North Korea

2015

In Order to Live In Order to Live A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

YEONMI PARK with Maryanne Vallers

PENGUIN PRESS

NEW YORK

PENGUIN PRESS

For myfamily, and for anyone, anywhere, struaalina!or freedom

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

penguin.com

Copyright © 2015 by Yeonmi Park Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech,

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reader.

Photographs courtesy ofYeonmi Park

Map illustration by John Gilkes

Des;ened by Amanda Dewey

ISBN 978-1-59420-679-5

ISBN 978-1-IOi 98-045-3 export edition

ISBN 978-0-73522-213 -7 special markets edition

Printed in the United States of America

357910864

Penguin is committed to publishing works of 9uality and integrity. In that spirit,

we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences,

and the words are the author's alone.

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One Even the Birds and Mice Can Hear You Whisper 9

Two A Dangerous History 20

Three Swallows and Magpies 29

Four Tears of Blood 37

Five The Dear Leader 45

Six City of Dreams 58

Seven The Darkest Nights 71

Eight A Song for Chosun 81

Nine jangmadang Generation 92

Ten The Lights of China 105

Eleven Missing 115

Prologue

Contents

[PART ONE]

North Korea

Twelve The Other Side of Darkness 125

Thirteen A Deal with the Devil 139

Fourteen A Birthday Gift 151

Fifteen Dust and Bones 162

S;xteen Kidnapped 169

Seventeen Like Bread from the Sky 181

Eishteen Following the Stars 187

In Order to Live

~_RTTWO

China

[ PART THREE.J

South Korea

Twenty Dreams and Nightmares 213

Twenty-one A Hungry Mind 223

Twenty-two Now on My Way to Meet You 235

Twenty-three Amazing Grace 245

Twenty-Jour Homecoming 256

Nineteen The Freedom Birds 201

Acknowledgments 269

Prologue

On the cold, black night ofMarch 31, 2007, mymother andIscrambled down the steep, rocky bank of the frozen YaluRiver that divides North Korea and China. There were patrols above us and below, and guard posts one hundred yards on

either side ofusmanned by soldiers ready to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border. We had no idea what would come next, but we

were desperate to get to China, where there might be a chance to

survive.

I was thirteen years old and weighed only sixty pounds. Just a

week earlier, I'd been in a hospital in my hometown of Hyesan along

the Chinese border, suffering from a severe intestinal infection that

the doctors had mistakenly diagnosed as appendicitis. I was still in

terrible pain from the incision, and was so weak [ could barely walk.

The young North Korean smuggler who was guiding us across the

border insisted we had to go that night. He had paid some guards to

look the other way, but he couldn't bribe aUthe soldiers in the area,

IN ORDER TO LIVE PROLOGUE

so we had to be extremely cautious. I followed him in the darkness,

but I was so unsteady that I had to scoot down the bank on my bot-

tom, sending small avalanches of rocks crashing ahead of me. He

turned and whispered angrily for me to stop making so much noise.

But it was too late. We could see the silhouette of a North Korean

soldier climbing up from the riverbed. If this was one of the bribed

border guards, he didn't seem to recognize us. "Go back!" the soldier shouted. "Get out of here!" Our guide scrambled down to meet him and we could hear them

talking in hushed voices. Our guide returned alone.

"Let's go," he said. "Hurry!"

It was early spring, and the weather was getting warmer, melting

patches of the frozen river. The place where we crossed was steep and

narrow, protected from the sun during the day so it was still solid

enough to hold our weight-we hoped. Our guide made a cell phone

call to someone on the other side, the Chinese side, and then whis-

pered, "Run!"

The guide started running, but my feet would not move and I

clung to my mother. I was so scared that I was completely paralyzed.

The guide ran back for us, grabbed my hands, and dragged me across

the ice. When we reached solid ground, we started running and didn't

stop until we were out of sight of the border guards. The riverbank was dark, but the lights of Chaingbai, China,

glowed just ahead of us. I turned to take a quick glance back at the place where I was born. The electric power grid was down, as usual,

and all [ could see was a black, lifeless horizon. I felt my heart pound-

ing out of my chest as we arrived at a small shack on the edge of some

flat, vacant fields. I wasn't dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea.

I didn't even know what it meant to be free. All I knew was that if my

family stayed behind, we would probably die-from starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of a prison labor camp. The

hunger had become unbearable; I was willing to risk my life for the

promise of a bowl of rice.

But there was more to our journey than our own survival. My

mother and I were searching for my older sister, Eunmi, who had left

for China a few days earlier and had not been heard from since. We

hoped that she would be there waiting for us when we crossed the

river. Instead the only person to greet us was a bald, middle-aged

Chinese man, an ethnic North Korean like many of the people living

in this border area. The man said something to my mother, and then

led her around the side of the building. From where I waited I could

hear my mother pleading, '?lniyo! Aniyo!"No! No!

I knew then that something was terribly wrong. We had come to

a bad place, maybe even worse than the one we had left.

Iam most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea,and that I escaped from North Korea. Both of these events shaped me, and I would not trade them for an ordinary and peaceful life. But

there is more to the story of how I became who I am today.

Like tens of thousands of other North Koreans, I escaped my

homeland and settled in South Korea, where we are still considered

citizens, as if a sealed border and nearly seventy years of conflict and

tension never divided us. North and South Koreans have the same

ethnic backgrounds, and we speak the same language-except in the

North there are no words for things like "shopping malls," "liberty,"

or even "love," at least as the rest of the world knows it. The only true

"love" we can express is worship for the Kims, a dynasty of dictators

who have ruled North Korea for three generations. The regime blocks

2 3 .

IN ORDER TO LrVE

all outside information, all videos and movies, and jams radio signals.

There is no World Wide Web and no Wikipedia, The only books are

filled with propaganda tel1ing us that we live in the greatest country

in the world, even though at least half of North Koreans live in ex-

treme poverty and many are chronically malnourished. My former

country doesn't even call itself North Korea-s-It claims to be Chosun,

the true Korea, a perfect socialist paradise where 25 million people

live only to serve the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Many of us who

have escaped call ourselves "defectors" because by refusing to accept

our fate and die for the Leader, we have deserted our duty. The re-

gime calls us traitors. If I tried to return, I would be executed.

