those kinds of things back in North Korea. When I am thinking of North Korea, I usually picture hanging out with my friends there. We played a lot of games, including card games. Also I liked drinking with my good friends too, haha.
Lastly I want to take this chance to say thanks to LiNK staff, volunteers, and supporters. I always appreciate them and thinking about them gives a lot of hope and motivation to do my best for my life.
