Entry — 17th Day of the 3rd Month, Year 115 Juche
Location: Sector 42, Hamhung
Written by: Ri Chun-hwa
We counted again at dawn. The People’s Committee says 10,403,325 remain. The number was read over the loudspeaker twice, slow, so no one could mistake it. Last harvest we were told 26 million. Now less than half.
The streets are wrong, Chun-hwa. Apartment blocks on Rakwon Street stand half-dark. Whole floors with no lamps, no cooking smoke. My unit’s ration team used to feed 18 families. This week we feed 7. The other flats are sealed. Red paper on the doors. No one talks about where they went.
Work shift at the chemical complex starts at 6, but the rail car only comes half full. Machines that needed 5 men now run with 2. My hands bleed from pulling levers meant for three. The foreman says nothing. He is missing his brother. We are all missing someone.
Food is the same story. The fields outside the city go to the horizon, but I see old women and children pulling plows because the oxen died and the tractors have no fuel, no drivers. The distribution center gave us corn and salt. No rice this month. Mother chews slower now, trying to make it last. She asks if my sister in Pyongyang is still alive. I lie and say yes. The lines are down.
At night the city is quiet in a way it never was. No crowds at the train station. No shouting at the market. Even the patrols are thinner. The young officer at our block checkpoint used to be 19. The one there now looks 14. He holds his rifle like it’s too heavy.
The radio says we are strong, that the enemy’s sanctions and disease have failed, that 10,403,325 is more than enough to defend the Republic. They play military songs louder than before. But between songs you can hear the wind in empty buildings. It sounds like the sea.
I don’t write this to betray, Chun-hwa. I write it because if I don’t, I will forget what 26 million looked like. I will forget how full the markets were during Chuseok, how the square on Kim Il Sung’s birthday could not hold us all.
Tomorrow we are told to report for “reorganization of labor.” They are consolidating districts. Mother says it means we will move. I don’t know where. I don’t know who will be left to move.
We are 10,403,325. I write my name, Ri Chun-hwa, every morning to make sure I am still one of them.