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Growing Up in Exile: Who Is Monique Macías?

Growing Up in Exile: Who is Monique Macías?Who is Monique Macías? Currently an author, Monique Macías was one of the only foreign students at the prestigious Mangyongdae Revolutionary School in Pyongyang, North Korea. Now out of exile and in her 40s, Monique Macías often depicts her unconventional upbringing as a black African adolescent in articles and memoirs.

Born in Equatorial Guinea in 1970, only two years after the country gained independence from Spain, her father, Francisco Macías Nguema, was the small country’s first elected president. As a new president, Macías sought to form relationships with leaders of other countries such as North Korean President Kim Il-sung.

Monique Macías stated that her father and Kim Il-sung became fast friends because they had “a lot in common”, pointing out that “both fought against colonial powers and both built their support base through nationalism.”

Regardless, Francisco Macías had a short term due to a series of illegal acts he implemented through the Equatorial Guinean government. In the late 1970s. Francisco Macías was overthrown as president of Equatorial Guinea and tried for numerous crimes including genocide, embezzlement and treason. Francisco Macías was executed by firing squad in the late 1970s.

Foreseeing his exile and later execution, Franciso Macías sent his three children to North Korea to live and receive an education. Monique Macías, along with her sister and brother, attended Mangyongdae Revolutionary School in Pyongyang, North Korea, where they learned to shoot Kalashnikov rifles and participated in daily physical drills that involved running and climbing.

Formerly an all-boys school, the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School made a new class for Macías and her sister as an exception. The special treatment often led other students to ask: who is Monique Macías and why do she and her siblings deserve preferential treatment? Macías was not too young to recognize the special treatment that she and her siblings received in Pyongyang:

“[We] were the only Korean-speaking long-term foreign residents during that period. We lived a privileged lifestyle compared to other foreign students and the majority of North Korean people. Throughout those years Kim Il-sung stayed in regular contact with us…”

Macias lived in exile in Pyongyang for 15 years before relocating in 1994.

So, who is Monique Macías outside of exile? Still affected by the conditions in which she spent her formative years, Macías continues to author memoirs and articles about her incredibly unconventional childhood and discusses how living in Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Spain and the United States informed her opinions of the North Korean regime.

“There are people in North Korea who know that this is not the right way to live,” she said in an interview with Reuters. “I don’t think it’s going to collapse easily.”

However, Monique Macías does not shy away from defending the country that took her in upon her father’s death and formed her childhood:

“I have found that Western media normally just focuses on nuclear issues, politics or human rights. Together, all this makes people think that North Korea is an evil country and that its people are simply robots….But having lived there, I am proof that all of these things are not always true.”

In the 2000s, Monique Macías published her memoir “I’m Monique, From Pyongyang” in Korean.

Photo: Flickr

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Living Conditions in North Korea: A Story of Extremes

Living Conditions in North Korea
Refugees and journalists consistently cite dire living conditions in North Korea, one of the most repressive authoritarian nations in the world. Leaking information from the secretive police state, they report firsthand knowledge to outsiders. According to these sources, the North Korean government commits severe human rights abuses against its citizens, and the government can barely feed its own people.

A 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report cited numerous human rights abuses in North Korea, including murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, forced abortions and sexual violence. The government extracts unquestioning obedience through public executions, arbitrary detention, forced labor, tight travel restrictions and religious persecution. Citizens have no basic freedoms such as the right to expression, assembly, political opposition or independent media. A sociopolitical stratification system divides North Koreans into three classes: “loyal,” “wavering” and “hostile.”

The specter of prison is one means of keeping the population in line. North Korea’s draconian three generations rule punishes the entire immediate family if one member is convicted of a serious crime. The next two generations born in the camp are then detained there for life. Existence in the camps is extreme. Clothing and food are so scarce that prisoners survive on rats and anything else they can catch. Inmates are frequently left stunted and deformed from long hours of hard labor. Twelve-hour days, seven days a week is the normal work schedule.

Life outside of the prison camps has its own grave challenges. Living conditions in North Korea are characterized by deprivation. The elite ruling class enjoys basic benefits of modern life such as indoor plumbing, cars, meat, coffee and a few luxury items. The middle class receives sufficient food and occasional new clothes. Most people, however, struggle to survive. Half of the nation’s 24 million people live in extreme poverty. North Korea’s annual GDP per capita is $1,800, making it 197th in the world and only 2 percent of South Korea’s.

One-third of North Korean children are stunted from malnutrition. For most people, meat is an unaffordable luxury. They subsist on fermented cabbage known as kimchi, rice, corn and porridge. Most homes are heated by open fireplaces, and many have no flush toilets. Electricity, for those fortunate enough to have it, is unreliable and sporadic. Power might be available for only a few hours each day. Frequently, cell phones are used as flashlights during outages.

Theoretically, education and healthcare are free in North Korea. However, school children must provide financially for desks, chairs, building materials and heat. Patients must provide their own medications, pay for heat and cook their own meals at home.

Still, living conditions in North Korea are showing some improvement, particularly for the elite who are privileged enough to reside in the capital of Pyongyang. According to the South Korea Central Bank, the North Korean economy grew by almost 4 percent in 2016. Despite spotty service and no internet, there are now 1.5 million mobile phone users. Even in smaller cities outside of Pyongyang, electric bikes from China and Japan can be seen mingling with the country’s ubiquitous bicycles.

In Pyongyang, people are buying smartphones, tablets, hi-fi speakers and HDTVs. With the exception of accessing the internet, North Korean smartphones have similar capacities to those in other nations. In place of the internet, citizens use a state-controlled intranet. There are North Korean versions of Google, Facebook, chat rooms and online dating. Food courts in Pyongyang malls offer American-style fast food restaurants serving milkshakes and French fries. Skating rinks opened in 2013, ushering in a rollerblading craze for those wealthy enough to afford skates.

Despite difficult living conditions in North Korea, its people make the best of their circumstances. In some ways, their lives are not so different from those in democratic countries. North Koreans play video games and beach volleyball. They enjoy picnics complete with food, beer and karaoke. And of course, their teenagers take lots of selfies. Hope remains that the situation can improve so that all of its people can enjoy the living conditions that its wealthiest citizens currently do.

– Anna Parker

Photo: Flickr