North Korea

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IN OHDER TO LIVE

The wedding celebration was nothing special. My mother wore her traditional hanbok, 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 10 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.

Four

Tears of Blood

My parents prospered in the early years of their marriage.They moved into a small house by the railroad stationthat 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 gave him

more freedom to be away from the office for 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

I I

IN ORDER TO LIVE

country, far away from any outside influences, she didn't know anv-

thing about the black market. She didn't even understand the COlK~

of business. This all changed during the 1990s, when the farrrine aIL

an economic collapse turned the whole country into a nation of trac-

ers in order to survive. But before that, capitalism was something

dirty to North Koreans, and money was too disgusting for most p",,: ple to mention in polite conversation.

Now she was married to a businessman who made his living haz-

dling money. It took some getting used to. But like many loyal Nortr: Koreans, she was able to separate her ideology from her actions ans not see that there was much of a conflict. She became a skilled trade herself. It may have felt unnatural to her at first, but she carne to rec-

ognize that my father was more aware and competent than other peo- ple and she followed his lead. Soon after they were married, she began helping him buy and sell his products in both the legal and under- ground markets in Hyesan.

Even though my parents were better off than most of their neigD-

bars, they were never members of the so-called elite. That kind of wealth came only from high-level government connections. How-

ever, they did well enough to take a vacation trip to North Korea's

monument-filled capital, Pyongyang, when Eunrni was an infant, and my mother was able to dress in some of the fashionable clothes that

were smuggled in from China. She loved designer handbags (even if they were Chinese knockoffs), Japanese blouses, and nice cosrnetjes, Years later, after Our escape, I would joke that she was like the Paris

Hilton of North Korea. But she was never extravagant; she just had a great sense of style.

Despite her good fortune, my mother never stopped working, and

nothing was too difficult for her. She was chopping firewood for the

house late into her pregnancy with Eunmi. The doctors saidthat's whv she went into labor early and had her first baby in her eighth month.

TEARS OF BLOOD

We think I was even more premature because) in her seventh month,

my mother was hauling coal across a railroad bridge in Hyesan. The coal transport was part of a backdoor enterprise run by my

grandfather Park. After he lost his job at the commissary, my grand- father found work as a security guard at a military facility in Hyesan.

The building had a stockpile of coal in one storage area, and he would

let my parents in to steal it. They had to sneak in at night and carry

the coal on their backs through the darkened city. It was hard work and they had to move fast, because if they were caught by the wrong policeman-meaning one they couldn't bribe-they might end up

getting arrested. One night on that bridge my mother felt sharp pains

in her abdomen, and the next day she delivered a baby the size of a

young chicken: me. According to North Korea, my grandfather Park and my parents

were criminals. My father bought and sold goods for a profit; in other

countries he'd simply be called a businessman. He bribed officials-

whose salaries weren't enough to feed their families-in order to

travel freely in his own country. And while it's true that my grandfa-

ther and my parents stole from the government, the government stole

everything from its people, including their freedom. As it turns out, my family's business was simply ahead of its time.

By the time I was born, in 1993, corruption, bribery, theft, and even

market capitalism were becoming a way of life in North Korea as the

centralized economy fell apart. The only thing left unchanged when

the crisis was over was the regime's brutal, totalitarian grip on polit-

ical power.

Throughout my childhood, my parents knew that with each pass-ing month it was getting harder and harder to survive in North Korea, but they didn't know why. Foreign media were completely

-------------------- ... IN ORDER TO LIVE TEARS OF BLOOD

banned in the country, and the newspapers reported only good news

about the regime-or blamed all of our hardships on evil plots by our enemies. The truth was that outside our sealed borders, the Commu-

nist superpowers that created North Korea were cutting off its life-

line. The big decline started in 1990 when the Soviet Union was breaking apart and Moscow dropped its "friendly rates" for exports to

North Korea. Without subsidized fuel and other commodities, the

economy creaked to a halt. There was no way for the government to

keep the domestic fertilizer factories running, and no fuel for trucks

to deliver imported fertilizer to farms. Crop yields dropped sharply.

At the same time, Russia almost completely cut off food aid. China

helped out for a few years, but it was also going through big changes

and increasing its economic ties with capitalist countries-like South

Korea and the United States-so it, too, cut off some of its subsidies

and started demanding hard currency for exports. North Korea had

already defaulted on its bank loans, so it couldn't borrow a penny.

By the time Kim II Sung died in 1994, famine was already taking

hold in the northern provinces. Government rations had been cut sharply, and sometimes they failed to arrive at all.

Instead of changing its policies and reforming its programs, North

Korea responded by ignoring the crisis. Instead of opening the coun-

try to full international assistance and investment, the regime told the people to eat only two meals a day to preserve our food resources. In

his New Year's message of 1995, the new Dear Leader, Kim Jong II,

called on the Korean people to work harder. Although 1994 had

brought us "tears of blood," he wrote, we should greet 1995 "energet-

ically, single-mindedly, and with one purpose"-to make the mother- land more prosperous.

Unfortunately, our problems could not be fixed with tears and

sweat, and the economy went into total collapse after torrential rains

caused terrible flooding that wiped out most of the rice harvest. Kim

Jong II described our national struggle against famine as "The Ardu- ous March," resurrecting the phrase used to describe the hardships

his father's generation had faced fighting against the Japanese imperi-

alists. Meanwhile as many as a million North Koreans died from star- vation or disease during the worst years of the famine.

The economic collapse disrupted every level of North Korean society. While it had once provided for all our needs, now the regime

said it was up to us to save ourselves. When foreign food aid finally

started pouring into the country to help famine victims, the govern-

ment diverted most of it to the military, whose needs always came

first. What food did get through to local authorities for distribution

quickly ended up being sold on the black market. Suddenly almost everybody in North Korea had to learn to trade or risk starving to

death. And the regime realized it had no choice but to tolerate these

unofficial markets. In fact, Kim Jong II eventually allowed permanent, state-managed marketplaces to be built.

The new reality spelled disaster for my father. Now that everyone

was buying and selling in the markets, called janBmadanBs, there was too much competition for him to make a living. Meanwhile, penalties

for black market activities grew harsher. As hard as my parents tried

to adapt, they were having trouble selling their goods and were falling

deeper into debt. My father tried different kinds of businesses. My

mother and her friends had an ancient pedal sewing machine they

used to patch together pieces of old clothes to make children's cloth-

ing. My mother dressed my sister and me in these outfits; her friends sold the rest in the market.

Some people had relatives in China, and they could apply for per-

mits to visit them. My uncle Park Jin did this at least once, but my

father didn't because the authorities frowned on it and would have

paid closer attention to his business. Those who went almost always

came back across the border with things to sell in makeshift stalls on

. 40 41

IN ORDER TO LIVE

the edges of the janBmadanB. They told us about the amazing items you could find in the trash in China, even perfectly good clothes. Nothing went to waste in North Korea, and we couldn't imagine throwing

anything out that could be used again, even empty plastic bottles,

bags, and tin cans. Those were like gold to us. When you are a very small child, all you know is what is in front

of your eyes. Your whole life is your parents, your relatives, your

neighborhood. lt seemed normal to me that there were times when we had food to eat, and other times when there was only one meal a

day and we went hungry. While they worked to keep us from catastrophe, my parents often

had to leave my sister and me alone. If she couldn't find someone to

look after us, my mother would have to bolt a metal bar across the door to keep us safe in the house. Sometimes she was away for so long

that the sun went down and the house would get dark. My sister, who

was afraid of the dark, would cry. I'd say, "Sister, don't cry. Umma will be here soon." But after a while, I would lose my nerve and we'd

cry together. When we heard her voice at the door, we would run to

it, sobbing with relief. It was so hard for my mother to come home

and find us like that. But if she had some food, all would be forgotten. In the free world, children dream about what they want to be

when they grow up and how they can use their talents. When I was

four and five years old, my only adult ambition was to buy as much

bread as I liked and eat all of it. When you are always hungry, all )'ou

think about is food. I couldn't understand why my mother would come home with some money and have to save most of it for later.

Instead of bread, we would eat only a little bit of porridge or potatoes.

