Hyung-Jin Kim
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (AP) – When the waves wash trash onto the beaches of frontline South Korean islands, Kang Dong Wan can often be found hunting for what he calls his “treasure” – rubbish from North Korea that provides a peek into a place that’s shut down to most outsiders.
“This can be very important material because we can learn what products are manufactured in North Korea and what goods people use there,” Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
He was forced to turn to the delicate information-gathering method because COVID-19 has made it much harder for outsiders to find out what’s going on inside North Korea, one of the world’s most cloistered nations even without pandemic border closures.
The variety, amount and increasing sophistication of the trash, he believes, confirms North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong-Un is pushing for the production of various kinds of consumer goods and a bigger industrial design sector to meet the demands of his people and improve their livelihoods.
Kim, despite his authoritarian rule, cannot ignore the tastes of consumers who now buy products at capitalist-style markets because the country’s socialist public rationing system is broken and its economic woes have worsened during the pandemic.
“Current North Korean residents are a generation of people who’ve come to realise what the market and economy are. Kim can’t win their support if he only suppresses and controls them while sticking to a nuclear development programme,” Kang said. “He needs to show there are some changes in his era.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Kang regularly visited Chinese border towns to meet North Koreans staying there. He also bought North Korean products and photographed North Korean villages across the river border. He can’t go there anymore, however, because China’s anti-virus restrictions limit foreign travellers.
Since September 2020, Kang has visited five South Korean border islands off the country’s west coast and collected about 2,000 pieces of North Korean trash including snack bags, juice pouches, candy wrappers and drink bottles.
Kang said he was amazed to see dozens of different kinds of colourful packaging materials, each for certain products like seasonings, ice cream bars, snack cakes and milk and yoghurt products. Many carry a variety of graphic elements, cartoon characters and lettering fonts.
Some still can seem out of date by Western standards and are apparent copycats of South Korean and Japanese designs. Kang recently published a book based on his work titled Picking up North Korean Trash on the Five West Sea Islands. He said he’s now also started to scour eastern South Korean front-line beaches.
Other experts study the diversity of goods and packaging designs in North Korea through state media broadcasts and publications, but Kang’s trash collection allows a more thorough analysis, said head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG Ahn Kyung-su, a website focussing on health issues in North Korea.
Kang’s work also opens up a fascinating window into North Korea. Ingredient information on some juice pouches, for instance, shows North Korea uses tree leaves as a sugar substitute.
Kang suspects that’s because of a lack of sugar and sugar-processing equipment.
He said the discovery of more than 30 kinds of artificial flavour enhancer packets could mean that North Korean households cannot afford more expensive natural ingredients like meat and fish to cook Korean soups and stews.