The information blockade works both ways: not only does the

government attempt to keep all foreign media from reaching its peo- ple, it also prevents outsiders from learning the truth about North

Korea. The regime is known as the Hermit Kingdom because it tries

to make itself unknowable. Only those of us who have escaped can

describe what really goes on behind the sealed borders. But until re- cently, our stories were seldom heard.

I arrived in South Korea in the spring of 2009, a fifteen-year-old

with no money and the equivalent of two years of primary school.

Five years later, I was a sophomore at a top university in Seoul, a po-

lice administration major with a growing awareness of the burning need for justice in the land where I was born.

I have told the story of my escape from North Korea many times,

in many forums. I have described how human traffickers tricked my

mother and me into follOWingthem to China, where my mother pro- tected me and sacrificed herself to be raped by the broker who had

targeted me. Once in China, we continued to look for my sister, with-

out success. My father crossed the border to join us in our search, but

he died of untreated cancer a few months later. In 2009, my mother

Ii II

4

PROLOGUE

and I were rescued by Christian missionaries, who led us to the Mon-

golian border with China. From there we walked through the frigid

Gobi Desert one endless winter night, follOWingthe stars to freedom. AII this is true, but it is not the whole story.

Before now, only my mother knew what really happened in the

two years that passed between the night we crossed the Yalu River

into China and the day we arrived in South Korea to begin a new life.

I told almost nothing of my story to the other defectors and human rights advocates I met in South Korea. J believed that, somehow, if I

refused to acknowledge the unspeakable past, it would disappear. I

convinced myself that a lot of it never happened; I taught myself to forget the rest.

But as I began to write this book, I realized that without the whole

truth my life would have no power, no real meaning. With the help of

my mother, the memories of our lives in North Korea and China came

back to me like scenes from a forgotten nightmare. Some of the im-

ages reappeared with a terrible clarity; others were hazy, or scram-

bled like a deck of cards spilled on the floor. The process of writing

has been the process of remembering, and of trying to make sense out of those memories.

Along with writing, reading has helped me order my world. As

soon as I arrived in South Korea and could get my hands on transla-

tions of the world's great books, I began devouring them. Later I was

able to read them in English. And as I began to write my own book,

I came across a famous line by Joan Didion, "We tell ourselves stories

in order to live." Even though the writer and I come from such dif-

ferent cultures, I feel the truth of those words echoing inside me.

I understand that sometimes the only way we can survive our own

memories is to shape them into a story that makes sense out of events

that seem inexplicable.

5 .

PART ONE

IN ORDER TO LIVE

Along my journey [ have seen the horrors that humans can inflict

on one another, but I've also witnessed acts of tenderness and kind-

ness and sacrifice in the worst imaginable circumstances. I know that

it is possible to lose part of your humanity in order to survive. But I

also know that the spark of human dignity is never completely extin-

guished, and that given the oxygen of freedom and the power of love,

it can grow again.

This is my story of the choices I made in order to live.

North Korea

6

Can Hear You Whisper

One

Even the Birds and Mice

The YaluRiver winds like the tail of a dragon between Chinaand North Korea on its way to the Yellow Sea. At Hyesan itopens into a valley in the Paektu Mountains, where the city of 200,000 sprawls between rolling hills and a high plateau covered

with fields, patches of trees, and graves. The river, usually shallow

and tame, is frozen solid during winter, which lasts the better part of

the year. This is the coldest part of North Korea, with temperatures

sometimes plunging to minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Only the tough- est survive.

To me, Hvesan was home.

]ust across the river is the Chinese city of Chaingbai, which has a

large population of ethnic Koreans. Families on both sides of the bor-

der have been trading with one another for generations. As a child I

would often stand in the darkness and stare across the river at the

lights of Chaingbai, wondering what was going on beyond my city's

limits. It was exciting to watch the colorful fireworks explode in the

IN ORDER TO LIVE EVEN THE BIRDS AND MICE CAN HEAR YOU WHISPER

velvet black sky during festivals and Chinese New Year. We never had

such things on our side of the border. Sometimes, when I walked

down to the river to fill my buckets with water and the damp wind

was blowing just right, I could actually smell delicious food, oily noo- dles and dumplings cooking in the kitchens on the other side. The

same wind carried the voices of the Chinese children who were play-

ing on the opposite bank.

"Hey, you! Are you hungry over there?" the boys shouted in Ko-

that I felt protected and cherished. Both my mother and my father encouraged me, from the start, to be proud of who I am.

rean.

"No! Shut up, you fat Chinese!" I shouted back.

This wasn't true. In fact, I was very hungry, but there was no use in talking about it.

When I was very young, we Livedin a one-story house perchedon a hill above the railroad tracks that curved like a rusty spine through the city.

Our house was small and drafty, and because we shared a wall

with a neighbor we could always hear what was going on next door.

We could also hear mice squeaking and skittering around in the ceil-

ing at night. But it was paradise to me because we were there together as a family.

My first memories are of the dark and the cold. During the winter

months, the most popular place in our house was a small fireplace that

burned wood or coal or whatever we could find. We cooked on top of

the fire, and there were channels running under the cement floor to

carry the smoke to a wooden chimney on the other side of the house.

This traditional heating system was supposed to keep the room warm,

but it was no match for the icy nights. At the end of the day, my mother

would spread a thick blanket out next to the fire and we would all

climb under the covers-c-first my mother, then me, then my sister,

and my father on the end, in the coldest spot. Once the sun went

down, you couldn't see anything at all. In our part of North Korea, it

was normal to go for weeks and even months without any electricity,

and candles were very expensive. So we played games in the dark. Sometimes under the covers we would tease each other.

"Whose foot is this?" my mother would say, poking with her toe.

"It's mine, it's mine!" Eunmi would cry.

On winter evenings and mornings, and even in summertime, every-

where we looked we could see smoke coming from the chimneys of

Hyesan. Our neighborhood was very cozy and small, and we knew

Icame into this world too soon.My mother was only seven months pregnant when she went into labor, and when I was born on October 4, 1993, I weighed less

than three pounds. The doctor at the hospital in Hyesan told my

mother that I was so small there wasn't anything they could do for me. "She might live or she might die," he said. "We don't know." It

was up to me to live.