My sister and I agreed that if we ever became adults, we would use

our money to eat bread until we were full. We would even argue

about how much we could eat, She told me she could eat one hucket

of bread; I said I could eat ten, She would say ten, I would say one

TEARS OF BLOOD

hundred! I thought I could eat a mountain of bread and I would never

be filled up. The worst times were the winters. There was no running water

and the river was frozen. There was one pump in town where you

could collect fresh water, but you had to line up for hours to fill your

bucket. One day when I was about five years old, my mother had to

go off to do some business, so she took me there at six in the morning, when it was still dark, to wait in line for her. I stood outside all day in

the freezing cold, and by the time she came back for me, it was dark

again. I can remember how cold my hands were, and I can still see the bucket and the long line of people in front of me, She has apologized

to me for doing that, but I don't blame her for anything; it was what

she had to do, For my mother it's still a painful story that lives deep,

deep inside her. She carries guilt to this day that she was not better

able to enjoy my childhood; she was too busy worrying about getting

us enough food to eat. Despite North Korea's anticapitalist ideals, there were lots of pri-

vate lenders who got rich by loaning money for monthly interest, My

parents borrowed from some of them to keep their business going,

but after black market prices collapsed and a lot of their merchandise

was confiscated or stolen, they couldn't pay it back. Every night, the

people who wanted to collect their debts came to the house while we

were eating our meal. They yelled and made threats, Finally, my fa-

ther decided he couldn't take it anymore. He knew of another way to

make money, but it was very dangerous, He had a connection in

Pyongyang who could get him some valuable metals-like gold, sil-

ver, copper, nickel, and cobalt-that he could sell to the Chinese for

a profit, My mother was against it. When he was selling sand eels and cig-

arettes, the worst that could happen was that he might have to spend all his profits on bribes, or do a short time in a reeducation camp.

IN ORDER TO LIVE

"You can live with that," she told him. "But smuggling stolen metals

could get you killed." She was even more frightened when she learned

how he intended to bring the contraband to Hyesan. Every passenger

train in North Korea had a special cargo car attached at the end of it

called Freight Train #9. These #9 trains were exclusively for the use of Kim Jong II to bring him specialty foods, fruits, and precious ma-

terials from different parts of North Korea, and to distribute gifts and

necessity items to cadres and party officials around the country. Ev-

erything shipped in the special car was sealed in wooden crates that even the police couldn't open to inspect. Nobody could even enter the

car without being searched. My father knew somebody who worked

on the train, and that man agreed to help smuggle the metals from

Pyongyang to Hyesan in one of these safe compartments. My mother held out for a long time, and then she finally agreed to

the plan. It was the only way to survive.

. 44

........

Five

The Dear Leader

Between 1998 and 2002, my father spent most of his time inPyongyang running the smuggling business. Usually he wouldbe gone for nine months of the year, coming back only for infrequent, short visits when be rode the train to Hyesan along with

bis latest shipment of metal. My mother quickly learned to run the

business in Hyesan, picking up packages from the train and delivering

them to the smugglers who sold them across the border in China.

Wben my father suffered a setback in his business, we would be

poor arid bungry again, but most of the time things were getting bet- ter for us. When he was in town, my father entertained at our house to keep the local officials happy, including the party bosses be paid to

ignore his absences from bis "official" workplace. My mother cooked

big meals of rice and kimchi, grilled meat caned bu}aoai, and other special dishes, while my father filled everyone's glasses to tbe brim

witb rice vodka and imported liquor. My father was a captivating story-

IN ORDER TO LIVE

- THE DEAR LEADER

teller with a great sense of humor. I fell asleep listening to the sound

of his voice and roars of laughter from the men at the table. I was just happy when there was food to eat, and we could afford

new shoes and uniforms for school.

Iwas the smallest kid in my first-grade class, and definitely not thesmartest. I know this because in North Korea they line you up by your height, and seat you in class by your test scores. I had trouble learning how to read and write and needed special help. I hated being

at the bottom of the class, and sometimes just refused to go to school.

I had a headstrong personality, perhaps because I had to work so

hard for everything I achieved. I was determined to learn how to

read, so I struggled to make sense of all those characters swimming

across the page. When my father was home, he would sometimes hold me in his

lap and read me children's books. I loved stories, but the only books

available in North Korea were published by the government and had

political themes. Instead of scary fairy tales, we had stories set in a

filthy and disgusting place called South Korea, where homeless chil-

dren went barefoot and begged in the streets. It never occurred to me

until after I arrived in Seoul that those books were really describing

life in North Korea. But we couldn't see past the propaganda. When I finally learned to read by myself, I couldn't get enough

books to satisfy me. Again, most of them were about our Leaders and

how they worked so hard and sacrificed so much for the people. One

of my favorites was a biography of Kim Il Sung. It described how he suffered as a young man while fighting the Japanese imperialists, sur-

viving by eating frogs and sleeping in the snow. In the classroom every subject we learned-math, science, read-

ing, music-was delivered with a dose of propaganda. Kim II Sung's

son, our Dear Leader Kim Jong ll, showed incredible loyalty to his

father, and this was an example for schoolchildren. In class we read a

textbook about how Kim II Sung was so busy leading our nation that

he would have to read documents while riding in his car. But this was

hard because the road was bumpy and the pages would shake. But

when Kim Jong II was very young, he managed to cover the road with

loads of sand to make the ride smooth and comfortable for his father.

Our Dear Leader had mystical powers. His biography said he

could control the weather with his thoughts, and that he wrote fifteen

hundred books during his three years at Kim II Sung University. Even

when he was a child he was an amazing tactician, and when he played

military games, his team always won because he came up with bril- liant new strategies every time. That story inspired my classmates in

Hyesan to play military games, too. But nobody ever wanted to be on the American imperialist team, because they would always have to

lose the battle.

In school, we sang a song about Kim Jong II and how he worked so hard to give our laborers on-the-spot instruction as he traveled around

the country, sleeping in his car and eating only small meals of rice

balls. "Please, please, Dear Leader, take a good rest for usl" we sang

through our tears. "We are all crying for you."

This worship of the Kims was reinforced in documentaries, mov-

ies, and shows broadcast by the single, state-run television station. Whenever the Leaders' smiling pictures appeared on the screen, stir-

ring sentimental music would build in the background. It made me so

emotional every time. North Koreans are raised to venerate our fa-

thers and our elders; it's part of the culture we inherited from Con-

fucianism. And so in our collective minds, Kim II Sung was our

beloved grandfather and Kim Jong II was our father.

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Once I even dreamed about Kim Jong II. He was smiling and hug-

ging me and giving me candy. I woke up so happy, and for a long time

the memory of that dream was the biggest joy in my life. Jang Jin Sung, a famous North Korea defector and former poet

laureate who worked in North Korea's propaganda bureau, calls this phenomenon "emotional dictatorship." In North Korea, it's not enough

for the government to control where you go, what you learn, where

you work, and what you say. They need to control you through your

emotions, making you a slave to the state by destroying your individ-

uality, and your ability to react to situations based on your own expe-

rience of the world. This dictatorship, both emotional and physical, is reinforced in

every aspect of your life. In fact, the indoctrination starts as soon as

you learn to talk and are taken on your mother's back to the inminban

meetings everybody in North Korea has to attend at least once a week.

You learn that your friends are your "comrades" and that is how you

address one another. You are taught to think with one mind. As soon as you are in school you are drilled in the 10 Principles of

the regime, like the Ten Commandments of the Bible. (Number I:

"We must give our all in the struggle to unify the entire society with

the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader comrade Kim II Sung." Number 2: "Respect the Great Leader respected comrade Kim II Sung

with the utmost loyalty." ... Number 10: "We must pass down the great achievements of Great Leader comrade Kim II Sung's revolution

from generation to generation, inheriting and completing it to the

end.") You learn the principle ofjuche, or national self-determination.

And you are taught to hate the enemies of the state with a burning

passion. Our classrooms and schoolbooks were plastered with images of

grotesque American GIs with blue eyes and huge noses executing ci-

vilians or being vanquished with spears and bayonets by brave young

THE DEAR LEADER

Korean children. Sometimes during recess from school we lined up to

take turns beating or stabbing dummies dressed up like American

soldiers. I was so scared that the Yankee devils would attack us again

and torture me to death in the most evil way. In second grade we were taught simple math, but not the way it is

taught in other countries. In North Korea, even arithmetic is a propa-

ganda tool. A typical problem would go like this: "If you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two, how many dead Amer-

ican bastards do you have?"

