Korea,” So Won says. “He was always drinking to avoid reality.” The reality was that North Korea’s system had long ago ceased to function: Its economy had stalled, its government was desperate, and its people were growing increasingly aware that their lives had changed for the worse. From 1945 — when the Korean Peninsula was split by the U.S. and the Soviet Union following the Japanese occupation — until the 1970s, North Korea was the richer of the two nations. The communist North enjoyed a better infrastructure and a stronger economy than the democratic South; some Koreans living abroad who had the choice of either country, including So Won’s grand­father who’d moved to Japan, opted to claim citizenship in the North. But over the following decades, life inNorth Korea shifted drastically. The fall of the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the economy. A series of floods and droughts culminated in the Great Famine, or “arduous march,” as it was called, from 1994 to 1998. The famine — along with the regime’s human rights abuses, mismanagement of foreign aid, and funneling of money toward its nuclear program — starved and killed 330,000 North Koreans, according to conservative estimates. The system, which had assigned citizens to state jobs and distributed coupons to buy food and other rations at state stores, started to crumble. A new class of workers emerged, often the women without official posts to report to who could discreetly find off-the-books employment. Women who lived in the northern reaches of the country sometimes