Black Girl from Pyongyang by Monica Macias

“The popular depictions of both Macias and Kim were shattering to me,” she writes. It wasn’t until Macias left Korea that she learned the most important male role models in her life were considered monsters.

Her fear might seem ironic, given her backstory. Monica, seen here toasting with NoKo first lady Kim Song-ae, was under the care of Kim Il-Sung’s family until she was 17. And she accepted it all as “unquestionable fact,” she writes. “A thousand thoughts crowded my mind.” When he reached out, “I snatched my hand away, turned and started to run, with all the force I could muster.”Įverything she had learned about America as a kid - from the films she watched and the books she read - painted the US as a sinister empire intent on bringing ruin to her homeland. She stumbled upon a white man willing to help her, but immediately recognized his accent as American. When Macias arrived in Beijing, China, as a 17-year-old foreign exchange student, unable to speak Chinese and feeling like an outsider, it was her first time traveling outside of Pyongyang, North Korea, where she’d lived since she was 7. “It became embedded in my mind.” Monica (center) with (from left) her sister Maribel, Kim Song-ae (wife of Kim Il Sung), father Francisco Macias Nguema, surrogate father Kim Il Sung, brother Teo, and her mother. “I grew up believing that America was an evil country who wanted to destroy North Korea,” Macias, 51, told the Post. She writes about her unique upbringing, and her shock in learning how the rest of the world viewed her two fathers, in her new book, “ Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity” (Duckworth). Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, founded a dynasty of dictatorship: his grandson Kim Jong Un is the current supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. (Macias’ brother, Teo, meanwhile was sent to Cuba.) When he was faced with violent uprisings, Nguema sent Macias and her sister to stay with his friend Kim Il Sung - the ruthless leader of the North Korea, who had 100,000 of his own people imprisoned in gulags. The teachings came from the men who raised her - not one but two brutal dictators.įrancisco Macias Nguema, her biological father and the first president of Equatorial Guinea, committed so many atrocities during his reign that the country was dubbed the “Dachau of Africa.”

She was terrified, she said, convinced that she was in imminent danger. The first time Monica Macias met an American, she ran away. G-7 diplomats reject Chinese, North Korean, Russian aggression Trump says he scratched ‘made in South Korea’ sticker off Elton John CD he gave to Kim Jong-un US sending nuclear sub to South Korea in Cold War-era tactic as North Korea threat looms

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Black Girl from Pyongyang by Monica Macias