Jia: A Novel of North Korea (13 page)

The year I left the orphanage, she moved to a small
school outside Pyongyang. The other girls and I wrote a
farewell letter and shed tears because we knew we'd never
see her again. I couldn't have imagined I'd run into her in a
street market; she had aged so much in just a few years.

"Excuse me, Teacher Oh?" Pushing through the passersby, I approached her and sized up her brown, oval face; I was sure who it was when I saw the small mole under
her lip. Teacher Oh fell silent; I thought perhaps she hadn't
recognized me.

"Do you remember me, Teacher Oh?" I asked, getting
closer to let her see my face.

She smiled. "How can I forget you? Little dancing girl..."

She grabbed my wrists and held them lightly, as she used
to do whenever she asked me to dance and sing in front of
my classmates. I reminded her of "Blood Sea," the women's
emancipation song: how I would sing it in front of the class,
while she sang with me from the back of the classroom with
flushed cheeks.

On that day, she closed her tiny stand for several hours.

Like almost everyone, Teacher Oh had two jobs. In the
morning, she taught students at a small school, where half
of the students didn't come regularly. In the afternoon, she
came to the market to sell bread. She didn't have time to
bake it herself, so she bought it from old ladies who baked
in their houses but couldn't compete with the loud voices of
other vendors. She didn't make much money at the market,
but it was better than just staying in the house and not even
trying to escape her poverty.

Holding my hands, she smiled bitterly and said, "I had no
idea that selling things to other people could be so hard. But
what else can I do! I already sold all my beloved books."

She had been an ideal teacher. She was honest and didn't
abuse her authority like other teachers. She had taught Kim
Il Sung's books passionately, and we had studied together as
friends would.

"You know, Jia, life can change in a flash, or lead you
in an unexpected direction. Nothing is as precious as life. Trust me, I have seen death with my own eyes..." Her eyes
looked much older because of the deep wrinkles that ran
from their edges.

She continued, "My husband and daughter died on the
same day. How could I have imagined such a hell? My youngest daughter always clung to my skirt, complaining about
how noisy her stomach was, and one day, after she came back
from the school, she seemed to have no energy left. But, you
know, people are all like that now, so I didn't care. I was sick
of hearing her complain-it only made me hungrier. I was
tired of telling her that our Dear Leader would soon solve all
the problems. The longer the situation continued, the more
restless I became. When I saw my neighbors heading to the
markets and not to their usual jobs, I knew I should do something too. But I couldn't leave the country and become a
capitalist merchant: my life, devoted to the Party and its ideology, would have lost all meaning. I ignored my husband's
suggestion to start selling our goods. I mocked him and told
him his brain was being rotted by hunger."

Just then, two kkot ebi ran past us, like bullets shot out
of a gun. Behind them, a young woman, who looked much
younger than me, shouted, "Damn you! I'll kill you next
time I see you."

Teacher Oh stopped speaking. Her eyes followed the
kkot ebi, who held new shoes in their hands and disappeared
around a corner. She heaved a deep and long sigh.

"When my daughter came back from school, she was
quiet and spoke in a low voice. `Mom, I'm sleepy,' she said. `I
slept all day in class. I didn't know until the teacher woke me
up that class already finished. On the way home, I walked
half asleep. I almost sank down on the ground, and Fin still
sleepy.' Then she fell asleep in a corner of the room, and died. My husband and I realized it only after several hours.
He went crazy. He cried out, "How can be this possible? My
daughter just died in front of me. What a bad father I am! We
killed our own daughter." Then he fell down and died on
the spot. In just one day, I had to send both my daughter and
husband to the other world. I didn't cry. I didn't have time. I
had to take care of two other kids. I decided not to be stuck
in the house anymore. That's why I came here and why I'm
shouting to sell one more piece of bread every day."

We looked at the other vendors, yelling at the top of
their voices next to us.

"I would sell clothes or shoes like them if I were handy, but
I can't make them." Teacher Oh sighed. "What's worse, I'm
not smart like the other women here, who hang around the
brokers. They get goods at low prices from those brokers."

While she spoke, she kept urging me to eat her bread.

"I'm not attractive anymore, I don't have a smooth
tongue. I know how to handle kids, not adults."

When I was about to leave, she stuffed three pieces of
bread in my pocket.

"But, I'm the luckiest and happiest woman in this place.
My ex-students help me. Sometimes, they bring clothes
from China and give them to me for very little. I never
thought I would be obliged to my little students like this."

Saying good bye, she gave me a wide smile. ` Jia, my
life hasn't been so bad! After you leave, I will smile and
think about those days. How cute you were! What a terrible
teacher I was!"

I bought most of her bread, claiming that I was about
to buy lunch for my coworkers in the market. On that day,
my coworkers had to fill their stomachs with Teacher Oh's
bread.

un was my neighbor. Her flat was right next to mine,
i in the rusty apartment complex I had been living in for
the past few years. Sometime after moving in, I met her
mother, Aunt Cho, in the hall. She asked about my age, my
job-all the usual questions that arise when people meet
each other for the first time.

"Why don't you live with your parents?"

I answered instantly: "They're dead. I've never seen
them."

"Oh..." She nodded her head slowly, looking ill at ease,
and let me pass by.

Whenever Aunt Cho stopped by my house after that,
she would look around my kitchen and then disappear. Several minutes later, she would come back with dishes in her
hands, and one of them always held kimchi.

