A Thousand Miles to Freedom (10 page)

I had noticed that everyone in that family was very egotistical. Everyone, from the grandmother on down through each of the sons, thought only of his or her own personal and material interests. There was no solidarity in this family, no expression of true feeling.

In any case, my “stepfather” had to fight back if he wanted to keep his new status in the family. His parents were not persuaded by my little brother's smiling little face. The grandma seemed to have a soft spot for her grandson, but of course that didn't do anything to change the patriarchal attitude in this region.

However, my mom's husband had high hopes and a lot of nerve. Shortly after Chang Qian's birth, he asked his mother for money to help him pay for the boy's education. He asked as though this would just be the first portion of his inheritance money. But his mother turned him down immediately.

“Why should I pay for your son's education?” she responded. “The child is yours, it's your responsibility.”

He then burst out in anger, declaring, “Since you don't recognize him as your grandson, he is not my son either, and I will not take care of him!”

Then, to our horror, he took the baby and placed him dangerously on the wagon outside. It was winter and the temperature was bitterly cold. I was horrified. How could the man treat his own son like that? This incident reminded me of the awful nature we had seen time and again in this man. He only thought of himself. The only reason he had ever wanted a son was because he wanted his family's inheritance. He didn't love his son at all.

From that day forth, I started worrying constantly about my little brother's future. How would he become educated with such a father? I wanted to protect him; I felt like it was my responsibility as his older sister. Although I haven't seen him in many years now, I will never forget him.

After several months, the atmosphere on the farm became even worse because of the constant fighting between the man and his parents. Mom, Keumsun, and I had to clean up after them without uttering a word of complaint. We had no other option. With the arrival of the baby, trying to escape was no longer a viable option. Mom hadn't wanted the baby originally, but once she makes a decision, she sticks to it until the end. So our only option was to try to integrate ourselves into this family and make the best of things, at least for the time being.

And besides, at least at the farm we had food to eat. It was better to live miserably in China than to live on the brink of starvation in North Korea. This peasant family may have been poor, but at least they could provide food to fill our stomachs each day. A daily routine began to emerge. As much as possible, we attempted to keep to ourselves and stay out of the family's way. Each night, we snuggled together in the living room to watch TV shows. My Chinese began to improve. We all started to cheer up a little. And then in the evenings, I would fall asleep peacefully, in the complete silence of the countryside.

*   *   *

Today, I realize that, in spite of everything we endured, we were nonetheless lucky. Like 70 percent of the thousands of women who cross the Chinese border each year, we had, unfortunately, fallen into the hands of human traffickers. But at least we had been spared the worst. Many other women who escape from North Korea face an even worse fate: forced prostitution in brothels and karaoke lounges. This also includes their children, even if the children are very young. These victims are scarred for life, and many feel ashamed of their pasts. As a result, even after managing to obtain freedom in South Korea, many of these women still suffer from great shame and live in the shadows.

*   *   *

One night, at the end of winter 2002, we were watching TV when I fell asleep. Shortly after, my slumber was interrupted quite abruptly: someone was banging loudly on the front door. I understood right away what was happening. I rose as quickly as I could and dashed toward the back window to try to escape. It was too late. The blinding white lights already clouded my vision. We were trapped.

My mom's husband looked frightened. He opened the door. A plainclothes policeman appeared and, toward Mom, Keumsun, and me, he barked: “Pack your belongings and come with me!”

There was a car waiting for us outside. It was the Chinese police. The officers instructed the three of us to get in the car. My heart was pounding. I was so scared that, for a moment, I completely forgot about my little brother. I was so focused on the situation at hand that I didn't even realize that I might never see him again. With the police present, the farmer didn't dare say anything and just stood there, holding on tightly to his son.

The man couldn't put up a fight because he knew what he had been doing was illegal. He did not have the right to marry a North Korean, nor did he have the right to provide housing for us. He risked being arrested as well. And so it was everyone for him or herself. Someone must have denounced us.

Normally, the neighbors warned us in advance whenever a suspicious car rolled by. But this time the police had come in the middle of the night, with the headlights off, in an ordinary car. The dogs didn't even make noise when they arrived.

Soon we found ourselves at the small police station in this town. There, we tried to appeal to the officers' humanity.

“I have a baby here. I am married to a Chinese man,” explained my mother.

They didn't listen to her and locked the three of us in the restroom, since the station was too small to even have jail cells.

In the restroom, there was a window with steel bars, through which we could see the street. We started imagining ways to escape. The bars didn't look that firmly attached to the wall. With a bit of effort and a few hours' time, we might have been able break them off the wall. Since we were so small, we could easily slip through in the middle of the night without being seen. But my mother said we should just forget it, because the plan was too risky and could potentially land us in even more trouble, if we were caught.

She was hoping instead that her husband would buy our freedom by bribing the police, which happened often in this area. But that hope was in vain: that horrible man did nothing to help release us from jail. Never mind that he'd made us work in the fields like slaves, and that my mom had given him the child that he so desperately wanted—a child that he treated poorly but kept nonetheless. I didn't know whether I was more overcome by anger or by sorrow.

The next day, we were once again sent by car to an unknown location.

As we were driving, I began to understand exactly where we were heading.

*   *   *

The car stopped in front of a building surrounded by guards in uniform. They threw us in a jail cell full of North Korean women. Like us, they were waiting to be sent back to their home country. Rumors were circling about. We heard that those who escaped to China were sent back to North Korea with iron rings around their necks. Were they going to torture us? The guards were heartless. One woman who tried to bribe a guard with cash was struck savagely across the face. Among the detainees, talking was strictly forbidden. On the other side, I heard yelling coming from the men's cell. I started to hate the Chinese. I was afraid, I was in pain, and I couldn't stop thinking about my little brother, whom we'd left behind. My heart broke at the thought of him. I thought that we had made a terrible mistake by not escaping through the restroom window at the police station. But now, it was too late.

