Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story (13 page)

I took the book and a blanket Jin-mo handed me and went to a corner. Seung-yo curled up on his mat. Soon he was snoring softly. I wrapped the blanket around me. I felt out of place in this apartment with these strange people. But I had nowhere else to go. 

T
WENTY-TWO

T
wo weeks later,
Jin-mo, Ki-soo and I drove to Pyongyang in a tiny, beat-up Fiat that Jin-mo had borrowed from a government official he knew in Sinuiju. He had bartered with a Russian soldier for just enough gasoline to make the 150-mile trip. We packed the car, said a heartfelt goodbye to Seung-yo, and set off. Jin-mo drove and Ki-soo sat in the passenger side with her hand on her belly. I was wedged in the back seat next to several old suitcases, two bedrolls, pots and pans and Jin-mo’s duffle bag stuffed with his books. On my lap was an old suitcase that Jin-mo had given me. Inside were some old clothes from Ki-soo, Jin-mo’s copy of The Communist Manifesto, the photograph of my family and, tucked within the lining where no one could see it, the comb with the two-headed dragon.

It was my first ride in a car. Of course, I had ridden in trucks before—you cannot very well grow up on a farm without riding in a truck once in a while—but never a car. The Fiat smelled of exhaust fumes and the ride over the rutted road was bumpy.

At first, I was scared to be going so far from home again. But the further south we went, the better I felt. Every mile was another mile away from Dongfeng and the comfort station.

And then, many miles out of Sinuiju, I saw the Yellow Sea for the first time. I had learned about the sea from my parent’s books and Father’s stories. I had always tried to picture water stretching so far that it looked like it was spilling off the edge of the earth. Now it was there in front of me, outside the car window.

It was wonderful. The blue-green sea sparkled under the morning sun and the sea air smelled fresh and clean. A large freighter with its stacks trailing thick black smoke, steamed along on the horizon. Closer in, dozens of fishing boats bobbed and pulled their nets. Still closer, great waves reached for the shore liked white foamy fangs, then crashed against the cliffs with a thunderous roar, only to retreat back again to the sea, gathering themselves for another surge. I could not take my eyes off it.

After a while, the road turned south. We traveled across a broad plain with rice paddies all the way up the hills. Dozens of workers in pointed straw hats, their black pants rolled over their knees, skillfully swung long cane poles knocking the rice grains into baskets. Others balanced baskets full of rice on their shoulders and carried them to carts waiting on the edge of the fields.

Eventually, the road rose from the rice paddies into farm fields like those behind my home. The smell of onions and garlic filled the air. It made me feel like a girl again. Workers stuffed sacks with carrots and beets and I remembered my mother saying how grandfather had to hire twenty men to bring in the harvest on our farm. In another field, cattle grazed lazily on the fall grass. I felt a surge of pride for this land and for my country and I realized Colonel Matsumoto was right. Korea was indeed a great country. Now I understood why the Japanese wanted it for themselves and had to be forced to leave. And now that they were gone, I was sure Korea would be great again.

“How much have you read of Marx?” Jin-mo asked with an elbow over the front seat. I snapped out of my spell. The Communist Manifesto had been difficult to read. It was dense and filled with words I didn’t know. Jin-mo and even Ki-soo had helped me with the new words. However, I had read so much growing up that I was able to finish it and understand most of the ideas. But I was afraid of exposing too much of myself so I didn’t let them know that I did.

“It is very difficult,” I answered.

“Don’t worry,” Jin-mo said. “It was difficult for me when I first read it. I got through it and you will, too.”

Ki-soo let out a snort. “Why do you bother? She’s too young.”

Jin-mo slid his elbow off the seat and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “I was her age when I first read it. You were only a year older. Anyway, we’ll build the party on the shoulders of the young. They are the future of Korea.”

Ki-soo turned her pretty face to the side window and didn’t say anything.