"I worked in the Nutrition Department before I had
Sun, so I know how to handle cooking. You can trust my
food, and you should gain at least five kilograms."

I couldn't decline her kindness-her kimchi was the best I
had ever eaten. With each bite of the pickled cabbage, I felt
my stomach grow so clean and cool. I brought any cookies
or snacks I could get in the hotel to her house, and though
I insisted she try them, Aunt Cho always put them aside,
saying, "Sun might like these more than me; she'll be back
next week. I'm sure she'll like you a lot-she always wanted
a sister."

Sun was 19 years old, with white skin and red lips. When
I finally met her, I couldn't believe that she had just returned
from three months of volunteering in the countryside before
graduating from a teaching school; it seemed her skin had
special protection against the sun. She was a giddy girl, and
she followed me around, talking about everything she saw
and heard. We liked to go to the street market to look at
cosmetics. We couldn't afford to buy anything; we just went
to be together and enjoy the uproarious atmosphere.

Sun's favorite topic was her boyfriend, Gun. She had
met him while walking with her friends in the Kaeson
Youth Park, on a Saturday. Sun said the day was brighter
than usual, or maybe the significance of her first encounter
with Gun made her memory of it brighter. She and her
friends enjoyed walking there more than in any other park
in Pyongyang because it was usually full of young people. A
dark-skinned man with thick eyebrows had approached the
group and smiled at Sun. She said she liked his bright and
even teeth. Most young girls didn't like guys with swarthy
skin, because it reminded them of laborers, but Sun said
Gun was different. He had great, sharp eyes, and he worked in the dancing and singing propaganda unit of a big factory.
When I saw him the first time, I couldn't help but understand why Sun praised him.

Sun was happy and dreamed of a future shared with her
boyfriend. When she became a teacher in an elementary
school, she loved talking about her students. She devoted
all her energy to then and recorded each student's characteristics in a notebook.

"You know what? I heard such a funny thing from my
students today," she said, sitting in my apartment one afternoon. "They said they like middle-aged female teachers the
best. You know why? Because young single female teachers
like me don't have to cook and take care of their own children and husbands. And we don't wash our clothes, because
our mothers do it. In the morning we have only to do our
makeup and eat the breakfast prepared by our mothers. So
we have a lot of energy left when we come to school. But
middle-aged female teachers have to do these chores every
day for their families; their hands are never dry of water.
When they beat the students, it doesn't hurt, because they
don't have any energy left. But we have a lot of energy, so
our palms are the harshest. You can't imagine how cute
they were when they said that."

Sun's family was not untouched by the famine of 1995:
her students started to skip school to go beg for food at the
market. She and the other teachers searched the markets
after class, trying to persuade their students to return to
school. She came home every night bone tired. I loved her.
I watched her tenderly, as my sister had watched over me.

In the summer of 1997, I didn't see Sun for several weeks.
I missed her, but I decided not to begrudge her time with others. Then, one night, I heard her call my name, and when I
opened my window, she was standing outside, like a ghost.

"What happened, Sun?"

"He's gone. He disappeared without saying anything to me"

She wore a thin shirt, though the night was cool, and
her face was practically blue. I took her hand and led her
into my room. I watched her as she cried quietly with her
legs folded under her and her hands on her knees. I thought
it must be the worst time in her life. I didn't say anything;
I just let her cry.

At length, she told me that Gun and his family were gone
in one night, and no one knew where. No!-everybody
knew, but no one would say. The steps Gun's family took one
day might be what other neighbors were driven to the next.
Sun said that the shoe factory where Gun's parents worked
had closed several months before, and Gun was trying to
sell their household goods in the street market. Gun's older
brother had died at age 21 in an accident while performing
military duties, and his death had driven Gun's parents to despair. Since then, his parents' health had been Gun's priority.

Sun couldn't understand why Gun hadn't mentioned
leaving. A couple of days earlier, he had asked for a picture
of them together. She was devastated that he hadn't shared
his plans with her.

I didn't see Sun much after that night. I couldn't offer
consolation, and I couldn't blame Gun: such was our situation and our lives. Time for despair could be better used
looking for a way to survive. All I hoped for Sun was that
she would forget about Gun as soon as possible. As time
went by, Sun would learn what I already knew too well: the
more you miss people who have already left you, the more
pain you feel.

Several weeks later, I ran into Sun in the hall of the
building, and she smiled at me. I asked her to come by my
apartment whenever she had some free time. She didn't
seem to have changed too much-she was still cheerfulbut as we chatted she sometimes lost her train of thought
and grew silent. I thought time would solve her problems.

Late one night, she came over, and I noticed that she had
become emaciated.

"Can I stay with you tonight?" Sun asked with a low
voice. Her eyes were unusually shiny.

I pulled her into my room with delight; I had been afraid
she was avoiding me, and it was wonderful to have her in
my apartment again. We didn't sleep much-I just held her
hand under the blanket while we talked, as my sister used
to. Sun talked a lot, laughing unnaturally hard, and told
me about how she and Gun had dreamed of their future
together, with a house and children.

Suddenly, her eyes filled with fear. "I'm afraid, sister.
Nothing seems sure in this world. I still don't understand
why Gun didn't discuss anything with me. Before he left, he
even talked about our wedding. We were going to take pictures on Mansu Hill-we thought the gold of Kim 11 Sung's
statue in the background would make the pictures more colorful. But he left the next day. Do you think he left because
he didn't want to marry me? Did I pressure him too much? I
really didn't care about the wedding; that wasn't important.
He misunderstood me."