North korea

PART TWO

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DON'T look back. Keep your eyes ahead," I panted again andagain as we sprinted across the ice. The frozen surface of the river beneath our feet turned at last

into land. We had stepped into China, and had committed an unredeemable act of treason. On the North Korean side, a soldier yelled, "Shoot! Shoot!" The shout sounded as if it was coming from very near. I heard no

shots, but imagined a bullet grazing past me, lodging itself in a tree

up ahead. Gritting our teeth, we kept going, heading for the nameless

mountain ahead of us. Although my legs were moving, the mountain seemed to be getting farther away.With almost every step I fell to the ground like jelly. The snow was ankle deep, and my limbs were too weak to support my body. When one of us fell, the other pulled him back up. Fear pushed us on and kept us moving; fear prevented us from looking back to see who or what was behind us. "Just a little farther. We're almost there," I gasped. Strangely, I

found a rage surging from within, drowning out the terror that had been gripping me. Had this narrow stretch of frozen river been all that had condemned us? Still,wewere not yet free. Terror laynot only in the guns behind us. Soldiers might appear somewhere ahead too. I said to Young-min, "Check around for patrols; you look right, I'll

look left."

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Snow, fields, mountains. There were no soldiers in this landscape. We were relieved to hear each other's voice say the same words: "No one on this side." Even the urgent shouts of the North Korean soldiers had faded into silence. But this exposed us to the terrifying vacuum of China's vast emptiness, waiting to swallow us whole. China's soldiers might be waiting for their approaching prey, hiding in a future we could not see. But as we continued towards the mountain, we saw no guns and

heard no soldiers' whistles. As we neared its base, we saw no other living thing. Coming face-to-face with the base of the mountain was like coming to seek refuge in the arms of divinity. The countryside was covered with trees, so unlike the barren hills of North Korea. These trees would welcome and hide us. Only a few minutes before, we had looked on this place as if it were a distant planet, but now we were standing within that other world. Only now did we catch our breath, turning to look back towards North Korea. There were no soldiers on our trail. We were seized by ecstasy. As we stood there, gawking at each

other like fools, tears ran down Young-min's cheeks. When he wiped my face with the back of his hand, I realized that I was crying too. But it didn't matter, because crying at times like these was the mark of a true man. Instead of saying this out loud, I made a fist and punched Young-mills chest. He did the same to me. After two or three more punches, the punches became tickles, and we fell about laughing. We had experienced a miracle, and we were proud of our courage. I posed to aim an imaginary rifle at Young-min. He spread his arms wide and puffed out his chest, daring me to shoot. We fell into laughter once again, clutching our bellies and marveling at how we could indulge in such play. Young-min found a pebble on the ground and hurled it in the

direction of North Korea. I felt the vanishing speck dislodge the anger knotted in my stomach and dissipate it. We had not merely

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freed ourselves from the grip of the regime, but hurled it away like the pebble Young-min had thrown. Nevertheless, the silence of the border was oppressive, and I cowered when I registered that ours were the only voices to be heard. But Young-min seemed to derive security from our isolation in this deep woodland, because he spread his arms again and fell backwards onto the snow. "Let's rest here for a few days," he said. "If I freeze to death on this

mountain, that won't be so bad." As he spoke, a bird flew across us from nowhere and, flapping

its wings loudly, passed low over our heads. It felt like an omen, a warning that other living beings were near. Young-min didn't seem to notice. He was making snoring noises and giggling to himself. I wanted to roll about in the snow with him, but didn't have the heart and stood nervously fiddling with my rucksack. We had passed through so many obstacles to get here and, merely moments ago, had stared death in the face. I could think of nothing more wretched than being caught after managing to cross that border. I said, "We don't have time. North Korea will be alerting China. If

westay here, they'll find us. Let'sgo just a bit farther, find a town." "How? We don't know where to go," Young-min replied. I stopped fiddling with my rucksack. As Young-min said, we had

no way of knowing where to go under this new and foreign sky. Perhaps we should follow the Tumen River south. Peering into the woods and hills deeper into China, I spotted what

appeared to be a small village in the distance. I could even make out a woman wearing red. What if she had seen us? Would she have alerted the authorities? The color red sent a shiver through me. Still, I saw no choicebut to head towards the village. "I'm going to check out the village. You stay here. I'll shout if I run

into trouble," I said. I was high on the confidence of having outrun the North Korean

border guards in broad daylight. My announcement woke Young-min from his trance and he seized my arm.

"Where on earth are you going? How do you know there won't be

patrols there?" I replied, "You know how they say there are lots of South Korean

tourists in China. I can pretend I'm one of them who's lost his way.

Do you have a better idea?" Young-min didn't approve and decided to stay where he was, but

I made my way towards the village all the same. I walked quickly without looking round too much, as I didn't want to draw attention to myself. As I neared the woman in red, I saw that she appeared to be in her forties. She looked like an ordinary countrywoman, the sort

that would be wary of strangers. I approached her. "I'm a South Korean tourist. Can I ask you for

directions?" Without saying a word, she hurried ahead of me and gestured

towards a house. She spoke no Korean, but I assumed that she must be pointing to the house of an ethnic Korean.

Many ethnic Koreans live in the three northeastern regions of China, near the border with North Korea. Korean settlers had moved north in large numbers at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. The population of Koreans in this region of Manchuria quickly rose from about 700,000 in 1870 to 1.7 million by the end of Japan's colonial rule. Though Japan was defeated in the Second World War and its occupation had ended, chaos in Korea returned within five years in the form of the Korean War. According to the Chinese Communist Party's policy on minority groups, the Koreans were acknowledged as a Chinese ethnic minority and allowed to settle in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeast China.

By the year 2000, there were some two million ethnic Koreans living in China. Perhaps because all that separated them from their

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fellow Koreans to the south was a political border, the house of the ethnic Korean that I was led to did not look much different from a country hut in my homeland. It didn't have a corrugated iron or cement roof like many of the other buildings surrounding it. These huts were called "earth huts" in North Korea, because their shape suggested that they had been raised from the earth. The hut was shabby. One corner of the mud wall was crumbling,

and it was dearly not looked after. Perhaps the only way it differed from a country hut in North Korea was that it was a larger building. I approached the gate and, when I tried to peer inside, a white dog put its head out and began to bark. I jumped and felt cold sweat trickle down my back. I worried that Young-min might think I was in trouble. "Who's there?" a middle-aged man shouted in Korean from a

stable to the left of the inner courtyard. His beetle-browed face was that of a farmer, large and round like the lid of an iron cauldron. He wore a black imitation leather jacket, but his trousers looked funny. Perhaps he had borrowed those yellow trousers dotted with tiny pink flowers from his wife? He wasn't wearing shoes. I knew it would be a waste of time to try to fool a local, so I reached for my cash. I took out seven hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and showed them to him. "We've just crossed over that river. Could you take us to the city?

Here'swhat I can offer." The man hastened towards me as if he were falling forward and

pulled me into the yard with the strength of an ox. I asked whether we were far from the city, but he ignored me. There was a strong smell of manure. When we went into the house, the heat made my faceflush. There was ondol heating just like in North Korea, where a firein the kitchen circulated the heat under the floor. When I took my shoes off and followed him in, the floor was deliciously hot beneath my feet. For wallpaper, there were sheets of Chinese newspaper glued in a type of papier mache, and I even spotted a portrait of Mao

100 I FUGITIVE Zedong amidst this collage. If someone had done such a thing in North Korea, inadvertently recycling the portrait of Kim II-sung or Kim [ong-il, he would have been sent to a gulag. When I had time to reflect on what I had seen, I wondered whether the reason that China had been able to reform and become more open while North Korea did not lie in the fact that, although the Chinese Communist Party had its own version of the Supreme Leader and even shared a history of leadership cultification similar in some ways to ours, in China the cultification of one man had ceased to be the overriding priority and

modus operandi of the state. But these thoughts came later. My immediate focus was on the

man, who was searching for something in his wardrobe, which appeared to have metal ox shoes for handles. There was a low table with an unfmished meal on it, and on the floor there was a pitchfork, caked with dirt. I realized why he had come out into the yard without

his shoes. "Here, I've found it," he said. He took out a faux black leather

jacket similar to his own along with some dark brown trousers, and

thrust them at me. "Put those on, quickly," he said in a North Hamgyong accent,

distinctive for its characteristic stress on final syllables. Hamgyong Province was in the northernmost parts of North Korea, and perhaps the close geography and history of the area led to their

shared accents. "My clothes are made in Japan," I replied. "I was going to pass

myself off as a tourist .. :' I had dressed especially in Japanese-made clothes because I didn't want to stand out in China with clothes that might give away my identity as a North Korean. My expensive coat was filled with down, and was good for keeping warm in the cold.

He shook his head. "No, you have to dress like a local. If you stand out, they'll notice at the checkpoints. Don't complain, lad. Do as I say. Ah yes, and that money, is that seven hundred dollars for me?"

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I passed the dollar bills to him without a word, in the hope that he would trust me. He hastily counted the notes. His fingernails too were caked with mud. I said, "I have a friend with me." Before recounting his money. the farmer looked up with eyes as

wide as those of an ox that had just slipped on ice. "What? How many?" "One;' I replied. "Well,what are you standing there for?" he asked. "Bring him here." By the time I returned with Young-min, the farmer had changed

into traveling clothes. The bus would arrive at the village in ten minutes, he explained. Impatiently, he helped us change into our new attire. Young-min looked at him in irritation. The black imitation leather jacket that I had put on wasn't too bad, but Young-min had to wear an orange-colored one with prominent Chinese lettering on the back. I stuffed myoid clothes into the rucksack, and tucked the manuscript of my poetry into my coat pocket. We left the house and walked along the unpaved road for five

minutes. The farmer, now wearing dark trousers instead of the yellow ones with pink flowers on them, looked much smarter than he did before. He introduced himself as Chang-yong. He looked more nervous than we were, and kept glancing around with suspicion in his eyes. He spoke quietly, "Don't say a word when you get on the bus. There is a checkpoint on the way to Yanji.Sometimes they check, sometimes they don't. If someone tries to make conversation, just pretend you're deaf. Ifborder guards come onto the bus, I'll speak on your behalf. Remember, lads: don't say a word! You'll be fine. There are ethnic Koreans here who don't speak Chinese. And if you have any more cash with you, give it to me. Ifyou get caught, I can bribe the officers. How much more do you have?" I pretended not to have heard his last question. I was not ready to

entrust my life to a total stranger.

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As we waited for the bus I wondered at the fact that there was a village so close to the border, and flinched nervously at the noise of a passing truck. On the North Korean side, apart from one or two military trucks on the road, the most common sight was a horse- or

ox-drawn cart. Just as farmer Chang-yong had promised, the bus soon arrived.

Young-min and I looked at each other in amazement. It was nothing like the smirks we gave each other when the exceedingly late arrival of our delayed train in Musan was greeted with delighted cries from the passengers. Even in the capital of North Korea, buses never ran on time, but they seemed to do just that here, in a rural Chinese border village. We found empty seats behind Chang-yong and sat down. When the bus door screeched shut, it was like being shut in a cell and I wished we had not boarded the vehicle. But seeing the Chinese around us in noisy conversation, carrying on with their daily routine, I relaxed a little and it seemed as though we had been welcomed into their world. Even though these were Chinese country folk, they seemed carefree in their prosperity. The men looked well fed and the women were as plump as the wives of party cadres in North Korea. Some of them even wore gold jewelry. No one living in the North Korean countryside could make a display of personal wealth in that way because they would immediately become a target for thieves. Even in the bright colors of the clothes worn by these countryside Chinese, I felt I could glimpse an economic confidence.

When we looked out of the window, it was eerie to see the Tumen River and the North Korean lands beyond it. If we had hesitated instead of sprinting across the ice, we might still be standing there in desperation. The Chinese perhaps regarded the North Korean people with pity, as they gazed across at our hills bare of trees. Even we two, who had just crossed over from that country, cringed at the nakedness of the distant landscape. Although I did not understand a word of Chinese, it seemed to my ears that our fellow passengers

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would be swearing at the North Korean regime for stripping its country bare. About half an hour after the bus had set off, Chang-yong turned

towards us and blinked. I had been drifting off in a daydream and, as the bus jerked to a halt, was startled to see what lay ahead of us. There was a camouflage-patterned obstacle on the road, with armed soldiers standing guard. They were wearing grass-colored military coats that came down to their knees! in sharp contrast to the dark-yellow uniform worn by North Korean soldiers. One of them raised a white-gloved hand to stop the bus. I was certain that they had been sent to arrest us. I felt very

conscious of my manuscript of poetry, as I had been at guard post No.6. My legs shook uncontrollably even though I was sitting down. Chang-yong's still silhouette seemed to indicate his indifference, and I chided myself for so easily trusting a stranger. I looked around to see how we might escape from the bus if the soldiers came towards us. The only thing I could think of doing for now was to lean on Young-min's shoulder, pretending to be asleep. When I opened my eyes a little to check on Young-min, I saw that his eyelids were trembling, although they too were closed. In an attempt to reassure him, I made faint snoring noises, being careful not to attract unwanted attention. I heard the doors of the bus swing open. In the heavy sound of the

stomping military boots, I could feel the weight of the soldiers' rifles. One of them spoke, and the ring of his announcement in Chinese overwhelmed the chatter in the bus. I flinched, fearing he might be talking about us. I heard the approach of boots and the murmuring of passengers.

What would I see if I opened my eyes now? Was the soldier watching us?I sat there feeling the goose pimples rise along my arms and kept myeyes shut. The boots stomped away from us and I heard the door of the bus close again. I could not quite believe what was happening,

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but the wheels of the bus began to turn. When I finally dared to open my eyes, I saw that the bus was really moving again.

Turning to look behind us, I could see the backs of three soldiers as they signaled to the driver of an approaching truck. I shook Young- min, whose eyes remained closed. He began to laugh, still with his eyes shut and in time with the swaying of the bus.

Chang-yong quickly got out of his seat and turned to us with a broad grin. He whispered quickly, "Well done, lads! Keep it up. The soldiers don't bother checking every vehicle thoroughly. Sometimes they come onto the bus and just look round once. They're here to look for North Korean refugees. They're easy to spot because they're underfed, have flaky skin, and look dirty after living rough. But your

skin is like ours, so you don't stand out." I looked at Chang-yong's skin. It was dark, and clearly marked him

out as a farmer who spent his days laboring under the sun. He continued, "Pyongyang people like you are obviously different.

There's one more checkpoint. Just do the same thing again." We had listened happily to his explanation until he mentioned

another checkpoint ahead. Once was lucky, but how could we risk our lives again on the basis of clean skin? I tried to get out of my seat, but Chang-yong gripped my knees and stopped me.

He said, "If you walk, they'll suspect you even more. Many North Koreans don't have money for a bus so they go by mountain roads, and get caught by the border guards there. There's lots of traffic on the road today, I'm sure they won't inspect thoroughly. I'm telling

you, take it easy." The local farmer's instinct turned out to be spot-on. At the second

checkpoint, our bus was let through without even being stopped. Nevertheless, I was soaked in sweat. I was no less on edge than when

we had crossed the river. As our bus entered wider avenues, Chang-yong came to sit across

from us and told us that we were now safe. My panic finally began to

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subside. Just as he had described, the mountains that rose up around us disappeared to make way for open fields. There were private residences here and there. There were pedestrians, more people on motorcycles, and, finally, we saw red cars with TAXI written on them. Young-min pointed to a huge sign that towered above the road like

a gateway into a new world. It read: YANBIAN LOOKS TO THE WORLD, THE WORLD TO YANBIAN! in large, red Korean script. It was surprising enough to find our writing in a foreign land, but I was astonished by the fact that even a provincial border town in China wanted to open itself to the world. In North Korea, we had slogans such as, "Let's Install Mosquito Nets to Keep Out the Winds of Capitalism!" or, "Let's Install Barred Windows!" The openness of China moved me deeply. I had certainly made the right choice, to escape from a system that had kept us so deliberately isolated. Away from the border patrols, we would now hide ourselves among 1.3 billion Chinese. I could not shout out my exhilaration aloud, but my heart rang with it.

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HEY! Please stop for us here!" Chang-yong called out to thedriver and the bus sputtered to a halt. When I stepped out I realized that although the road was wider, we were still very much in the countryside and it seemed that we had just been dumped in the

middle of nowhere. "Now, if you walk along this road, it'll take you just half an hour

to get to Yanji's city center. There're no more checkpoints. I guess I'm done here. Take care, lads, and good luck." Chang-yong reached out

to shake my hand. I couldn't return his handshake. It was soon going to turn dark,

and we didn't speak a word of Chinese. Where would we go from here? I shivered with the cold. I replied, "I'm really sorry, but could you stay with us for a little bit longer? Would you please tell us what we should do next, and give us some idea of how to keep away from

the authorities?" Chang-yong seemed surprised. "What? You don't know anyone in

Yanji? But you told me you had to get here! You mean you crossed

the river without a plan?" Young-min stepped forward and said, "We do have relatives here,

but we don't know how to contact them." Chang-yong was at a loss, but he decided to take pity on us. Opening

his cell phone, he began to dial. "It's me," he said. "I don't think I'll be coming home tonight. Yes,of course I've got my fee. Were near your mother's place and I was going to stop by anyway. Would you call her to say that two more are coming? It'll just be for the one night."

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After fmishing the call to his wife, Chang-yong explained to us that his oxen had not been fed today. Tonight, we could stay at his mother-in-laws place, but he would have to leave us first thing in the morning to deal with the animals. As if on cue, a blizzard descended and buffeted us with snow as we walked. Chang-yong drew his short neck down into the collar of his jacket and began to grumble. He said others might have left us to our fate and that we were lucky to have met a simple farmer likehim. When a taxi passed by with a loud honk, he swore in Chinese. That voice seemed to belong to another man. "How far is your mother-in-law's?" Young-min asked. "Fifteen minutes," Chang-yong replied. With those two words, he trudged ahead, as if to say it was up

to us whether we followed him or not. He was huddled against the cold wind, but behind him, we couldn't contain our excitement: the soil beneath our feet was not patrolled by North Korean soldiers or by the ministry's secret police. As if to reflect this difference, the snowstorm abruptly ceased, and there was the sunset, which seemed extraordinarily foreign and exotic. We were no longer at the end of yet another day lived in loyal obedience to the Dear Leader and the party; instead the sunset portended new days whose potential I could not begin to imagine, just like in my childhood memories. The marbled sky seemed majestic with these thoughts. Young-min too seemed intoxicated by our new environment. And by the time we had climbed the small hill to where Cnang-yong's mother-in-law lived, the view was even better. There were hundreds of village houses spread out before us, all similar but each distinct. Being in the north where the winters were long, narrow chimneys rose prominently above each homestead and the smoke that rose from them looked like the fluttering standards of an army gathered to confront winter itself. Chang-yong said he couldn't visit his mother-in-law empty-

handed; especially not when he was bringing guests. We stopped by

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a shop where meat hung under the eaves outside, facing the street. It went against all the logic we knew from our lives in North Korea- there, the shopkeeper would be standing with his wares around him, and anything as precious as meat would be kept inside, away from potential thieves. We bought two pounds of beef and, as we walked the short distance to the apartment, darkness fell.