We could never just say "American"-that would be too respect-

ful. It had to be "American bastard," "Yankee devil," or "big-nosed

Yankee." If you didn't say it, you would be criticized for being too soft

on our enemies.

Likewise, any mention of the Kims had to be preceded by a title

or tender description to show our infinite love and respect for our

Leaders. One time when my mother was preparing food in the kitchen

and I grabbed a newspaper, I had to read it for a long time before I

realized I had just finished the title of our Leader: "Our great comrade

Kim Jong II, the general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the

chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, and the su-

preme commander of the Korean People's Army, said today ... "

I don't think my father was brainwashed the way the rest of us

were. My mother has told me he was more aware of what the regime

was doing to its people. I heard him grumble about it only once, and

I didn't understand what my father was saying at the time. We were

listening to the television news broadcast with the usual footage of

Kim Jong II inspecting troops somewhere. The newsreaders were

going on and on about how much the Dear Leader was suffering in the

cold to give his benevolent guidance to the loyal soldiers when my fa-

ther snapped, "That son of a bitch! Turn off the TV."

My mother whispered furiously, "Be careful what you say around

49 .

IN ORDER TO LIVE

the children! This isn't just about what you think. You're putting all

of us in danger." I had no idea my father was talking about Kim Jong n. I could

. . h . disrespect for the regime or our Leaders.That never lmagme S owmg

would be unthinkable.

M y father wasn't the only one who was beginning to think dif-

ferently. In fact, capitalism was already alive and well just a few blocks

away in the bustlingjanBmadanB' Only a few years earlier, the market had consisted of a few grandmothers selling homegrown vegetables

d k N W a corrugated metal roof covered rows and rows of

an snac s. 0 market stalls where vendors sold everything from handmade rice cakes to Chinese athletic shoes. If you knew where to look, you could also find things like digital watches and DVD players from vendors

who operated in the gray area between legal and illegal trade In the

new North Korea. The smugglers who brought the black market goods back and fo~

to China lived in low houses behind the market, along the nver s

edge. I got to know this neighborhood well. When my father was in

town with a shipment from Pyongyang, he would sometimes hide the metal in my little book bag, and then carry me piggyback from

our house to one of the smugglers' shacks. From there some men took the package to Chinese buyers on the other side of the river. Some- . h I 0 ld wade or walk across the YaluRIVer,some-times t e smugg ers w u

times they met their Chinese counterparts halfway. They did it at

night, signaling one another with flashlights- There were so many of them doing business that each needed a special code-one, two,

three flashes-so they didn't get one another mixed up. The soldiers who guarded the border were part of the operation

50 .

THE DEAR LEADER

by now, and they were always there to take their cut. Of course, even

with the authorities looking the other way, there still were many

things that you were forbidden to buy or sell. And breaking the rules

could be fatal.

In North Korea, public executions were used to teach us lessons in

loyalty to the regime and the consequences of disobedience. In Hye-

san when I was little, a young man was executed right behind the market for killing and eating a cow. It was a crime to eat beef without

special permission. Cows were the property of the state, and were too valuable to eat because they were used for plowing fields and

dragging carts, so anybody who butchered one would be stealing gov-

ernment property. The young man had committed some other petty crimes, but the

cow was his main offense. He suffered from tuberculosis and had

nothing to eat, but that didn't make any difference to the police. They

announced his execution to the whole city, and then brought him to

the market and tied him at the chest, knees, and ankles to a heavy piece of wood. Three men with rifles stood in front of him and began

firing. The executioners tried to cut the ropes with bullets and it took

a long time. Finally, they succeeded, and the dead man flopped to the

ground. My mother watched in shock as they rolled the body away, stuffed it into a sack, and drove it off in the back of a truck. Her blood

went cold and she was unable to move her legs for a while. She couldn't

believe that in her own country a human's life had less value than an

animal's. Even a dog would be treated with more respect.

There was an endless list of crimes in North Korea. The govern-

ment was obsessed with preventing corrupt ideas from penetrating

our borders, so all foreign media were totally forbidden. Although

many families owned televisions, radios, and VCR players, they were

allowed to listen to or watch only state-generated news programs and

propaganda films, which were incredibly boring. There was a huge

IN ORDER TO LIVE

demand for foreign movies and South Korean television shows, even

though you never knew when the police might raid your house search-

ing for smuggled media. First they would shut off the electricity (if

the power was on in the first place) so that the videocassette or DVD

would be trapped in the machine when they came through the door.

But people learned to get around this by owning two video players

and quickly switching them out if they heard a police team coming.If

you were caught smuggling or distributing illegal videos, the punish-

ment could be severe. Some people have even been executed by firing squad-just to set an example for the rest of us.

Radios and televisions came sealed and permanently tuned to

state-approved channels. If you tampered with them, you could be ar-

rested and sent to a labor camp for reeducation, but a lot of people did

it anyway. In the border areas those of us with receivers could some-

times pick up Chinese television broadcasts. I was mostly interested in

the load commercials. There were advertisements for exotic things

like milk and cookies. I never drank milk in North Korea! I didn't

even know it came from a cow until after' escaped. My friends and I

would watch these incredible things and understand that the Chinese

had more, but it never really occurred to us that our lives could be any different.

I'm often asked why people would risk going to prison to watch Chinese commercials or South Korean soap operas or year-old wres-

tling matches. I think it's because people are so oppressed in North Korea, and daily life is so grim and colorless, that people are desper- ate for any kind of escape. When you watch a movie, your imagination

can carry you away for two whole hours. You COmeback refreshed, your struggles temporarily forgotten.

My uncle Park Jin had a VCR, and when 1was very young, 'would go to his house to watch tapes of Hollywood movies. My aunt covered

the windows and told us not to sayanything about it. 'loved Cinderella,

THE DEAR LEADER

Snow White, and James Bond movies. But when I was seven or eight years old, the film that changed my lifewas Titanic. It amazed me that it was a story that took place a hundred years ago. Those people living in 1912 had better technology than most North Koreans! But mostly I

couldn't believehow someone could make amovie out of sucha shame- Eullove story. In North Korea, the filmmakers would have been exe-

cuted. No real human stories were allowed, nothing but propaganda about the Leader. But in Titanic, the characters talked about love and

humanity. 1 was amazed that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet

were willing to die for love, not just for the regime, as we were. The idea that people could choose their own destinies fascinated me. This

pirated Hollywood movie gave me my first small taste of freedom.

But while the outside media offered me a glimpse of a larger world

very different from the one I occupied, I never imagined' could live like the characters in those movies. 'couldn't look at the people on the

screen and think they were real, or allow myself to envy their lives.

The propaganda we were fed inoculated me from any lessons I might

apply to my own life. It also made me numb to the suffering that was going on all around me as the famine was taking its terrible toll.

North Koreans have two stories running in their heads at alltimes, like trains on parallel tracks. One is what you are taught to believe; the other is what you see with your own eyes. It wasn't

until I escaped to South Korea and read a translation of George Or-

well's Nineteen Eighty-FouT that' found a word for this peculiar condi-

tion: doublethink. This is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time-and somehow not go crazy.

This "doublethink" is how you can shout slogans denouncing cap-

italism in the morning, then br-owsethrough the market in the after- noon to buy smuggled South Korean cosmetics.

IN ORDER TO LIVE

It is how you can believe that North Korea is a socialist paradise,

the best country in the world with the happiest people who havenoth-

ing to envy, while devouring movies and TV programs that showor-

dinary people in enemy nations enjoying a level of prosperity that you couldn't imagine in your dreams.

It is how you can sit in Hyesan watching propaganda videos show- ing productive factories, supermarkets stocked with food, and well-

dressed people in amusement parks and believe you are living on the same planet as your government Leaders.

It is how you can recite the motto "Children Are King" in school,

then walk home past the orphanage where children with bloated bel- lies stare at you with hungry eyes.

Maybe deep, deep inside me I knew something was wrong. But we

North Koreans can be experts at lying, even to ourselves. The frozen

babies that starving mothers abandoned in the alleys did not fit into

my world view, so I couldn't process what I saw. It was normal to see bodies in the trash heaps, bodies floating in the river, normal to just walk by and do nothing when a stranger cried for help.

