The city that never sleeps is in deep slumber.  I have been sitting home for over two months now. My room is both my classroom and my work space. When I arrived here in September 2019, New York was buzzing with a mix of everything. Culture, food, music, and arts-it was full of vibe. 

 Now  my life consists of washing  my hands frequently and wearing a mask to go to the store.  There are restrictions everywhere to prevent the spread of  the virus. The warnings reinforce the new codes of behavior that dominates what was once a vibrant, buzzing and multicultural city. Now social distancing, avoiding crowded spaces, avoiding family, avoiding friends are the new orders. Our normal lives are gone. 

The streets are blocked off. Schools and businesses are closed. Cinemas and restaurants are shuttered. Even the city’s lovely Time Square is empty, lonely and deserted.

Almost 30,000 in New York alone and over 100,000 have died from the virus nationwide.

The doors of my university are closed and my courses restricted online. 

The social and psychological shift that’s taken place under COVID-19’s regime worries me more than the government’s temporary restrictions on our movements to deal with the public health crisis. When fear becomes a prime motivator for people, they lose touch with the better angels of their nature. I’ve seen it firsthand. When I sneezed in public people looked at me with suspicion and ran away. 

This is not the first time I am facing a dictatorial regime.  In the 90’s, while living in my home country of Sierra Leone,  I witnessed a military regime with brutal restrictions. Five years ago I faced the Ebola virus. Both were brutal. But I was not expecting another like this in New York, the buzzing capital of the world.

Since COVID-19 struck, I have seen people lose jobs, family members abandon their sick loved ones. I have seen people buried in body bags, their families unable to participate in giving proper burial rites. I have seen marketplaces increase food prices because everything imported is more expensive these days. I have paid my fair share to  the virus regime.

I came close to the virus myself. A source I interviewed for a university assignment tested positive two weeks after our meeting. She survived. A black African who owns a shop close to my house on Staten Island succumbed to the virus. His shop is still closed and RIP written on it. 

When I started reporting on COVID-19 in New York for my classes months ago, I never thought it would devastate the city and the world like this. The world is on a lockdown. All because of a dictatorial virus.

Barber shops and hair salons are closed and my bushy hair reminds me that these are not normal times. 

I have turned to watching movies, reading books and watching television shows that occupy my time in isolation. I too am succumbing to COVID-19’s state of sadness or dictatorial tendencies. 

But I am trying to make up for what I’ve seen I want to replace bad energy with something positive. I’m playing my part as the dissident in COVID-19’s dictatorship.

Just like I survived the other dictatorial regimes in the past, I am hopeful that I will survive this because this too shall soon pass.

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Across the United States right now, there are around 160 North Koreans, quietly building very different lives after fleeing a country the world looks upon as shadowy and repressive.

It’s a treacherous journey, and getting over the border is only the beginning. In China, refugees run the risk of being intercepted by human traffickers, or sent back by Chinese authorities reluctant to grant them asylum.

Those who find their way to the U.S. still have a long road ahead of them.

“The things they struggle with, most of them, they are alone in the U.S. – it might be loneliness, and they know that unless their family members come out, they will never be able to see their family,” said Hyerim Ko, U.S. Resettlement Coordinator for Liberty in North Korea, a California- based group.

Ko works directly with North Koreans arriving in the U.S. She says they keep a low profile here, fearing repercussions against the families they have left behind. It’s a threat that has become particularly daunting since Kim Jong-Un took power after his father’s death two years ago.

“He [Kim Jong-Un] has been extensively hunting down family members of defectors and expelling them from their homes,” said Ko. “They are sent to collective detention centers… it’s been reported that hundreds of households in Pyongyang have been exiled.”

Recently Pyongyang agreed to allow meetings between family members separated by the Korean War over 50 years ago. It’s a gesture that doesn’t signify any larger change in the regime, according to Ko.

“I believe there’s been reunions before,” said Ko, I don’t think this is really a softening – even if they’re softening, they’re not changing anything inside North Korea on behalf of the people,” she said.

Byong Sun Soh, President of Save North Korean Refugees, lived through the Korean War. He said the reunions are still fraught with danger for anyone who takes up the offer.

“Once they go to Pyongyang they take away their passports. You never know what will happen,” said Soh.

Byung Sun Soh, President of Save North Korean Refugees, with one of his dogs in his Manhattan apartment. Photo by Nidhi Prakash

While the dictatorship in North Korea is now in its third generation, Soh is optimistic that something will change eventually.

“Some day it will happen that they [the North Korean people] will all walk together and destroy [the dictatorship]… they cannot go on to a fourth, fifth, sixth generation,” he said.

Ko’s organization is intent on North Koreans driving change from within their country.

“I can’t speak on behalf of the North Korean people, because I don’t know what they want for their country, so what we’re doing is working with them so they can drive change in their country,” said Ko, “So that at the very least they will be able to meet their basic needs, and they will be able to have food and water, and have basic human rights, the ones that they don’t have now.”

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