Jia: A Novel of North Korea (4 page)

Surrounding our house were mountains and an enormous valley, with trees and grass everywhere in between.
The water was clean; we could drink it without a care,
and my sister and I swam every day. Whenever I wasn't
sick, I was outside until late into the evening; I wanted to
make up for my bedridden life with outdoor activities. Our
grandparents assigned homework daily, usually the collection of mushrooms and herbs. Every night, huddled close
together, we cleaned our harvest thoroughly, and the next
day our grandparents brought it to the camp. My sister and
I spent the days searching the mountains and valleys for
new things to do and see. We held races to see who could swim faster; though I was much younger than my sister, my
long arms and legs helped me win, or at least get abreast of
her. It could be she simply gave me the chance.

I was curious about people and other places, and I read
all the books my grandmother kept in her closet. They
helped my sister and me forget about the gray faces and the
thick, pointy wire fences, even for an hour. The photos in
some of the books thrilled me, transporting us to places we
had never been and introducing us to people we had never
met. I had so many questions about what I saw in the pictures: the high buildings, the people walking on pavement,
and especially the kids my own age dressed in nice clothing. These were photos taken in Pyongyang, North Korea's
biggest city, and from first sight, I dreamed of living there
and walking those streets. My grandmother answered all
my questions kindly, explaining everything in detail.

There was only one rule: I was never to ask about my
father. My family's refusal to talk about him convinced me
he had done something terrible. Often I hugged my grandmother and grumbled that I despised my father, knowing
he brought my family tragedy. I knew it was his fault that
my mother was dead, and that we lived in such an isolated
place. I cursed him over and over, but my grandmother
consoled me, whispering that he never meant to hurt us.
He was smart, she'd say, he just wasn't lucky. That's why
people tried to hurt him. It was not his fault. His only fault
was being born in the wrong place.

I learned my parents' story the day before my unexpected farewell to my grandparents and my sister. I didn't
even get the chance to boast to my sister about what I had
learned from Grandmother. I didn't know it was the last
gift she would give to me.

veryone said that my father and mother never should
have met, that it was the beginning of a tragic story.
My mom was from a good family; as an only child, she
was given everything she could have wanted. Her family
belonged to the "core class," the highest of the three government-assigned categories. Mom's father occupied a high
position in the army, and her mother was a vice principal at
a small college. She inherited her father's outstanding physique, and took advantage of it by studying at a professional
dancing school.

Dancers shouldn't be afraid to face any kind of dance:
that was her dancing philosophy. Wearing the traditional
hanbok, she was fragile and sweet in her movements, like a
flying butterfly, but when she donned a military uniform,
her movements expressed the spirit ofa strong and passionate revolutionary soldier. Success as a famous dancer was every
woman's dream in North Korea. My mother's talent and
good background, and the support of her family, suggested
that she would become the most famous dancer in Pyongyang. Then she met my father.

It was a bad match. My father, by contrast, had a coinplicated family: they belonged to one of the lower classes
of society, the "wavering class." My great-grandparents on
my father's side were exploited by the Japanese in the early
part of the century; their mistake was to own too much
land and to have too many servants. My grandfather grew
up seeing his father regularly beaten by Japanese police and
eventually stripped of his property.

When my grandfather was 15, a single incident changed
his life forever. A secret guerilla group agitating for independence passed through the town. They were caught by
the Japanese police but resisted their captors, eventually
killing them. After taking food and weapons from the police warehouse, the group hastily disappeared. The episode
left the town's young people excited and anxious.

Several days later, my grandfather disappeared from his
house with only these written words: "I'm leaving to be
a hero for my country." He went to northeast China and
instantly joined a guerrilla group. At that time, it was difficult to stage independence activities against Japan in Korea.
Some Koreans protested with their feet, moving to northeast China and Joining Chinese nationalist or communist
groups. Others conducted their own, purely Korean, activities. There were many young people like my grandfather:
passionate about punishing the Japanese.

He didn't take on the colors of any faction, and he wasn't
interested in ideology; his purpose was to see how many Japanese soldiers and policemen he could kill. He and his
comrades lurked about in villages at night, looking for targets, and gathered in the mountains during the day. They
learned how to make bombs and produce dynamite, using
them to punish the Japanese police and the Korean stool
pigeons. Their radical strategies made it difficult to get
regular financial support from the usual associations that
secretly funded such activities. They were always hungry,
always cold, as they traveled back and forth between northeast China and the northern tip of Korea.

My grandmother was an obedient student and daughter,
but she secretly supported independence activists, providing food for them and helping to write and distribute pain-
phlets. When my grandfather's guerilla group stayed in the
vicinity of my grandmother's town, the underground student association my grandmother belonged to helped them
maintain their cover. She was the chief editor of the association at that time. My grandfather and grandmother had
never even spoken privately before their marriage. They
met only as comrades, with others around.

During these times, a horrible rumor spread through
the village. People said the Japanese soldiers were dragging
young, single women to the battlefield and using them as
whores to console solders tired from battle.