Chang-yong had warned us that although he owned several fields and oxen, his mother-in-law was very poor. Nevertheless, when we stepped over the threshold of her house, it was much nicer than amid-ranking party cadre's flat in Pyongyang. Back home, a refrigerator, a color television, and a sofa were signs of this class of prosperity. But here, in addition to those items, even the wardrobe and drawers seemed to be good-quality items too. The mother- in-law spoke in a northern Hamgyong accent just like Chang-yongs, asking anxiously whether we had hurt ourselves while crossing the river. Her concern for us was more heartening than the heating that

warmed the room. I was looking round, saying what a nice and spacious home she

had, when my voice faltered as I noticed the calendar that hung beside the curtains: it showed a large photograph of a Western model clad only in a bikini. In North Korea, no matter how private your home, such a thing would be impossible. In fact, precisely because it was the intimate privacy of your home, it was a sanctified place in which you would of course hang portraits of Kim II-sung and Kim [ong-il, There did exist calendars showing famous actresses, but they were to represent their loyalty to the party through their art: it wasn't supposed to be about the women's celebrity or beauty or some product they were advertising. If any North Korean had hung such a calendar as this on their wall at home and it was discovered, that person would be found guilty beyond doubt of worshipping materialism and punished accordingly. Both Young-min and I found the calendar too shocking to bear and turned to sit facing away from

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it, as it appeared to our sheltered North Korean eyes like a public display of pornography. Steam swirled wonderfully from the kitchen and, as Chang-yongs

mother-in-law prepared the beef and chopped vegetables, I inhaled the strange, strong smell of what could only be Chinese spices. As we waited, we listened to Chang-yong explain how there were more than one hundred thousand North Korean refugees hiding in China. He told us that the Chinese authorities actively sought them out in an attempt to reduce the numbers. Then he proceeded to tell a horrible story about refugees being seized and handed over to the North Korean secret police. "Why didn't the soldiers shoot aswe crossed the river?" I wondered

aloud. Chang-yong suggested that the North Korean soldiers did not have permission to fire towards China. He grinned and patted us both on the back for sprinting so well. He added that although he had met many North Koreans on the run, we were the only gentlemen to have given him the sum of $700. Apparently, it was enough to buy a cultivator, he said loudly enough for his mother-in-law to hear, and his face glowed with pleasure at the thought. He then frowned, saying that if he were found to have accepted money from us, the fine would be twenty times as great as the fee. He repeated several times that if we were caught, we must not tell anyone that we had given him any money. As we listened, we realized that our escape was far from over. We

had managed to run away from North Korean soldiers, but there were Chinese soldiers waiting for us here. Suddenly, Chang-yong's cell phone rang. He listened for a moment

and then answered, "Hey, I said I couldn't come home tonight. What? Saythat again?" His expression became serious. Although it appeared that the

person at the other end had already hung up, he kept the phone clamped to his ear as he stuttered at us, ''Are ... are you murderers?"

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The question caught us both completely by surprise. The mother- in-law, who was still cooking in the kitchen, stopped what she was doing too and peered through to see what was going on.

Chang-yong said, "That was my wife on the phone again. She says that border guards and armed police have been searching the village. The time, your clothes, your height, it all fits. According to the message from North Korea, you're murderers. They say you're armed and dangerous. The border areas have gone crazy."

My chest tightened and my face flushed hot with anger. How could they possibly frame us for murder? Our worst crime was that we'd fled for the sake of our loved ones.

Chang-yong leaned in closer. "I know you're not just ordinary folk," he said, hesitantly. "The defectors they're really desperate to catch-well; North Korea always frames them for murder. 1 know that much because I've lived here all my life. You have money and you've got good skin. You're from Pyongyang. You probably held important jobs. Who are you?"

We decided to trust this good man completely, as the Chinese authorities were on our trail now. 1 told him curtly that 1 was a member of the United Front Department and my friend worked for Section 5, and that both institutions were attached to the Central

Party. "Please, tell me so 1can understand. 1get the party, but what's the

United Front Department, and what's Section Five?" While 1 hesitated to reveal our full identities, Chang-yong's large

eyes grew wider with fear, and the fluorescent light above reflected

brightly in his dark pupils. "The United Front Department oversees policy and operations

related to South Korea," 1 explained. "And Section Five-how can I put it-it takes care of Kim Iong-il's personal needs, through entities

such as the ToyDivision." Chang-yong leapt up in surprise. 1 thought it was in reaction to

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my mentioning the "United Front Department:' so his next question threw me off completely. "Joy Division?" he exclaimed. "That thing where Kim Iong-il

sleeps with girls? But your friend here is a man! You'renot saying that Kim [ong-il sleeps with men?" His heavy northern emphasis on the last syllable was even

more pronounced, and both Young-min and I burst out laughing. Chang-yong's confused expression made us laugh even more. At this point, his mother-in-law came in carrying a small table laden with wine and beef stew. Chang-yong reached for the wine, but instead of pouring us all a glass, he asked agitatedly what we meant by Section 5. Still grinning, Young-min explained, "The most powerful entity

in North Korea is the Organization and Guidance Department of the Workers' Party. That's because our general, I mean Kim [ong-il, exercises all his powers through that department. Under it falls the chain of command over every single party, military, or administrative entity in North Korea. Section Five of the OGD oversees matters relating to Kim Jong-il's private life. Kim Iong-ils guesthouses, villas, health, food, hobbies, and entertainment-all of this is the responsibility of Section Five. The girls you were thinking of, they're also employed by Section Five. That's why in North Korea, we call pretty girls 'Section Five girls.' We have staff in every county, city,and district, and part of their duty is to go around girls' middle schools to hunt for the prettiest ones. "They only pick thirteen-year-olds, which is also the age when

many of them start menstruating. After selection at the age of thirteen, the girls undergo an annual physical inspection to check for disease and to make sure they're still virgins. At sixteen, when the girls finish middle school, the regional branches of Section Five make a selection from among them. The ones who make it through to the final round are sent for a year's training and then dispatched

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throughout the country to Kim Iong-ils holiday homes or hunting grounds. They receive their assignments at seventeen and end their service at twenty-four. Most of them go into arranged marriages with Kim [ong-ils personal guards or senior cadres cleared to work in foreign affairs. Some even go on to become cadres themselves. Section Five manages the whole operation.

"As for me," Young-min went on, "I served as a court musician. Kim [ong-ils longevity is not just about physical well-being, but emotional well-being too. I've been part of Kim [ong-ils personal entourage for ten years. And my friend here, he's a classmate of mine from music school. I majored in piano then went on to study composition, while my friend finished his music studies and moved to work in literature. He studied at Kim Il-sung University, before starting work at the United Front Department."

In his earnest desire to explain, I feared that Young-min was speaking much too honestly. But it was spilt milk, and we had nothing to lose, so I decided to chime in.

"My friend here is a highly respected composer in North Korea. He had the special trust of Kim [ong-il, who personally gave him a piano. His grandparents are mentioned in our textbooks as leading anti- Japanese resistance fighters, as well as in Kim Il-sungs own memoir, With the Century."

Chang-yong and his mother-in-law made no response, but remained like stone, stunned by what they'd heard. Young-min spoke: "1 wanted to ask you something." He quickly

rose and took a worn envelope from our rucksack. "This is the address of my relative in China, from a few years back. I would be grateful if you could take us there." After peering at the address, Chang-yong raised his voice. "What

a rich relative you have! This neighborhood, everyone in the region knows how expensive it is there. So you're thinking of settling there

with your relative?"

It seemed that he finally trusted us, and he leaned over to fill our cups with wine.

"No, we're planning to head to South Korea." We spoke almost in unison.

There was a moment of silence before Chang-yong raised his cup high. "If you want to go to South Korea, leave it to me," he said solemnly. "My nephew, he's a professional. Defectors of your rank are guaranteed a comfortable journey to South Korea." Then he bent forward and whispered, "You know, my nephew-he speaks directly with South Korean spies."

"Really?" We both spoke at once. Chang-yong nodded emphatically, and insisted that the South Korean spies would probably send out escorts for defectors of our stature. At this, we raised our cups and clinked them together. Chang-yong's cell rang again. He looked shocked as he listened. "What? Why on earth did you tell them? Stupid woman. What, they knew already? Why didn't you tell me earlier? OK, fine."

Chang-yong leapt from his seat. "Get up! The authorities are on their way! They asked my wife for her mother's address. I mean they checked it with her, because they already had it."

We gathered our belongings and left the house quickly, to the scolding of Chang-yongs mother-in-law, whose careful preparation of dinner had been spoiled. We hurried after Chang-yong, blindly following whichever alleyway he chose to run down. The squeaking of snow under our feet and the barking of dogs all around made my panic worse. When it was brighter, the village with its multitude of chimneys had looked like a forest. But a couple of minutes running through alleys brought us to a dark and wild mountainside. Chang-yong stopped to catch his breath, like an ox that had come to a halt after being forced to do more work than its strength allowed. As he slumped to the ground, he grasped one of his ankles and moaned. I wondered if he might have sprained it.

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I wanted to ask whether he was all right; I wanted to show my genuine concern, but it was all I could do to suppress a burst of absurd and pathetic laughter that was bubbling up inside me. We were running like this for our lives; but with our entry into his quiet life, for a sum of $700, I could see the wretchedness we had brought on Chang-yong as clearly as I could visualize his yellow trousers with their pattern of pink flowers. I managed to compose myself as I examined his ankle, but then all three of us began to laugh.

As farmer Chang-yong finally caught his breath, he began to fume. "Remember I asked you how you found my house, and you said a Chinese woman showed you the way? I bet it was her who told on us. That bitch must have reported you to the authorities. She'sdone it once before." Although it was dark, his breath was visible with every word. "I swear I'll never help another one of you. I tell you, it's the

money. I shouldn't have taken the seven hundred dollars from you. In fact, other defectors are fine, but tangling with you two-it's too dangerous. You don't know how many times I've been interrogated already, living near that damned river. Anyway, where will you go now? It's dark." I despaired to hear him ask us the question we were about to askhim.

The air was bitter and cold. Should we plead with him and offer two hundred more dollars? I put my hands into my pocket and was feeling for the money, when Chang-yong exclaimed, "Hey! I know. Come on."

He explained that his mother-in-law had an outbuilding across the street from her house. He would secure the door with a padlock after we had hidden inside.

"What? Soldiers are looking for us and you want us to hide near her house?" I retorted. Young-min added in a trembling voice, "IQ rather go deeper into

the mountains. I don't care how far we have to go."

Chang-yong interrupted him, saying, "Just listen to me. You guys are murderers in the eyes ofChina. That's right, murderers! Youwon't be safe, even in the mountains. Besides, what are you going to do for food? And it's risky to be outdoors after dark. Anyone can be stopped by the night patrols for an identity check. If you get caught, that's it for me too. How are you going to explain how you got to Yanji?Are you prepared not to implicate me? How am I supposed to trust you two? You know the saying, 'It's darkest under the torch'? However much they are feared, even soldiers can't enter someone else'slocked shed. Do you hear what I'm saying? I'll bring you the rest of the beef stew and some blankets. And the wine too." We had no choice but to comply. The shed was actually a small

shack that might once have been used as a home, although it looked to have been abandoned for years. There was a space where an old-fashioned kitchen fire had been. The smallest of the three "rooms' in the shack had ahole in the roof and the stars could be seen in the open sky. It was not much better than being out in the cold, but at least we would be sheltered from the worst of the wind. In the kitchen area, there was a heap of dry pine needles for kindling. Chang-yong took a long time to return to us, perhaps because he

was arguing with his mother-in-law. Although this was technically part of Yanji City, it seemed as remote as the countryside. In our hut there was no sign of habitation, and certainly no heating or calendars depicting bikini-clad models, but the solitude of the place gave me hope that we might live here in hiding as long as we needed to. My daydreaming was disturbed by the barking of dogs, and it

sounded as if they were coming closer. The barking must have drowned out the sound of traffic, because I then heard engines being turned off and car doors opening. My hair stood on end. There was a chaotic stamping of heavy military boots, and then

the voices of several men. My worst fears were confirmed when I heard Chang-yongs voice among them, speaking in Chinese. The

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glow of the full moon shone down on us through one of the shack's dirty windows, like a spotlight intent on revealing a criminal's whereabouts, and we squatted in a dark corner away from the light. The rucksack was still on the other side of the hut. I was afraid that Chang-yong would be frightened into revealing our whereabouts to the authorities, and even the short dash over to the rucksack seemed too much to risk. We remained like this, on tenterhooks, for over half an hour. Then alI at once, the sound of heavy footsteps was followed by car

doors being shut, of engines starting and of vehicles pulling away. I was so grateful for the silence at the end of it. But Young-min and I remained in our corner, stuck to the wall as if we were a part of it. A few minutes later, I could hear Chang-yong muttering in the

yard. The familiarity of his voice was welcome, but part of me feared that soldiers might secretly be following him. When the door to our shack opened, I was relieved to see that farmer Chang-yong was alone. He was carrying a large blanket and a package.

"I told you!" he exclaimed. "I was right-it was that bitch who snitched on us. But] kept my mouth shut, said] didn't know anything about you. Fucking bitch!"

"Please, calm down." As] waved my hand to quiet him, Young-min peered outside to check that no one else was there.

But Chang-yong spoke even more loudly than before. "Don't worry, they've gone. They were looking for you, saying you're a pair of murderers. They even showed me photographs of you." He put the package on the ground. "Here. Some dumplings. Eat this and stay here till morning. Ialready called my nephew-you know, the one who knows South Korean spies. He says he's some distance away,and he asked me to look after you for five more days. He says there'll be a large reward if] hide you well! What a good lad. Anyway, I'll bring you a day's worth of food every day. Just sit tight and everything will be fine."

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I I

Torn between our fear at the thought of our photos in the hands of the authorities, who were parading us as murderers on the run, and the hope that Chang-yongs nephew would come to our rescue, we waited one day, then another, each day stretching before us like a decade. Chang-yong continued to bring us food each night. Once or twice, after the loud barking of dogs at dawn, Chang-yong

circled our shack to check the area, and then disappeared again. Young-min, saying he would probably die of a heart attack before we were caught, asked several times a day whether it would be better for us to go straight to his relative's house. Each time, I shook my head. Finally, I lost my temper and raised my voice. "Think about it," I snapped. "Weve already been caught once by

the border guards in North Korea. That's why the Chinese authorities have our photographs. We've been in China for a few days, and by now the authorities here must have been sent more evidence from North Korea. These soldiers were able to track us down to Chang- yongs mother-in-law. Do you not think they would know about your relatives? They've probably got the place surrounded. So forget it. Were going to wait for Chang-yong's nephew." Even in his sleep, Young-min let out big sighs and managed to get

on my nerves. I had to muster all my patience to keep myself quiet. If I complained, it might provoke him even more and I didn't want an argument to betray us. On the third night, I fell asleep quite early after drinking the wine

Chang-yong had brought us; he had told us it might be the coldest night of the winter. Young-min shook me and I awoke to his terrified face and the sound of barking all around us. The night before, a cow had wandered in the yard and its shadow had frightened me so much that I'd curled into a ball and had kept shaking for an hour afterwards. Although I mumbled that it might be the animal again, I jumped up when, through the crack in the door, I spotted someone outside shining a torch over our shack. We leapt back to the corner behind

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the padlocked door. Every time a beam of light seeped through the cracks in the door and wall, I flinched as if it were a blade that could cut through my skin. The light was coming closer and growing brighter. I pulled the

blanket close to me and crouched in the corner. There was the sound of footsteps, which then stopped at the door. The lock on the door rattled viciously, and the sound clawed at my chest. I thought the intruder might give up and go away, but the door finally swung open to reveal a large soldier. He grimaced when my eyes met his. After the short moment it took for the soldier to register that there were two of us, he started yelling something in Chinese and rushed out. I slapped Young-nuns back to get his attention. He was bent over, frantically looking for something on the ground.

"What on earth are you doing?" I hissed. Then we ran into the dark. I don't know how I managed to climb over the high wall across

from the shack. I had often stared at it through the dirty window of our shelter, thinking I could never scramble over it even if our lives depended on it. Tumbling onto the other side, I sprinted after the shape running ahead of me. I muttered to myself again and again, "I'm going to live, I'm going to live."

I stumbled through the dark, but came to a halt when I realized that the shape I was chasing was not Young-min, but a calf. I turned to look behind me, but there was no one there. I bent double and retraced my steps to look for Young-min, ending up in a large empty plot with a line of sight to our shack. I counted four torches, then another eight. There were twelve torch lights altogether.

Still bent double, I crept down the alleyways in search of Young- min. Sudden footsteps made me jump, and I realized that one of the torch lights was beaming from somewhere close. In the glow of light, I could even see a red star on the soldier's cap. In only a few seconds, we would come face-to-face. But then a miracle occurred. A cow appeared next to me, out of nowhere. Perhaps it was the mother of

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the calf I had seen earlier. I quickly hid myselfbehind it. The distance between the soldier and me must have been less than fifteen feet, and if he turned there was every chance that he would see my legs below the creature's belly. But the cow registered my presence before the soldier did. It

shifted nervously a few paces, and then started to move more quickly. Forced to run in the same direction as the cow, and doing my best to stay hidden behind its bulk, my clothes were torn by tangles of thorns in the hedgerows. When we reached a dark place far from any source of light, I pushed against the cow and ran ahead with the last of my strength until I reached the bottom of the mountain. There, I sank to the ground and pressed my palm against my tight

chest to still the pounding of my heart as I caught my breath. My surroundings looked familiar, and I realized I must be in the area we had run to on the first night when, led by Chang-yong after the phone call, we fled from his mother-in-law's house. Perhaps this was the only road in the neighborhood! If so, Young-min might be nearby too. "Young-min?" I called out. "Young-min? Are you there?" I called

a little louder. The mountain did not respond, as if it had turned its back on me

and piled a wall of darkness between us. Only then did I realize that my feet, numb and beyond pain, were bare. I sank into the snow and rubbed my frozen soles. They were like stone, not flesh. Cold winds stabbed at my cheeks and ears like needles. I heard a crunching sound, similar to footsteps on snow. Had the border guards followed me up all the way here? At the thought, I was furious, because I had lost the will to run any farther with these frozen and unprotected feet. But unexpectedly, a voice called to me. "Hey, it's me! Over here!" I looked towards the noise, and saw some branches moving. The

snow reflected enough light for me to see Young-min smiling and

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waving his hand, poking his head out between the branches of a bush. The bastard was alive! I ran towards him, and as soon as I got close, I punched him. "How can you smile? You selfish bastard, you abandoned your

friend to save your own life!" Young-min received my punches to his chest without complaint.

Only when I had finished my scolding did he tell me he had come here thinking I was right behind him. Then he took out something from an inside pocket and handed it to me. It was the manuscript of my poetry that I had brought from Pyongyang. That was what he had been searching for on the ground in the shack before we fled. Even in that desperate situation, confronted by soldiers, he had done the best thing a friend couId do. I felt a pang in my heart at the thought. Then I noticed Young-min wasn't wearing shoes either.

"Stupid boy, you should have put your shoes on too," I said, attempting a joke.

Fortunately, we had not taken anything else off, so the rest of our bodies were relatively warm. To be safer, we climbed a little higher up the hill. As soon as sat down, we put our feet on each other's bellies to warm them. We could see the whole village down below, and couId even count the individual torches in the alleyways beneath us. Near where we had been hiding, two vehicles had their lights on although their engines were switched off. Chang-yong's mother-in-law was perhaps sleeping through it, as there were no lights on in her house at all. We did not have to wait too long before the sky had begun to

lighten and gain some color. The order must have been given to withdraw, because the torches all moved towards the vehicles, which then drove off out of the village.

"Should we go back down?" Young-min asked first. I found the cold difficult to bear any longer, and we cautiously made our way back down to the village. Having confirmed our presence in this

village, I had thought that the border guards might have left some men behind. But we had seen each of the torches disappear into the vehicles and, more than anything else, the greatest threat to our lives at the moment was the cold. As we picked our way down the hill, we had no feeling left in our feet at all and we stumbled several times.

When we reached the house of Chang-yongs mother-in-law, we knocked, but there was no response. But as soon as we called Chang- yong's name a light came on inside and, instead of a spoken response, he rushed out to let us in. As he opened the door, we could hear his mother-in-law shouting something in Chinese.

"Unbelievable," he said to us. "You weren't caught after all! You lads are amazing."

Those words made me feel very proud. But what we needed more than praise at that moment was heat. When Chang-yong noticed our exposed feet, he took a sharp intake of breath but didn't say a word. He went to find us some shoes, and returned to us bearing socks and rubber slip-ons, apologizing that these were all he had. When I put mine on, they were surprisingly warming for my feet. Farmer Chang-yong said that if we had been captured, he too would have had to live a life on the run. He told us that we were therefore greater men than Kim [ong-il. Whatever his reasons for being relieved at our safety, Iwas happy that he shared our relief, and at that moment he felt like an uncle

to me. "The soldiers took your rucksack," Chang-yong said. "What was

inside?" When I replied that it was just books and a change of clothes, he

asked me to confirm that there hadn't been any money in the bag. Young-min, who was standing to Chang-yongs side, went pale at the word "money" Before he couId speak, I answered, "Luckily, we had

h "t e money on us.

I

I

I, 'I' I, I

I I

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As Young-min signaled to me with his eyes to check whether I was telling the truth, Chang-yong's mother-in-law called from inside, and he went into the house. "You really have the money? Is it in your pocket?" Young-min

asked half expectantly, half suspiciously. I took him to the corner of the yard and said, "Listen, we have

nothing, wehave absolutely nothing. Everything was in the rucksack. But we have to pretend we have money. That man can abandon us if he wants, but we can't do anything without him." Farmer Chang-yong came out of the house with another package.