During the two weeks in Sinuiju, Jin-mo, Ki-soo, and Seung-yo had passionate discussions at night in the apartment about governments, workers and the future. They used each other’s shortened names—‘Ki,’ ‘Seung,’ and ‘Jin’—which sounded strange and impolite to me. It was not the way proper Koreans addressed each other. They discussed what would happen to Korea now that the Japanese were gone. Jin-mo tried to include me in their discussions and I had tried to participate as much as I could. The ideas were new, but they seemed to make sense. The discussions felt like the discussions my family had about one of our books after a hard day’s work on the farm.

I had learned that Jin-mo, Ki-soo, and Seung-yo were rebels and had fought the Japanese with other Koreans in the mountains of northern China. It had been a dangerous, hardscrabble life that had cost Seung-yo his left leg and many of their friends their lives. They had been part of a group led by a man named Kim Il-sung who they said had fought bravely and who had convinced the Russians to enter the war against the Japanese. The radio in the apartment had given them news that Kim Il-sung, with Russia’s support, was in charge of a provisional government in Pyongyang. Jin-mo had been close to comrade Kim and was going to Pyongyang to secure an important position in the new government there. He had said he could get a job for me, too.

Jin-mo turned to me. “It’s an exciting time in Korea, Ja-hee. A new beginning. Soon, the party will take over and Korea will become a modern country. You’ll see.”

Ki-soo folded her arms across her bloated belly and continued to look out her side window. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said under her breath.

Jin-mo tensed. “Why do you have to be that way, Ki?” he demanded. “Why are you always so cynical?”

“Because I don’t trust them,” she said, suddenly facing him. “I don’t just believe everything they say.”

I sank low in my seat. I had never heard a woman talk back to a man like Ki-soo did to Jin-mo. My mother never talked to my father like that. But Jin-mo and Ki-soo argued often and it usually ended with Ki-soo slamming the door to her room and Jin-mo staring blankly at Seung-yo and me.

“Look Ki, this isn’t going to be easy,” Jin-mo said. “We’ll have to work together or other countries will push us around just like they always have. Communism is our chance. No more Japanese, no more Chinese. And the Russians and the Americans have agreed to leave once we establish a government.”

“I’m not sure it will work,” Ki-soo said.

“What’s the alternative? Capitalism? Money and power in the hands of a few greedy men? It plunged the world into a ten-year depression that the Japanese and Germans took full advantage of. It caused the World War. We have to find a better way. Communism is it.”

“‘A classless society based on common ownership of the means of production,’” Ki-soo said, as if she were reading from Marx.

“Exactly,” Jin-mo said. “It’s what has made Russia powerful. And there are communist movements in a dozen other countries, too. China will be next, and countries in Asia and Europe will follow. There’s even a communist movement in America. And right now in Korea, we can make it happen without a civil war.”

“Changes like this are never bloodless, Jin. And who will lead this new government, your friend Kim Il-sung? I don’t trust comrade Kim,” Ki-soo said, twisting the word ‘comrade’.

“He fought against the Japanese, Ki, when others ran away to America or Europe.”

Ki-soo faced the window again and said nothing more for a long time. The car climbed into hills terraced with more rice paddies.

Finally, with a nod to me, Ki-soo asked, “What are you going to do with her in Pyongyang?”

“She can help with the baby.”

“I don’t need help with the baby.”

“Then, she can help in the new government. She is great with languages. She speaks Japanese better than I do. Chinese, too. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is she going to live with us?” Ki-soo asked. Her eyes flashed.

“She lost her family, Ki.”

“Half of Korea lost their family during the Japanese occupation. You aren’t going to invite all of them to live with us, are you?”

Jin-mo gripped the steering wheel hard as the car bumped along the road and crested another hill. Pyongyang loomed in the distance. I hoped we would get there soon so I could get out of the car, away from Ki-soo.

Finally, Ki-soo said, “I have to piss again. This traveling isn’t good for the baby.”

Without a word, Jin-mo pulled the car to the side of the road and let it idle while Ki-soo got out and squatted in the ditch.