There are images I can never forget. Late one afternoon, my sister and I found the body of a young man lying beside a pond. It was a

place where people went to fetch water, and he must have dragged

himself there to drink. He was naked and his eyes were staring and

his mouth wide open in an expression of terrible suffering. I had seen many dead bodies before, but this was the most horrible and frighten- ing of all, because his insides were coming out where something-c-

maybe dogs~had ripped him open. 1 was so embarrassed for him,

lying there stripped of his clothes and his dignity. I could not bear to look at him, so I grabbed my sister's hand and we ran home.

My mother tried to help people when she could. Homeless wan- derers would sometimes knock on our door to beg for food. I remem-

ber one young woman who brought her daughter to our house. "I'm

THE DEAR LEADER

so cold, so hungry," she said. "But if you give me food, I' lllet my baby eat." My mother understood that feeling because she had young chil-

dren, too. She invited them inside and gave them both plates of food.

I watched them closely, because the daughter was nearly my age. They were very polite, and ate delicately even though they were starving. I wonder often if they survived, and if they are still in North Korea.

There were so many desperate people on the streets crying for help that you had to shut off your heart or the pain would be too much. After a while you can't care anymore. And that is what hell is like.

Almost everybody I knew lost family in the famine. The youngest and oldest died first. Then the men, who had fewer reserves than

women. Starving people wither awayuntil they can no longer fight off diseases, or the chemicals in their blood become so unbalanced that their hearts forget to beat.

My own family suffered, too, as our fortune rose and fell like a

cork in the ocean. In 1999, my father tried to use trucks instead of

trains to smuggle metals out of Pyongyang, but there were too many

expenses to pay drivers and buy gasoline, too many checkpoints and

too many bribes to pay, so he ended up losing all of his money. My

mother took me and my sister with her to live with her relatives for a few months while my father went back to his train business and made up his losses.

We arrived in Kowon to find that my mother's family was also

struggling to survive. Grandfather Byeon had died a few years earlier,

and my grandmother was living with her older son, Min Sik, in the

family home. Her youngest son, long Sik, who had been imprisoned years earlier for stealing from the state, was visiting them as well. In

the labor camp he had caught tuberculosis, which was very common

in North Korea. Now that there was so little food to go around, he was sick all the time and wasting away.

My grandmother had taken in lots of neighborhood children, and

IN ORDER TO LIVE

in order to make sure everybody else was fed, she ate only a tiny bit

of food each day. She worried that she was a burden, even though sbe

consumed so little and her bones were as light as a bird's.

I loved my little grandmother Hwang with her wooden leg. She

never got upset with me, even when I cried and pestered her to carry

me on her back like a horse. She always smiled at me and she wasa

wonderful storyteller; I would sit with her for hours as she told me

about her childhood in the South. She described a beautiful island off

the southern coast called Jeju, where women divers can hold their

breath for a long time and swim like fish while they gather food from

the bottom of the sea. I was so curious when she described the wide

blue ocean to me, and the playful dolphins that lived there. I had

never seen an ocean or heard of such a thing as a dolphin. Once I

asked her, "Grandma, what is the biggest thing in the world?" Shetold

me it was the whale that breathes in air from a hole in its back and

makes a fountain come out. I had never even seen pictures of whales,

but they sounded like something I would like.

Most of her stories were from the time of Chosun wben there, was no North or South Korea, only one country, one people. She told

me we had the same culture and shared the same traditions as the

South. She also told me a little bit about the time she visited Seoul, although even saying the name was forbidden in North Korea. You

just didn't mention such an evil place. I knew it existed only from

propaganda, newspaper articles describing anti-imperialist demon- strations by its oppressed masses. But somehow my grandmother

planted deep inside me a curiosity about this place she had loved. She

told me, "Come to my grave someday, and tell me that the North and South are reunited."

It was a sad time to visit Kowan; because of the famine, so many people were dying. My grandmother took a lot of medicines, some

THE DEAR LEADER

opium for the pains of old age and other pills to help her sleep and forget the suffering around her. One morning before I went out to

play, I saw her take lots of her medicine, much more than usual.

"Grandma, why are you taking so much medicine?" I asked. She was very calm and smiled at me. "Grandma just wants to have

a good sleep," she said. "She needs a good rest."

Later that afternoon, I heard a terrible sound coming from the

house. It was my uncle Jong Sik calling my grandmother's name. We ran inside and he was shaking her in her bed, wailing, "Wake up! Wake up! Answer mel"

But she was lying there peacefully, and no matter how loud my uncle shouted, she could no longer hear him.

A few months later, my uncle would also be dead. Sometimes I can

still hear his voice, screaming for his mother, begging her to wake up.

These are some of the things I wish I could forget, but I know I never will.

57 .

Six

City of Dreams

By the year 2000, when 1 turned seven years old, my father'sbusiness was thriv' u, h dmg. vve a returned to Hyesan after mygrandmother's fu I d b c 1 .. nera an J erore ang, my family was nch-at least by t d d

Our s an ar s. We ate rice three times a day and meat two or three tim h ,.. h

. es a mont . vve ad money for medical erner- genc,es, new shoes and thi I'k h

' ngs , e s ampoo and toothpaste that were beyond the means of ordinary North Koreans. We still didn't have a telephone, car, or motorbik b l'

. e, ut our rves seemed very luxurious to our fnends and neighbors.

My father came back from his business trips with loads of gifts for us. He brought my . t d

SJS er an me new clothes and books' my mother would get perfume d s d '

an ace pOwer. But his most exciting black mar- ket purchase was a 1980 N'

s-era mtendo set for playing video games. My favorite was Supe M . B

r ana ros, Whenever the electricity was on, I sat for hours moving th l't I h

e J tee aracters across the screen to bouncy, happy music that still makes me smile when I hear it. My

CITY OF DREAMS

parents loved playing video tennis games, and they could be quite

competitive. It was fun to watch them act like kids with the controls

in their hands, shouting playful insults at each other. They were also obsessed with professional wrestling videos, which they would watch

together in the darkened room after my sister and [ had gone to bed. We could hear both of them yelling, "Hit him harder!" My mother's

favorite was a huge blond woman wrestler who defeated all her rivals.

But I didn't like watching these videos because of all the violence. We had enough of that on the streets and at home.

My parents had a complicated and passionate marriage. Theyrespected each other and were great partners. They made each other laugh. When my father was sober, he treated my mother like gold. But when he was drinking, it was a different story.

North Korean society is by its nature tough and violent, and so are relations between men and women. The woman is expected to obey

her father and her husband; males always come first in everything.

When I was growing up, women could not sit at the same table with men. Many of my neighbors' and classmates' houses had special bowls

and spoons for their fathers. It was commonplace for a husband to

beat his wife. We had one neighbor whose husband was so brutal that

she couldn't click her chopsticks while she ate for fear he would hit her for making noise.

By comparison, my father was an enlightened man. He included

my mother and my sister and me at the table; he respected us. He

drank only occasionally and rarely beat my mother. But sometimes he

did. I am not excusing his actions, but I am explaining the culture-

men in North Korea were taught they were superior, just as they were taught to obey our Leader.

The difference in our household was that my mother wouldn't

IN ORDER TO LIVE

take it. Unlike many N .L K . ortn orean women, who would cry andapol

oglze, my mother hit b k Sh h d , ac. e a a strong spirit, stronger thanmy

father s, and he was nth C h o ma c ror er. When their fights got outof

control, I would run d h Own t e street to get the neighbors to breakit

up. Sometimes I was afraid they would kiJ1each other. During their Worst f ht

. Ig s, my mother would sometimes threaten dIvorce, but they quick! .

y reconcIled. It wasn't until another woman entered my fath 'I' r. d.

er s I e tnar my mother almost left for good.

When my father beg hi bust .I an s usiness In Pyongyang, he needed a . p ace to stay and an assistant to help him with his work. His

older sIster lived in the cit d h . . yan s e Introduced him to a single woman In her early twenties named W

. an Sun. She was available to work as his aSSIstant,plus she lived with h '.

1 er famlly m a large apartment with an extra room that he could Th' . f rent. at s where he stayed for nine monthsa the year.