He complained as if to let his mother-in-law hear, handed us a bottle of wine, and reassured us of his nephew's promise. We would have to wait just two more days. He added that we should take care not to freeze to death in the mountains. But we must not light a fire,he warned us. He said that one of the reasons that Chinese authorities activelysearched for North Korean refugees hiding in the mountains was because of the frequent mountain fires they started. "Go now, up near that rock over there. I'll follow with bread and

more blankets." As he pushed Young-min onwards, he grabbed my arm. He explained that his mother-in-law was angry with him for keeping us at her house longer than shea expected, and putting her in danger. The only way to calm her down, he said, was to giveher money.

I put on a stern face, saying, "We trusted your instructions in coming here, but we were almost caught. I'll think about more money when your nephew arrives. We don't know what else might happen, so please understand our situation." With that, Young-min and I headed into the mountains. An hour

later, Chang-yong came to give us an old blanket and a packageof food. He waved his fist at the cold and said that we would be better offon the hillside than on flat ground that couldn't shield us fromany direction; then he made his way back down the slope. A little while

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later, he reappeared, saying that we must not fall asleep, because the temperature could fall to -22°F in the night. He stressed several times that we must keep ourselves awake at all costs. We thanked him and saw him off again. We found a spot that was

a little less steep, and dug away the snow until we could see earth, clearing a space just big enough to fit two people sitting down. We sat there huddled together with the blanket over us. The bottle of wine we shared was emptied far too quickly. But the alcohol spread heat through my body, which felt comforting. We also had a hot water bottle each, and I felt even warmer knowing that Chang-yong was on our side. Young-min said, "Let's each pretend the other one is a woman." Both of us burst out laughing at those unexpected words. Having

been cooped up in a locked shack for the last few days, suspicious of even our own breathing, it feltwonderful to laugh again. The thought of having evaded the border guards in such a close call felt like a triumph too. As the night grew darker, the mountain came alive. I remembered,

back in North Korea, being captivated one quiet night by the never- ending sound of waves crashing onto the coast in South Hamgyong Province. I think I was seven years old. I had not seen the ocean before, and as that vast expanse lapped restlessly, it seemed to be a living being. That night, I ran on the sand barefoot, saying that I would wake the sea from its twitchy slumber. "Hello, sea! It's me! Wake up and come play with me!" As I shouted at the waves, and as if the sea were waking with a

stretch, lightning flashed in the distant dark of the sky. Like the sea that night, the mountain whispered and pulsated in

the dark, as if it were teeming with spirits. A distant sound coming from the peak of the mountain grew louder and, as it swelled into the valley, we imitated the noise, letting our voices rise with it. When the cold wind blew past us and away as if it were a visible being, I could

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feel the deep energy of the mountain as it readied another wind to sweep down from its peak.

That night, Young-min and I shared our deepest secrets with each other like lovers. Our first crushes, recollections from childhood, the family we had left behind; as if painting the sky above with the colors of our memories, even the smallest recollection held significance. As the conversation turned to our loved ones, Young-min and I could do nothing but be there in silent solidarity, each for the other. Even after swallowing a fistful of snow, my throat burned with raw emotion. The conversation turned to the North Korean regime. Ours was a

system that would rather have us convicted as murderers and killed than permit us to abandon it, let alone stand in its way. The taste of bile from the pit of my stomach let me know that until now, I had not merely spent my life living within the borders of North Korea, but been imprisoned behind them.

(~NNALS OF THE 3 KIM DYNASTY"

INthe autumn of 1999, I was appointed to work on the compilationof the Annals of the Kim Dynasty as a state historian. Following my composition of the epic poem to Kim Iong-il that had so pleased him in May, and my subsequent elevation as one of his Admitted, I had become a rising star in the UFD and received an urgent summons to the office of First Deputy Director Im Tong-ok. There I found myself in the company of seven colleagues I knew from various sections within the UFD.

I'd barely taken a seat when Director Im said, "Please stand up." He looked down at the sheets of paper in front of him on his desk. "I am instructed to deliver the General's orders, as follows: 'Even the ruinous five hundred years of the Lee dynasty during the Chosun period was recorded in the form of the Annals of the Lee Dynasty. It is a grave failing that we have no Annals of the Kim Dynasty to record the great rule of Kim II-sung and Kim Iong-il. The UFD must therefore bring together the best minds in the country and urgently accomplish the completion of this work:"

The Annals of the Lee Dynasty is a history of the Chosun era, spanning the half millennium between AD 1392 and 1893 on the Korean peninsula. However, it seemed paradoxical to emulate those ancient volumes when we lived in a socialist system that was strongly critical of that feudal dynasty. And although my appointment to such a team was a great honor, I was even more surprised that the carefully selected members of the group were writers, not historians,

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a signal that history came second to the cultification of the Supreme Leader.

The eight of us lived and worked in the Munsu Guesthouse, inaccessible to any outsider. Such guesthouses were independently operated by Central Party departments to provide exclusive facilities, where vetted cadres could work in strict secrecy. The premises were extremely well furnished and were smaller versions of the sort of guesthouses used as accommodation for state-level visitors to North Korea.

The UFD operates several guesthouses, such as Ui-Am and Soonan. Among these, the Munsu Guesthouse had previously been used for those defecting to the North. Situated as it was in the residential area of No.3 Chungryu-dong in the wealthy Daedong River district of east Pyongyang, not even the local residents knew that this L-shaped building was used for classified UFD operations. The interior of the high-walled compound was extravagantly appointed and, in order to ease recent defectors into collaboration, it had been decorated with luxurious foreign furnishings and materials, including expensive pieces made by South Korea's leading furniture companies. Until then, I had engaged in Localization only through reading materials and consumer goods, but when I entered an entire building that that had been localized, it blew me away. In recent years, defections to North Korea had ceased, and the villa was now designated for internal UFD use. We were the first North Korean guests to live in the premises. The task that had been entrusted to us was the brainchild of Kim

Jong -il. The first step had been taken on the third anniversary of Kim Il-sung's death, in July 1997, when Kim [ong-il marked his father's birthday (April 15, 1912) as the beginning of a new [uche calendar. With the birth of Kim II-sung at year zero, the history of Korea had begun anew. Kim Iong-il had declared the ethnicity of North Koreans as "Kim Il-sung's People" and he now needed to

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" I 127

legitimize this. His plan was to establish a history of Kim II-sung that would consolidate and underpin the basis of Korean identity in alignment with the legacy of Kim II-sung, rather than with a shared race, language, or culture. In order to emphasize that North Korea was the legitimate Korea, he wanted to create a history that would include not only Koreans in the North, but in the South and overseas. None of the relevant archival records could be released to anyone without a UFD clearance. But above all, Kim Jong-il could trust no one outside a handpicked circle with the Supreme Leader's unvarnished secret history. We would need to master that secret history before we could reshape-or distort-it to achieve Kim [ong-il's purpose.

North Korea asserts that Japan's defeat in 1945 is the direct result of Kim Il-sung's achievement as a guerrilla leader in the anti -Iapanese resistance. The Korean War, which was actually suspended by an armistice, is declared as Kim Il-sungs outright victory over US imperialism. Even the history of the Cold War is taught in North Korea as a Communist history that revolved around the efforts of Kim II-sung. The international section of the Central Party became active in setting up ]uche research institutes overseas, in an attempt to encourage foreigners to sympathize with North Korea's worldview and version of history.

One reason why North Korea is unable to pursue reform and open itself more to the world is that this would risk exposing core dogmas of the state as mere fabrications. Kim Jong-il decided that under no circumstances should any potentially harmful source material dealing with Kim Il-sungs past be made available to the public. He had therefore assigned the task to UFD cadres, who already held the highest security clearances in the nation due to the sensitive nature of their policy and intelligence work.

Even so, there was a further level of atomization built in, with each of us in the group responsible for a specific theme or decade in the

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history of North Korea. Before our work began, we signed a contract confirming that we would pay a severe penalty if we overstepped the limits of our mandate in conducting our research. We carried out our work in separate studies. I was put in charge of the history of Kim Tong-irs activities relating to and stemming from his role in the Propaganda and Agitation Department, including his artistic

I

achievements, from the mid-1960s up to the present day. We were not allowed to enter anyone else's study. But since the

eight of us-segregated in turn from the rest of North Korean society-lived communally at the Munsu Guesthouse for the period of our task, the boundaries of secrecy gradually eroded and we formed deep bonds with each other. Of the eight of us, I thought that the writer in charge of Kim

Il-sungs early years had the most challenging task. He often chain- smoked after dinner. "How are things going?" I asked cautiously, not long after we had

begun our stay. Instead of responding, he lit another cigarette. But he eventually turned to ask me a question. "You're the youngest here. Let me ask you something. Our

Supreme Leader was born on April 15, 1912. It's such a significant day that there's plenty to say about it. But what did he do the next day? I could refer to his mother's milk as a revolutionary nutrient. But what did the Supreme Leader himself do? In all honesty, what else could a baby at that age do but piss and shit? And how am I going to describe the two years after that? If you were in my position, how would you approach the problem?"

Another writer, who was working on the history of North Korea in the 1980s, shared his dilemma with me. He said he had found in one of our Supreme Leader's personal memos a mention of his attending a performance in North Pyongan province in 1972. He asked me to help with fmding source materials on similar events, with which he was going to fill three days' worth of history in the

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" 1129

decade that he was supposed to be writing about. In this way, our contract of secrecy became nothing more than a piece of paper as the continuation of our mutual safety came to depend on mutual trust. We spent increasing periods of time in conversation with one another rather than in our segregated studies. And as I encountered more and more historical records, I grew ever more disturbed at the picture that began to emerge from the source materials.

Our group had been entrusted with originals of Kim Il-sung- and Kim [ong-il-related documents from archival materials. Compartmentalization prevented anyone person from seeing a comprehensive overview of the nation's history, but when the pieces came together, the shape of the overall picture was clear and definite: Kim Iong-il's authority had not been passed on to him by Kim Il-sung as according to the official narrative of hereditary succession, even though this was what he used as the basis of his legitimacy. Rather, the son had usurped the father.

The old saying that power cannot be shared between fathers and sons suggests some kind of universal and inevitable fate. The seeds of Kim Iong-ils vicious struggle for power against his father Kim Il-sung were unintentionally sown when the boy was abandoned by his father at the age of eight, after the death of his natural mother, Kim Iong-suk. One year after her death, on Tune 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung invaded the South. Kim Iong-il spent three years separated from his father, as he was sent away from the fighting. After the armistice, he returned to Pyongyang, but father and son grew no closer. By 1954, he had gained a half brother in Kim Pyong-il, whose mother was Kim Sung-ae, a secretary inseparable from Kim Il-sung, Kim Iong-il entered Kim Il-sung University for his studies, and

graduated in 1964. As the eldest son of Kim II-sung and bearer of his father's line, if there were to be a hereditary transfer of power at all, Kim Iong-il would have been expected to receive some responsibility or title, in line with Korean custom. But one year before Kim Tong-irs

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graduation, in 1963, Kim It-sung married Kim Sung-ae, and this served to cement the exclusion of Kim Iong-il from the prospect of leadership. As the Cultural Revolution got under way in China, during

which time Mao's wife and first lady, Jiang Qing, held great sway, a parallel development occurred in North Korea. Kim Sung-ae, as first lady, gained considerable authority at this time, with North Korea's political elite lining up behind her as if she was a North Korean mirror ofJiang Qing. Because Kim Sung-aes son Kim Pyong-il-and not her stepson Kim Jong-il-was being prepared for succession by Kim It-sung's associates, Kim Jong-il now found himself in a situation where his father's supporters had turned into his political enemies. To this day, the mere mention of Kim Pyong- ii's role in events leading to Kim Iong-ils succession remains a blasphemously taboo subject in North Korea. Although North Korea states officially that Kim Iong-il began his

career in the Party's Organization and Guidance Department, this is not the case. It's a deliberate distortion to provide a fitting start to the career of the future Dear Leader. At this stage, with North Korea's power elite firmly behind Kim Sung-ae, and with even Kim Il-sungs younger brother Kim Yong-ju pitted against him, Kim Jong-il had been placed well away from the centers of power, relegated to a post in the Propaganda and Agitation Department. Kim Jong-iI did not show signs of turning against his father at

that time. In fact, in his work in the PAD, he contributed to the cultification of Kim It-sung and glorification of the anti-Japanese activities of his father's guerrilla comrades. His activities were so expansive that a monthly magazine called Recollections of the anti-Japanese Fighters, established under his direction, came to be considered as compulsory reading nationwide. Many statues of Kim II-sung and anti-Japanese fighters appeared during this time too. Ultimately, Kim Jong-iJ's early years in the PAD provided him with

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" 1131

a set of crucial cultural and ideological tools that he would come to depend on when he eventually came to rule through his dictatorship of the mind.

Even by the end of the 1960s, Kim II-sung had not yet been established as a godhead. At the end of 1968, Minister of National Security Kim Chang-bong attempted an armed coup against Kim ll-sung. In January 1969, after Kim II-sung had officially purged Kim Chang-bong and his faction, he appointed General Choi Hyon as a replacement. In gratitude, Choi Hyun pledged loyalty to the absolute rule of the Supreme Leader. But he was a strict conservative who believed in the hereditary transfer of power through an elder son, and it was he who secured for Kim Jong-il a place in the OGD through a closed party meeting in the summer of 1969. In turn, Kim Jong-il kept Choi Hyon's son, Choi Ryong-hae, as his right hand man for the rest of his life.

Kim Sung-ae's factional power, however, was not to be easily overcome. Her older brother Kim Kwang-hop was the vice prime minister, and Kim Il-sung's younger brother Kim Yong-ju supported rum. Kim Il-sung's own supporters openly referred among themselves to his son Kim Pyong-il as the successor to the Supreme Leader.

However, Kim Jong-il found a way of ridding himself of these forces in the "Three Great Revolutionary Goals;' which imitated the structure of the Red Guards of China's Cultural Revolution. While China's Red Guards aimed to eliminate capitalist and revisionist elements, the three revolutionary goals for North Korea were ideology, industry, and culture. In the manner of Red Guards, units made up of youths about to finish their education were set up all over the country to implement the three revolutionary goals. Their main enemy was the "abuse of power and corruption of provincial bureaucrats:' As Central Party cadres with ties to regional forces were eliminated one by one, Kim Iong-ils power grew centrally, as well as through building on solid regional support.

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His father Kim Il-sungs authority at this time was channeled through the government, which had ruling powers. In this climate, Kim [ong-il was seen as no great threat to the power of his father and his supporters because he was merely an employee of the Workers' Party, which was just one of many bureaucratic institutions. Apart from Choi Hyun, no other minister even considered him as a potential successor to Kim II-sung. But as Kim Iong-ils power base was the Workers' Party, it was the only means at his command to expand his influence and confront the government. He found the pivot he needed in the philosophy of luche.

[uche was based on a focus on the person, and as such was a humanist philosophy. Kim long- iloversaw a change to this philosophy, revising it to state that a person must be part of an institution to progress, and those who were brought into such an institution could only triumph when led by the excellent guidance of a Supreme Leader (Suryong). [uche thus became a "Suryong-ist" ideology centered not on the individual person, but on one individual alone: his father Kim Il-sung, (The original author of luche, Hwang Iang-yop, who was the party's international secretary, eventually fled from the creation he had spawned to seek exile in South Korea in 1997.) By 1973, "Kimilsungism,' which asserted that the Supreme Leader

guided the party and the party led the people, had become the omnipotent weapon ofthe party. It is from this time that Kimilsungism became the people's ideology, and loyal obedience to the cult of Kim became the moral conscience of every party member. Anyone seen to be challenging this moral conscience, in however slight a way,would be sent with three generations of his family to a gulag where the family line would come to an end. Itwas also during this time that surveillance institutions, formerly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Social Security, were given independence in the form of the newly created Ministry of State Security, which reported directly to the OGD.

Kim Iong-il elevated the authority of the OGD and PAD, which

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" I 133

were his bases of power, by emphasizing society's need for the party's organization, guidance, and propaganda if Kimilsungism was to be realized. In this way, he found a means to accommodate the cultification of Kim II-sung within his party-based powers, or rather, have the abstract cultification of the Supreme Leader support his own party-based powers.

When Jiang Qing was purged in China in 1976, her fall reflected badly on her North Korean "mirror:' Kim Sung-ae, who became isolated and fell from favor. After his stepmother Kim Sung-ae lost her position as head of the woman's committee, Kim Iong-il's position was strengthened.

To consolidate the party's claim to "upholding" the Supreme Leader's guidance, powers to appoint personnel were removed from the government, and his political enemies were vigilantly watched under the premise of ideological surveillance by the OGD's section for party guidance. The North Korean state, previously founded on the twin powers of the Workers' Party and the government, came to be entirely dependent on the party. By Kim Iong-ils time, the party had replaced all the functions of government, which had become no more than a hollow shell and a historical remnant.

But why did Kim II-sung stand by and do nothing about his son's consolidation of party-based power? The answer is, because he saw only the cultification of himself, as did the outside world. Kim Iong-il's consolidation of party power was clothed in a moral upholding of Kimilsungism and advertised itself through the language and ideology of the Supreme Leader's legacy. But while Kim Iong-il appeared to remain loyal to his father on the surface and in public perception, behind the scenes he was steadily reducing old guard powers, preparing the system for the time when one man-he himself-would have absolute and concentrated powers to determine the future of North Korea.

In the beginning, it started innocently enough with the replacement of

r=:='i-rr.!;mrrr-------------------------

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direct proposals to Kim ll-sung with cassette recordings, on the premise of lightening his father's duties. The recording of proposals on tape effectivelyrouted all proposals for Kim Il-sungs ratification through Kim Iong-il, who controlled the technology. Eventually,every single proposal was routed through the OGD, so that only the selected and redacted ones would be sent up for Kim Il-sungs approval. By 1980, Kim Iong-il had already completed a system whereby all real powers were vested in one man, himself, as the OGD party secretary,while on the surface authority appeared to rest with Kim ll-sung as the Supreme Leader.

Kim Jong-il consolidated his absolute party-based power through the OGD by monopolizing five spheres of influence.

The first was the OGD's exclusive right to allocate positions of departmental director level and above in the core institutions. Also, in the military, generals in the key regiments were directly appointed by the OGD. The second was the OGD's absolute right to "Party guidance,"

which allowed it to intervene in every administrative task carried out at any level. It did this by strictly monitoring regional and departmental party secretaries, and through a network of isolated cell-like structures. The result was that its military arm could summon any of North Korea's highest-ranking generals to grovel and be humiliated, while its foreign affairs arm exercised the same authority over cadres who maintained contact with the outside world, such as diplomats or businessmen. The third was the OGD's absolute surveillance powers, which

allowed it to monitor, purge or banish any cadre. The structure of this section was extremely compartmentalized yet centralized, designed to uphold and facilitate Kim Iong-ils rule by terror. North Korea's secret police, the Ministry of State Security, reported directly to this section of the OGD. The fourth was the department's absolute right to ratify and

sanction policies. All institutions in North Korea had to route

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" I 135

their proposals through the OGD's reporting section in order to be authorized by Kim Iong-il before they became valid.

The fifth was the OGD's responsibility for the protection of and catering for Kim Il-sung and Kim Iong-il, This meant overseeing all concerns pertaining to the Kims, as well as the procurement of luxury goods and operation of the Guards Command.

Somewhat ironically, the source materials for the process of this meticulous consolidation of power are preserved in the party's History and Literature Institute, categorized under the factional fighting that occurred in the process of hereditary succession.

In the course of my research for the Annals of the Kim Dynasty, any questions that I had were answered efficiently by employees at the institute. They were very helpful, often going out of their way to send me additional and related supporting materials. But even in this archive, which was supposed to contain all the secrets of North Korean history, there existed no single document that summed. up the fierce rivalry which existed between the factions of Kim II-sung and Kim Iong-il. Although we reached our conclusion reluctantly, the overwhelming evidence that demonstrated the enmity and power struggles between the son and father (including documents showing how the father and son had announced directly opposing policies at the same time) left us with no alternative. We had to concede that, while Kim Iong-ils legitimacy might have been based on hereditary succession from father to son in terms of the official narrative, in reality it had involved usurpation by son against father. Kim Iong-il had consolidated power by wresting it away from his father instead of receiving it from him.