*

Pyongyang. I had heard about the great city with tall buildings on the Taedong River.
Appa
had been there once and had told us all about it. But after my disappointment in seeing Sinuiju for the first time, my expectations were low. But Pyongyang was different. It was a marvelous city teeming with people on bicycles, on foot, in cars, in trucks, on boardwalks and on the streets all rushing to get somewhere. Hundreds of electric wires on tall posts ran along the streets. Buildings—some several stories tall—were everywhere. The sounds, the sights, the smells, the energy was like nothing I had ever imagined.

Jin-mo produced a map from the glove box and gave it to Ki-soo. She did her best to decipher it and help Jin-mo navigate around the trucks and bicyclists on the busy streets. The Fiat rolled through the heavy traffic before we finally came to a stop in front of a massive, four-story, stone building. “This is it!” Jin-mo said excitedly. “You two stay here while I check in.”

He changed his shirt, brushed his hair, and slipped on his leather shoes. Then he disappeared inside the building while Ki-soo and I stayed in the car. Ki-soo kept her back to me, staring out the car window at the people on the street. After a while, she said into the window, “I will not let Jin-mo destroy me and my baby.” I sank in my seat among the suitcases and bedrolls and prayed that Jin-mo would return soon.

An hour later, Jin-mo came running out of the building and jumped into the car. He held some papers in his hand. “It’s all arranged,” he said with a nod. “We have a furnished apartment close to here. I report to work the day after tomorrow. I think I will be able to get a job for you too, Ja-hee.”

As he started the car, he turned to Ki-soo, then to me. The joy in his smile made my heart beat fast. “Welcome to the new Korea,” he said. 

T
WENTY-THREE

Sixteen months later

I
t was another
late night in the provisional government headquarters building. I sat at my desk, helping translate documents into Hangul for the meeting two floors above. The meeting was between delegations from the American-controlled South and the Russian-controlled North. The two sides were trying to reconcile their differences and unify Korea under one government. It was the third day of meetings and, according to Jin-mo, a delegate for the North, the meetings were not going well.

My desk was surrounded by a dozen others in a large bullpen on the second floor. The bullpen was dark except for the area around me. The head of my department, Mr. Chee, paced behind me reading the translations aloud. He was a middle-aged, bookish man who had been educated in London. He always wore reading glasses on a chain around his neck. When I had first started in the translation department eighteen months earlier, he had been angry that Jin-mo’s friends forced him to work with someone so young, so he put me on low-level translations. But Dongfeng haunted me and I was determined to put my shame behind me. I desperately wanted to prove that I could do something more than lie on my back and let men rape me. And I didn’t want to disappoint Jin-mo. So I worked very hard at learning languages.

I studied every day and late at night when I should have been sleeping. I never took a day off. I learned dozens of new words everyday and researched their precise meanings and pronunciations. I was obsessed with grammar. I read everything I could get my hands on in English and Russian and Japanese. I snuck away to the cinema to watch foreign films. I saw Gone with the Wind three times and read the book in English twice, making long notes in the margins of every page. I practically memorized a book on English grammar that Jin-mo gave me. I used my dictionaries so much, they fell apart.

And I had a gift. It’s hard to explain, but I only needed to hear a word once and I was able to recall its meaning, remember the context, the correct pronunciation, and everything about its usage. People said I was a genius, and I suppose I was. But they didn’t see how hard I worked at it. Eventually, Mr. Chee had to make me his top translator.

But my success didn’t help. I often woke up at night from nightmares about the comfort station. I could still clearly see the machine gun cut down my
ianfu
sisters that last, horrible day. I could feel the sting in my thighs where Lieutenant Tanaka had beat me and the ache between my legs where Colonel Matsumoto and a thousand men had raped me. And every day I yearned for my
onni
, Soo-hee.

“What do they mean by this phrase?” Mr. Chee asked. “A dictatorship of the proletariat through which the socialization of the means of production can be realized?”

“It’s the basis for a communist government,” I said. “It means the workers will build a government that controls economic production for the benefit of everyone.”