As it turned out th . 1h ' errs was more than just a working relationshipat oughmyf:th I . ,

a er a ways tned to deny it. Sti1J, it was not unusual for a wealthy or powe f I

h' r u man to take a mistress in North Korea. After a w lIe, Wan Sun fe1Jin I v d hoe an wanted to marry him. But first shead to get rid ofm h

y mot er. It was like a plot from a bad South Ko- rean soap opera-and it almost worked.

In August 2001 m h d . , Ymot er ecided to go to Pyongyang for a few

months while my father s . h pent same tIme with us in Hyesan. Naturally,s e stayed in Wan Sun's h apartment while she sold a few products ont e black market and b h . , aug t some metals to se1Jin Hyesan. What she

didn t know Wasthat W S an un was calling my father and te1Jinghimthat his wife was se . h

. emg at er men. Unfortunately, he believed these hes, and the next time h

my mot er and father spoke on the telephone he accused her of cheating. She couldn't understand why he was say-

. 60 .

CITY OF DREAMS

ing such things. She was so upset and angry that she told him she wanted a divorce.

This time she meant it. Instead of returning to Hyesan, she took the next train to Kowon to visit her brother Min Sik and think about her next move.

When my mother didn't come home, my father realized his mis-

take and was very unhappy. He even started drinking every day, which was unusual for him. Then one afternoon, about two weeks

after my mother had run away to Kowon, I answered a knock on the

door and found an unfamiliar young woman standing outside, dressed

in fancy city clothes. This was my first glimpse of Wan Sun. As soon as she found out that my mother had asked for a divorce, she was on

the next train to Hyesan. I had no idea what was going on, but it all seemed very strange.

Later that day, it got even stranger when my friend YangJa poked her head in the door and asked me to come over to her house to play.

When I stepped inside, my mother was waiting there for me. I was so happy to see her again that I ran into her arms.

"Yeonrni-va! I missed you so much!" she said.

I still had no clue why she had left and then returned without warning, but she later told me what had happened. Her brother had

agreed to take her in if she divorced my father-but only if she left

her children behind. She couldn't abandon us, and during her time

awayfrom my father, she began to remember all the good things about him. So she had returned to her family to mend things.

"How is your father, Yeonmi?" she asked.

"Right now he is home with a lady from Pyongyang," I said.

"Stay right here and don't come back home until I send for you," she said.

When she reached our house, she found Wan Sun sitting on a floor

mat inside, talking to my father. I don't know whether my father or

IN ORDER TO LIVE

his girlfriend was more surprised to see my mother standing in the

doorway. My mother ran in and kicked Wan Sun right in the butt,

yelling, "Get out of my house!" Wan Sun stood up and slapped her,

and my father had to hold my mother to keep her from tearing Wan

Sun to pieces. My father told Wan Sun she had better go, and my mother slammed the door behind her.

Itwas the beginning of November, and this skinny girl from Pyong- yang wasn't prepared for the freezing weather. She was wearing a light

coat and thin, impractical shoes. Wan Sun stood outside our house like

a shivering ghost, whimpering for my father to let her in again.

Meanwhile, my father begged my mother to change her mind and

not divorce him. He still SWore to her that nothing was going on be-

tween him and his assistant. My mother didn't know what to believe.

But she knew that her family was more important than this woman, so

she decided to stay. Wan Sun left on the next train back to Pyongyang.

If you asked anyone in the North Korean countryside, "What is your dream?" most would answer, "To see Pyongyang in my lifetime." I was eight years old when that dream came true for me.

Only the most privileged citizens are allowed to live and work in

the nation's capital. You need special permission even to visit. But

Pyongyang is as familiar to ordinary North Koreans as our own back-

yards because of the hundreds upon hundreds of picture books and

propaganda films that celebrate it as the perfect expression of our so-

cialist paradise. To us, it is a mystical shrine with towering monu-

ments and thrilling pageantry-like Red Square, Jerusalem, and Disneyland all in one city.

My father had not been home in a long time, so he invited each of his daughters to visit him for one month in the summer. I went first.

The idea of seeing my father and the city of my dreams at the same

62 .

CITY OF DREAMS

time was so exciting that I couldn't sleep for a whole week before he

arrived to pick me up. It was especially exciting because 2002 was the first summer that North Korea staged its now-famous Arirang Festi-

val, a massive celebration of the regime's military and cultural prow-

ess. I could not believe I would actually get to see it all with my own

eyes. I told all my neighbors and classmates about my trip. Some par-

ents asked me not to brag in front of their children, because now they

were begging to visit Pyongyang, too. I packed all my best clothes including my Princess T-shirt and my

Mary Jane shoes for this special trip. My father and I left on the morn-

ing train for Pyongyang. Even though the distance was only about 225

miles, the ride took days, because electricity shortages slowed down the train. My father and I brought food with us and traveled in a

sleeper car, but most people had to sleep on hard seats. When the

train finally pulled into the Pyongyang station, Wan Sun came to greet us. I still didn't understand what the trouble was all about when

she was in Hyesan a fewmonths before, and in fact Ihardly remembered

her. But I had a child's sense that something was off about this ar-

rangement as I watched her take my father's arm. That feeling passed

quickly, however, as I was carried away by the spellbinding sights and

sounds of Pyongyang. Everything amazed me. I took my first ride on a public bus that

day, and I was astonished that people were also traveling around in an

underground subway, and in private cars. I had never seen a taxi be-

fore, and my father had to help me pronounce a word for it and ex-

plain what it meant. Even crazier was a new kind of drink my father

bought for me. It was a very bright color and came in a bottle, but

when I drank it, it was not gentle in my mouth-in fact, it was pain-

ful, like an electric shock.

"Abuji, I don't like this," I told my father as I blinked back tears. "Come on, now," he said softly. "Don't act like a country girll If

IN ORDER TO LIVE

you drink more, you'll like it." But that fizzy soda scared me so much that I never wanted to try another.

Pyongyang felt like a fairyland to me. Everybody seemed so clean

and well dressed. Because of an order by Kim Jong Il, all the women

had to wear skirts. In Hyesan, a lot of women ignored the official

dress code and wore more practical slacks, but not in this fancy city.

To me, the residents seemed more refined, with gentler accents and

more polite ways of talking than the tough, guttural language we used in the far north.

In contrast to the crumbling apartment houses, dusty alleys, and sooty rail yards of Hyesan, Pyongyang seemed so new and shiny, with

huge buildings and wide, spotless boulevards. You hardly saw anyone

begging here, just the street children we called kotjebi, who haunted

the markets and train stations in every part of North Korea. The dif-

ference in Pyongyang was that whenever the kotjebt asked for food or money, the police officers carne and drove them off.

Wherever we went, my father pleaded with me to hold his hand

tightly. He was afraid I would get lost because I was always looking up at the giant city all around me. When he took me on a bus ride at

night to see the lights of downtown Pyongyang, I nearly lost my mind. The only thing that was ever lit up at night in Hyesan was the Kim Il

Sung monument, but here all the important buildings glowed like torches. There were d bso many propagan a anners, some of them written in neon, saying "Pyongyang, Heart of Korea." That was im- Pressive enough but e th ., yen e restaurant SIgnswere neon.