I became terrified by the knowledge that the Dear Leader was neither compassionate nor divine, and had acquired his power by acts of terror, betrayal, and revenge. Once, while drinking tea with

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one of the writers in our group whom 1 trusted most, 1 made a confession. "I want out," 1said. "The secrets are too much for me to bear. 1don't think 1can ever have a free conscience again, knowing the truths behind the lies." He replied, "Don't be stupid. There's no way you can stop now. The

best you can do is to keep it all shut inside you, and don't mention anything to the others, okay?" Tomy great relief, 1was released from completing the full duration

of my duty to the Annals when the order came from Director Im to compose the UFD's epic poem for the year 2000 as a tribute to Kim Iong-il. But although 1 returned to my familiar bed in my family home, 1didn't feel I'd returned to a familiar world. 1 knew my past as a secret historian of Kim Iong-il would haunt me forever, like an ever-present shadow of suspicion. What frightened me more than anything was that 1had forbidden knowledge about the Leader, and 1would never be free of it. The most troubling aspect for me at the time was Kim Iong-ils

merciless rule by purging, which did not spare members of his own family. As soon as Kim Iong-il had consolidated his power, he used the "side branch" notion to designate members of his family who were like side branches of a tree that must be pruned for the tree to grow tall and strong. To begin with, his uncle Kim Yang-ju and stepmother Kim Sung-ae were placed under house arrest; and in 1981, he ordered that the children of Kim Il-sungs supporters should not to be accepted into the Central Party. This became fixed as an internal regulation in the OGo.

Kim Il-sungs associates began to disappear one by one, and those who remained grew increasingly disgruntled by the fact that their chiIdren were being relegated to provincial postings, dead-end government positions, or military ranks outside the power structure of the party. The disaffected supporters of Kim ll-sung confronted the issue by going as a group to the Mount Keumsu assembly hall

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY" In7 (also known as the Palace ofthe Supreme Leader) on April IS, 1982, Kim Il-sung's birthday, to discuss the issue with the Supreme Leader himself.

By this time, however, Kim II-sung was merely a figurehead. AIl power in the state had been meticulously routed to Kim Iong-il through the OGD's tentacled reach, with positions of real authority occupied by Kim [ong-ils classmates from Kim II-sung University. Kim Iong-il's power over the Supreme Leader himself was absolute: Kim II-sung even had to request permission from the party's OGD before he could meet up with any of his supporters or old comrades. His own powers were restricted to those that would continue to make him appear powerful to North Koreans and outsiders alike, such as on-site inspections and diplomatic authority. Even Section 1 of the Guards Command, the personal bodyguards of Kim Il-sung, now answered directly to the party's OGD. In this way, a leader who had once received close protection from a loyal cohort of guards lived out his last days under the close surveillance of a cohort loyal to Kim Jong-il.

This is also the reason why there was not a single general meeting of the Workers' Party for over twenty years between the sixth general meeting of October 1980 and my crossing of the Tumen River in 2004. Kim Jong-il had so weakened the Politburo itself, which came under the authority of the party's general secretary, Kim Il-sung, that it was powerless even to call meetings.

Just as the father was the public power holder and the son was the actual power holder, a dual structure came into being whereby real power was recognized internally according to the level of trust Kim Jong-il placed in you, rather than your official position. This made it impossible for outsiders to analyze the workings of North Korea, as the revealed hierarchy was a sop to the old guard and actual power was held by trusted individuals beyond public scrutiny.

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In other words, supporters of Kim Il-sung might be given prestigious official posts, but actual powers were restricted to Kim Iong-ils own associates. A cross-shaped system with two power structures emerged, whereby publicly high-ranking positions and Kim Iong-ils delegation of actual power were never vested in a single person. For example, Park Ui-chun, the foreign minister, was nothing but a straw man, while First Deputy Minister Kang Sok-ju held the real power in international affairs. This discrepancy between the hidden and surface structures allowed Kim Iong-il to maintain a system of control that could not be understood or manipulated by any outsider. In the process of consolidating his authority, Kim Iong-ii did not

hold back from humiliating his father, and the following incident demonstrates the Supreme Leader's impotence in the face of his son and his son's OGD. As one of the eight writers of the Annals, I was vested with the

authority to summon for interview any of the surviving official witnesses of North Korean history relevant to my area of study, including the nation's most senior generals. Through one of them, I discovered the real reason for the revolutionary re-education of Kim Du-nam, who had been Kim Il-sungs military advisor. "Revolutionary reeducation" encompasses all the party's warnings

and penalties related to ideological sessions, forced labor, expulsion from the party, loss of post, or banishment. In fact, among North Korea's senior cadres, there aren't many who haven't received such a "reeducation;' because it is seen as a kind of vaccination against a full-blown greed for power. There are even senior cadres who are former inmates of North Korea's infamous Yodok camp. Unlike other prison camps, where you can only leave as a corpse, going to Yodok is not the end of your life or career if you choose to endure forced labor and indoctrination obediently. It is a brutal ideological training camp, where you relearn the only truth that matters in North Korea: that loyalty to the Dear Leader buys renown, and disobedience brings

"ANNALS OF THE KfM DYNASTY" 1139

death. The person from whom I first began to understand the Kim Du-nam backstory was a general whose father had lost authority as a consequence of Kim Il-sungs unseen fall from power. Although it was he who told me the story, he too seemed to fear Yodok.

"No stranger must know this story. Don't write it down: just know about it. Better still, hear it to understand it, and then erase it from your memory."

This is the story he told me. In the mid-1980s, a high-ranking military group from the USSR

visited North Korea. Kim II-sung wanted to inquire about the hospitality being offered to them, and ordered his military advisor Kim Du-nam, a four-star general, to request their schedule from the military's Foreign Affairs Bureau. When Kim II-sung discovered that the visitors were staying at a guesthouse belonging to the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, he phoned his son Kim Iong-il to ask whether it might be more suitable to accord them the level of hospitality more appropriate to a head of state, suggesting the Baekhwa-won Guesthouse as a possibility.

Kim Iong-il immediately ordered the OGD to reveal who had notified Kim Il-sungs office about the arrangements for the USSR delegation. The next day, he fired the director of foreign affairs of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, and sentenced Kim Il-sung's military advisor, Kim Du -nam, to "revolutionary reeducation" for six months.

Among many further indignities, Kim II-sung had to offer up a personal ode of praise on his son's fiftieth birthday, on February 16, 1992.

In this way, Kim II-sung lived out his final years as the leading character in his own cult, which was itself controlled by the son who had effectively usurped him and who would now succeed him.

Publicly, Kim Iong-il was careful to keep up the pretense that father and son got along well. In 1994, after Kim II-sung's death, the North

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Korean state publicized artifacts associated with the Supreme Leader's office. Among them was a speech handwritten by Kim II-sung before his death, in which he proposed a summit to discuss unification with South Korea. This manuscript was even publicly displayed in the Mount Keumsu Memorial Palace for propaganda purposes in support of the ideology of federal unification of the two Koreas.

It seemed that Kim Jong-il supported his father's pursuit of peaceful unification. But in reality and behind the scenes, he fiercely opposed it. In 1994, alarmed by the threat of pre-emptive strikes made by the United States, Kim Jong-il permitted former United States president Jimmy Carter to visit Pyongyang. Kim II-sung took the opportunity to declare publicly his approval for an inter- Korean summit, and many in the international community noted optimistically that North Korea's leader had reached out to the world. They perhaps did not realize that Kim II-sung was no longer in control. Among the source materials I saw during the course of my work on

the Annals of the Kim Dynasty, there was one document in particular that illustrated the contrast between what Kim Jong-il projected through propaganda and his actual intentions. The document in question is the minutes of a party meeting that took place in early July 1994, organized by Kim Iong-il himself. According to these minutes, the meeting was titled, "Today's climate calls for practical developmental policies for protecting Socialism, not policies for unification of the homeland:' It called on cadres to discredit all thoughts of unification associated with the inter-Korean summit that his father had proposed, going as far as stating that his suggestions were indicators of senility. In fact, the conversation records a meeting that was held among Kim Iong-il's closest associates not only to criticize Kim II-sung's proposal, but to plan obstructions to its success. Why then did Kim II-sung stubbornly pursue the summit in the

"ANNALS OF THE KIM DYNASTY» 1141

face of Kim Iong-ils opposition? Authority to talk to the outside world, which he had as the apparent leader of North Korea, was the last remaining power he held. Putting unification on an agenda that was so publicly and irrevocably in view of the world was perhaps a final attempt to have his say on the future of Korea in a way that his son could not merely ignore and recast.

Kim Jong-il refused to fulfill even one of his father's simplest last requests. Kim II-sung had said that when he died, he wanted to be buried alongside his fallen comrades at the Mount Daesung Revolutionary Martyrs' Memorial. After his death, his ex-guerrilla comrades even signed a group petition for this wish to be carried out. But Kim Jong-il thought that if Kim Il-sung's body were laid to rest at this location, the authority of his father's revolutionary comrades would be seen to be reasserted, which might in turn threaten his own power because he had once taken away theirs.

As if to reflect his anxiety over this divisive and delicate balance, at the same time as he refused the Mount Daesung burial, he announced to the world through the Workers' Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun that "It is the most righteous and moral thing to respect the first generation of revolutionaries;' referring to the very group who were his enemies. Meanwhile, Kim Il-sung, denied his last wish of being buried next to his supporters, was mummified in the Mount Keumsu Memorial Palace-spending his afterlife as a propaganda icon used to legitimize Kim Jong-iI's hereditary succession.

Given the subterfuge and machinations performed by Kim Iong-il against his father, it was no easy task for me and my seven colleagues at the UFD to write the Annals of theKim Dynasty, between 1999 and 2000. That said, they continue to be broadcast daily on North Korean state television under the title: Uncovering the Revolutionary Annals of Comrade Kim ll-sung.

4 CRIMINAL OPERATIONS

THOSE who simply cross the river out of hunger spend a fewmonths in a hard labor camp. But the higher one's position, the more treacherous the defection is considered to be, and the punishment is correspondingly greater. The knowledge of this and our fear of the possible consequences for our loved ones weighed heavy on our hearts.

In the hope that it would get a little warmer on the mountain after the sun rose, Young-min and I stayed up all night talking. But a stronger blizzard came just before dawn. Weak after shivering all night and unable to stretch my legs, I thought I would pass out. I felt as if we had come to a cliff's edge, confronting the reality that we must spend another twenty-four hours in these freezing conditions. At least we still had the thermos of warm tea and the bread that Chang-yong had given us, which afforded us a little consolation. When Chang-yong finally returned, he brought with him a new

blanket and a hatchet. Our old blanket was like corrugated iron, frozen stiff, so Chang-yong had to carry it on his head down the hill. Before he left, he grumbled that Pyongyang boys might have money, but they didn't know how to survive; he chopped small logs and gathered branches from nearby to make us a shelter. Inside, we were shielded from the worst of the bone-chilling wind. But the respite didn't last long. As the sunlight couldn't penetrate

it, the shelter was like a freezer and the air inside was bitterly cold. It felt as though I had my feet in iced water, in spite of my wearing

'I

CRIMINAL OPERA nONS I 143

rubber shoes. In an effort to keep warm, we ran to the top of the hill and back down several times during the day. At night, the blizzard worsened. Farmer Chang-yong had given

us two bottles of wine, and when I put one down to drink from the other, the bottle frosted during the few moments it was resting on the ground. Yet,even if misery was all that there was left to look forward to, every second I survived in that mountainside shelter reminded me of the preciousness of human life. The morning promised by Chang-yong finally arrived. After

the sun had passed its midday mark. he reappeared with a man of about our own age. The young man was wearing blue jeans and an expensive-looking beige leather jacket. He was fit and agile, and our first impression was that he did indeed seem like someone who might have connections with South Korea's spy agency. His eyes were small and did not give the impression that he trusted anyone easily, yet he was full of quiet confidence. He was the kind of man who only spoke when absolutely necessary, and his greeting was as short as he could make it. But his slight smile did not leave his face throughout our meeting. "My name is Shin Gwang-ho," he said. He was certainly Chang-yong's nephew in that he shared his

heavy northern accent, reminiscent of North Hamgyong Province. He looked us up and down, pausing as he noticed our rubber shoes. When he fmally offered his hand for us to shake, it was soft and warm. But after shaking our hands, he furtively wiped his own on his jeans. He asked us for our identification documents, saying it was just

a routine precaution. I noted his professionalism in recognizing and checking the dates, stamps, and quality of our papers, and I felt somehow that I could trust this man. Although Chang-yong was on edge, fidgeting at the sound of barking dogs in the distance, Mr. Shin didn't seem to notice and focused on his task.

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Apparently satisfied, he looked up at us. "Would you please wait a moment?" This time, I wondered if he was speaking in South Korean. This

was because he said, "Would you please," before the request. I had learned at the UFD that there were three types of politeness markers in South Korean. The first was to refer to oneself in a lower register than the listener; the second was to add something like "would you" (requests ending with yo) as a general marker of respect; and the third was similar to a military manner of speaking: "Sir, would you please" (requests ending with sipnika). In North Korea, there exist the first and third types of politeness markers, but not the second. Instead of subtleties for different situations, the two distinctions were the one ordering and the one complying, so the senior person in this sort of scenario would say "Wait!" and the junior party would comply. However, in North Korea, there was another politeness marker

that not even the most senior cadres could use, which was the marker reserved only for the ruling Kim. This works most typically in a "siut" addition to the verb conjugation. For example, the people are said to have "done" something (hada) but the Supreme Leader "did do" something (ha-siut-da). This distinction was strictly observed not only in everyday life, but also in all forms of the written word. In this way, although Mr. Shin spoke to us in a standard polite register (a request ending with yo), he had added the "siut" conjugation reserved only for Kim II-sung and Kim Iong-il in North Korea. This seemed to us at the time to be a Significant marker of respect. He turned away to make a call on his cell phone. After speaking quietly for a few moments, he hung up and we stood waiting in the snow, hunched against the cold. A short while later, a four-wheel drive appeared and stopped halfway up the slope. As Chang-yong had implied, his nephew's resourcefulness was at a very different level from that of his farmer uncle, for whom the greatest imaginable excitement was the prospect of buying a new cultivator. When Mr. Shin told us to hurry,

CRIMINAL OPERATIONS Il45

we quickly hugged Chang-yong, who was waiting for our embrace with his arms open wide, and said good-bye. Not only did he not ask for more money, but as we clasped each other he whispered into my ear that I should not tell his nephew about the $700 we had given him. As we climbed into the Jeep, we thanked him once again and promised to come back and visit him after wed made it to South Korea. The Jeep was as powerful and agile as Mr. Shin. Listening to Korean

pop music on the radio as we bounced along the road, I felt we could ride this Jeep all the way to Seoul. Instead, we arrived back in Yanji, this time in a central and modernized area. There, right in the middle of the city, Mr. Shin brought the Jeep to a halt, opened the door and asked us to get out. Having been so far from the bustle of ordinary life, we found the busy crowd overwhelming. Mr. Shin didn't seem to notice. He just shouted, "Hurry up!" and we followed him. We went into a shopping mall, where I was startled to see a group

of armed police on patrol. Yet Mr. Shin dared to call my name out loud. His apparent carelessness put me on edge, but Young-min and I did as we were told as he beckoned impatiently to us from outside a clothing store. After putting on the new clothes hed chosen, I looked in the

mirror, pleased at first, but then shocked to see my easily recognizable face staring back. What was I doing, standing in such a public place with my face displayed for all to see? I quickly asked for a pair of sunglasses instead of new clothes. Mr. Shin said that would arouse suspicion, but Young-min pleaded likewise. He even explained at length how we had lost our sunglasses in the rucksack we had been forced to abandon. Mr. Shin was reluctant to make the purchase, saying it might make us stand out, but in the end he gave in to Young- nun,

From then on, we wore our new clothes and sunglasses. I felt I could stand tall, safely disguised by the dark glasses. Young-min

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grinned at me from behind his shades, although I could not see his eyes. I felt a pang of sadness, thinking that this is how I must have looked to my parents when they saw me for the last time. When we went back to the car, Mr. Shin was waiting with a camera.

He said he had to provide evidence to his superiors of how he had used their money. If we had not bought the sunglasses, I don't think I could have let myself be photographed in public. After wed finished with the photographs, I noticed some more police officers standing behind us, completely oblivious. That was the first day I felt we were really able to appreciate the

impact of reforms in China. Just like the North Korean saying that "even viewing Mount Keumgang is to be done after eating' (meaning that even gazing at the best views on earth ought to be done on a full stomach), we headed first to have lunch. Mr. Shin took us to an expensive restaurant that specialized in smoked duck served whole on a large plate. Mr. Shin boasted that this was a favorite dish of such illustrious figures as Emperor Qianlong, Empress Cixi, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, but our delight in the dish was pleasure enough without these sorts of associations. After stuffing ourselves with duck, we went-for the first time in our lives-to a Korean-style sauna open to both men and women. I asked why it was referred to as Korean style, and Mr. Shin explained that, in South Korea, you could take a bath, have a sauna, and stay the night all in one establishment. When I plunged up to my neck into a large hot tub, washing off

the dirt I'd accumulated since wed left Pyongyang, it seemed as though all my suffering was being washed away too. Even the hot water overflowing from the tub was miraculous. By 1994, when the central heating system of Pyongyang had all but collapsed, hot water had become a rare privilege. In November 1998, just before the start of winter, the party finally acknowledged this through a public order, stating that each household must sort out its own heating problems.

CRIMINAL OPERATIONS 1147

At the time, Pyongyang residents openly complained that they were happy to forgo hot water, if only they would be provided with a decent supply of drinking water. The only residential area in Pyongyang that provided a hot water

supply to its residents was Changgwang-dong of the Ioongu area, where Central Party cadres lived. Even there, the supply was only provided twice a day for two hours at a time, between six and eight in the morning and seven and nine in the evening, when people were preparing to go to work and arriving home. With the situation so dire even for the most privileged people in the nation, the places foreigners frequented such as the Koryo Hotel and facilities set up for foreigners, such as saunas, became established as the social gathering places of the North Korean elite. Until I left Pyongyang in 2004, the price of two pounds of rice in

the markets was 1000 won, the equivalent of 50 US cents. At a time when many couldn't afford to pay even such a small sum for essentials and sometimes went without food for days, a fee of five or eight US dollars for one entry to a foreigners' bath or sauna represented an inconceivable extravagance. Instead, the middle class of Pyongyang, who didn't have enough foreign currency purchasing power to afford this luxury, frequented the boiler rooms at foreign embassies, restaurants, or central state institutions. If you paid a bribe, the staff would allow you to have some of the hot water from the overflow pipe. You could sometimes see foreigners at these locations, but there would always be surveillance around and no one dared to get too friendly with the visitors. Even today, the vast majority of the North Korean population,

which struggles with many of the basics of day-to-day living, relies on vinyl bathing "greenhouses' imported from China. These come in single and double sizes. If you hang this vinyl encasement from the ceiling, it reaches to the floor. In effect, it is a large plastic bag. If you enter it carrying a bucket full of boiling water, the steam

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rises and the plastic bag swells like a balloon. You wash yourself by mixing cold and boiling water, and you're kept warm by the sauna effect. In contrast to all this, China seemed to me paradise on earth. The

hot water that filled my tub was much more than that to me. It was yet another example of how reform had transformed Chinese society to the extent that the enjoyment of the most luxurious privilege by North Korean standards was available even to ordinary people. On hearing our description of the "greenhouse" baths, Mr. Shin said that there were rural places in China where they still washed themselves using a similar method. Ironically, it was due to Chinese reforms that these "Korean-style" saunas had appeared. Seemingly proud of this, he leapt out of the bath, declaring that he would give us North Korean hillbillies a real taste of Chinese-style reform. He took us to a room furnished with beds, where a man stood in a

white bathrobe. Mr. Shin said he was the back scrubber, who would scrub our backs for a few coins. I couldn't understand why on earth anyone would stoop to scrub another man's back, even for money. We were made to lie down to see for ourselves what it was like. The man went to work energetically, but I felt so embarrassed that I couldn't enjoy the experience. Coming from a country where ideology dictated that no ordinary individual was permitted to benefit from the personal service of any other individual, this back-scrubbing experience made me feel that I was overdosing on the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation. Changing into bathrobes, we followed Mr. Shin into the main

hall, where we were profoundly shocked once again. This time, it was at the sight of men and women in the same room wearing only bathrobes, despite being complete strangers. When a woman wearing shorts that revealed her knees approached and plonked herself down next to us, Young-min and I jumped up from our seats. In North Korea, only a madwoman would behave in such an unguarded

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manner in the presence of men. While we stared in amazement as she nonchalantly peeled a tangerine, Mr. Shin laughed. After the sauna, we went to a karaoke bar. Mr. Shin probably

thought that we would find the karaoke more astonishing than the back-scrubbing services, but he was wrong. In fact, we had sung more karaoke than Mr. Shin. Pyongyang has karaoke bars too. The main difference between

them and this one in China was that back home you had to pay an entrance fee of US$lO per person and you didn't have time in one session to sing as many songs as you could here. Instead, you would receive a special token in exchange for a US dollar, which allowed you to sing one song. But for a country where millions were on the starvation line, karaoke, like hot water, was an extravagant luxury. In Pyongyang's karaoke bars, the playlists are filled with songs of

praise for Kim II-sung and Kim Iong-il, but no one in his right mind would have paid precious foreign currency to sing such common fare. Nevertheless, even being drunk in a karaoke bar with friends might not exempt a person from being accused of subversion if he messed up the lyrics while singing a song of praise for the Dear Leader. So the most popular songs in these establishments were songs such as "Whistling" or "Nice to Meet You"; popular melodies considered relatively free from political implications, yet whose lyrics had been adapted to comply with the party.