“Why do they call it a dictatorship?” he asked.

“It’s a Marx idea,” I answered. “He believed the workers need to take complete control from the proletariat capitalists for a more fair economy.”

“How do you know all of this?” Mr. Chee asked, shaking his head. “Never mind,” he said quickly with a wave. “Let’s just get the translation done. They’re waiting for it upstairs.”

We worked for a while longer, tossing phrases and words back and forth. When we finally agreed on the translation, I wrote it out and handed it to Mr. Chee. As he read it, he said, “You need to stay. They could go all night again.” I bowed and said I would. He smiled a tired ‘thank you’ and hurriedly headed to the stairs to deliver the translations to the delegation.

I leaned over my desk and laid my head on my arms. I closed my eyes, and words in three languages danced awkwardly in my head. Soon, I fell into a restless sleep.

*

“Ja-hee!” someone said, over the impossibly long line of Japanese soldiers in my dream. “Wake up! It’s time to go.” I forced my eyes open and lifted my head. Jin-mo's handsome face replaced the faces of the Japanese soldiers in the comfort station. “You fell asleep again,” he said. “Come, we have to go. Ki will be worried about us.”

I walked with Jin-mo through the empty street toward our apartment six blocks from the provisional government headquarters. We had made this walk together nearly every night since we’d started working for the provincial government. At first, I was uncomfortable being alone with a man who was not my husband. But over time, I realized that Jin-mo was a gentle, kind man. He had a way of talking to me that made me believe that I was someone important. His passion for Korea and his ideas for a new kind of government were infectious. I felt alive around him and had feelings for him I had never known before.

As we walked in the cool spring air, I asked, “How did the meeting go today?”

Jin-mo sighed. It worried me how sunken his eyes had become and how his back was beginning to bend. “Not well,” he said softly. “Both sides feel they have the legitimate right to rule the entire peninsula. Neither is willing to give ground.”

“What is going to happen?”

“If the Americans and Russians would leave us alone, maybe we could work something out,” he said. “They have both agreed to leave this year if we can form a unified government. But the Russians want a communist government and the Americans won’t tolerate it. They want to make a stand against communism here in Korea. It’s turning into a stalemate.”

We walked for a while in silence. The huge fronds on the weeping willows that lined the street swayed in the gentle night breeze.

“What side do you think is right?” I asked. As soon as I asked it, I wished I hadn’t. I was asking too many questions again, especially in Pyongyang where questions were discouraged. But it did not appear to bother Jin-mo.

“I used to think it was the North. This is where Korea was born. We have more industry here than they do in the South. And as you know, I believe a socialist government would be right for us. But what is most important is that we come together under one government. We’ve been divided our entire history—the North always aligned with the Chinese, the South with the Japanese. This is our chance to be one nation if the Russians and the Americans don’t keep us divided.”

“What must we do?”

“I’ve presented ideas, but my comrades won’t listen. They’re inflexible. They won’t compromise and I think they are wrong.” Jin-mo raised an eyebrow. “Of course, my comments are just between you and me.”

I nodded, pleased that he had taken me into his confidence. “Of course,” I said.

When we came to the apartment there was a black car with a driver inside parked out front. Jin-mo gave the car an uneasy look. He quickly opened the apartment door and I followed him inside.

The government had given Jin-mo a furnished, western-style apartment across the street from a park filled with the giant willow trees that Pyongyang was famous for. There were four rooms—a large main room with European upholstered furniture and a fireplace, a bedroom, a kitchen with a cast-iron stove, and a small room off the back where I slept.

Jin-mo and I removed our shoes and stepped inside the main room. Ki-soo sat on the sofa with her legs folded underneath her. Her eyes were red. On the sofa next to Ki-soo was her winter coat and on the floor in front of her was a suitcase. Lying next to her was their sixteen-month-old son, Suk-ju. The little boy was leaning against his mother, sleeping. He wore a traveling coat.