No matter how many blankets my mother wrapped around me,

she couldn't keep me warm. So she heated up a stone and put it in the

blanket with me, and that's how I survived. A few days later, my par- ents brought me home, and waited.

My sister, Eunmi, had been born two years earlier, and this time

my father, Park Jin Sik, was hoping for a son. In patriarcbal North

Korea, it was the male line that really mattered. However, he quickly

recovered from his disappointment. Most of the time it's the mother

who makes the strongest bond with a baby, but my father was the one

who could soothe me when I was crying. It was in my father's arms

10 11'

IN ORDER TO LIVE EVEN THE BIRDS AND MICE CAN HEAR YOU WHISPER

'\ "l Then I was young, I didn't hear the background noise of me- V V chanical sounds like I do now in South Korea and the United

States. There weren't garbage trucks churning, horns honking, or

phones ringing everywhere. All I could hear were the sounds people

were making: women washing dishes, mothers calling their children,

the clink of spoons and chopsticks on rice bowls as families sat down

to eat. Sometimes I could hear my friends being scolded by their par-

ents. There was no music blaring in the background, no eyes glued to smartphones back then. But there was human intimacy and connec-

tion, something that is hard to find in the modern world I inhabit today.

At our house in Hyesan, our water pipes were almost always dry,

so my mother usually carried our clothes down to the river and

washed them there. When she brought them back, she put them on the warm floor to dry.

Because electricity was so rare in OUf neighborhood, whenever

the lights came on people were so happy they would sing and clap and

shout. Even in the middle of the night, we would wake up to cele-

brate. When you have so little, just the smallest thing can make you

happy-and that is one of the very few features of life in North Korea

everyone who lived there. If smoke was not coming out of someone's

house, we'd go knock on the door to check if everything was okay.

The unpaved lanes between houses were too narrow for cars, al- though this wasn't much of a problem because there were so few cars.

People in our neighborhood got around on foot, or for the few who

could afford one, on bicycle or motorbike. The paths would turn slip-

pery with mud after a rain, and that was the best time for the neigh-

borhood kids to play our favorite chasing game. But I was smaller and

slower than the other children my age and always had a hard time

fitting in and keeping up.

When I started school, Eunmi sometimes had to fight the older

kids to defend me. She wasn't very big, either, but she was smart and

quick. She was my protector and playmate. When it snowed, she car-

ried me up the hills around our neighborhood, put me in her lap, and

wrapped her arms around me. I held on tight as we slid back down on

our bottoms, screaming and laughing. I was just happy to be part of her world.

In the summer, all the kids went down to play in the Yalu River,

but I never learned how to swim. I just sat on the bank while the oth-

ers paddled out into the current. Sometimes my sister or my best

friend, Yong Ja, would see me by myself and bring me some pretty

rocks they'd found in the deep river. And sometimes they held me in

their arms and carried me a little way into the water before bringing me back to shore.

Yong [a and I were the same age, and we lived in the same part of

town. I liked her because we were both good at using our imagina-

tions to create our own toys. You could find a few manufactured dolls

and other toys in the market, but they were usually too expensive.

Instead we made little bowls and animals out of mud, and sometimes

even miniature tanks; homemade military toys were very big in orth

Korea. But we girls were obsessed with paper dolls and spent hours

cutting them out of thick paper, making dresses and scarves for them out of scraps.

Sometimes my mother made pinwheels for us, and we would fas- ten them on to the metal footbridge above the railroad we called the

Cloud Bridge. Yearslater, when life was much harder and more com-

pI icated, I would pass by that bridge and think of how happy it made us to watch those pinwheels spin in the open breeze.

/2 /3

that I actually miss. Of course, the lights would never stay on for long.

When they flickered off, we just said, "Oh, well," and went back to

sleep. Even when the electricity came on the power was very low, so

many families had a voltage booster to help run the appliances. These

machines were always catching on fire, and one March night it hap-

pened at our house while my parents were out. I was just a baby, and

all I remember is waking up and crying while someone carried me

through the smoke and flames. I don't know if it was my sister or our

neighbor who saved me. My mother came running when someone

told her about the blaze, but my sister and I were both already safe in

the neighbor's house. Our home was destroyed by the fire, but right

away my father rebuilt it with his own hands.

After that, we planted a garden in our small fenced yard. My

mother and sister weren't interested in gardening, but my father and

I loved it. We put in squash and cabbage and cucumbers and sunflow-

ers. My father also planted beautiful fuchsia flowers we called "ear

drops" along the fence. I adored draping the long delicate blossoms

from my ears and pretending they were earrings. My mother asked my father why he was wasting valuable space planting flowers, but he ignored her.

In North Korea, people lived close to nature, and they developed skills to predict the next day's weather. We didn't have the Internet

and usually couldn't watch the government's broadcast on television

because of the electricity shortage. So we had to figure it out our- selves.

During the long summer nights, our neighbors would all sit around

outside their houses in the evening air. There were no chairs; we just

sat on the ground, looking at the sky. If we saw millions of stars up

there, someone would remark, "Tomorrow will be a sunny day." And we'd all murmur agreement. If there were only thousands of stars,

someone else might say, "Looks like tomorrow will be cloudy." That

was our local forecast.

The best day of every month was Noodle Day, when my mother

bought fresh, moist noodles that were made in a machine in town.

We wanted them to last a long time, so we spread them out on the

warm kitchen floor to dry. It was like a holiday for my sister and me

because we would get to sneak a few noodles and eat them while they

were still soft and sweet. In the earliest years of my life, before the

worst of the famine that struck North Korea in the mid-1990s had

gripped our city, our friends would come around and we would share

the noodles with them. In North Korea, you are supposed to share

everything. But later, when times were much harder for our family

and for the country, my mother told us to chase the children away.

We couldn't afford to share anything. During the good times, a family meal would consist of rice, kim-

chi, some kind of beans, and seaweed soup. But those things were too

expensive to eat during the lean times. Sometimes we would skip meals, and often all we had to eat was a thin porridge of wheat or

barley, beans, or black frozen potatoes ground and made into cakes

filled with cabbage.