We visited all the si ht I h dId b19 s a on y rea a out or seen on televi- sion: Myfather showed me the famous Ryugyong Hotel, a lOS-story

pyramid III the center of the city, designed to be the tallest hotel in the world but never finished. (It's still not finished.) We posed for a picture in front of the graceful Mansudae fountains on "The Hill of

the Sun," where I laid flowers at the feet of the giant bronze statue of

. 64

CITY OF DREAMS

Kim n Sung. The Great Leader smiled at his people from seventy-five feet above the enormous plaza. He was dressed in a long top coat, with one arm raised as if to reveal the nation's destiny. My father,

always the joker, remarked to Wan Sun, "How cool would it be to take off his big coat and sell it in China?" Then he added, "Or at least

one of his shoes." My father said the most surprising things. I realize now that he

was like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, a man who secretly

saw past BigBrother's propaganda and knew how things really worked in the country. But I was still years away from understanding that the

Kims weren't gods. I had a warm, holy feeling being in Pyongyang,

where the Great Leader once walked, and where his son, Kim Jong Il,

now lived. Just knowing he breathed the same air made me feel so

proud and special-which is exactly how I was supposed to feel. One day we took a two-hour boat ride down the Taedong River to

visit Kim nSung's birthplace at Mangyongdae, but changed our minds and instead went to a good Chinese restaurant nearby. I had never

been in a restaurant where you sat in chairs. In Hyesan, we could

sometimes eat food at the market, and there were a few places like

restaurants in people's houses, but you always sat on the floor. Sitting

in a stiff chair seemed very odd to me-and I will still always sit on

the floor if I have a choice. But I really liked ordering all kinds of food

from a waitress and having someone put it in front of me. For the first

time, I ate bread that was soft and delicate instead of black and hard. I

finally got to taste those oily noodles I had smelled cooking across the

river in China, but I was not used to the flavor. I didn't say anything,

but I almost wished I'd had some kimchi instead. But I ate thinly

sliced pork and some other delicious Chinese dishes that were like

heaven on earth. In the future, whenever I was hungry, I would eat

this meal a thousand times over in my mind. My only regret was that

I didn't order more food.

IN ORDER TO LIVE

Wan Sun's apartm ten was on the eleventh floor of a high-riseapartment building' th S '.In e ongyo district in eastern p on _ yang. I took the first elevator ride of my life in that buildin . I ha:se~ these thmgs in movies and S h g

. out Korean soap operas, but the actual experIence was more scar th .. in k d Y an excItIng. The electricity in the build- s g wor e ,but they kept the lights off in the hallways and elevator to ave power. So I just held ti htl

th h g Yto my father's hand while we felt our way roug the lobby and up to the apartment

Once inside, there were lots of wind '. thing Th ows and hghts to see every-

. ' ere were three bedrooms, one bath' . dming area '" S '£ ' a kitchen, and a bIg. vvan un sather d th Wan Sun stayed ith h an stepmo er slept in one bedroom,

WI er two . and I slept with f ther i younger SIsters in a second bedroom, I was visiting ;:y a er in the third. At least that's how it was while

. s soon as we arrived h stretched out on hi b d f at t e apartment, my father

IS eater the long t . 'd right next to hi d I ram rr e. Wan Sun sat down

m an eaned against him I d because that's wh t I h d . t rna e me uncomfortable,

a a seen my mother d f th in between the d an a er do. So I crawled

1 m an snuggled up to my father.

ust about every marnin k anthem blaring th g we wo e up to the sound of the national

on e government_su I' d di North Korea h d h pp ie ra 10. Every household in

a to ave one and 1 tuned to only on . ' you cou d never turn it off. It was

e station, and that's how th trol you even when . e government could con-

you were In your ow h played lots of enth . . nome. In the morning it

USIastIcsongs with ti I lik " ous Nation" rem' d- It es I e Strong and Prosper-

, m mg us how luck we w socialist life I . Y ere to celebrate our proud

. was surpnsed that the radi yang. Back home th I " 0 was on so much in Pyong-

, e e ectnCIty w 11 ourselves up. as usua Y off, so we had to wake

At seven in the mornin h g, t ere was always a lady knocking on the

66 .

CITY OF DREAMS

door of the apartment in Pyongyang, yelling, "Get up! Time to clean!"

She was head of the inminban,or "people's unit," that included every

apartment in our part of the building. In North Korea, everybody is

required to wake up early and spend an hour sweeping and scrubbing

the hallways, or tending the area outside their houses. Communal

labor is how we keep up our revolutionary spirit and work together as

one people. The regime wants us to be like cells in a single organism, where no unit can exist without the others. We have to do everything

at the same time, always. So at noon, when the radio goes "beeeep"

everybody stops to eat lunch. There is no getting away from it.

After the people of Pyongyang finish cleaning in the morning, they line up for the buses and go off to work. In the northern prov-

inces, not many people were going to work anymore because there

was nothing left to do. The factories and mines had stopped operating

and there was nothing to manufacture. Even if the men went to their

offices or assembly lines they would just drink, play cards, and gam-

ble. But Pyongyang was different. Everybody seemed busy. One time

Wan Sun's little sister took me to visit the factory where she worked,

a place where they made plastic for car tires. It was the only factory I

saw in North Korea that actually functioned. I had other exciting adventures during my month in Pyongyang.

We got tickets to several of the huge Arirang Festival performances in

the giant May Day Stadium. I was overwhelmed by the spectacular

dramatic, musical, and gymnastic presentations. Most impressive

were the thirty thousand to fifty thousand schoolchildren who had

trained for many months to sit in the risers behind the stage, holding

up colored squares like a living mural to create enormous, ever-

changing scenes and slogans glorifying the regime. Only much later

did I realize how abusive it was for these children to perform for hours

and hours without even a small break to eat or use the bathroom. We

were taught that it was an honor to suffer for our leaders, who had

IN ORDER TO LIVE

suffered so much for us. Given the chance, I would proudly hare joined them.

I also visited a zoo for the first time in my life and saw monkeys,

tigers, bears, and elephants. It was like stepping into one of my pic-

ture books. The most exciting animal I saw was a peacock. Ididn't

think these birds were real, just drawings somebody made up. But

when the male peacock spread his magnificent tail feathers, I nearly

screamed. I couldn't imagine it was possible for something so beauti- ful to exist in the same world as me.

As the weeks went by, Wan Sun went out of her way to be nice to

me, so Iactually liked her after a while. And my father was very good

to her. When they first met, she was suffering from tuberculosis,

which was common even among the elite. He made sure she ate welI and got the right medicines. She was almost cured by the time I met

her. Looking back at it, I think he must have had feelings for her, but

like so many other things in my life, Ipreferred not to see what was in front of me.

One time Iwoke up in the middle of the night and heard people argUing. Instead of sleeping in the bed next to me, my father was in the

other room with Wan Sun, who was crying and pleading with him. "Wh d 'Y on t you get divorced!" I heard her say. "I can take care of

Yeonmi, she's small. Let Eunmi stay with her mother." My father whispered C • I "D' h 'rurrous y, on t say t at! Youre going to

wake her up!"

Later, my father made me promise not to telI my mother about any of this when I returned to Hyesan.

Toward the end of my t C th b "say, my fa er ecame very sick WIthstomach pains and he decided to check into the Red Cross hos- pital in Pyongyang for tests. They couldn't find what was wrong at

CITY OF DREAMS

that hospital, so he went to the most modern hospital in the capital,

where the elites go for treatment. Even the best doctors in the coun-

try couldn't tell him why he was sick, so he gave up trying to figure it

out and decided to bring me home. We rode on the train to Hyesan, along with his latest shipment of

metal. As we rolled through the stations, the mountains got steeper

and the landscape grew harder and poorer. The bright lights and clean streets of Pyongyang faded back into a dream as Ilooked out the win-

dow and saw skinny peasants scraping the dirt with their hoes, pick-

ing up whatever seeds and grain they could find. Whenever the train stopped, the kotjebi street children would

climb up and knock on my window to beg. I could see them scram-

bling to pick up any spoiled food that people threw away, even moldy

grains of rice. My father was worried that they would get sick eating

bad food and told me we shouldn't give them our garbage. I saw that

some of those children were about my age, and many even younger.

But I can't say I felt compassion or even pity, just simple curiosity

about how they managed to survive eating all that rotten food. As we

pulled away from the station, some of them were still hanging on,

holding tight to the undercarriage, using all their energy not to fall off

the running train and looking up at me with eyes that had no curiosity

or even anger. What I saw in them was a pure determination to live,

an animal instinct for survival even when there seemed to be no hope.

Before we reached Hyesan, the train stopped suddenly between

stations. People were saying that one of the street kids had crawled

onto the roof of the train and was killed when he touched a live

wire. We were delayed while they removed the body, and some peo-

ple seemed annoyed. Otherwise the incident didn't seem to bother

anyone.

My mother picked us up at the station while my father went to pay

the policeman guarding the #9 Freight car and then pick up his pack-

IN ORDER TO LIVE

age. I was so happy to be h dorne, an to see our familiar house and my garden of sunflowers. I had missed my mother so much and I couldn't

wai~to tell her everything that happened in Pyongyang.