Jin-mo saw the suitcases and stopped. “What is this?” he asked.

Ki-soo said, “I can’t risk it anymore, Jin. I’m leaving and I’m taking Suk-ju with me.”

“What do you mean?” Jin-mo asked. “What can’t you risk anymore?”

Little Suk-ju pressed his face into his mother’s side and moaned.

Ki-soo said, “I don’t want to talk about it. You will wake Suk-ju.”

“If you’re leaving, when will we talk about it?” Jin-mo asked, trying to keep his voice down.

Suk-ju opened his eyes and reached his little hands to Ki-soo. “
Ummah
?” he said.

I stepped forward. “I will take him so you can talk.” Ki-soo looked at me angrily, but let me take the boy.

Suk-ju wrapped his arms around my neck as I carried him to my room and closed the door. I sat on my mat and held him close. The boy was warm against my breast. Over the previous year and a half, I had come to love this little boy as if he were my own. I took great delight in everything he did—the way he clung to my finger when he was just a few days old, his first steps, his first words, his mischievous toddler grin, his eyes, soft and intelligent like his father’s.

Suk-ju fell back to sleep while the voices of Jin-mo and Ki-soo—low at first—argued in the living room. I tried not to listen, but the voices grew loud and clear.

“I said you could not reason with these people, Jin-mo!” I heard Ki-soo say. “It’s going to be a bloody dictatorship, just like in Russia with Stalin.”

“I’m being careful, Ki. We have to try.”

“You have made too many compromises.”

“Look, the Russians have agreed to leave in a few months. It will be different then.”

“Different? Your leader is murdering people, Jin-mo! Once the Russians leave, it will only get worse.”

“The South is murdering people too, Ki.”

“So that makes it right? What happens when the murdering comes here, to our home? I will not let that happen.”

“I work for them. They won’t do anything to us.”

“Don’t be so sure. You have enemies. You are on the wrong side of this.”

“I’m not the only one. And I won’t stop trying. It’s the only way we can bring the North and South together. We cannot give up. We can still make it work.”

There was silence for a while. Then, there was a crash of porcelain breaking. In my arms, Suk-ju jerked but didn’t wake up.

“You and your ideals!” Ki-soo cried.

“Keep your voice down, Ki.”

“No, I will not! You said you were going to get rid of her a year ago.”

“She doesn’t have anywhere to go. Anyway, she loves Suk-ju and he loves her. I’m not going to just throw her out.”

“I told you I will not allow it!”

“Ki-soo, nothing has happened between us.”

“I don’t care. Go ahead. Live with your pretty little
chinulpa
, your comfort woman whore.”

Every nerve in my body snapped to life. Had I heard Ki-soo right? Had she just called me a comfort woman? I hadn’t told anyone about what I had done in Dongfeng. How had the secret I kept for nearly two years possibly have gotten out? How could they know?

There was another crash from the living room. “Shut up, Ki! We have to help each other.”

“That’s not why you won’t get rid of her.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Okay, go ahead. Leave.”

“I’m taking Suk-ju.” I heard the sound of footsteps marching to my door. The door flew open and Suk-ju jerked awake. Ki-soo took her son from me. She marched out to the living room. She grabbed her coat and suitcase and stomped out of the apartment.

*

For a long time, I sat on my mat with my knees to my chin. Ki-soo’s words, ‘comfort woman whore’ rang in my ears. I hadn’t heard those words in nearly two years. I put my hands on my head and tried to make them go away, but they stayed, like the insults the Japanese had thrown at me every day at the comfort station.

Finally, I rose, cracked open my door and peeked into the living room. Jin-mo was in a chair in the shadows looking at nothing. Outside the window, the willows swayed gently in the night breeze.

I went to the kitchen and got a broom and dustpan. I started to sweep up the shards from the broken celadon pot. “Leave it,” Jin-mo said from the darkness. “It’s my responsibility.”

I set the broom down and went back to my room. I shut the door and sat on my low bed as the horrors of Dongfeng surrounded me again.