IN ORDER TO LIVE EVEN THE BIRDS AND MICE CAN HEAR YOU WHISPER

The country I grew up in was not like the one my parents hadknown as children in the 1960s and 1970s. When they were young, the state took care of everyone's basic needs: clothes, medical

care, food. After the Cold War ended, the Communist countries that

had been propping up the North Korean regime all but abandoned it,

and our state-controlled economy collapsed. North Koreans were

suddenly on their own.

I was too young to realize how desperate things were becoming

in the grown-up world, as my family tried to adapt to the massive

14 . 15

IN ORDER TO LIVE

changes in North Korea during the 1990s. After my sister and I

were asleep, my parents would sometimes lie awake, sick with

worry, wondering what they could do to keep us all from starving to

death. Anything I did overhear, I learned quickly not to repeat. I was

taught never to express my opinion, never to question anything. I was

taught to simply follow what the government told me to do or say or

think. I actually believed that our Dear Leader, Kim Jong II, could

read my mind, and I would be punished for my bad thoughts. And if he didn't hear me, spies were everywhere, listening at the windows

and watching in the school yard. We all belonged to inminban, or neighborhood "people's units," and we were ordered to inform on

anyone who said the wrong thing. We lived in fear, and almost

everyone-my mother included-had a personal experience that

demonstrated the dangers of talking. I was only nine months old when Kim 11Sung died on July 8,

1994. North Koreans worshipped the eighty-two-year-old "Great

Leader." At the time of his death, Kim 11Sung had ruled North Korea

with an iron grip for almost five decades, and true believers-my

mother included-thought that Kim II Sung was actually immortal.

His passing was a time of passionate mourning, and also uncertainty

in the country. The Great Leader's son, Kim Jong II, had already been

chosen to succeed his father, but the huge void Kim 11Sung left behind

had everyone on edge.

My mother strapped me on her back to join the thousands of

mourners who daily flocked to the plaza-like Kim II Sung monument

in Hvesan to weep and wail for the fallen Leader during the official

mourning period. The mourners left offerings of flowers and cups of

rice liquor to show their adoration and grief.

During that time, one of my father's relatives was visiting from

northeast China, where many ethnic North Koreans lived. Because he

16

EVEN THE BIRDS AND MICE CAN HEAR YOU WHISPER

was a foreigner, he was not as reverent about the Great Leader, and

when my mother came back from one of her trips to the monument,

Uncle Yong Sao repeated a story he had just heard. The Pyongyang government had announced that Kim 11Sung had died of a heart at-

tack, but Yong Soo reported that a Chinese friend told him he had heard from a North Korean police officer that it wasn't true. The real

cause of death, he said, was hwa-byung-a common diagnosis in both North and South Korea that roughly translates into "disease caused by

mental or emotional stress." Yong Soo had heard that there were dis-

agreements between Kim 11Sung and Kim Jong 11over the elder Kim's plans to hold talks with South Korea....

"Stop!" my mother said. "Don't say another word!" She was so upset that Yong Soo would dare to spread rumors about the regime that she had to be rude to her guest and shut him up.

The next day she and her best friend were visiting the monument

to place more flowers when they noticed someone had vandalized the offerings.

"Oh, there are such bad people in this world!" her friend said. "You are so right!" my mother said. "You wouldn't believe the evil

rumor that our enemies have been spreading." And then she told her

friend about the lies she had heard.

The following day she was walking across the Cloud Bridge when

she noticed an official-looking car parked in the lane below our house,

and a large group of men gathered around it. She immediately knew

something awful was about to happen.

The visitors were plainclothes agents of the dreaded bo-wi-bu, or

National Security Agency, that ran the political prison camps and in-

vestigated threats to the regime. Everybody knew these men could

take you away and you would never be heard from again. Worse,

these weren't locals; they had been sent from headquarters.

The senior agent met my mother at our door and led her to our

·17

IN ORDER TO LIVE EVEN THE BIRDS AND MICE CAN HEAR YOU WHISPER

neighbor's house, which he had borrowed for the afternoon. They

both sat, and he looked at her with eyes like black glass.

"Do you know why I'm here?" he asked. "Yes, I do," she said.

"So where did you hear that?" he said.

She told him she'd heard the rumor from her husband's Chinese

uncle, who had heard it from a friend.

"What do you think of it?" he said.

"It's a terrible, evil rumor!" she said, most sincerely. "It's a lie told

by our enemies who are trying to destroy the greatest nation in the world!"

"What do you think you have done wrong?" he said, flatly.

"Sir, [ should have gone to the party organization to report it. I

was wrong to just tell it to an individual."

"No, you are wrong," he said. "You should never have let those words out of your mouth."

Now she was sure she was going to die. She kept telling him she ,,<IS

sorry, begging to spare her life for the sake of her two babies. As we sa., in Korea, she begged until she thought her hands would wear olf.

Finally, he said in a sharp voice that chilled her bones, "You must

never mention this again. Not to your friends or your husband or your

children. Do you understand what will happen if you do?"

She did. Completely.

Next he interrogated Uncle Yong Soo, who was nervously waiting

with the family at our house. My mother thinks that she was spared

any punishment because Yong Soo confirmed to the agent how angry she had been when he told her the rumor.

When it was over, the agents rode away in their car. My uncle

went back to China. When my father asked my mother what the se-

cret police wanted from her, she said it was nothing she could talk

about, and never mentioned it again. My father went to his grave

without knowing how close they had come to disaster.

Many years later, after she told me her story, I finally understood

why when my mother sent me off to school she never said, "Have a

good day," or even, "Watch out for strangers." What she always said was, "Take care of your mouth."

In most countries, a mother encourages her children to ask about

everything, but not in North Korea. As soon as I was old enough to understand, my mother warned me that [ should be careful about

what I was saying. "Remember, Yeonmi-ya," she said gently, "even when you think you're alone, the birds and mice can hear you whis- per." She didn't mean to scare me, but I felt a deep darkness and horror inside me.

