Even two decades after he fled North Korea, even with an abiding hatred of the ruling dictatorship, Sim Ju-il sometimes still relives the days when he goose-stepped past the nation’s revered founder, Kim Il Sung, as a young man. Alone on a Seoul street, he’ll pretend his umbrella is a rifle and present arms as he lifts his now aged legs in a rigid, still springy march and remembers the long-ago, exalted feeling.
“I was proud of myself because not too many people got to take part in these marches, and I still have that pride,” said Sim, 67, who participated in military parades in 1972 and 1985 — first as a goose-stepper and later riding on a military vehicle — before later defecting to South Korea. “I think North Korean military parades are the best in the world.”
Ahead of a massive military parade Sunday to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s socialist government, there are mixed feelings among ex-North Korean soldiers who goose-stepped in previous years’ parades. Pride, for some like Sim, but bitterness among others who say they were beaten, battered and malnourished during intense training sessions that never seemed to end. There’s also acknowledgement that the privilege of marching in one of the North’s premier events guaranteed speedy promotion and higher social standing.
Another former North Korean goose-stepper, Kim Jungah, was once proud of her marching but now feels she was physically abused. Still, she, too, sometimes dusts off her goose-stepping skills for South Koreans curious about the harsh training she experienced ahead…
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