Ina country where the arts were explicitly political, there were not too many songs to choose from. Whenever Young-min and I went to a karaoke bar in Pyongyang, we sang "Morning Dew" over and over again. The song was actually South Korean, one of the anthems of the South Korean democratic movement that rebelled against that country's military dictatorship in the 1970s. But the party had edited the lyrics to suggest that South Korean citizens looked to Kim II-sung as the force that would unify the Korean peninsula, and so the song was sanctioned for karaoke use.

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When Young-min and I now took turns to sing "Morning Dew" in perfect tune, Mr. Shin was astonished at how we hit all the right notes. He gave us a thumbs- up and said that we were clearly different from ordinary refugees who had never seen a microphone before. Whenever we heard his compliments ringing through the sound system, we felt embarrassed and waved our hands to quiet him, but Mr. Shin went on to shout drunkenly, "Here in this land, there is no Kim Iong-il!" The evening passed quickly, and it was past ten by the time we

stumbled outside. When we got into a cab, Mr. Shin told us that we would be staying at his place for a few days. The cab dropped us off in front of a decrepit building, where there were no lights in the stairwell. Mr. Shin led the way up to his third-floor apartment with a cigarette lighter, warning us that the stairs were slippery. We stopped at a door with a small plaque that read "302:' When

Mr. Shin rang the doorbell, a woman in her mid-twenties opened the front door. She was wearing a hooded purple sweatshirt and matching bottoms. Whether it was because of her rolled-up sleeves or her pursed lips, I felt I could sense in her a certain inner strength. But her face remained impassive and all she said was, "Yes,"or "No," in a Spartan way. "This is my wife." Mr. Shin gave his curt introduction, but the

impact of those words was deep for me. The muscles in my body, which had been tense and rigid with chill and fear of death since crossing the Tumen River, relaxed a little. I felt there was no more comforting word in the world than "wife;' with its domestic connotations. The inside of Mr. Shin's flat looked not much different from an

average flat in North Korea's capital city. The kitchen doubled as a bathroom, with a tap and toilet next to each other in the confined space. This was also where we took our shoes off to enter the rest of Mr. Shin's home. There were two rooms in addition to the kitchen- bathroom, where Mr. Shin ate and slept on the heated floor in true

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North Korean style. In the bigger room of the two, there were three wardrobes. Apart from those items and a loud whirring fan heater on the floor, there were no furnishings. In the smaller room, there were some blankets folded up in a

corner. Gesturing towards them, Mr. Shin said, "You can use this room. It's warmer than the other one because it's smaller. Good night then." With those words, he left us alone. Young-min and I both stretched our limbs. Hearing the cracking noises in my joints gave me pleasure, because I feared they had withered in the terror and cold of the last few days. After switching off the light, I snuggled under the blankets in our warm room. As I lay in the dark, images of the dangers and close calls

we'd experienced over the last few days began to play over and over in my head like scenes in a film on repeat. They were mere memories, but, nevertheless, my heart thumped; my mind fell prey to doubts about whether we would make it through the night, and I wondered how much longer we could remain on the run. The faintest sound of a motor vehicle outside sent shivers through me and, when it was quiet, I held my breath in anticipation of the next potential threat. Although this pattern continued without any real danger materializing, my restless mind didn't tire of the routine. My finer feelings and emotions had evaporated after these days spent so close to death, and now I was relying solely on my animal instincts, desiring and imagining nothing but survival. Although I recognized and wanted to reject this response, I couldn't. And I felt dismayed and hollow at how weak I had become. Young-min slept with his back to me, but whenever he

breathed really loudly, I could sense his inner torment. There might not be any soldiers knocking at our door, but they were already in our heads, and we had to do battle with them throughout the night.

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In the morning, someone knocked on the door of our room. "Areyou up yet?" Mr. Shin asked. He had in his hand some paper

and a pen. We had been up and awake for an hour, had folded our blankets, and were peering through the window at Yanji. "I'll show you around Yanji as much as you want, but now isn't the time. I need both of you to write me a statement before we can eat breakfast." He passed us the paper and pen and asked us to write "carefully"

a statement detailing our family relations, what intelligence we had to pass on to the South Korean government, and the reason for our defection. He emphasized the importance of "intelligence:' but said that since he himself must not know about the details, we should just summarize it in bullet points. The way he spoke suggested that he was practiced in this routine. But what did we have to offer that would count as intelligence? All the same, the request felt professional, as if he were directly representing South Korea. I don't think I'd ever taken such care with every single word of a

piece of writing as I did that morning. Young-min too made a great effort, as if writing a letter to the South Korean president himself. We worked for over an hour and showed the results to Mr. Shin. He said that even though we were writing in bullet points, we should explain enough to make sure we could be trusted. He suggested, for example, that I should hint at what the "seed-bearing strategy" referred to. I felt that in order to persuade the South Korean intelligence of our credentials, I needed first to gain the trust of Mr. Shin, and told him that the strategy referred to a kidnapping operation practiced by North Korean agents. I first learnt of this immense criminal operation when I was a

student at Pyongyang Arts Schoo!. Among my classmates there was a girl called Ri Hyun-suk. We had just finished eating our packed lunches and had started to peel some tangerines to share between us when she confessed to me, "I'm actually Japanese." I choked on a soft segment of fruit. Id known her for several years:

CRIMINAL OPERA TrONS I 153 how could she possibly be a foreigner? All citizens of North Korea had to be Korean. I laughed awkwardly. Hyun-suk began to cry and then she left the room. A few days later, after going on a date together, I had the opportunity to see her home. She lived alone with her mother in a very luxurious private

mansion. Not only her house, but all the other houses in that walled compound were mansions. Before we parted, she told me, as ifletting me in on a top secret, that all the residents of that walled compound were involved in "Localization" schemes. When I asked what she meant, she said this was where female North Korean agents who had been made pregnant by foreign husbands lived with their children. It was part of a plan to establish North Korean family ties for foreigners, to make them sympathetic towards North Korea. Her father, she said, was the most important figure in the Japanese Socialist Party. I did not believe everything she told me then, not until the second

time I encountered the "Localization" strategy after my admittance into the United Front Department. There, I learnt first-hand that there were others like Hyun -suk who had foreign blood in them and were brought up not knowing their own fathers. This was 1999, when the Japanese government had raised the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the DPRK as an issue, and was demanding their return. At that time, I was working on a book of poetry commissioned

by Director Im Tong-ok and was staying at Ui-Am Guesthouse. Although, as head of the UFD, he was in charge of any espionage, policy or diplomacy related to South Korea, he needed to maintain his literary credentials because the UFD relied on tools of psychological warfare that encompassed the arts. Moreover, Director Irn was caught up in a power struggle at the very top that required him to offer Kim Jong-iI a book of poetry. OGD Deputy Director Hwang Byong-seo, having upset Kim Iong-il and been banished into the provinces, had offered his apology to Kim by way of dedicating a book of poems to

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him. When Kim Iong-il reinstated the man on the grounds that the dedication was proof of his absolute loyalty in the face of adversity, North Korea's most powerful men became pitted against each other in a battle to the death to please Kim Iong-il with their own "literary offerings." The Ui-Am Guesthouse, in the Daedong River area of Pyongyang,

belonged to Director Irn Tong-ok. A very limited number were permitted to go inside, and those allowed entry were being afforded a special show of trust by him. For this reason, conversation on classified state secrets was allowed to take place there to a certain extent. One day, when head ofUFD policy-making Chae Chang-guk visited the guesthouse, I asked about our department's need for Japanese citizens. "You'll hurt yourself if you know too much," he responded with

a hearty laugh, instead of answering my query. But that evening, as we dined with other cadres in the compound, the very same subject came up again in the context of diplomacy with Japan. Chae Chang-guk didn't seem to be concerned that I was part of the conversation, and I understood tacitly that while he couldn't tell me directly, it was something I was allowed to know. That evening marked my true induction into the nature and scale of international crimes perpetrated by the North Korean regime. The history of North Korea's kidnappings began in the 1970s.

Until the end of the 1960s, North Korea was effectively ruled by the military. Following the end of the Korean War in 1953, Kim Il-sung built up the authority of the military in order to consolidate domestic politics on the basis of anti-South Korean sentiment, and to entrench his power. But for Kim Iong-il, who had been preparing the ground for his succession to the throne since the early 1970s, the military was a threatening entity: as long as it could influence policy-making, it effectively held power. Under the guise of forming a state based on single-party rule, Kim Iong-il took away the inter-Korean diplomatic

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and business privileges of the military and transferred them to the Workers' Party. The military had to consent to Kim Iong-ils proposals because of

the nature of Kim Il-sung's Koryo "Confederation" strategy, according to which there would be two political systems on the Korean peninsula initially, until such a time as the two Koreas could be united under a federal government. For this to work in Kim Il-sung's favor, what was required was not merely military might, but the dissolution of South Korea's military leadership. This was to be accomplished through infiltrating South Korea's democratic movements, which were increasingly rising up in protest against their military dictator. This is what led to the creation of the United Front Department,

the Strategic Command, Office 35, and the Foreign Investigations Bureau (the precursor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), all of which were to be controlled by the Workers' Party. In order to showcase the superiority of the party over the military in activities in the inter- Korean sphere, Kim Iong-Il instigated in 1972 an ambitious project called "Localization:' While the military's Reconnaissance Bureau produced spies by

training those who had defected to the North, the new departments of the Workers' Party were more proactive in how they acquired "localized" knowledge: they chose to kidnap citizens of the country that would be spied on. Eventually, the military became restricted to gathering tactical intelligence in the inter-Korean sphere. While the Workers' Party also conducted espionage in the inter-Korean sphere, its mandate was extended to the promotion of Korean reunification (on DPRK terms) at the international level by means of cultivating pro-North sympathizers worldwide and engaging in counter-intelligence and psychological warfare initiatives. There were three main reasons put forward by cadres working

on these operations to justify Kim Iong-ils strategy of kidnapping of foreign citizens. First, to recruit teachers who could provide

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"localized" knowledge of their country and thus aid in the training of North Korean spies. Second, it helped accomplish identity fraud and allowed North Korean spies to acquire genuine foreign identities. Third, depending on the individual circumstances of adaptation and loyalty, kidnapped children could be trained and returned to their country of birth as North Korean agents. In 1977, Yokota Megumi, a Japanese girl who is one of the most

well-known victims of North Korean kidnapping, was captured for the third reason when she was only thirteen years old. Her youth meant she could be persuaded to feel loyalty to the DPRK-or so it was thought. The following year, sixteen-year-old South Korean student Kim Young-nam was kidnapped in Gunsan, in Cheonbuk, South Korea, along with dozens of other teenagers from around the world. Nevertheless, Japanese citizens made up the greatest number of

foreign kidnap victims. This was because the party's inter-Korean operatives had an outpost in the Jochongryon, the Association of Chosun People in Japan, and there were political and geographical advantages in mounting operations against the South from a base in Japan. However, no matter how thorough the reach of Kim Iong-ils

dictatorship of the mind, it didn't win the genuine loyalty of the kidnapped. Because of their vivid memories of the lives they had known and the trauma of being separated from their parents, I believe the kidnapped teenagers were able to resist ideological brainwashing In the mid-1980s, Kim Iong-il therefore proposed the "seed-bearing

strategy" as a solution to the problem. The idea was to create spies who looked foreign, but who were born and bred North Koreans. In order to accomplish this task, the party's inter-Korean operatives pursued a two-fold tactic that involved kidnapping foreign women, and sending attractive North Korean women abroad to become

CRIMINAL OPERATIONS I 157 pregnant with men who had white, black, or brown skin. Their children were born in North Korea with different-colored skin to the rest of their countrymen, and the rest of their lives were to be spent in strict apartheid. Their health is looked after by Office 915 of the party's Strategic Command, which treats only inter-Korean operatives. Everything else they need in life is arranged directly by the most powerful entity in North Korea, the Party's Organization and Guidance Department. My classmate Ri Hyun-suk, however, had spent her life in

relative freedom, and was integrated into society to a certain extent. This was because her mere presence as a hostage in Pyongyang provided leverage against her father, giving him a greater incentive to encourage foreign aid to North Korea and advocate for engagement strategies favorable to the DPRK. Kim Iong-ils international crimes, which extended to kidnappings

as he established his succession from Kim Il-sung, were first revealed on a mainstream scale at the time of the 2002 summit with the then Japanese prime minister Koizumi. Before this time, even the Japanese were skeptical of the notion that the DPRK might be kidnapping their citizens. But at the summit, Kim long- iI acknowledged the kidnapping of Megumi and others. He issued an apology, saying he had only found out about these incidents after the event, because special departments had carried out the kidnappings out of heroic and nationalistic fervor. Not only Japan, but the rest of the world was shocked. The gross miscalculation by Kim Iong-il had its roots in North

Korea's anticipation of 11.4 billion dollars in aid from Japan. The following is how the events unfolded behind the scenes. Just before Koizumi arrived in Pyongyang, the DPRK foreign ministry's final agenda of the summit was to be provided to the UFD for viewing. As we waited throughout the morning for the agenda to arrive, the atmosphere was grave: we had submitted an unambiguous warning

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to Kim Iong-il earlier, saying that if the kidnapping issue had already been included in the agenda for the North Korea- Japan summit, there was a serious risk that the issue might attract international attention through the interference of South Korean or Japanese civilians. This would put North Korea in a very difficult position, and someone on our side would surely have to meet a grisly end following the summit. After receiving a summons from Supervisor Park Chul to appear

at an emergency meeting, I joined other colleagues in the meeting room. On the table lay the agenda, a packet of documents printed on white paper, and someone on our side would surely have to meet a grisly end following the summit.

"This agenda must be confirmed by Office 101 and returned to headquarters before the end of the day. We have thirty minutes to complete the task. There's not enough time to contribute individually; so I suggest we nominate someone to read the agenda out loud to the group." Normally, any UFD employee was permitted to view documents sent to the department by Kim Iong-il. But if there was a departmental meeting to discuss them, the documents had to be sealed again and returned to their source. As we had suspected, the agenda looked unfavorable. Above all,

the tone of the Japanese response to North Korea's proposal that they pay 40 billion US dollars in war reparations was alarming. North Korea had argued that the war damages and interest accrued since the time of the Japanese occupation amounted to 40 billion dollars. Japan responded by saying that North Korea owed money to Japan for having used factories, railroads, and other infrastructure built by Japan, and subsequently not dismantled by them, in the period following its withdrawal from Korea. But the most pertinent card they played was that Japan could not pay in cash, because if they did, it would afford opportunities to the United States to meddle in the name of inspecting funds related to nuclear issues. In the end, North Korea had settled for a proposal of 1104 billion dollars in material aid.

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When Koizumi arrived, Kim Iong-il found himself entangled from the start in a discussion that centered on Japan's seeking of a state- level apology for North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese citizens. Just as the UFD had warned, Kim Iong-il had walked into a trap whereby he was obliged to engage in a "constructive" dialogue that required real-rather than strategically feigned-give-and-take. From Kim Iong-ils perspective, the worst of it occurred after

the first morning session. The Japanese delegation's room had been bugged and during the break one of their team was heard to object strongly to North Korea's unwillingness to negotiate a state apology for the kidnappings, and to recommend that Koizumi leave Pyongyang without participating in another session. The conversation was reported to Kim Iong-il, who then must have feared that the foreign -currency aid package he so desperately wanted could be at risk. What happened next was shocking. In the afternoon session that followed, Kim Jong-il made an

off-the-cuff apology for the kidnappings. It was the only time in his life that he made a public apology. No one on the North Korean side had ever seen Kim Iong-il speaking on impulse like that, and it would never happen again. In an attempt to limit the damage, the party's Propaganda and Agitation Department immediately released the news that Kim Iong-il had "acknowledged" the kidnappings. But it could not control the Japanese media, which duly reported that Kim Jong-il had "offered an apology" for the kidnappings. In Korean, there is a saying that goes, "The man with cake has no

intention of sharing it, but the other man has already begun to set the cutlery." Kim Iong-il dreamed of modernizing the country with a two-track railway as a central part of his economic reconstruction plan, because he resented the Single-track railway laid by the Japanese and wanted to be "liberated" from that particular reminder of Iapans colonial rule. At the same time, the Propaganda and Agitation Department had ramped up anti-Japanese propaganda through all

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~edia outlets, emphasizing the suffering of the Korean people under Japanese occupation. Such was the background to Kim Iong-ils ignoring of the UFD's

advice. Tomake his point, he had sent us the foreign ministry's summit agenda at the last minute, as a token reprimand for our arrogance in criticizing him. This was received as a clear warning, because Kim Iong-il usually trusted by default the UFD on every aspect of North Korea'sengagement and diplomacy with the outside world. Emerging from tense give-and-take games sustained for decades, the UFD was in fact a peerless, finely tuned organization of pyschological warfare, whose mission was to create the best possible circumstances and context for ensuring that all kinds of "diplomacy" and "engagement" were conducted in a way favorable to the party. In the context of our special relationship of trust, it had been humiliating for the UFD to have to refer to an agenda finalized by the foreign ministry. Nevertheless, we were concerned that the prospect of 11.4 billion dollars of aid had blinded Kim Iong-il to the long-term implications. In the end, the summit of September 2002 that culminated in Kim

Iong-ils apology was a disaster for him in every way possible. As the extraordinary news spread throughout Japan and beyond, both the 11.4 billion dollars in aid, and the Iochongryon that functioned as an outpost and foreign currency safe in Japan for North Korea,came to be at risk. Kim Iong-il allowed five kidnapped Japanese to VISittheir homeland as a gesture of goodwill, but that didn't help. Adding insult to injury, the five refused to return to North Korea. Kim Jong-il was enraged, and insisted that there would be no further summits with Japan during his lifetime unless Japan paid him the foreign currency he demanded. He reaffirmed the rule that "Diplomacy ISa counter- intelligence operation" and removed from the foreign ministry the right to diplomatic involvement on any issue connected With the kidnappings, returning control of these matters to the UFD.

NORTH KOREAN 5 WOMEN SOLD AS "PIGS"

By the time I had finished outlining the seed-bearing strategy,Mr. Shin was leaning forward, listening intently. He had kept a somewhat condescending distance from us since our first meeting, but seemed to soften after my account. As if to introduce himself to us for the first time, he told us that he was thirty-two and that he had been born in Yanji. He had worked for five years as a broker helping North Korean refugees escape from China, and boasted that he had contacts in the intelligence agency in South Korea. He added that anyone working with North Korean refugees was monitored by the Chinese authorities, and that he had already had to move house several times.

He glanced over at his wife as he told us this. The many moves explained why the apartment was so devoid of personal belongings even though they were newlyweds building a new life together. He now wanted to settle in South Korea and have some stability, even if it meant doing menial jobs there. He sighed as he spoke, and I felt that we still weren't safe in his hands. However, on learning that Mr. Shin's wife was from North Korea's North Hamgyong Province, my trust in him increased, though Young-min did not yet seem convinced.