18 /9

Two

The highest is the "core" class made up of honored revolution-

aries-peasants, veterans, or relatives of those who fought or died for

the North-and those who have demonstrated great loyalty to the

Kim family and are part of the apparatus that keeps them in power.

Second is the "basic" or "wavering" class, made up of those who once

lived in the South or had family there, former merchants, intellectu-

als, or any ordinary person who might not be trusted to have com-

plete loyalty to the new order. Finally, lowest of all, is the "hostile"

class, including former landowners and their descendants, capitalists,

former South Korean soldiers, Christians or other religious followers,

the families of political prisoners, and any other perceived enemies of the state.

It is extremely difficult to move to a higher sonabun, but it is

very easy to be cast down into the lowest levels through no fault of

your own. And as my father and his family found out, once you lose

your sonabun status, you lose everything else you have achieved along with it.

A DANGEROUS HISTORY

A Dangerous History

Ithink my father would have become a millionaire if he hadgrown up in South Korea or the United States. But he was bornin North Korea, where family connections and party loyalty are all that matter, and hard work guarantees you nothing but more hard work and a constant struggle to survive.

Park Jin Sik was born in the industrial port city of Hamhung on March +, 1962, into a military family with good political connections. This should have given him a great advantage in life, because in North

Korea all of your opportunities are determined by your caste, or sona-

bun. When Kim II Sung came to power after World War II, he up-

ended the traditional feudal system that divided the people into

landlords and peasants, nobility and commoners, priests and scholars.

He ordered background checks on every citizen to find out every-

thing about them and their families, going back generations. In the

sonabun system, everyone is ranked among three main groups, based on their supposed loyalty to the regime.

My father's father, Park Chang Gyu, grew up in the countrysidenear Hyesan when Korea was a Japanese colony. For more than four thousand years there has been one Korean

people, but many different Koreas. Legend tells us that our history

began in 2333 B.C., with a kingdom called Chosun, which means

"Morning Land." Despite its soothing name, my homeland has rarely

been peaceful. The Korean peninsula lay at the crossroads of great

empires, and over the centuries Korean kingdoms had to fight off

invaders from Manchuria to Mongolia and beyond. Then, in the early

twentieth century, the expanding Japanese empire slowly absorbed

Korea using threats and treaties, finally annexing the whole country

in 1910. That was two years before the birth of North Korea's first

2/

Leader, Kim II Sung, and eleven years before my grandfather Park was born.

The Japanese were despotic colonial rulers who tried to destroy Korean culture and turn us into second-class citizens in our own land.

They outlawed the Korean language and took over our farms and in-

dustries. This behavior sparked a nationalist resistance to Japanese

rule that was met with violent suppression. Like many Koreans, Kim II Sung's parents moved the family across the northern border to

Manchuria, then a part of the Chinese empire. After the Japanese in-

vaded Manchuria in the early 1930s, our future Great Leader joined a

guerrilla group fighting the Japanese occupiers. But at the outset of

World War 11, Kim II Sung joined the Soviet army and <asI later learned), contrary to North Korean propaganda, wh.ich has him al-

most singlehandedly defeating the Japanese-spent the war at a mili- tary base far from the fighting.

When I was growing up, we didn't talk about what our families

did during those times. In North Korea, any history can be danger-

ous. What I know about my father's side of the family comes from the few stories my father told my mother.

At the start of World War 11,Grandfather Park was working for

Japanese managers in the finance department of Hyesan's administra-

tive office, or city hall. It was there that he met his future wife, Jung

Hye Soon, who was also working at the city hall. She was an orphan

who had been raised byher aunt, and she'd had a very hard life before

she met my grandfather. Their courtship was unusual, because unlike

so many Korean couples whose marriages are arranged by their par-

ents, my grandparents actually knew and liked each other before their wedding.

Mygrandfather kept his civil service job all through World War II.

After the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, the Soviet

army swept into the northern part of Korea, while the American mil-

itary took charge of the South-and this set the stage for the agony

my country has endured for more than seventy years. An arbitrary

line was drawn along the 38th parallel, dividing the peninsula into

two administrative zones: North and South Korea. The United States

flew an anti-Communist exile named Syngman Rhee into Seoul and

ushered him into power as the first president of the Republic of Korea.

In the North, Kim II Sung, who had by then become a Soviet major,

was installed as leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,

or DPRK.

The Soviets quickly rounded up all eligible men to establish a

North Korean military force. My grandfather was taken from his job

at city hall and turned into an officer in the People's Army.

By 1949, both the United States and the Soviet Union had with-

drawn their troops and turned the peninsula over to the new puppet

leaders. It did not go well. Kim IISung was a Stalinist and an ultrana- tionalist dictator who decided to reunify the country in the summer

of 1950 by invading the South with Russian tanks and thousands of

troops. In North Korea, we were taught that the Yankee imperialists

started the war, and our soldiers gallantly fought off their evil inva-

sion. In fact, the United States military returned to Korea for the ex-

press purpose of difending the South-bolstered by an official United Nations force-and quickly drove Kim II Sung's army all the way to

the Yalu River, nearly taking over the country. They were stopped

only when Chinese soldiers surged across the border and fought the

Americans back to the 38th parallel. By the end of this senseless war,

at least three million Koreans had been killed or wounded, millions

were refugees, and most of the country was in ruins.

In 1953, both sides agreed to end the fighting, but they never

signed a peace treaty. To this day we are still officially at war, and

both the governments of the North and South believe that they are the

legitimate representatives of all Koreans.

IN ORDER TO LIVE A DANGEROUS HISTORY

22 23

My father went into the military sometime around 1980, whenhe was in his late teens. Like most North Korean men from the middle and upper classes, he was conscripted for ten years of ser-

vice, although with connections that could be reduced to as little as

two. But lessthan ayear after my father joined the army, he got very

sick with a burst appendix. After four or five surgeries to control

complications from the infection, his military service was over for

good. This couldhavebeen a catastrophe for him, because North Ko-

rean men without military backgrounds are usually shut out of the

best jobs. But when he returned to Hyesan with nothing to do, his

father suggested he study finance. He was able to enroll in a three-

year program at the Hyesan Economic College. The rest of the family

was also doing well. My father's older brother Park Jin was attending

medical school in Hvesan, and his eldest brother, Park Dong II,was a

middle school teacher in Hamhung. His older sister had married and

moved to Pyongyang where she worked as a waitress, and his little

sister was attending school in Hyesan.