The rumor that the women in my grandmother's village would be targeted threw the village into chaos. Some
families with adult daughters believed the Japanese soldiers
would never do such a thing; others hurried to find single
men willing to marry their girls. My grandfather went directly to my grandmother's house and told her parents that
he was taking her with his group when they left town. My
grandmother's parents objected strongly; they knew my grandfather's life was dangerous-his life itself was in constant danger. My grandmother overheard the conversation,
packed her belongings, and left her house with my grandfather without turning back. They were married before his
comrades in the mountains and honeymooned in a cave.

From then on, hard times were their lot. World War II
only made conditions worse. Just as the rumors predicted,
women were dragged away by the Japanese Army. The
Japanese killed anyone they even suspected of being against
them. My grandfather's group had to move every day, hiding in the mountains. Moving so often caused my grandmother to lose an unborn child five months into pregnancy
and undergo another two consecutive natural abortions.
When they finally delivered my father, their only child,
in 1943, my grandmother wept for days. Though she was
happy to have given birth, she couldn't help but be afraid
for my father. When the Japanese were defeated in 1945,
she expressed her relief for him by saying, "He can get a
regular education, in a normal school."

My grandparents and my father were living in Anshan,
then a small city in northeast China, when the Japanese began trickling out of northeast China and Korea. At first, my
grandmother resisted the long journey to China because
my father was sick, but my grandfather was unhappy about
changes in the Korean Peninsula: the Korean fight against
Japan had turned into an ideological fight between Korean
people, communists in the north and nationalists in the
south. Foreign influence in the Korean Peninsula shifted
from Japan to the Soviet Union and United States. There
were conflicts, arguments, and betrayals among ideologues
everywhere in China and Korea. Choosing a side affected
people's lives so profoundly that some were found dead the day after switching from one side to the other. Nobody
knew who was right, who was wrong.

Five years later, when the Korean War began in 1950,
my grandparents were still in northeast China. They feared
for their relatives and decided to bring them across the border. When my grandfather returned to Korea to find them,
however, he was arrested by the South Korean Army. Despite his insistence that he had no ideological position, his
history and his hot temper persuaded his South Korean
captors to suspect he was with the North. He was sent
to Geoje Island, off the southern coast of South Korea,
and held there for several years. My grandmother took my
father back to North Korea and found her parents. She
looked for her husband but was told he had never arrived.
Several years later, when the war ended, the two Koreas
exchanged captives, and my grandfather and grandmother
reunited in North Korea.

When prisoners of war came back to North Korea, most
were welcomed ardently as heroes to the country. But my
grandfather's history and lack of ideology were not appreciated by the North Koreans. What is worse, the North
Korean government became suspicious of people who had
been held in South Korean prisons. Though most of the
prisoners were communists, their time in the South made
their commitment appear dubious, and they were gradually
excluded from important positions.

In spite of my grandfather's revolutionary activities for
Korean independence, his life after the war was miserable.
He received no compensation for his years in prison, and
instead was placed under constant government supervision.
Inside the house, he was a hero, but outside he was powerless and considered a possible reactionary element. My father grew up seeing it all, and he became cynical. He was a big
man, and energetic, like his father; always the best soccer
player, and at the top of his math class. He loved science and
reading, but his family background limited and embittered
him. While my mother was satisfied with her station in life,
having realized her dreams of becoming a dancer, my father
recognized that he would never get what he wanted.

My father's talent for science brought him to despair. Although he scored the highest in his school on the university
entrance examination, he could not get into the university
of his choice. Every year, a set number of students from each
province can enter university, and each university decides
how many students it will accept from each province, distributing admission tickets to the schools in the province.
In my father's year, his school was awarded five tickets from
the university where he wanted to study. The examination
scores didn't matter much: acceptance hinged on family
background. Despite receiving a lower score, my father's
competitor in soccer and mathematics since elementary
school easily got in, while my father was rejected. He was
not a chosen person in his world.

My father's teacher intervened on his behalf, and after
negotiations with the Education Bureau, a small college
admitted my father on the condition that he would start
teaching there as soon as he graduated. My mother's mother, who didn't like my father much, worked in that college.
On the school stage, she held him up as an example of the
generosity of the country toward reactionary elements, but
he failed to demonstrate his appreciation to the audience,
which had expected a touching speech from him.

His mind was made for science. He studied and he conducted his research, becoming the youngest teacher in the college. It was then that he met my mother. They ran into
each other in the corridor on the way to his laboratory.
She had just found out when her next dancing performance
at the Grand Theater would be and was stopping by the
school to tell her mother.

On seeing my father, my mother approached him and
asked, "What do you do here?"

"I've heard I'm regarded as a teacher," he replied curtly.

That night, my mom asked my grandmother to bring
all the faculty members to her performance; her intention,
of course, was to invite my father. After the performance,
they began dating. I don't know how they came to love
each other or what they talked about, but Grandmother
said my father changed: he smiled more.

When my mother's parents discovered the relationship,
they almost killed my father. Such an unbalanced love affair
was a slap in their faces. My father lost his job right away
and was to be sent to an isolated village to teach in a small
school. If my mother had given up my father, I wouldn't be
in this world, but she quit everything, including eating.