After four days of this nightmare, the guards let us out, with our hands cuffed behind our backs, and then pushed us on a bus, our wrists torn. The curtains were drawn, but I peeked through them and saw little snippets of the countryside as we drove. Soon the mountains disappeared and we saw a river. We were driving across a bridge. I recognized the landmarks. We were at the Tumen River, the border between North Korea and China. The date was March 31, 2002, and we were on our way back to North Korea.

 

11

“Take off your clothes!”

Under the blinding white light, I took off my tattered clothing piece by piece.

“Bend over!” shouted the officer.

I was completely naked and being subjected to humiliating torment. I bent my knees, crouched down, and then got back up again. I did this repeatedly until I was out of breath. Nothing was to be hidden, not even the most intimate areas of our bodies. After making her way through this group of naked women, a female officer in uniform grabbed me extremely hard. She shone a flashlight in my ears and then in my mouth. She inspected my teeth and then reached behind my gums. She dragged her hand down my chest. I started to shudder. Then her hand reached my stomach. She didn't stop there: a little farther down and she continued to search my body by pushing her fingers inside me. I clenched my jaw. Everything had to be removed, even tampons.

*   *   *

Mom and Keumsun were subjected to the same degrading treatment. It was what everyone who escaped from North Korea and got sent back had to go through.

“When did you betray your country, you fucking cunt? With who? Where did you go, you worthless piece of shit?” screamed the interrogating officer.

The violent and abusive interrogation continued. I didn't answer his questions. That only infuriated him all the more.

Then I was thrown into a cell where some sixty other women were already crammed like cattle. The cell was tiny and was hardly built to fit sixty people. On one side, there were steel bars preventing us from escaping. On the other side, there was a simple hole in the ground where we could go to the bathroom, right in front of everyone. There wasn't enough space to lie down or stretch. At night, we slept next to one another, with each person's head against someone else's chest. It was impossible, however, to sleep for very long. In the middle of the night, my little brother appeared to me in a terrible nightmare. In my nightmare, he screamed as he was being boiled alive in a pot of water. He was just fourteen months old when I left him. What would happen to him at the hands of his inhumane father?

That night, for the first time in my life, I began to feel anger toward my country. Up until then, I'd never felt any hatred toward North Korea. We only left for China in order to survive, because we didn't have any food. We didn't have anything against Kim Jong-il, nor did we have anything against the system—we were apolitical. But in that prison, for the first time, my eyes were opened to the horrors perpetrated by the Kim regime, and I felt my anger begin to build.

*   *   *

Only once, when I was very little, had I already started feeling the seeds of doubt about our country. One morning in primary school, the teacher told us that we would attend an important event in our education: the execution of a man who was guilty of committing “serious crimes.” The playground started to fill with commotion.

“I know who is going to be killed! It's your father!” taunted some of the meaner boys. I stayed quiet, worrying silently.

Before lunch, the teachers took us downtown in order of rank. The crowd gathered near an empty lot, right next to the bridge. Since we were little, we were positioned on top of the bridge so that we could have a clearer view of what was happening, so that we wouldn't miss this important pedagogical lesson. Some privilege that was.

Then a car with heavily tinted windows appeared. Policemen dragged out several men whose heads and faces were covered with headscarves. The crowd started to shiver. After one final symbolic interrogation, the accused men pitifully admitted their wrongdoings. Afterward, they were tied to wooden poles planted along the river. I didn't understand how they managed to remain so emotionless when they knew they were about to die.

And then suddenly, we heard a deafening noise. I jumped, startled. The gunshots seemed to last an eternity. After a while, all was quiet again. Through the plume of smoke that was dissipating into the air, I could make out gigantic puddles of blood, littered with pieces of flesh mixed with a white liquid. It was there that I learned to feel compassion for others; I felt an immense outpouring of pity, a feeling of fraternity toward these men who had been slaughtered so heartlessly.

I was wondering what would happen to their remains—the last vestiges of their existence—when all of a sudden a strange-looking man emerged from the crowd and started sniffing the shredded pieces of bodies. Such was the nature of a hungry animal. He took the gray, gelatinous pieces of flesh and looked at them hungrily before devouring them in front of everyone. I was terrified. We were told that this crazy man thought that eating a human brain would cure him of his maladies.

As everyone left to get lunch, I stood still, horrified.

After this first terrible ordeal, I became used to these public executions, which were a routine occurrence. Even so, each time, I still had my qualms. I remember a man who was sent to the execution pole for having “insulted our Great Leader” Kim Il-sung. His crime? He had snatched some bronze letters off an official inscription of our Great Leader. No doubt the man had just hoped to ameliorate his living conditions during the famine by selling the metal to the Chinese for a bit of cash. It was a crime punishable by death. When I heard the shots being fired, I felt that I was witnessing a great injustice.

It's just bronze. It's not fair to die just for a bit of bronze,
I thought to myself. For the first time, I was revolted. But I kept all these thoughts to myself, because I knew that I would have been seen in a very bad light by my classmates and teachers if I had vocalized these opinions. In North Korea, everyone kept tabs on his or her neighbors. Even among friends, people could not be trusted. Starting from a young age, I noticed that my parents agreed with things publicly that were quite different from what they said at home. One day, a group of men were executed for stealing rice from the army reserves. After the execution, my parents commended the men's courage.