But disaster struck in 1980 when Dong II was accused of raping

one of his students and attempting to kill his wife. I never learned all

the details ofwhat happened, or even if the charges were true, but he

ended up being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor. It was only

IN ORDER TO LIVE A DANGEROUS HISTORY

Grandfather Park was a financial officer and never fired a shotdUrIng the Korean War. After the armistice, he remained in the military, traveling with his family from post to post. He was

based in Hamhung, about 180miles south of Hyesan, when myfather

was born-the fourth of five children and the youngest son. Later,

when my grandfather retired from active duty, the government reset-

tled him and his family in Hyesan. My grandfather's position as an

officer and amember of the ruling Workers' Party of Koreagavehim

good songbun status, and he was awarded another job as financeman- ager at the commissary that supplied goods to military families. At

least for a while, the family prospered along with North Korea's

growing economy.

During the 1950s and 1960s, China and the Soviet Union poured money into North Korea to help it rebuild. The North has coal and

minerals in its mountains, and it was always the richer, more industri-

alized part of the country. It bounced back more quickly than the South, which was still mostly agricultural and slow to recover from

the war. But that started to change in the 1970s and 1980s, as South

Korea became a manufacturing center and North Korea's Soviet-style

system began to collapse under its own weight. The economy was

centrally planned and completely controlled by the state. There was

no private property-at least officially-and all the farms were col-

lectivized, although people could grow some vegetables to sell in

small, highly controlled markets. The government provided all jobs,

paid everyone's salary, and distributed rations for most foodand con- sumer goods.

While my parents were growing up, the distribution system was still subsidized by the Soviet Union and China, so few people were

starving, but nobody outside the elite really prospered. At the same

time, supply wasn't meeting demand for the kinds of items people

wanted, like imported clothing, electronics, and special foods. While the favored classes had access to many of these goods through

government-run department stores, the prices were usually too high

for most people to afford. Any ordinary citizen who fancied foreign

cigarettes or alcohol or Japanese-made handbags would have to buy

them on the blackmarket. The usual route for those goods was from

the north, through China.

24 25

I

I

I

IN ORDER TO LIVE A DANGEROUS HISTORY

because of Grandfather Park's connections that he escaped execution.

It is common for nonpolitical prisoners to be released from prison

before they die, to save the government the trouble of sending their

bodies home. So after serving twelve years, Dong II was let out on

sickleave and he returned to Hyesan. Nobody in the family ever spoke

about his past. I remember him as a frail and quiet man who was al-

ways kind to me. He died when I was still a little girl. In North Korea, if one member of the family commits a serious

crime, everybody is considered a criminal. Suddenly my father's fam-

ily lost its favorable social and political status.

There are more than fifty subgroups within the main sonqbun castes, and once you become an adult, your status is constantly being

monitored and adjusted by the authorities. A network of casual neigh-

borhood informants and official police surveillance ensures that noth-

ing you do or your family does goes unnoticed. Everything about )'ou

is recorded and stored in local administrative offices and in big na-

tional organizations, and the information is used to determine where

you can live, where you can go to school, and where you can work.

With a superior sonqbun, you can join the Workers' Party, which gives you access to political power. You can go to a good university and get

a good job, With a poor one, you can end up on a collective farm

chopping rice paddies for the rest of your life. And, in times of fam- ine, starving to death.

All of Grandfather Park's connections could not save his career

after his eldest son was convicted of attempted murder. He was fired

from his job at the commissary shortly after Dong II was sent to

prison, although no official reason was given for his dismissal. Fortu-

nately, his younger sons were less affected bythe scandal and managed

to complete their educations. My uncle Park Jin finished medical

school and became a professor at Hyesan Medical University and later

became administrator at the medical college. He was an excellent stu-

dent and clever political player who managed to succeed despite his

family's problems. My father earned his degree in economic planning

and, like his father before him, was hired to work in the finance office

in Hyesan's city hall, But after only a year, there was a restructuring

in the administrative offices and he lost his job. His poor sonobun had

finally caught up with him.

My father realized he would have no future unless he found a way

to join the Workers' Party. He decided to become a laborer at a local

metal foundry where he could work hard and prove his loyalty to the

regime. He was able to build good relationships with the people who

had power at his workplace, including the party representative there. Before long, he had his membership,

By that time, my father had also started a side business to make

some extra money. This was a bold move, because any business ven- ture outside of state control was illegal. But my father was unusual in

that he had a natural entrepreneurial spirit and what some might call

a healthy contempt for rules. He also had the luck to be living at the

right time and in the right part of the country to turn his business into

a big success, At least for a while,

Hyesan already had a long-established tradition of cross-border

trade with China and a small but lively black market for everything

from dried fish to electronics. During the 1980s, women were al-

lowed to sell food and handicrafts in makeshift markets, but general

trading was still an underground and specialized activity. My father

joined a small but growing class of black market operators who found

ways to exploit cracks in the state-controlled economy. He started

small. My father discovered that he could buy a carton of top-quality

cigarettes for 70 to 100 won on the black market in Hyesan, then sell

eoch cigarette for 7 to 10 won in the North Korean interior. At that

time, a kilogram-2.2 pounds-c--of rice cost around 25 won, so ciga-

rettes were obviously very valuable,

. 26 . 27

The government had placed more restrictions on travel in North

Korea, and there was a lot of paperwork involved in traveling out of

town. First my father needed permission to leave the factory where he

worked. He would negotiate a fee with a doctor to write him a note

sayinghe was sick, then he would tell his supervisor that he needed to

go out of town for a few days for treatment. The supervisor would

issue him papers. Then my father would go to the police and bribe them for a travel permit.

My father traveled by train to small cities where there weren't big

black markets. He hid the cigarettes in his bags, all over his body, and

in every pocket. He had to keep moving to avoid being searched by

the police, who were always looking for contraband. Sometimes the police discovered him and confiscated the cigarettes or threatened to

hit him with a metal stick if he didn't turn over his money. My father

had to convince the police that it was in everybody's interest to let

him make a profit so that he could keep coming back and giving them cigarettes as bribes. Often they agreed. He was a born salesman.

