The second characteristic: Our Black Market Generation has had wide access to outside media and information. The private market has provided more than food and clothing — it has also provided TVs, bootleg South Korean movies and K-pop videos, USBs and DVDs. As a girl in North Korea, I saw “Titanic,” “Cinderella,” “Pretty Woman” and “Snow White” — not to mention WWE wrestling.

As American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote: “It is not actual suffering but a taste of better things which excites people to revolt.”

Yeon-mi Park: The hopes of North Korea’s ‘Black Market Generation’