"Breakfast is ready!" Mrs. Shin declared from the other room. As soon as we joined her, I exclaimed that it was wonderful to meet

another North Korean, and Young-min and I both asked eagerly about her story and her hometown. But her face remained blank, as

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if to ask why we were making such a fuss about her past. She spoke only to tell us to tuck into our food, and we fell silent. She brought out steaming rice and a tofu stew with red chilli oil

floating on it. The chopsticks and spoon were carefully placed next to our food. Even if she was a bit unfriendly on the outside, she was clearly a warmhearted woman. This was the first proper sit-down home-cooked meal we'dbeen able to enjoy since crossing the river, so I immediately picked up my spoon. Then I realized that the low table was too small for four adults, and that only three places had been set. I noticed a bowl and chopsticks placed on the floor in the kitchen area and saw that she had already sat down beside them. Before I could ask her to join us, she put a spoonful of rice into her mouth. "Come, let's all eat together out here," Young-min called out.

She lowered her eyes and turned away from us. North Korea is a patriarchal society, which went straight from feudal Confucianism to Kim dynasty rule. The plight of women becomes much worse the farther north you venture from Pyongyang, and the cold and harsh climate only makes their domestic work harder. But to witness such an example of North Korean provincialism in a foreign land embarrassed me. Mr. Shin sighed too, saying they needed to buy a bigger table. To cover the awkwardness, he explained at length that when there were guests, there wasn't enough room. But I feltgrateful that this man had married a poor North Korean woman for love, and this made me respect him more. Mr. Shin finished eating first, rose, and put on his coat. Slippingour

statements, photographs, and copies of our identification documents into an envelope, he said, "The Chinese authorities sometimes check the post. That's why I'm going to give this directly to a boatman who will sail to Incheon port in South Korea. Within five days, we will get a call or a visit from the South Koreans. Then you'll be able to make your way to Seoul."

Before he left the house, he turned and told us that South Koreans

NORTH KOREAN WOMEN SOLD AS "PIGS" 1163

would on such occasions of uncertain hope shout, "Pa-ee-ting!"- which means "Fighting!" in Korean. Young-min and I looked at each other and shouted, "Pa-ee-ting!" and gave each other a high five. We were going to shout it again, but Mr. Shin's wife spoke first. "Be careful!" she warned him.

About three hours later, the doorbell rang. Mr. Shin had not yet returned, and any unexpected sound made us jump. Mrs. Shin peered through the peephole before opening the door. Even this precaution made us nervous and, as she undid the bolt, I was concerned that she might be about to let trouble into the house. When the door was opened, there was a loud racket as several women kicked off their shoes and walked in. It looked like they had all bought their clothes cheaply in the same shop, and they were wearing flimsy coats, one with a tacky yellow zipper. One of the women had a baby on her back. Speaking in a heavy northern accent very similar to Mrs. Shin's, they asked her to shut the door quickly, saying that there were police everywhere today, and that they had almost been stopped. When they noticed us, the women fell silent. As she bolted the

door, Mrs. Shin called out from behind them, "Don't worry, they're North Koreans too, friends of my husband's." I was a little worried that she might be carelessly giving away our identity. With the arrival of the women and their conversations, Young-min

and I withdrew into our smaller room and closed the door. I was curious to hear what they were saying, but with their heavy accents and Chinese words mixed in here and there, it was almost Unintelligible.

Mr. Shin returned an hour later. He seemed to know the women well, because the gathering burst into life when he came in, but he left them immediately and came to see us in our room and return our documents.

"How did it go? Were you able to send our papers?" I asked as soon as he came in.

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"Yes,I've sent copies of everything," he answered. More than the words he said, his confident smile was reassuring. I

asked who the women in the other room were, and Mr. Shin checked to see if the door was closed behind him before answering. He then leaned in and spoke in a low voice.

"They're victims ofhuman trafficking who have managed to escape." "Human trafficking? What's that?" Young-min asked, and I was

just as curious. Mr. Shin replied, "In China there are fewer women than men

and some villages have no women at all. These men, they can't get married unless they have money. And Chinese women are said to be quite daunting. Remember Empress Cixi who ruled this place a century ago? She was very fierce. Anyway, there are quite a few men who specialize in kidnapping North Korean women as soon as they cross the border into China. Lots of people who speak Korean in the border area have connections with criminal organizations." "But not Chang-yong?" Young-min asked, hoping that the answer

would be no. Mr. Shin replied, "I'm not saying this because he's my uncle but,

really, he's just a simple farmer who only knows about his cattle and his crops. People like him will never get on in life," he added bluntly. "You two are really lucky. If you had met the wrong kind of people, you might have been held hostage until the South Korean spies could produce enough ransom money."

I remembered Chang-yong's face on the way to his mother-in- law's house, and how he'd told us how lucky we were to have met a simple farmer like him. Mr. Shin slid closer to us as we sat on the floor. He continued, "Do you know what they call North Korean women over here?" We shook our heads. "Pigs. In the Chinese countryside, pigs are valuable, so people

call the women pigs. They're graded according to their age and

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appearance. A grade one "pig" fetches around 200,000 won; grade two goes for 150,000 won; and a grade three will bring in 100,000 won. The brokers, who act as middlemen, take half the selling price as their fee. Grade one is equivalent to about 1,500 US dollars. If you get sold for that amount, at least you go to a better house. "Below that amount, the women get taken to very remote farms

or are married to disabled men who can't find wives. They spend the rest of their lives rotting-the countryside here is a miserable place. Some women are shackled at night so they can't run away. Think about it-a farmer who has bought a woman has made a big investment, and these North Korean women are already risk takers who've crossed the border. Do you think they'd not run away? Well, they do keep running away,and because everyone knows this, they're kept in chains, at least until they've had their first baby. "While most North Korean women get sold on, the North Korean

men end up in one of two ways. Either they get caught sleeping rough and are sent back to North Korea; or, if they have enough money and meet a decent broker, they eventually make it to South Korea. But in the eyes of traffickers, the women here are worth at least 150,000 won each."

Even as I listened, I doubted what I was hearing, and could not believe it was true. Perhaps it was better to be sold into marriage than starve to death in North Korea, but for human beings to be priced like pigs was obscene. And to think that these "wives" were kept shackled-l was shaken by the idea that foreign men could treat our woman in this way. I was even angrier at the brokers who made money from this. But most of all, I felt disgust for Kim Iong-il, who didn't seem to be humiliated at all by what he had reduced his nation's women to, or to care enough to intervene. Young-min was shocked too. He seemed at a loss for words, and

looked restless as he lay down on the floor, and then sat up again. He asked how many women were trapped in this network, and Mr.

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Shin said that all he knew was that there were some 100,000 North Koreans caught in limbo in China. I couldn't believe that no one in Pyongyang talked about a situation as grave as this.

Then the door opened a crack and a woman with dyed-brown hair poked her head round. "Are you from Pyongyang?" she asked. "My friend just said you were." Then she went back behind the door and whispered, "You say it- I can't."

I didn't know what they wanted, but they seemed to be nudging each other. Mr. Shin asked in a loud voice, "Alcohol? Do you want a drink?"

"Yes!"came the chorus of replies, and we ended up having a boozy lunch together. In Mr. Shin's small Chinese flat, there were now five North Koreans and we started by introducing ourselves in turn. The woman who had first opened the door to our room said she was from Chongjin; the woman next to her was from Hamheung. We added Sariwon, Pyongyang, and Yanji in turn, and then we lifted our cups to toast all our homes. We drank three bottles of strong Chinese alcohol, eating only pickled cabbage and leftover tofu, but it made for a wonderful and rich feast when enjoyed in their company.

Perhaps because we were all North Koreans and shared our fugitive status, the topic of conversation soon turned to how we'd kept out of sight and evaded the Chinese authorities. The women all seemed to agree on the importance of dyeing their hair. In North Korea, since the idea of pure ethnic identity was strong, everyone's hair was black, and the first thing women did after crossing the border was to. dye their hair another color. This helped them feel like someone from the outside world and not conspicuous as a North Korean on the run. That was when I realized that all the women had indeed dyed their hair different shades of brown. The woman who had the baby on her back returned after putting her baby to sleep, and her hair was brown too. When Young-min said they looked like Westerners with their light-colored hair, the women smiled, delighted with their disguise.

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For refugees, there is often more pain caused by the things we can't take with us than by the things we are running away from. So when the conversation turned to talk of home, everyone spoke and listened solemnly After each person's story had ended, we toasted the memory of loved ones left behind. Then it became the turn of the youngest of the women to speak, the one with the baby. She hadn't yet spoken and Young-min, perhaps wanting to make it easier, asked a question.

"We missed you when we took turns to talk. How old are you?" "Sixteen," came the quiet reply. In fact, Young-min had suspected that she was young, and had

been urging her not to drink too much. But she kept sipping at her cup, and now her cheeks were bright pink.

"You're lucky to have got out with your little sister," he said. "Wheres your mother?" I'm sure Young-min spoke without thinking. But the girl narrowed her eyes, shot Young-min a sharp look, and tutted angrily. Then she filled her plastic cup with soju and downed it in one go.

Young-min tried to apologize, "Sorry, I realize your mother didn't manage to cross with you. I hope you'll be able to see her again ... "

Before he could finish, the girl threw the empty plastic cup across the room.

"Shut up, you asshole!" she shouted. Our jaws dropped. What had Young-min done to provoke such

a response? What confused us even more was that, apart from Young-min and me, the others remained silent and looked away.

As Young-min glanced around, wondering what on earth was the matter, the girl screamed at him again. "I am the mother! Does that make you feel better? And the baby, she isn't my sister-she's my daughter. So what's the problem? Am I a freak? Is my little girl a freak?"

Young-min's chopsticks fell from his fmgers. She probably needed

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a mother's love, yet she was a mother herself with a baby to care for, and on the run at only sixteen. As if she pitied herself for this very reason, the girl suddenly grasped Mrs. Shin's hand and started to cry. "What am I going to do?" she sobbed. "I went to the hospital yesterday. A friend took me there. Do you know what the doctor said? I don't know what to do ... " She couldn't finish her sentence, and beat her chest twice. Mrs.

Shin poured her a cup of water; she gulped it down and spoke again. "My little Iung-hyun, they can't fix her eyes. She's got to live the rest of her life blind. And do you know what else they said? They asked if something had happened when I was pregnant, if I'd ever knocked my womb or had a fall." I looked into the girl's eyes, which were now clear and bright from

her tears. Her trembling lips were a pale pink. This time it was I who handed her water. As if shea lost awareness of her surroundings, she looked up and said to the ceiling, "I passed out. When that bastard bought me, I was fourteen. I didn't know anything. He started to pull off my clothes. That middle-aged monster. Do you know what happened that day? I started to cry because I was scared. Then his mother and sister came into the room, those witches. They held my arms and legs down, and pulled my underwear off." The girl started shaking, and clutched Mrs. Shin's arm as she

wailed. "Then, you know what, the so-called mother-in-law, sister- in-law, as they held me down, that old monster, he-you know- right in front of them." With her lips pursed and her eyes wet with tears, Mrs. Shin held

the child tight. The girl whimpered, "Then I passed out. Afterwards, my poor

.Iung-hyun, my Jung-hyun was born blind. Because of that fucking monster," I tried to blink back the tears. And then I could no longer hold

them in. Young-min downed his cup of soju, and could no longer

NORTH KOREAN WOMEN SOLD AS "PIGS" I 169

restrain himself either. Mrs. Shin led the teenage mother into the room we had slept in, and the only sound was of the other women sobbing. How many more like her were there out there, forgotten by the world? How wretched their lives were. As the other women began to open up and tell their own stories, my chest tightened even more.

'1\t least she was able to run away," said the woman from Chongjin who had introduced herself first. "One girl I knew from back home escaped over the river too. She was sold into a Chinese village family where she was locked up and used by all the men in the family. One day the father-in-law would be the aggressor, the next the brother- in-law, all sleeping with her. So she doesn't even know who the father of her baby boy is, whether it's the husband or the father-in-law or the brother-in-law. In the end, they pimped her out to other men in the village, and pocketed the money. Luckily, there was one decent man who helped her escape.

"There are many 'dark children' here in China, babies abandoned by North Korean women. Because their mothers are North Korean, they have no rights and their births aren't recognized by China. They can't go to school or anything like that, and they live on the streets. That's why they're called 'dark children:" The woman from Hamheung, whoa seemed to be lost in pain until

then, took a deep breath, as if she still couldn't quite believe that the story she had to tell was one she herself had lived through. "I wasn't going to bring up my own experience, but before I was

sold, I was kept prisoner by a broker. There were sixteen other women there apart from me. He said that we could earn money by working on computers, but it turned out to be sex chatting. We were forced to be naked on camera. When I resisted, he threatened to report me to the authorities. When I still resisted, he beat me. From morning to evening we were made to do sex chatting. But six months of this work only added up to around a hundred dollars in payment

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for us. He said it was expensive to feed us. Besides, as North Koreans without legitimate identities, we can't open bank accounts here. So the broker said he was keeping our wages in the bank, and that he would return it all with interest. But, in the end, I never saw any of it, not even the one hundred. He said hed lost it in a deal. After profiting from us for around a year, he was planning to sell us off as ifwe were new refugees who had just crossed over. He said he would kill us if we didn't comply. And, really, I knew hed have just killed me. That knowledge gave me the determination to escape, and then I met my friends here on the streets. We're going to Tianjin to see if we can work in a restaurant. They say there are lots of Koreans there. Maybe we'll meet someone who can help us get to South Korea." Young-min was red-eyed and visibly agitated by a combination

of drink and anger, and suggested that returning home might be a better option than enduring such humiliation in China.

"Areyou really North Korean?" one woman asked in astonishment, adding that although she could perhaps endure the hunger, she could never stomach returning to that cruel country. Others joined in, clicking their tongues in disapproval. The woman from Hamheung, who I had thought the most

withdrawn, started cracking her knuckles nervously and saidagitatedly, ''A lot of the refugees in China have experienced repatriation. Those of us who have been sent back, knowing what the world is like over the border, usually have another go at escaping. Do you know what happens during repatriation? Even the handcuffs are different. Here in China, the handcuffs are shiny and new, but as soon as you cross the Friendship Bridge over the Yalu River and into North Korea, they change your handcuffs. North Korean handcuffs are rusty and disgusting. Besides, even though they're foreigners, the Chinese are more humane than our own people. Before my repatriation, one of the Chinese officers even apologized, and gave me a hundred yuan. But in North Korea, they're merciless.

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"They got all of us women together, took off our clothes and groped inside our vaginas with their fingers. You know, looking for hidden money and stuff. Pregnant women are treated like animals. There was a woman who was seven months pregnant among us when I was caught. Saying that she had bastard Chinese seed in her, the North Korean officers kicked her on the stomach over and over until she passed out. She died. ''And when you go to prison after processing, that's when you really

want to kill yourself. They keep you awake for days and beat you, and interrogate you to find out whether you might have intended to go to South Korea or the United States. If they suspect you of either, you're sent to a proper prison camp, instead of being sent to an ordinary labor camp to serve a three-year sentence. But even there, it's hard to make it through without suffering permanent disability. I couldn't bear the thought of going to either place. Seeing that ahead of me, I couldn't face it. So I swallowed a hairpin to kill myself. The bastards took me to the hospital, where I overheard somebody say that someone as strong-willed as me would definitely have had South Korea as my destination and, as soon as I recovered, I should be sent for a six-month pretrial confinement. ''At night, when the surveillance was slack, I managed to escape

and cross the river again. Even now, I can't believe it. They had cut my stomach open to take the hairpin out and sewed it back up, and although the wound opened again, I didn't feel any pain. Really, no pain at all." As I listened to their stories, I could see every scene vividly and

imagined myself being taken away and repatriated. The woman who had just told us her story then asked me a question. "So you're a cadre from Pyongyang. Why would you leave?" As

she spoke, all eyes in the room turned to us. It seemed that each gaze was saying, I left because I had no choice, but what hardship could you have had?

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I could not think of anything to say.Young-min spoke first. "You're all North Korean," he said. "You've heard of the Scrutiny, right?" "Yes,"came the replies. "Well, the administrative director for that was my father." The woman from Chongjin froze in the middle of pouring herself

another cup of soju. It was as if even the liquid had turned to ice. As everyone stared at Young-min, their faces didn't just register their shock. There was suddenly a distancing from him, as if he was an object of grotesque terror. All over North Korea, the mere mention of the Scrutiny would

be enough to silence any crying child. Every North Korean who was alive then knows about Kim Iong-il's Scrutiny that began in August 1997, and the bloody massacre that followed.

One sweltering summer's day in Pyongyang, an execution took place. Several hundred thousand spectators were gathered to watch it. The condemned man was a foreign spy, it was declared. But in fact, standing against the upright wooden plank -his limbs and torso bound with rope-the accused was none other than the party's agricultural secretary, Seo Gwan-hui. As the man in charge of the nation's food supply, he had become Kim Iong-il's scapegoat for the Widespread famine that had followed the collapse of the Public Distribution System in the mid-1990s. Seo Gwan-hui had been charged with spying for the Americans

and the South Koreans. It was alleged that he had been assigned by them to systematically undermine North Korea's principle of "self-reliance" in the sphere of agriculture. As a result, the crops had failed year after year. Accused of causing deaths among the people by starvation, he was not executed by firing squad. Instead, the crowd, whipped into hysteria, stoned him to death. Capitalizing on the widespread frenzy that followed Seo Gwan-huis

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conviction for spying, a mass purge was instigated, declaring war against "The Spies Within:' Back then, one of the main responsibilities of the now-defunct Ministry of Social Security was to oversee recordkeeping for North Koreans. Every North Korean is assigned an identification booklet at birth. This is a lifelong report card that records any change of circumstances throughout his or her years of education, contributions to the workplace, and efforts in the local party branch. Even if a person is unemployed, the officer in charge of their residential area and an officer from the ministry will jointly assign him or her a grade for behavior; so blank years are never an option. In order to "prove" the disgraced agricultural secretary's

collusion with foreign intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Social Security argued that the blank spaces in Seos identification booklet demonstrated that he had left the country to receive secret training in America. In fact, the three blank months in question reflected an unrecorded period in his life that occurred during the chaos of the Korean War in the early 1950s. As the evidence for the crime had been obtained by scrutinizing

his identification booklet, an aptly named campaign-the Scrutiny-was launched. Everyone who held an identification booklet dating to the Korean War was to be scrutinized. With its headquarters in the Ministry of Social Security, local bureaux of the ministry established dedicated Offices of Scrutiny throughout the country. Young-min's father, Hwang Iin-thaek, who headed the Ministry of Social Security, was appointed as the administrative director of the Scrutiny. Chae Mun-deok was appointed as its political director. To consolidate the powers of the Ministry of Social Security, and

to provide the distraction Kim Iong-il needed in the instability that followed from Kim Il-sung's death and the years of mass starvation, he gave overall command of the campaign of the Scrutiny to his

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brother-in-law lang Song-thaek, who was then deputy director of the party's Administrative Department. Kim Iong-ils intention was to lend weight to the Ministry of Social Security, which had until then ranked beneath the Ministry of State Security and the military in its surveillance powers. As Kim Iong-ils word served as the law, and because there was no man in North Korea more powerful than himself, he effectively gave hegemony over surveillance to the Ministry of Social Security by declaring, "I'm first in line for your campaign of scrutiny." Consequently, the Ministry of Social Security rose to dominate both the military and the Ministry of State Security. Moon Sung-sui, the general secretary of the Workers' Party HQ

and the third most senior man in the country after Kim II-sung and Kim Iong-il according to the party's hierarchy, became the first victim of the Scrutiny. As head of the Workers' Party HQ, Moon Sung-sui also served as the first deputy director of the party's OGD and held sway over the nation's most powerful men, for all of them reported ultimately to that entity. Nevertheless, he found himself the first in line to be charged with espionage by Jang Song-thaek, because he had been responsible for putting lang Song-thaek under surveillance by the OGD and restricting his influence on the grounds that he was a "side branch" of the Kim family who posed the greatest factional threat. Jang Song-thaek took the opportunity to seek revenge by having

Moon Sung-suI tortured and beaten to death. However, this move was much more than a mere act of personal vengeance on the part of lang Song-thaek; it was a clear warning to the OGD leadership that they too were not immune from destruction if they fell out of Kim Iong-ils favor. The Ministry of State Security received the same warning. In 1998,

the Ministry's first deputy director Kim Yong-ryong shot himself when agents from the Ministry of Social Security burst into his room to arrest him during the Scrutiny.

