While growing up in Wellington, New Zealand, Ijen Kim wanted to know more about Russia, so she sought out the Soviet sailors at the town’s port and asked them to teach her Russian. Despite this informal beginning, Kim went on to study the language in Paris and work as a translator for the official presidential website of the Kremlin from 2003 to 2017, furthering her appreciation for nuanced perspectives on other cultures. In The Snuff Bottle Boy (Crux Publishing),Kim gives readers a unique view into another country that has long fascinated her: North Korea. Through the character of Mickey, a member of Pyongyang’s Chinese community, the city’s only “foreign community,” Kim shows how daily life there is unlike anything those outside North Korea might imagine.
What gave you an interest in travel and living abroad?
I never saw a passport until I got my own when I was 22 and left for Paris to continue my studies. I was very fortunate that the French government gave me a scholarship and made it possible for me to train as an interpreter in Paris. I liked the idea of being a bridge between peoples and cultures and making communication possible. Currently, I am based in Vienna, where I work as a conference interpreter.
Why did you decide to leave Russia?
I was very happy living in Russia, but I never had any illusions about the political regime and the direction it would take. I ended up in a situation where I was no longer only translating the president, but also was being asked to translate other material too, making me feel that I was not just conveying to the world the Kremlin’s view, which I think is a perfectly legitimate task, but was taking part in the Russian state propaganda machine. It was not an easy decision to leave Russia. But I was lucky that I had a choice and I sensed it was the right moment to make the move.
What was your connection to North Korea?
I have no connection to North Korea other than a long-standing interest in the country. I studied taekwondo in Moscow for a long time, and our school had strong connections with Pyongyang. I studied the Korean language for a while, too. Ijen is a made-up name that I liked the sound of, and Kim was the name of a pet guinea pig I owned at the time. I never knew back then that I would someday write a novel with a Korean theme.
How does Mickey differ from what we might expect of a “typical” resident of Pyongyang?
I am under absolutely no illusions about the nature of the regime there, but it would also be false to imagine that people there do not have their little joys and pleasures. It is banal to say that we are fundamentally all alike, but it is so. Mickey is not a typical Pyongyang resident though. He comes from a community that has a lot more choice and freedom, today at least, than your average Pyongyang resident.
How did you research the Chinese community in Pyongyang?
There were a number of sources about the Chinese community in Pyongyang. Some of my information came from Russian researchers who work in this area. I read a lot of books, articles. My main source of information was a site put together by the North Korean Chinese students in Xiamen and Guangzhou. This was all in Chinese and had detailed information about their lives in China as well as their lives back in North Korea.
What do you hope your book makes people realize about life in North Korea?
Even in Moscow, foreigners would come with these pictures in their heads from the grim, drab days of Soviet-era shortages or images of Stalin-era labor camps and would express surprise when they’d see us all just living, laughing, going about an ordinary-seeming life. And yet the authoritarian regime is not a myth. I hope that my book might help people realize that North Koreans are not the robotic, faceless masses often portrayed, but are no different to the rest of us. They just happen to be living in this very particular, difficult environment, and they have adapted accordingly.
Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator based in Paris.
