Nothing to Envy

Dr. Kim Ji-eun is introduced in greater detail. At the time of Kim Il-sung’s death, she is twenty-eight and the youngest doctor at the hospital where she works. Her father was an ethnicKorean living in China who immigrated to escape Mao’s Great Leap Forward. As a doctor, she works a twelve-hour day, is exposed to high levels of radiation, donates her own blood and skin grafts, and scavenges for medicinal herbs. She is divorced, and her husband has custody, as is traditional. To survive the famine, she accepts gifts from patients. Upon Kim Il-sung’s death, she is stunned. Meanwhile, her depressed father loses his will to live, and alternates between praising the regime and predicting its total collapse. One of his last acts is to give her a letter that lists her Chinese relatives, telling her these relatives will help.As Kim Jong-il comes to power, she notices that many of her juvenile patients exhibit “wasting,” a condition in which “the starved body eats away at its own muscle tissue” (113). As a new doctor, the children’s deaths affect her painfully: new leadership has not improved conditions in the hospital or the nation.