NORTH KOREAN WOMEN SOLD AS "PIGS" I 175 It was at this time that Young-min's father, Hwang [in-thaek, was

also arrested. He had raised questions about the attack against Moon Sung-sui, and lang Song-thaek was able to obtain approval from Kim Iong-il to attribute antirevolutionary charges to Hwang. Following Jang Song-thaek's lead of reprisal, the Scrutiny's

political director Choe Mun-deok similarly exacted revenge on his rival Seo Yoon-seok, the party secretary for Pyongyang. The poisoned water seeped downwards as others, in turn, inspired by the example set by their superiors, sought to resolve their personal grudges in a similar way. Through a widespread abuse of the surveillance powers offered by the Scrutiny, which relied on gaps in the entries of records from the Korean War, a bloodbath washed over the nation. Nearly 20,000 cadres, as well as retired individuals, were executed or sent to prison camps-and that was only according to the number released through official Workers' Party lectures. The impact was far greater because of the principle of guilt by association, whereby relatives and close associates were all purged alongside the "criminal:' As both cadres and ordinary North Koreans alike reacted with

increasing unrest and discontent, Kim Iong-il decided to turn down the heat by redirecting blame towards the campaign of the Scrutiny itself. According to him, the early prosecutor Choe Mun-deok's abuse of his office had sown the treacherous seeds of "greed for power" in the Scrutiny. Choe Mun-deok alone bore the brunt of Kim Iong-il and [ang Song-thaek's responsibilities and was publicly executed in February 2000. The six thousand officials who had worked directly under him were summarily stripped of rank. At this time, Young-min's father was reinstated in reputation as

far as the party was concerned, but he died in hospital two weeks after his release from prison. Young-min said that when he looked into his father's open but lifeless eyes, he cried not in mourning, but

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because of the injustice of it all. His father had known only loyalty to the party; yet in his final moments, he had to fix his eyes on a blank ceiling, unable to gaze at his loved ones. As Young-min closed his father's eyes, the trembling of his hand was the only visible trace of emotion that he could allow to escape from his heart. As Young-min finished telling his story, the North Korean women,

who knew the Scrutiny well, were silent for a moment. Only Mr. Shin, who had always lived in China, was incredulous: "So you're telling me that these violent mass purges went on in 2000? In todays world, and not in some history book? I really can't believe it."

The women from Hamheung and Chongjin both described how the Scrutiny had devastated their own hometowns like a tsunami. Fear and suspicion became so pervasive across the whole of North Korea that even the sight of a truck routinely delivering goods would be mistaken for a vehicle transporting another relative of a Scrutiny victim to a prison camp. Mrs. Shin described the violence and social anarchy that followed in her town in the wake of the Scrutiny's bloodbath. After Kim Iong-il publicly denounced the campaign, the officer responsible for her town was beaten to death in the dark of night. When incidents such as this began to occur all over the country,

and not only beatings but also the murder of Social Security agents, Kim Jong-il ordered the Workers' Party to prepare a series of compulsory lectures to be delivered nationwide. According to the reading materials for these lectures, the Ministry of Social Security would change its name to the Ministry of People's Security because it ought to "maintain security for the people, rather than oppress society:' It was claimed that Kim Iong-il penciled in the new name for the ministry with his own hand out oflove for his people. Inthis way, he thought, the negative connotations of a ministry associated with the Scrutiny's brutal violence might be erased.

Kim Iong-il's use of political theater in dealing with the issue did

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not end there. Through the authority of the supreme commander, he ordered the release of victims of the Scrutiny held in prison camps, in order to "bring justice" to the many who had been accused on false charges. In order to maximize the effect of their joy when they found they had regained their lives, he ordered that prisoners should not be informed of their release until they were in a party lecture hall where an audience could witness their genuine joy. But this tactic backfired appallingly, and the party halls became instead public courts testifying against despotism. Wretched prisoners were brought by truck from the camps and pushed into the hall; and even when Supreme Commander Kim Iong-ils release order was read out, they thought it might be a cruel prelude to execution. One person pleaded for his life; another coughed blood and passed out, thinking that he was going to be killed. Several were actually executed because they cursed Kim Iong-il before the audience in the party halL There were other respects in which the tragedy experienced by

the victims of the Scrutiny could not be reversed by mere words. Some spouses, who had escaped condemnation when their husband or wife was sentenced but were forcibly divorced, had already remarried; others had committed suicide. Some victims returned to find their homes and possessions reassigned to others and ended up on the streets. Kim Iong-il then issued an order for regional party committees to provide temporary housing for them, and also to offer rice and cooking oil. The party's Propaganda and Agitation Department used this as evidence to instigate mass propaganda campaigns describing Kim Iong-il's leadership as "all-embracing of the people, like the heavens;' moving on from the previous slogan of "strong leadership:'

6 AT A LOSS

WE spent only one afternoon with the North Korean women.Though it was only a short time together, it was a most crucial time. We compressed into those hours each of our individual experiences of life in North Korea, shared among us and no longer kept to ourselves. Above all, our time with the women confirmed for Young-min and me that the falsehoods on which Kim Iong-ils tyranny depended could not remain immune from scrutiny forever. While wewere inside the system, his command of absolute authority seemed to be the sole and most powerful manifestation of truth in the world. But how vicious and perverse that power was, which pursued us even after we had left its borders. It was only then, looking back from the outside, that I realized

this power could not belong to a strong man. It was the tantrum of a defeated man, a man who had been abandoned not only by Young-min and me, but by the very people he would have perceived as worthless and weak, such as these women who had endured the worst of humiliations. Another important lesson I learned from the women was one of

courage. The escape that Young-min and Ihad planned was born out of desperation, and we had only gone so far as to promise to commit suicide if we failed. But these women were driven by a powerful resolve and would keep on trying to escape, even after being captured and returned to North Korea. For them, this resolve had led to their decision to take action and cross China to Tianjin. Wewere not alone in our fate.

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The problem was that, although Mr. Shin had taught us to cry "Pa-ee-tingl" at uncertain times such as this, there were not yet signs that the miracle we hoped for would become a reality. Even after the women had gone on their way and the house had been empty of their voices for aweek, we had still received no response from South Korea. Mr. Shin too sighed as the days went by. I kept my doubts to myself for as long as I could, but in the end I had to ask him what was going on. How much longer would we have to continue to wait in hiding? He asked his wife to go out and get some wine. Then he sat

down with a serious expression on his face and said, "There's this South Korean I know quite well. He's very interested in North Korean refugees, and I think he works for South Korea's spy agency." "What-you think he works for the agency? Soyou're not certain?"

I asked. "What spy would admit to being a spy? I've met him several times

and he knows a lot about North Korea. He always speaks carefully, that's for sure. He's given me a retainer several times and asked me to contact him ifI happened to come across a defector from Pyongyang. Just a few days ago, he was checking up on how you guys were doing. The clothes I bought you, food, all my expenses so far-it's all his money. That's why I took pictures after we went shopping and sent them to him along with copies ofyour papers. But it's odd that I can't get through to him anymore. When I dial his cell, it says the number doesn't exist." All my hopes faded in an instant. The man wed put our trust in,

Mr. Shin's contact and our savior, might be nothing more than a mirage. Mr. Shin wasn't even sure about the man's identity, and there was no guarantee that he worked for South Korea at all. We had been waiting for a miracle from some unknown person. I regretted even asking-not knowing would have been better than this new

- - --~---~---------

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uncertainty. Not only the future, but even the miracles that had blessed us until now, all this seemed meaningless.

Was there no other way forward? Why was it so difficult to get to the country where our fellow Koreans lived? Mr. Shin explained that there were other ways of getting to South Korea through Vietnam, Mongolia, or Thailand, but this only made us feel worse. We had already had several near misses just coming from the border to Yanji-how could we possibly go so far and cross so many more borders? In the end, the problem was money. Mr. Shin reminded us that staying here any longer required money, and setting off anywhere required more money.

Young-min excused himself and went to our room. He returned carrying the envelope that held the note with the address of his relative. As Mr. Shin read the note's contents, his eyes lit up. With a wide-eyed expression that reminded me of his uncle Chang-yong, he exclaimed that the relative must be very rich. Immediately, he got out his phone and dialed a number. He spoke in Chinese, which I couldn't understand, but it was clear from his face that the call went well. As he hung up, he turned to us and could hardly contain his excitement as he began to explain.

"I have a friend who is a reporter at Yanbian Broadcasting, and he says that if these people really are your relatives, there should be no problem getting you to South Korea. In fact, I think I've heard of this name too. This lady, she comes up in textbooks in the Chinese schools here as an anti-Japanese heroine. And her children have land in Shenyang too. Is she really family?"

Kim Il-sung's anti-Japanese experience is hugely exaggerated and religiously indoctrinated into every North Korean mind. Moreover, all famous ethnic Korean anti-Japanese fighters are alleged to have been loyal to Kim II-sung. In Chinese textbooks, where Koreans are recognized as an ethnic minority, they are praised as ethnic Korean- Chinese "anti-Japanese heroes;' whereas in North Korean textbooks,

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they are acclaimed as "Kim II-sung's loyal comrades" who followed in Kim Il-sungs anti-Japanese footsteps.

I replied that even in North Korean textbooks, Young-min's grandmother was known as a key historical figure. That being so, Mr. Shin said we could definitely make it to South Korea from here. He was more excited by our connections than even his humble uncle Chang-yong had been, and went so far as to ask us to take him and his wife with us to South Korea. That's when I learnt that after being recognized as the legal spouse of a North Korean refugee, an ethnic Korean from China could qualify for South Korean citizenship. Mr. Shin, far more optimistic about the possibilities than we were, said that we should visit Young-min's family that very night.

Young-min eagerly put his coat on, but I couldn't feel quite as positive. It was certain that by now there would be police watching the relative's house every minute of the day. Young-min argued that there had been no response from the South Korean contact for ten days, and the number was now out of order-we had no other choice. At least we had Mr. Shin to look out for us, and so we decided to give it a go.

Mr. Shin insisted we get an expensive cab, so that any police watching the house would be less suspicious. After a half-hour journey we arrived at a private residence that was more palatial and impressive than anything I could have imagined. The problem was that the surrounding area was very brightly lit. There was also a suspicious-looking private car with its Sidelights on and engine running opposite the front gate. I said we should drive round the block. But however carefully we checked out the area, it appeared impossible to get close to the building safely on foot.

We decided in the end to wait in the taxi in a nearby alley while Mr. Shin went to the house. He was to arrange a place and time to meet, and if the family didn't believe that he had come on behalf of Young- min, he would bring one of them to the alley where we would be

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waiting. As he walked off, Young-min and I waited anxiously. In spite of the cold, my palms were sweating. It was sheer torment once Mr. Shin was out of sight. Young-min wanted us to go round the block once more, but neither of us could speak to the driver in Chinese. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, Mr. Shin came running in an

obvious panic, his arms and legs flailing. As soon as he got in the cab, he waved at the driver, urging him to set off. With fear in his eyes, he turned to see if anyone was following us. Young-min and I asked several times what had happened, but each time he replied curtly that he would tell us once we were out of the cab. Instead of stopping the cab near his house, we got out several blocks farther on. As soon as the cab left, he turned to us angrily. "A lot of people

here in Yanji speak Korean! Even some of the Chinese cab drivers understand Korean, so what am I supposed to say if you keep asking what happened?"

He was trembling, and lit himself a cigarette with shaking hands. After inhaling deeply, he calmed a little and offered one to each of us. I didn't want to accept. He obviously had some bad news to tell us. "Now listen:' he said, and his tone was ominous. "Even after we

separate, don't even think about going to that house. It's not just surrounded by police. There are even some North Korean agents on standby, a prosecution squad from the Ministry of State Security." As soon as we heard about the ministry's prosecution squad, I

could feel their shadows upon us. "When I pressed the doorbell, a man came out and said he was

the son. I told him Young-min from Pyongyang sent me, and do you know what he said? He said he didn't want to know about his cousin, and anyway he has no connection to you following the death of your grandparents. He said how dare a murderer come to his house-that you were wasting police time, and that he and his family had had to deal with the constant surveillance of North Korean agents; and he said don't ever show up again if you want to live. I tried as hard as

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I could to persuade him to meet you, but you know that car parked opposite the mansion? Two men got out of it and started walking towards me. If I hadn't seen them, I'd be in an interrogation room right now." Just hearing him speak sent a shiver through my body. What

would have happened if we had gone ourselves, or if Mr. Shin had been captured? The possibilities made my heart pound and I feared the car might have followed us. I told Mr. Shin that we should get back inside the apartment block and turned to walk, but froze in my tracks when Young-min collapsed in an alleyway, and began to whimper piteously. Back in the flat, we tried to console Young-min. Even his family

outside North Korea now regarded him as a murderer, and I pitied him for how small and alone he looked. Mr. Shin said that the cousin had taken his phone number and that he might possibly change his mind and call back. Even though Mr. Shin did his best to sympathize, I felt that his words lacked conviction. Young-min's despair was obvious, and he didn't even bother to take off his coat as he slid down the wall and sat with his head on his knees. Mrs. Shin was scolding her husband in the other room. "What? You left them your number? What if they hand it over to

the North Koreans? What on earth were you thinking? Switch the phone off and take out the chip!" Young-min looked up at the noise, but sank back into his

depression. I spent an unbearably long night, first trying to calm Young-min, then drifting in and out of nightmares in which North Korean agents had already thrown me into a cell.

The next morning we left Mr. Shin'shouse early. Itwas too dangerous for us to stay there any longer-not only for Mr. Shin, but also for his wife who, like us, was a North Korean in China who might

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be repatriated if her identity were discovered. Mr. Shin made us memorize his number, saying that we should keep in frequent contact as the South Koreans might come back with a response. He also put a hundred yuan in my hand-about fifteen US dollars. He apologized for the small amount, but it was as if he had given us all he had. Without that hundred yuan, we would have been lost as soon as we stepped out of the building, foreigners wandering without a penny in a land whose language we didn't understand. More than the value of the money, the fact that we had any money

at all lightened our hearts a little. Mr. Shin saw us off and walked with us for a while, advising us to look for churches. He said that these places sometimes gave money, food, and shelter to North Korean refugees, and a missionary might even help us get to South Korea. But, he said, we must be careful to insist that wed fled the country because of hunger: if they found out that we had been accused of murder, it might scare them off. He also warned us that some churches were fronts for the Chinese authorities and might turn us in, so we must be careful not to trust anyone too easily. "I can't believe there exists a religion that would give money and

food for free to a stranger," said Young-min and he smiled for the first time in days. I was very grateful for that smile. While hed tossed and turned the night before, hurt by his cousin's rejection of him, I had lain awake worrying about how heavy his steps would be today. I deliberately gave Young-min a loud high five, and whispered, "Pa-ee-tingi" beneath the sound of our slapping hands. As if to lift a weight from his chest, Young-min strained so hard that the veins on his neck began to show, and he exclaimed in a whisper, "Pa-ee-tingi" Fighting! We automatically reached for our sunglasses, and burst into

hysterical laughter when we realized we were both doing the same thing. It was not only funny, but pathetic-only seconds after we had summoned up our courage, here we were, hiding ourselves behind

AT A LOSS 1185

dark lenses. One of us remarked how Mr. Shin's gift of the sunglasses was even greater than the food, help, and shelter he had given us. Wearing sunglasses and following the advice Mr. Shin had given

us, Young-min and I walked to the outskirts of Yanji, looking for any building with a cross on it. "What should we say to a pastor when we meet one?" Young-min

asked eagerly; and I as enthusiastically replied that we should answer each question with, "Amen;' and everything would work out. As I said this, my chest puffed with pride at my own pearl of wisdom. As a former member of the UFD, I thought I knew all about

religion. Even in North Korea, there is such a thing. More specifically, North Korea has a number of religious institutions that are controlled by the United Front Department. But in practice, North Korea is a one- religion state, where only the worship of the Kim cult is allowed. The UFD's religious institutions exist in order that North Korea may claim that it is a pluralistic society, and thereby appear to comply with the values of those who wish to give it aid or engage with the North through Track II, or "informal;' channels. AIl of North Korea's religious institutions are staffed by UFD

"Track II diplomacy" operatives and include the Chosun Buddhist Association, the Chosun Christian Association, the Chosun Catholic Association, and the Chosun Catholic Central Committee. I was aware that, in dealing with the outside world, the UFD used the names of the different religious institutions. Internally, it was illegal to use these, so they were referred to by numbers. Although a cadre might be a monk or priest as far as the outside world was concerned, in the UFD they were all faithful worshippers of the Kim cult. If you are in Pyongyang and go to Iangchun -dong in Dongdae- won

Area, or Palgol-dong in the Mangyongdae area, you will see buildings with crosses on their roofs. The priests who worship in these buildings sing authentic Christian hymns, in the same way that people outside North Korea do in ordinary churches. But the congregations are

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composed exclusively of UFD operatives and their family members, who are obliged to attend out of duty to the party. No ordinary North Korean could even begin to consider worshipping in these buildings, as they are in operational zones where entry is restricted to UFD personnel and foreigners. But, in 2000, the following incident occurred. Once, in order to

welcome an international religious organization to North Korea, the UFD conspicuously opened the doors of the Jangchun church in Pyongyang to the public. An old man in his eighties walked in carrying a Bible that he had kept hidden all his life. He said that he had believed in Jesus before the Korean War, but after losing his family to an American bombardment, he had converted and become instead a fervent believer in the Supreme Leader, Kim II-sung. He even explained that at his age, old memories became important, and he had come to the church because hed been delighted to hear hymns from his childhood. The old man was reported by the UFD operative in priestly garb and arrested on the spot by secret police. That cadre was subsequently awarded a First Class medal, reserved

for the most loyal to Kim, for the achievement of exposing a religious element who had succeeded in keeping his subversive beliefs secret until now. I was there sitting in the audience, applauding as the cadre received his medal. The old man was sent to a prison camp, and the very same Bible is used to this day by the UFD as a prop to boast about the history of North Korea's religious tolerance. These religiousactivities only helped UFD cadres enjoymore luxuries

not available to ordinary North Koreans. North Korea is technically still at war with the United States, so internally, all humanitarian aid from outside is referred to as "spoils of war:' Because the North Korean system associates itselfwith the ideology of luche, it prohibits the word "aid:' as this is regarded as a threat to "self-reliance:' As a result, gifts received every month by employees of the UFD included "spoils of

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war" donated by various South Korean and international religious organizations as humanitarian aid. For example, on April 15, 2001 (Kim Il-sung's birthday), bicycles

supplied by a South Korean Buddhist NGO were given to the UFD, and there were enough of them for everyone of us. The next month, diapers and milk powder donated by a South Korean Christian NGO were distributed among staff. I knew from first-hand experience how great was the influence of the UFD, because it controlled how North Korea was presented to outsiders. And this was also how I knew that "Amen" was a powerful word that could move Christians to come to our aid, if we could only find a church here in Yanji. Although Young-min and I walked for a whole day, we didn't

come across a Single church in which we could say our Amens. Any building with a cross on it was either abandoned or locked. Once, a security guard opened the door, but as soon as we said we were North Korean refugees, he became furious and chased us off as if we were stray dogs. I learned the hard way how we North Koreans were hated outside our country, though the party had taught us to see ourselves as "the most glorious people on earth, Kim II-sung's people:' Every time we were turned away,we joked haplessly about the Kim dynasty, which had made the world shun us as the scum of the earth. When it started to turn dark, I felt strangely elated, perhaps

because I had been frightened by the brightness of the day. I felt as if my body could float up into the darkness like a balloon. Taking my sunglasses off, I could see even more clearly than in daylight. All around us was countryside, and there were no other pedestrians. Even the fact that I could breathe freely and speak openly to Young-min without feeling paranoid made me feel like I was pioneering into a new world.

The icy winds of January didn't worry us, and we weren't concerned about spending a wintry night outdoors. After all, wed already made it through several nights on a frozen mountain. Under the heavy

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winter sky, in the middle of nowhere in China, we ran down an endless country lane shouting at the top of our lungs.

We ended up in a small village called Longjing. Not that we had intended to go there-we had just wandered along, aimlessly looking for churches, and this was the first village we had come to as we followed random roads. We decided to stay the night there and then take off again in the morning.