DId you see the Juche Tower, Yeonmi-ya?" my mother said asshe made me a rice cake. "And all the monuments?"

"Yes, Umma! We went everywhere with Wan Sun." "Really?" my mother said with a very cool voice. "y: "I'd" des, sal. An we went to the zoo, too!" But [ didn't say any more.

E unmi went back to Pyo . hngyang WIt my father, and then returnedhome with him at the end of the summer. While he was in Hye- :;n, my father got a call through to Wan Sun and heard some trou-

mg news. It turned out sh d . h e was omg some side business helping

anot er smuggler in P dh yongyang, an that smuggler had informed on er. The police had picked her u f '.d . P or questlOnmg, but she ran away urmg a break in her interrogation Now she w . h'd'. as In 1 log

Before my father left to return t P . h. 0 yongyang, my mother warnedirn to stay away f W Srom an un from now on. She told him that <rid was trouble. e-'

But he did not listen.

Seven

The Darkest Nights

My father returned to Pyongyang at the end of October2002, and before long he had another shipment of metalready to go to China. All that was missing was a burlap sack and some rope to prepare the package for the train to Hyesan.

Those items were hard to find, even in the capital, but my father

knew somebody in town who usually had a good supply.

Ignoring my mother's advice, and his own good sense, he had con-

tacted Wan Sun after he arrived in Pyongyang. Apparently she was

still helping him with his business because Wan Sun went to purchase

the rope and sack while he waited at a nearby market. What they

didn't know was that detectives from the prosecutor's office-which

has its own investigators-were watching the house, probably be-

cause they had received a tip that Wan Sun and possibly my father

would be arriving. My father waited for about an hour, and when Wan Sun didn't

IN ORDER TO LIVE

return, he went looking for her. The detectives had set a trap forhim

at the house, but they didn't arrest him right away. Instead they fol.

lowed him, hoping he would lead them to his cache of illegal metals.

But when they saw he was about to get on a bus and disappear, they grabbed him.

"Are you Park Jin Sik?" one of them demanded.

"Yes,"my father said. And with that each took one of his arms and placed him under arrest.

Later, when my mother tried to piece together what happened, she learned that the police had arrested a copper smuggler in Pyong.

yang who knew about my father's operation. During her interrogation, she told the police that she could name two other people buying sto- len metals, a "big fish" from Hyesan named Park Jin Sik who worked with a young girl from Pyongyang.

Wan Sun was arrested at the same time as my father and sen. tenced to six months in a labor "training" camp. We heard that she got married to a former military officer after she finished her sentence,

and had a baby with him. I was happy to hear that she was able to put her troubles behind her. Like everybody else, she was just trying to survive.

Sadly, my father would pay a much bigger price for his crimes against the state.

In November 2002, my mother came back from a visit to the post office crying and shaking. I didn't understand why until I heard her

talking to my friend YongJa's grandmother. My mother told her she had tried to call my father in Pyongyang but couldn't reach him. That's when she found out he had been arrested for smuggling.

My mother hoped it was all a mistake, or even a bad dream. But she knew she had to act qUickly.She needed to travel to the capital to

THE DARKEST NIGHTS

find out where my father was being held, and to see if she could pay

enough money to get him out of jail. The morning my mother left for Pyongyang, she sat down with me

and my sister to explain what had happened, and what was going to

happen next. Shewarned us that people would treat us differently now.

"They might saybad things about our family,"she said. "But please try not to let it bother you too much. Your father will come home

soon and will protect us." She told us we had nothing to be ashamed of, so we should laugh out loud like always, and act as if nothing was

wrong. She kneeled before Eunmi and said, "Youare the first child, and so

you are the pillar of this house while I am away."Then she turned to

me and said, "Yeonmi, you have to help Eunmi."

She left us with a bag of rice and some cooking oil. She told us

there would be no money coming for a while, and that we couldn't eat

like before. We had to save everything now, and not waste even one

grain. We walked her to the station, and as she was about to board the

train, she gave us about 200 won, enough for a bit of dried beans or

corn if we ran out of rice. "I'll be back as soon as I can, and I'll bring

more food," she said. Then she hugged us good-bye. We watched for

a long time as the train pulled away. I was only eight years old, but I

felt like my childhood was departing with her.

On the way back to our house Eunmi and I saw someone selling

food on the street. We stared for a long time at the candy and im-

ported snacks from China. Our mother had never let us have these

treats because they were so expensive, but we were keen to try them. Without thinking, we spent all the money our mother had left for us

on a small bag of Chinese sandwich cookies and a cup of sunflower

seeds. It would be more than a month before we saw our mother again.

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IN ORDER TO LIVE

Winter had arrived and the days got dark too quickjv. The air was

so cold that the door to our house kept freezing shut. And it was very

difficult for us to figure out how to make a fire to heat the house and

cook food. My mother had left us some firewood, but we weren't very

good at chopping it into small pieces. The ax was too heavy for me and

r had no gloves. For a long time I picked splinters out of my hands. Early one evening, I was in charge of making the fire in the kitchen,

but I used wet wood and it started to smoke too much. My sister and

I were struggling to breathe, but we couldn't open the doors or win-

dows because they were frozen solid. We screamed and banged on the

wall to our neighbor's house, but nobody could hear us. I finally picked up the ax and broke the ice to open the door.

It was a miracle we survived that terrible month. The food my mother left for us ran out quickly, and by the end of December we

were nearly starving. Sometimes our friends' mothers would feed us

but they were struggling, too. The famine was supposed to have

ended in North Korea in the late 1990s, but life was still very hard,

even years later. My father's younger sister who lived in Hyesan had

nothing to spare, and my uncle Park Jin was furious that my father

had brought more trouble and disgrace to the family by getting him- self arrested. It was so hurtful because my parents had always been

generous with him and his family. Now we didn't feel we could ask him for help.

Our neighbor Kim Jong Ae was a kind woman who tried to keep an eye on us. She was a party member and worked for the Military Mobilization Departme t h doi bn so s e was OJng etter than most people we knew. I'll never forget the freezing day when my sister and I were out- side playing in the snow·th fri d' .WI Our ren S-lt was wmter break from school-and when we came back to Our house at five p.m. it was al- ready dark. We had no lights in the house and no food. We just sat in

the kitchen, preparing for another cold, hungry night, when Jong Ae

THE DARKEST NIGHTS

appeared in the doorway with a steaming bowl of rice. I can still close

my eyes and remember the incredible aroma of that rice, probably the

best thing I have ever smelled in my life. I have never had a more deli-

cious meal, or been more grateful for a simple act of kindness.

My friend Yang Ja and her grandmother helped us, too. Yang Ja sometimes slept at our house so that my sister and I wouldn't be so

afraid of the dark. It is painful to write these words because I don't like to remember how I felt during those desperate times. Since then

I have hated the dark. Even now when I'm upset and having a hard

time, I turn on all the lights and make the room as bright as possible.

If night never came again, I would be happy. To fill up the lonely hours, my sister and I would sing the same

songs our mother soothed us with when we were babies. We wished

we could just hear her voice telling us she would come back, but there

were no phones and no number where we could reach her.

When my mother knocked on the door without warning one day

in January, we couldn't believe it. We just threw our arms around her

and wouldn't let go. All three of us cried and cried with happiness

that we were all still alive. She brought us some rice and corn and

dried beans, and we were so hungry it was hard to resist cooking

ourselves a big feast. But we knew the food had to last because our

mother told us she couldn't stay long. She had to get back to Pyong-

yang to earn some money, and to try to help our father.

The story she told us was terrifying: Soon after she arrived, she

found he was being held at a detention and interrogation center called

a ku ryujana. At first they wouldn't let her see my father, but finally she was able to bribe one of the guards to get in. My father was in a shock-

ing condition. He told her the police had tortured him by beating one

place on his leg until it swelled up so badly that he could barely move.

He couldn't even get to the toilet. Then the guards tied him in a

kneeling position with a wooden stick behind his knees, causing even

IN ORDER TO LIVE

more excruciating pain. They wanted to know how much he had sold to smugglers and who else was involved in the operation. But he told them very little.

