在朝鲜，饥饿是一种什么样的体验？

When you are always hungry, all you think about is food.

In the free world, children dream about what they want to be when they grow up and how they can use their talents.

When I was four and five years old, my only adult ambition was to buy as much bread as I liked and eat all of it.

When you are always hungry, all you think about is food.

I couldn’t understand why my mother would come home with some money and have to save most of it for later.

Instead of bread, we would eat only a little bit of porridge（粥）or potatoes.

My sister and I agreed that if we ever became adults, we would use our money to eat bread until we were full.

We would even argue about how much we could eat.

She told me she could eat one bucket of bread; 

I said I could eat ten.

She would say ten, I would say one hundred!

I thought I could eat a mountain of bread and I would never be filled up.

在朝鲜，人们怎么样过冬？

One day when I was about five years old, my mother had to go off to do some business, so she took me there at six in the morning, when it was still dark, to wait in line（排队） for her.

The worst times were the winters.

There was no running water and the river was frozen.

There was one pump（抽水机）in town where you could collect fresh water, 

but you had to line up（排队）for hours to fill your bucket（水桶）.

One day when I was about five years old, my mother had to go off to do some business, so she took me there at six in the morning, when it was still dark, to wait in line for her.

I stood outside all day in the freezing cold, and by the time she came back for me, it was dark again.

I can remember how cold my hands were, and I can still see the bucket and the long line of people in front of me.

在朝鲜，金日成的形象是什么样的？

His biography said he could control the weather with his thoughts。

In the classroom every subject we learned—math, science, reading, music—was delivered with a dose of propaganda.

    Propaganda[prɒpə'gændə]n.〔政府或政党为了影响民意而进行的〕宣传

When I finally learned to read by myself, I couldn’t get enough books to satisfy me.

Again, most of them were about our Leaders and how they worked so hard and sacrificed so much for the people.

One of my favorites was a biography of Kim Il Sung.

It described how he suffered as a young man while fighting the Japanese imperialists, surviving by eating frogs and sleeping in the snow.

Our Dear Leader had mystical powers.

His biography said he could control the weather with his thoughts, and that he wrote fifteen hundred books during his three years at Kim Il Sung University.

Even when he was achild he was an amazing tactician, and when he played military games, his team always won because he came up with brilliant new strategies every time.

在朝鲜，人们怎么用数学课进行洗脑宣传？

If youdidn’t say it, you would be criticized for being too soft on our enemies.

In second grade we were taught simple math, but not the way it is taught in other countries.

In North Korea, even arithmetic is a propaganda tool.

A typical problem would go like this: “If you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two, how many dead American bastards do you have?”

We could never just say “American”—that would be too respectful.

It had to be “American bastard,” “Yankee devil,” or “big-nosed Yankee.”

If you didn’t say it, you would be criticized for being too soft on our enemies.