Fortunately, we found an empty stable. It would at least keep out the bitter winds. The floor too was thickly padded with straw. Before falling asleep, we held the hundred-yuan note in our hands, holding up one side each, and gazed at it for several minutes. What would we be looking at now if we didn't have this? How hopeless we would be without it. Back home in North Korea, I had pitied the corpses of children starved to death, but had looked away from the adult bodies, shaking my head and thinking, Why didn't they try harder to survive? Why were they so stupid as to starve to death, with no sense of responsibility to themselves or anyone else? They could at least have stolen food and carried on. But that night I could see the end of my own life not far away. After we had used up the money and had not eaten for a few days, I might sit down and close my eyes to rest, let consciousness slip away, and not even realize I was dying. Stunned by these thoughts, I wanted to test out my voice to see if it was still there.

"I'm sure it'll work out. We'll get to South Korea before the money's gone." Even as I said these words, I did not believe them.

As if he did not believe them either, and as if the hundred yuan would not be opening our path, Young-min let go of his end of the note and dropped his hand. We were silent for a while. I wanted to sleep. But for tomorrow morning's sake, I didn't want to end the day like this. What else could I say? The thought of talking made my lips numb. Eventually, I put them together, and began to whistle a folk song from back home, "Spring of My Hometown:' As I finished the

AT A LOSS I 189

first verse and began to whistle the second, Young-min joined me in a lower harmony.

Our hunger and despair lifted a little, and I was reminded of a performance we had given at music school. The students of Western music had borrowed brass instruments to put on a spectacular show that got the audience roaring with laughter. It was not unusual to see brass instruments, but the way they did it was the clincher: the trumpet played wittily, to the slow and low answer of a tuba that did not get the joke. After the silence that followed the applause, the composition students, both male and female, performed as a whistling choir. The audience went wild, and we had the whole school whistling for weeks.

As our whistling performance in the stable approached the last few notes, a mischievous grin formed on Young-mill's face, and he went on for a second with a dissonant note. I prolonged my last note on purpose, and Young-min fell back into harmony, and we finished on a beautiful double note.

Young-min whispered first, "Pa-ee-tingl" I responded, "Pa-ee-tingl" and found my tense muscles loosen,

until I was able to fall asleep. Before that night, even the rustling of leaves had terrified me. That was the first night in China I was able to forget that border guards and North Korean agents might be lurking in the shadows of every building, bush, and tree.

7 FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN

WE woke to the lowing of cattle. When I opened my eyes,something large and brown stirred next to me, and I started. An immense ox, as if annoyed by the intruders in his home, gave us a long look through the narrowed slits of his eyes and snorted loudly. Instinctively, I patted my pockets in case the oxhad stolen the money from me. Seeing the red hundred-yuan note tucked in among my poems brought me a sigh of relief. Young-min sat up too. He looked at me and then at the ox and

was about to speak; but then he lowered his gaze and began to pick miserably at the straw. We both realized that our faces and clothes were stained and that the look of a fugitive, which Chang-yang had said would give us away as North Koreans on the run, had crept up on us. If we continued our journey looking like this, there was no doubt that someone would report us to the authorities. We rubbed our faces with the white snow piled outside the barn, but it just smeared the dirt and made it worse. Wewent to the nearest house and knocked on the courtyard door.

Instead of cement or bricks, the fence was made of tightly joined planks. The chimney straggled above a dark -orange tin roof, which lacked the Korean roof tiles we had seen on some houses. Wewaited anxiously, feeling vulnerable with our dirty faces exposed towhoever might answer the door. There was some movement, and a moment later the door opened a little to reveal an old man peering out at us. He was wearing a worn black coat, but the buttons were shiny and new, and he didn't look like a farmer. He might have been very old,

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN I 19!

but his face looked more youthful than ancient. He could probably tell right away that we were North Koreans on the run, because he was about to close the door on us. I bowed deeply. "Sir, may we please use your soap to wash our

faces?" Instead of closing the door, the old man put his head out of the gap

again and looked us up and down. We thought he might not have understood our Korean, but to our great surprise he opened the door fully and spoke to us in our own language, so welcome to our ears.

"Come in."

The old man's yard was neat and tidy, unlike Chang-yang's house, whose waIls were crumbling. There were three apple trees in one corner, straw wrapped round their trunks to keep them from freezing. The old man left us shivering in the yard and went into the house. A few moments later he returned from the kitchen with a large

brass washbowl full of steaming hot water. We rushed to help him with it and carried it to the corner of the yard opposite the apple trees. AsYoung-min and I politely told each other to go first, the old man shuffled towards us, lit a cigarette, and asked, "Have you come from across the river?" Young-min hesitated for amoment, then answered, "Yes." The old man sucked deeply on his cigarette and blew out smoke

that looked eerily white in the winter morning air. "I've had no end of refugees knocking on my door for food," he said. "There's even been some who've stolen things and thrown rocks at me. But you! In all my life, r don't think I've ever had someone ask to wash!" He shook his head in disbelief. "Have you eaten yet?" When he saw that we couldn't answer with an immediate yes, he

stamped out his half-smoked cigarette and asked us to come inside after we had washed. He shouted again from the kitchen, "Come on in when you're clean!"

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When we'd finished, we tipped out the soapy water and propped the bowl against the side of the house to drain. We made our way to the kitchen and pushed open the door to the room from which the voice had spoken. The old man was spooning out rice. The smell of it, so different from the outside air, flooded my lungs with warmth. At that moment, a feeling of bliss rushed through me that made my chest pound. It was a sublime moment of transcendence, the like of which I had never experienced before. The smell of cooking rice confirmed that the world had not yet abandoned us. The rice was generously served in big bowls, steaming fresh from

the stove. It was so chewy that, with each spoonful, there were grains sticking to the underside of the spoon as well as heaped in its bowl. The warmth of the grains in my throat as I swallowed comforted me. While we ate, the old man criticized Kim Iong-il emphatically. He said that in this modern age it was disgusting that our leader should starve his whole country, and insisted that Kim Iong-ils potbelly was clear evidence of his selfishness and greed. I was grateful for the rice, but even more for his sympathy. It felt

like support for our plight, especially as everywhere else the refugees were spat on.

The old man asked, "Where are you heading? And how did you get into this state?" "We want to go to South Korea," Young-min replied. "The authorities must be after you, then. You must be on the run. " "Yes,we were nearly caught by the authorities," I replied. "Did you cross the river together?" "Yes,we're friends:' We answered his questions earnestly, wanting to show appreciation

for his interest. But what he said next left us speechless. "You're from Pyongyang," he declared, "and you're accused of

murder," We didn't know what to say.

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN I 193

"This village is close to Yanji city center," the old man continued, "and a lot of refugees pass through. There isn't a day without one of them. So the authorities keep an eye on this place. In fact, the day before yesterday, they searched every house, looking for two defectors from Pyongyang who escaped over the river after committing murder." My ears were ringing and the rice sat heavy in my stomach.

When we left Mr. Shin's house, we had taken some comfort in the knowledge that China is a large country. Yet in this village that seemed so remote, an old man we'd never met before knew exactly who we were. It felt as if there were nowhere on this earth where we could hide, and that North Korea's framing of us for murder would follow us to the ends of the earth. "We're not murderers!" Young-min blurted out desperately, but the

old man waved his words away. "Look;' he said. "I've lived for seventy years. I can tell by looking

at you that you're not murderers. I also know that the North Korean bastards like to frame people for murder. Neither the Chinese authorities nor any of the locals here believe a word they say." We had been tense and nervous, and ready to leave at once, but

this brought us some relief. "So don't go everywhere together," the old man advised us. "Walk

separately, and be careful." "Thank you, sir." I found myself bowing deeply once again. Young-min, as if he wanted to repay the debt, took the empty

bowls and spoons back into the kitchen. He insisted on doing the dishes too, but the old man managed to call him back to the main room, and found some paper and a pen. He explained that there was a Korean church in Yanji that he knew quite well, and he would write us a letter of introduction to the pastor there. He said the pastor could help us get to South Korea. Young-min and I could not believe it, and could hardly contain our excitement.

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The old man drew us a map showing how to get to the church from the Yanji bus terminal, to be sure that we wouldn't get lost. He marked the church with a cross, and went over it several times to make it stand out. After repeating the directions, he tested us several times to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything. "What building is this?" he asked. "What road is that?" He checked everything thoroughly. We answered his questions like two eager students. As we said farewell, he said to us, "When you get to South Korea,

settle in Seoul instead of in the provinces." After we'd heard these words, even our footsteps seemed lighter

as we left the old man's house. The letter of introduction and map that the old man had drawn so carefully seemed like a passport that would take us all the way to South Korea. We felt confident, and didn't even put on our sunglasses. But we took care to follow the old man's advice about staying apart. Whenever we reached a road where there were people, we

pretended not to know each other. It was actually exciting. Sometimes Young-min led the way and I fell back, and in the end we fought over who would get to walk in front. Once, when I was leading, I hid in an alley for a joke, and I watched Young-min turn white and search frantically for me up and down the road. A long journey that would have taken over an hour by bus passed by quickly as we playfully made our way. The old man's directions were so thorough that we very easily

found Yanji Church in the busy city center. Unlike other churches that stood out with prominent crosses, this church merely occupied some office space in a commercial building. Before we knocked on the door, I glanced at the wooden sign that

read YAN)! CHURCHin black letters. Inside, I knew there would be South Koreans, and my heart swelled at the thought of falling into the embrace of my countrymen. Young-min too was verging on tears, as if we had come to the threshold of South Korea itself.1asked

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN I 195

him to knock. Sure enough, a voice answered in Korean, and when we entered there were three middle-aged men inside. One of them, wearing glasses, flushed on seeing us. His eyes, peering behind thick lenses, seemed unusually small. "How did you find us?" he asked. "Come in, come in:' The interior of the church was as spacious as the Revolutionary

Study Rooms of Comrades Kim II-sung and Kim Jong-il that were attached to all workplaces in North Korea. In the central part of the wall, where we expected portraits of the Kims to hang, there hung a cross instead. But the atmosphere of the room was just as solemn as the Revolutionary Study Rooms. Above the cross was a wooden slogan that read, "Let's be saved by saying Amen:' There were perhaps twenty wooden pews, and a desk near the door. "We want to meet the pastor," I said in reply. However, I didn't

realize at the time that I had left out the honorific suffix "nim" that South Koreans must add when using a title such as "pastor" or "teacher:' In North Korea, the suffix "nim' may only be used for a member of the ruling Kim family-or for a teacher, because one of the titles of Kim Jong-il was Teacher Dear Leader. In this way, although we had come here to seek our savior, we had not shown even the most basic respect for Him, and the eyes of the bespectacled man narrowed further. "Where have you come from?" he growled. "We can only tell the pastor." "He's in South Korea at the moment. You can tell me. I'm standing

in for him while he's gone." My heart fluttered, If the pastor could go to South Korea from

here, so might we! As I took the letter of introduction out from my pocket to give to the man, my hands shook. While he read the letter, Young-min looked curiously at the cross and Bible on the table, as if they were strange alien artifacts. To see these objects here in an ordinary setting, objects that you could see in North Korea only in

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the UFD's operational zones, made me feel like I had already stepped into South Korean territory. I couldn't stop grinning. Suddenly, the man took his glasses off and screamed at the top of

his voice. "Get out of here at once!" I stood there speechless. "Hey! Throw these guys out, they're defectors!" I felt as though I had just been knocked out. Before I could bring

myself to consider that he might be joking, the two other men approached us and began to shove us out. Young-min didn't bother to struggle, but instead, fell to his knees at the doorway. "We came here because we heard you were South Korean," he

cried. "We risked our lives and crossed the border so that we could go to South Korea. We will die on the streets if you throw us out."

"What, you think you're the only ones? Our pastor was arrested once because of you lot. The church will have to close down because of you. Get out! Get out, you bastards!" I was astonished. Were these men from the country where we

longed to seek refuge? When I saw the bespectacled man start to hit Young-min on the head, I felt my blood rush. He slapped Young-min in the face as he pleaded tearfully with them. I lost my temper and found myself screaming. I dragged the bespectacled man off Young-min and picked up the cross on the desk like a weapon.

"Do you call yourselves human? We risked our lives to come here!" I shouted. "Hurry up! Call the authorities! Report them!" I had been about to give them a piece of my mind, but when I

heard those two words of terror-"authorities" and "report"-in a single sentence, I seized Young-min's arm and ran out of the church. It was a long way back to the entrance and we stumbled as we fled. When we finally reached the street, the cars rushing past us

sounded like sirens and I was filled with panic. Young-min led the way, but when he came to a fork in the road, he could not decide

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN 1197

which way to turn and I crashed into him, sending both of us tumbling onto the street. Only when we found ourselves in a remote neighborhood in the

outskirts of the city could we think of looking behind us. As I caught my breath, a vast emptiness filled my soul. Even the South Korean church had turned us away and there was nowhere else to turn. As if to demonstrate that we had tried everything and there was nothing left, Young-min took out the map the old man had drawn so carefully and tore it to shreds. Every shred of it, as it fell to the ground, was a fragment of our shattered lives. We sat for a while in silence. Young-min tapped my arm as I stared up at the sky, and asked,

"Shallwe spend some of that money today? Let'sget ourselves a drink." I remembered our final night back in Pyongyang, when wed

decided to escape after a drink, but ignored him. Then I said, "Id rather look for a place to spend the night." I stood up and turned to go, but Young-min blocked my way. "Why? Why should we?" he asked. "You think we can make

it to South Korea after what wive just seen? They were going to report us! You and I, we're neither North nor South Korean! Do you understand? We belong nowhere!" I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say. We wanted to settle in a

free Korea, but it didn't exist anywhere on earth. Although my body was physically here, it seemed as if my spirit had departed because I was too numb to perceive anything. If I had killed myself in North Korea, at least I would have been buried in the land of my family and friends. Here we could only wander like dogs until the rigor of death set in, and we would eventually disappear unknown and unmourned into the dust of these foreign roads. The thought of this tragic end to my existence convinced me that this was my last day on earth. Young-min dragged me off to a drinks stall in the market. Bottles

of alcohol, differently priced, were on display. He pointed to a small bottle of wine at twelve yuan, and then at a single empty glass,

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which would cost five yuan to fill. When I realized it was a powerful Chinese soju, it was obvious that we would pass out on the streets if we drank this on an empty stomach, and we'd be exposed to the authorities. What could we eat to prevent this? As I did the sums in my head, I put the glass back down.

"Look, we only have one hundred yuan. I won't drink. You can have one, though." Young-min's eyelids trembled as he looked at me in desperation.

The dark eyes that I knew so well, usually full ofloyalty and friendship and the spark of musical genius, were empty. His bloodshot gaze was tainted only with disappointment and spite. What else could I do? I stood my ground, because I felt the one-hundred-yuan note was the only thing we had to hold on to. I was also exhausted and on edge, and if we lost even one yuan out of that hundred, it would destroy me. So instead of the drink, we ended up exchanging the 100 yuan for two fifty-yuan notes. I was more fearful of losing Young-min than of meeting soldiers who would seize me. If we split the money, at least one of us might make it. Young-min Sighed as I handed him his fifty-yuan note.

"Okay," he said. "Let's get drunk out of our heads when we get to South Korea. But you keep the money, it's better for one person to look after it."

I made him keep it, but took the opportunity to tease him. "Don't think it's your money just because I'm giving it to you. It's not to spend, it's to let you think, 'I've got money to buy food!' when you feel hungry."

"Bastard. So that's why you've been so full of energy, because you've been holding the money!"

"That's right," I smiled. ''And I should have said this earlier: you know when we ran in a panic out of the church? Well, we might have to do that again, so whenever there's a fork in the road, just take the one on the right. That way, you won't have to stop to think, and

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN 1199

After four days on the streets, our money and stamina both ran out. On the fifth day, wedidn't have anything to eat, and I felt very weak. We came to a dumpling stall, and I asked Young-min for his last ten yuan so we could buy some food.

"What ten yuan?" Young-min asked. "You've ten yuan left. Come on, let's buy some food." "I don't have any money!" Young-min grumbled at my insistence,

and showed me his empty pockets. Although it was a small amount of money, or perhaps because it

was all we had, I had been very careful with the sums. I pulled him into an alley and added up everything to show him he was wrong. I repeated my calculations again and again, and it was clear he should still have ten yuan left. "So you're going to keep lying? What are you hiding from me? Did

you eat without telling me?" Young-min avoided my gaze, picked a

we'll be less likely to lose each other. Look, I can't and won't make it without you. You've got Mr. Shin's number in your head, right? That's the only number we have to share if we split." The first three yuan we spent was on a small bar of soap. Our

hunger was our own concern, but if we didn't keep up appearances, we would arouse suspicion.

We gave up on churches and decided to look for South Korean businesses, as that seemed to be the only other open door into a network of South Koreans. We looked out for anything we might recognize, such as Samsung, Hyundai, or LG. Once, we went into a shop with an imitation "Samsong' logo outside, and were chased out with insults in Chinese. At night, wed sleep near a source of water such as a public fountain. We skipped breakfast, but around eleven in the morning wed buy some bread for two yuan and share it again in the evening.

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weed, and began to tear its stalk into long shreds. I despised the very sight of his fingers as he plucked at it. "Tell me!" I demanded. "Look at me: if you've eaten, tell me straight!" Young-min hurled the remains of the stalk to the ground and

dusted the dirt off his hands. "Yes, I used the ten yuan," he said. "I used it for something really important. So what are you going to do about it?"

I shot back, "Don't make excuses about things being 'really important:" If you've eaten, just confess to it like a man."

''All right! Yes,I did do something without telling you. I bought a blade. "

Young-min took a razor from the side pocket of his jacket. I was about to shout, "Why?" but the word stuck in my throat. When we were worried enough about our next meal, why would he buy a blade? Why would Young-min buy a blade without telling me? His eyes welled with tears as he continued, "We won't ever make it

to South Korea. We were stupid even to think of it. I believed meeting a South Korean would solve everything, but that's not true. We've been on the street for days, and they'll definitely catch us soon. And then what? I don't care for my own life, but the party will destroy my family too if they take us back and make us confess. So I bought this blade to kill myself with, so those bastards won't get what they want."

His words rang in my ears, and the ringing would not stop. Seeing that blade on his palm, I was overcome with an impulse to kill myself first, out of rage. At the thought of such a blade in the hand of my only source of strength, I was helpless. Having no hope was far worse than having no money. Seeing my despair, Young-min said, "No, let's not be like this.

Should we try my cousin one more time? Maybe if he sees me face-to-face, things will be different."

His eyes were bloodshot and he spoke rapidly, as if possessed. I was frustrated that besides his thoughts of suicide, he still clung to

FAREWELL, YOUNG-MIN I 201

the hope that his cousin might help, and realized that this was what must be making him weak. "Youheard as clearly as I did," I said. "He doesn't consider you to be family anymore." "He probably panicked with the police around. If I explain in my

own words that I didn't murder anyone, he'll get it. Even Mr. Shin said that ifhe gets involved, we'll have no problem making it to South Korea. Come on, let's try one more time." I turned to walk away, but Young-min continued, "There's nothing else! It's the only hope left for us now." I decided that it would be impossible to persuade him otherwise,

so I turned round again and said that we could think about it after finding a place to stay the night in the countryside. Young-min stared ahead but didn't say no, and we headed out towards the fields. By the time we reached the first village it was dark. My legs

kept wobbling and I had to make a real effort to stop myself from collapsing on the spot and giving up. We knocked on a few doors, but didn't have the courage to speak. When yet another household slammed the door on us, Young-min slid down onto the ice, right there on the threshold. "It's because there's two of us," he reasoned. "Maybe it would be

all right during the day, but no one would welcome two strange men into their home at night. They might even suspect us of being the two wanted murderers and report us." We sat in silence for a while. The one streetlamp in the village

shone a spotlight on our solitude. The night sky seemed unusually low, and I could sense a snowstorm coming. Young-min mustered all his strength to rise to his feet again. He

said, "How about this: we separate and each finds somewhere to stay. That might be easier on our hosts too. And we'll meet up under that tree over there in the morning." I asked, "What if we don't find anyone who'll put us up for the

night?"

, '

202 I FUGITIVE

"Then we keep on trying. At least the tree won't be going h "anyw ere.

I looked where Young-min was pointing. About sixty-five feet away, a large tree stood alone, the guardian of the village. We said good-bye. Young-min stayed behind in the village to try more houses, while I headed on to the next. I felt uneasy as Young-min earnestly waved me off, but his smile allowed me to turn and walk away.

PART THREE

FREEDOM