Although I know he would have preferred a safer and more con- ventionallife as a high government official, that was never to be his

fate. Almost anywhere else, business would have been my father's vo-

cation. But in North Korea, it was simply a means to survive. And it

made him an outlaw.

Three

IN ORDER TO LIVE

Swallows and Magpies

My father's business began with cigarettes and soon grew toinclude Chinese-made clothes, a product in high demand.In the summer of 1989, he traveled to Kowon, a small city near North Korea's east coast, to sell his goods, and while in

town stopped to visit with his friend Byeon Min Sik, another ambi-

tious young man whom my father had known in Hyesan. It was there

that my father met his friend's younger sister, Keum Soak. Mymother.

She was four years younger than my father, and her sonsbun status was just as poor as his, also through no fault of her own. While my

father had to struggle because his brother was in prison, she was con-

sidered untrustworthy because her paternal grandfather had owned

land when Korea was a Japanese colony. The stigma passed down

through three generations, and when my mother was born in 1966,

she was already considered a member of the "hostile" class and barred

from the privileges of the elite.

My mother's father, Byeon Ung Rook, came from North Ham-

28

IN ORDER TO LIVE SWALLOWS AND MAGPIES

gyong province in the northernmost part of Korea. His family wasn't

very wealthy, but they owned just enough property to be considered

landlords. By the time my grandfather Bveon was born in 1931, the

family had already lost their money. That was the same year that Japan

decided to expand its empire by invading and occupying the three

Chinese provinces that make up Manchuria, just north of the Korean border.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Koreans had already settled in

Manchuria, and the border was notoriously porous. When Japan oc-

cupied both regions during the 1930s and 1940s, it was even easier to travel back and forth.

In 1933, when my grandfather Byeon was two years old, the whole family moved to Hunchun, China, just across the Tumen River from

Hamgyong. When World War II broke out, he was still a schoolboy, but he ended up in the fighting. My mother never knew which army he belonged to, because my grandfather never spoke of it.

After the war ended, he remained in China but often visited his

North Korean homeland. When he was twenty-two years old, right

before the Korean War began in 1950, he made a visit to Onsong, a

border town where his father had once owned property. There he met

a group of men who were on their way to the Soviet Union to work as

loggers. He joined them for dinner, and they kept buying rounds of drinks. Finally, he left them to walk back alone to the inn where he

was staying, but he was so drunk that he lay down on the railroad

tracks and fell asleep. My grandfather woke up the next day in an

Onsong hospital with an arm and a leg missing and no idea how he got

there. He was told that a train had run over him while he slept, and

he'd survived only because a railroad monitor found him and brought him to a doctor.

Grandfather Byeon remained in North Korea to heal. His arm was

completely gone, but enough of his leg remained that he was fitted

with a prosthetic limb and learned to walk without crutches. By the

time he recovered, the Korean War was ending. In fact, the devastat-

ing injury might have saved his life, because he would almost certainly

have ended up fighting in a conflict that claimed more than three

million lives. The United States dropped more bombs on North Korea than it

had during the entire Pacific campaign in World War II. The Ameri-

cans bombed every city and village, and they kept bombing until there were no major buildings left to destroy. Then they bombed the dams

to flood the crops. The damage was unimaginable, and nobody knows

how many civilians were killed and maimed.

After the war, the North Korean government set up nursing cen-

ters for the disabled who had no families to care for them. One of

these facilities in Onsong was where Grandfather met his future wife,

Hwang Ok Soon. She was an orphan from a rural community in what

was now South Korea, and her father had been a resistance fighter

against Japan during Korea's colonial days. When she was ten years

old, he was arrested and never heard from again. After that, Grand-

mother Hwang was abandoned by her family, and ended up working

as a farm laborer in Tumen, China-which was then part of the Jap-

anese empire. She returned to her home country after the Japanese surrendered

and Korea gained independence. Unfortunately, she was living in the

Communist North when Korea was partitioned. In 1952, she was

working at a munitions factory in the port city of Chongjin on the

East Sea when her leg was injured in a bombing raid and had to be

amputated. She was sent to a nursing facility to recover and learn to use her

wooden leg. She was still young and single, but it was not likely that

an able-bodied person would marry someone with a disability. So her

best hope was to find a husband with a similar condition. My grand-

30 3/

IN ORDER TO LIVE

father Byeon apparently had the same idea, and he was visiting nursing

homes all over the northern provinces, looking for a bride. The way

she told the story, my grandmother saw him walking around the hall-

ways and took pity on him. "This man is in bad shape," she thought. "If I don't marry him, he'll never find a wife."

They were wed shortly after the war ended, and she traveled the

150 miles north with him, across the Chinese border to his home in

Hunchun. By 1956, my grandmother was pregnant with their first

child, my mother's older sister. She was also miserable and homesick.

Even though she had spent time in China, she never learned to speak

Chinese. And she had a terrible craving for seafood, especially octo-

pus the way it is prepared in Cheongjin. Finally, she couldn't stand it

anymore, and she left her husband behind while she went to find some

octopus to eat. She could be an extremely emotional woman, and very

strong-willed. When she made up her mind to do something, she could

not be dissuaded. My grandfather had no choice but to follow her.

Cheongjin was once a small fishing village, but the Japanese had turned it into an industrial port, and the North Korean government

was rebuilding it as a major manufacturing and military center. My

grandparents agreed that it was no place to raise a family. They were

both loyal followers of Kim II Sung, and they worried about the capi-

talistic tendencies in the border areas. They didn't want their children to be tempted by smuggling and other criminal activities.

They traveled south by rail to find a place to settle deep in the countryside. This was how my mother's family came to live in Kowon,

a small city near a big agricultural river delta backed by rolling moun-

tains. There were rice paddies and orchards, and none of the corrupt-

ing influences of the bustling border towns. It should have been a

fresh start, but they came to Kowon at the time that Kim II Sung

began purging North Korea of class traitors. All citizens had to be

investigated to determine their loyalty and record their sonpbun. Un-

32 .