Later he was moved to Camp 11, the Chungsan "reeducatioo' labor camp northwest of Pyongyang. This type of facility is mostly for petty criminals Or women who have been captured escaping orth

Korea. But these kinds of prisons can be as brutal as the felony-level

and even the political prison camps in the North Korean gulag. In "reeducation" camps, the inmates are forced to work at hard labor aU

day, in the fields or in manufacturing jobs, on so little food that they

have to fight Overscraps and sometimes eat rats to survive. Then they have to spend the evenings memorizing the Leaders' speeches or en- gaging in endless self-criticism sessions. Although they have commit-

ted "crimes against the people," these prisoners are thought to be

redeemable, so they can be sent back to society once they have re- pented and finished an intensive refresher Course in Kim 11 Sung's

teachings. Sometimes prisoners are given a trial, sometimes not. But

my mother thought it was agood sign that my father had been sent to one of these so-ca11edlighter facilities. It gave her hope that we could a11be together again soon.

Eunmi and I were relieved to have our mother home. That night we all snuggled together by the fire, and I slept without fear for the first time in weeks. The next day, though, we woke up to detectives pounding on our door. They had come to arrest my mother for ques- tioning about my father's crimes. But when the police officers saw that she had young children in the house, they took pity on us. They asked if she had any relatives who could take us while she was being interrogated, and she told them about my father's brother, Uncle 1in_ So the police asked the head ofour inminbon to find him and bring him to Ourhouse. When he arrived, they ordered him to care for Us while our mother was being questioned, and then they Jed her aWay.

76 •

THE DARKEST NIGHTS

, he had to sit in a room at the prosecutors

For the next few days, Shut herself and d . ht writing statements a aoffice in Hyesan day an mg , Then a detective

hi the had done wrong. my father and everyt 109 y . At night they would

d ask her more questlOns, would read the pages an I the morning they came simply lock the office door and go away. n

back to start the interrogation agam. . d h r enough to travel, F· Il she was released. The police truste e . t ma y, . her interrogatIon a ald he had to return to contmuebut she was to s

later time. h '1 sent away to prison,ateful that s e wasn Eunmi and I were so gr t Uncle [in's house, we

when she came to see us a like our father. But hi] h turned to Pyongyang to

It at home W I e sere begged her to et us say ki d to us' they or-

h M uncle and aunt were un In , try to help my fat er. y dade us feel so unwelcome that we dered us around like servants, an m h h was gone. We told

. ht h ppen to us w en s edidn't know what mIg a . wn house. Be- better off staying alone m our a

our mother we were k fourselves. She reluctantly. h tota ecareosides, we were learnmg ow

agreed. t y mother left us again.I hi k ofthe momen mI still cry whenever t m . d holding . b ie-colored jacket, and [ was cryIng an

She was weanng a e g difficult. [ wanted . h Life without her was so

on to it, not lettIng er go. it 6 me to come home, to k'd ith someone to war or

to live like other I s, WI k I just missed her so ,. f di er or it's time to wa e up.

tell me it s time or IOn 't big deal that she was . d t etend it wasn ah At first she trte a pr

muc. . b then she started crying with me, too. leaVIngagam, ut . "h id "You just have tod . I Yeonmi ya s e sal ."Please be a goo glr, - ,,'

. ht and I'Il be home. sleep for forty mg s d it s My mother would

I g time to me, an I wa . That felt like a very on th Often she would

f uentl over the next seven mon s. come and go req y . Sh had a business buying andI weeks at a time. e be gone for severa , . Il things that the gov-

hI thes and used televisions-s-aselling wate es, co,

IN ORDER TO LIVE

ernment didn't care much about if they caught you. But it took a long

time to move all her products. She was able to see my father onlyonce

more, and neither of them had any way of knowing how longhe would

be held in prison. Sometimes when she came back to Hyesan she had

no food or snacks to bring us. When we were younger, my sister and I

might have complained, but not anymore. All we cared about was that

she was all right, and that we were together at least for a while.

Meanwhile, my sister and I had to drop out of school. Education IS supposed to be free in North Korea but students have to pav, ,

for their own supplies and uniforms, and the school expects you to

bring gifts of food and other items for the teachers. We no longer had

money for these things, so nobody cared if we went to class or not.

Besides, Eunmi and I had to spend all of our time just staying alive.

To wash our clothes and dishes we had to walk down to the river and break the ice. Every day or so, one of us had to stand in line for

tap water for cooking and drinking. The food Our mother left with us never lasted very long, so we were very hungry and skinny.

As our mother predicted, the children in town started mocking us because we were a family of criminals. Everybody was saying my fa- ther had destroyed our bright future and left us in a hopeless situation. We put our chins in the air and walked away from these people. But we knew they were telling the truth. Once my father became a pris- oner and was kicked out of the Workers' Party, our destiny was irre- versible. There was little hope we would ever be a happy family again.

After that long, dark winter of hunger in 2002 and 2003, I got apainful rash on my face that cracked and bled when I went out in the sun. I was dizzy most of the time and had a bad stomach. A lot

. 78 .

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THE DARKEST NIGHTS

of other children suffered from the same thing, and I later found out we all had pellagra, which is caused by a lack of niacin and other

minerals. A starvation diet of mostly com and no meat will bring on

the disease, which can kill you in a few years unless you get better

nutrition.

After I escaped to South Korea, I was surprised to hear that the

blossoms and green shoots of spring symbolize life and renewal in

other parts in the world. In North Korea, spring is the season of death. It is the time of year when our stores of food are gone, but the

farms produce nothing to eat because new crops are just being planted. Spring is when most people died of starvation. My sister and I often

heard the adults who saw dead bodies on the street make clucking noises and say, "It's too bad they couldn't hold on until summer."

Now when I travel to places like America and England in April

and May, I have the luxury of enjoying nature and drinking in the beauty of spring flowers. But I also remember the time when! cursed

the bright green hills and wished those flowers were made of bread or

candy. The only good thing about spring was that we didn't need as much

wood to bum, and we could walk to the small mountains outside of

town where we could fill our bellies with bugs and wild plants so that

the hunger didn't bite so sharply. Some of the plants even tasted good,

like wild clover flowers. Eunmi's favorite was something we called

"cat plant," which had small, soft green leaves. We also chewed on

certain roots without swallowing them, just to feel like we were put-

ting something in our mouths. But one time we chewed on a root that

made our tongues swell up so we couldn't talk for at least an hour.

After that we were more careful.

Lots of children like to chase after dragonflies; when I caught

them, I ate them.

The boys in our neighborhood had a plastic cigarette lighter, and

IN ORDER TO LIVE

they taught me bow to cook a dragonfly head on an open flame.It

gave off an incredible smell like roasted meat, and it tasted delicious.

Later in the summer, we roasted cicadas, which were considereda

gourmet treat. My sister and I would sometimes spend all da),up

there in the fields, trying to eat as much as we could before returning to our quiet dark house.

In late August 2003, my mother came back to Hyesan and told us to pack up a few thi ngs ld d .. we wall nee. Her Interrogation was fm- ished, and she couldn't leave us alone for another winter. Our mother

sold our house so that we could have money to move back to her hometown of Kow B' .. on. ut It was a tricky thing to buy and sell prop. erty m Nor-th Korea b h'. ecause everyt mg belonged to the state. Be. cause It was illegal, the sale of Our bouse was never recorded and there were no deed h. s or ot er papers to sign. My mother and the buyer Just made an oral dagreement, an trusted that nobody would inform on them.

We were leaving the only borne we bad ever known.

•

A Song for Chosun

My mother dropped us off to stay with her brother, my fa-ther's old friend Min Sik, who lived with his wife and twosons in the family bouse that now belonged to him. Min Sik bad a job driving for a collective car service that provided trans-

portation for local factories. But nobody in North Korea could live on

their wages alone. In 2002, an average worker's salary was about

2,400 won per month, worth about $2 at the unofficial excbange rate.

That couldn't even buy ten pounds of cheap grain, and prices kept

going up. My uncle couldn't afford to feed two more children,

But my mother bad money from the bouse sale, which she used to

lease a stall in the market for Min Sik's wife to help support the fam-

il),. The government was now regulating the janamadanas and cbarging fees for spots in the covered markets-and taking bribes for the best

positions. My uncle's wife started a business selling fish and rice

cakes, but it wasn't very profitable. My mother gave what money was

left to her brother to bold, but be ran througb it quickly.