Cigarettes and what they mean for North Koreans

North Korean cigarettes.

It does not make for a persuasive argument to ask those whose everyday lives are miserable to give up their temporary pleasures of smoking to ensure longevity. According to various refugee testimonies, cigarettes provide a rare source of comfort for North Koreans.

Moreover, cigarettes can save lives in North Korea. They are a ubiquitous form of bribery. Talking to defectors about life in North Korea and their escape from the country, one will frequently hear of cigarettes being used as bribes not only for everyday transactions with bureaucrats, but during the escape process itself. Soldiers too will turn a blind eye at a gift of a few cigarettes.

In a country plagued by shortages of consumable goods, cigarettes are extremely popular among soldiers as supplies often run short.

In the rest of the world too, a cigarette provides pleasure to its smoker; yet in North Korea, the cigarette serve a role beyond that of cherished consumable and have gained value as a type of currency. Perhaps in an environment when basic requirements of survival such as putting food on the table is arduous, cigarettes have worth beyond its practical offerings and gain a symbolic status.

In order to rid the country of this new currency, Kim Jong-il has on several occasions tried to restrict the trade of cigarettes in the black market economy. Nevertheless, this only increased the value of cigarettes and made it into a more valuable form of bribe.

It may not be a coincidence that after these failed attempts, cigarettes began to carry a health warning. Yet this was not easy to accomplish.

Even on North Korea’s cigarette packaging, the cult of Kim plays an important role. Packaging for high-quality cigarettes must contain references to ‘Mt. Paekdu’ or ‘Pyongyang’, which have important associations with Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il respectively. It is for this reason that the notion of putting a health warning on such a ‘holy’ item was, at first, beyond the realm of possibility.

On various occasions, the North Korean government put forward proposals to Kim Jong-il by means of delivering Central Party speeches, asking whether they should remove the sanctified references from cigarette packaging, or not to put in the health warnings.

The decision must have been to go ahead with the health warnings; as can be seen in the picture above, a warning says, ‘Cigarettes may cause lung cancer and heart disease.’

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition to the health labels on prestige cigarettes smoked by Party officials. According to North Korean defector Lee Jong-bok, “When I was living in North Korea, I would use the part of the Rodong Sinmun with Kim Jong-il’s photo in order to roll up a cigarette and smoke away my frustrations. Of course, I did this in secret.”