SWALLOWS AND MAGPIES

fortunately, my grandfather was very truthful, and he told the inves-

tigator that his father was a landowner from Onsong. From then on he

was cursed with a bad sonpbu», and there was no chance for him to

join the party and get ahead in life. He was assigned a job in a button

factory. My mother's older sister was born in Kowon in 1957, followed by

three more children-two boys and then my mother, the youngest,

who was born on July 16, 1966. They all grew up to be loyal followers

of the regime, like their parents. My mother was an excellent student and a gifted singer and musi-

cian who accompanied herself on the accordion and guitar. In North

Korean propaganda videos, you often see beautiful women dressed in

traditional hanbak-the colorful jackets and high-waisted skirts that

make them look like floating flowers-who sing such high and

mournful songs that the audience bursts into tears. That's what my

mother did so well. When she was young, she wanted to perform professionally, but

her teachers told her she had to study to go to university. Her father

also discouraged a career as a performer. Instead she concentrated on

her studies and memorized poetry praising the Great Leader and his

son, Kim Jong II, his chosen heir. It was unusual for a North Korean woman of her status to get a

higher education. But my mother was such a good scholar that she was

accepted at a college in the nearby city of Hamhung. If given a choice,

she would have liked to have become a doctor. But only students from

better families are allowed a say in what they will study. The school

administration decided she would major in inorganic chemistry, and

that's what she did. When she graduated, party officials sent her back

to Kowon to work in a chemical factory there. She was assigned a low-

level job making the ingredients for fragrances to put in soap and

toothpaste. A few months later, she was allowed to switch to a better

33

IN ORDER TO LIVE SWALLOWS AND MAGPIES

job at another factory that made clothes for export to the Soviet Union.

Despite what others might call disappointments, she never ques- tioned the regime's authority to control her life. Unlike North Kore-

ans who grew up along the borders, my mother had no exposure to the outside world or foreign ideas. She knew only what the regime

taught her and she remained a proud and pure revolutionary. And

because she had a poet's heart, she felt an enormous emotional con- nection to the official propaganda. She sincerely believed that North

Korea was the center of the universe and that Kim II Sung and Kim

Jong II had supernatural powers. She helieved that Kim II Sung caused the sun to rise and that when Kim Jong II was born in a cabin on our

sacred Mount Paektu (he was actually born in Russia), his arrival was

marked by a double rainbow and a bright new star in the sky. She was

so brainwashed that when Kim II Sung died she started to panic. It

was like God himself had died. "How can the Earth still spin on its

axis?" she wondered. The laws of physics she had studied in college

were overcome by the propaganda that was drilled into her all her life. It would be many years before she realized that Kim II Sung and

Kim Jong II were just men who had learned from Joseph Stalin, their Soviet role model, how to make people worship them like gods.

between men and women. If you grow up in the West, you may think that romance occurs naturally, but it does not. You learn how to be

romantic from books and movies, or from observation. But there was

no model to learn from in my parents' time. They didn't even have

the language to talk about their feelings. You just had to guess how

your beloved felt from the look in his eyes, or the tone of her voice

when she spoke to you. The most they could do was hold hands se-

cretly. I don't know what my father thought when he met my mother, but

she must have been a beautiful sight. She was slender, with strong

limbs, high cheekbones, and fine, pale features. She also had a quick

mind and a powerful will, which must have fascinated him. She was not that impressed with him. To her he was ordinary

looking, and not very tall. But her brother Min Sik had told her that

his friend was capable enough to take care of a wife. There's a saying for men like my father: "He could survive even on hare rock," mean- ing he was resourceful and resilient no matter what the circumstance.

According to tradition, their marriage was arranged by their fam-

ilies. My grandfather Park accompanied my father on a selling trip to

Kowon. They had decided that it was safer to spread the risk between

the two of them, so that neither would be carrying too many ciga-

rettes or too much money if they were searched. When they arrived

safely, they stayed with Min Sik and his family. Grandfather Park quickly noticed my mother, and saw her ex-

changing significant looks with his son. He sat down with my moth-

er's mother to discuss a match. My parents were judged by their

families to be well suited; they both had bad sonqbuo. As we say, you

bave to match swallow with swallow, magpie with magpie. In this

case, bride and groom were both magpies. When the deal was done,

Jin Sik and Keum Sook were told they were engaged. End of story.

My mother was still living at home and working in the clothingfactory when she met my father in the summer of 1989. It had become my father's habit to stay with her brother Min Sik while he

was conducting his black market business in Kowon. Since Min Sik also lived with his parents, my mother and father saw each other quite

often, but they didn't speak to each other except for polite greetings.

There was no concept of "dating" in North Korea at that time.

Our culture has always been extremely conservative about relations

34 35

IN ORDER TO LIVE

The wedding celebration was nothing special. My mother wore

her traditional hanhak, and my father came to her parents' house,

where there was a big table of food laid out for close family and

friends. Then, my mother rode the train to Hyesan for a similar gath-

ering at my father's house. There was no ceremony. My parents just

brought their ID cards to the police station to record their marriage, and that was it.

There is another Korean saying: "The thread follows the needle." Usually the man is the needle and the thread is the woman so the, woman follows the husband to his home. But she does not take his

name. For many women, it is the only independence that remains in their lives.

36

Four

Tears of Blood

M yparents prospered in the early years of their marriage. They moved into a small house by the railroad station

that the military had given to my grandfather after he

retired. It was very run-down, but my father started fixing it up for

his growing family. My mother became pregnant with my sister,

Eunrni, almost right away, and she was born in January 1991.

My father left the metal foundry to find other jobs that gavehim

more freedom to be away from the officefor days at a time to run his

businesses. In addition to the cigarettes, he bought sugar, rice, and

other goods in the informal markets in Hyesan, then traveled around

the country selling them for a profit. When he did business in Won-

san, a port on the East Sea, he brought back dried sand eels-tiny,

skinny fish that Koreans love to eat as a side dish. He could sell them

for a good profit in our landlocked province, and they became his

best-selling product. Because my mother had spent her whole life in the center of the