Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (10 page)

The seafood trade was mostly carried out in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) located between Korea and Japan. When we handed over loads of seafood, I would go on board on Japanese ships to receive cash payment. The Japanese partners, many of whom I befriended, were not supposed to get off the ship. But unless specifically prohibited by the Great Leader, practically everything was possible in North Korea if one had the right connections. So using my network of influences, I snuck my Japanese business partners off the ship and drove them to resort areas where they could hang out with North Korean beauties. These women were well-trained workers who understood that by providing discreet service, they could earn some foreign money for their benefit. I urged the Japanese partners to tip the girls generously and when they left, I checked with the girls to make sure that they were compensated well. Not only Japanese but also my colleagues in the foreign currency–earning department enjoyed having access to these women. Even though we did not seek them out ourselves, there were always offers of women wherever we traveled. We were bound to encounter provincial authorities who gladly paired Pyongyang officials with local beauties. Most of these women knew too well that American dollars and Japanese yen could earn them expensive items hardly available to ordinary people, and they readily provided their sexual services in exchange. Most of them were entry-level party secretaries who were well educated on how to behave themselves and keep silent about the illicit encounter. Many were Koreans who formerly resided in Japan but decided to come to North Korea. These women with overseas experience needed hard currency to obtain foreign goods in order to maintain their previous lifestyle, and many voluntarily offered themselves in order to satisfy their desire to consume.

If these women were high-end prostitutes, at the other end of the North Korean sex industry were streetwalkers who would hang around near foreign currency–only restaurants. They would wait for customers to walk out and ask, “Do you want to buy nocturnal flowers?” When caught, they would be sent to correction facilities where they would be subject to torture and harsh labor, but there was no way of stopping them from earning hard currency the only way they knew how. These women were addicted to expensive foreign clothes or cosmetics and would keep pursuing illegal business even at the risk of severe punishment. The streetwalkers existed well before Kim Jong-il came to power, but as economic hardship affected everyone, the number of women selling nocturnal flowers kept increasing.

My work at the trading company brought me chances to travel to the Soviet Union twice—first in 1982 and later in 1987. The first trip was to Sakhalin, where we discussed the possibilities of future trade with Russia and Japan right on the sea border, which promised to be a more efficient way to trade seafood than to go though existing trade ports. The second trip was to Khabarovsk, where we discussed with Soviet partners the possibilities of expanding joint operation. At that time, both the Soviet Union and North Korea were profiting from the presence of the North Korean woodcutters working in Siberia, who would provide cheap labor to the Soviets and bring back foreign currency to North Korea. One of the things we discussed during the second meeting was establishing a factory to process northern bilberries, which were plentiful in Siberia. Bilberry spirits were very popular in North Korea, but realizing this joint adventure turned out to be more complicated than we initially thought. Each trip lasted for about twelve days, but I saw many things that were different from North Korea. Overall, I felt that the Soviets exercised a greater degree of freedom of speech and spoke badly of our Great Leader Kim Il-sung. They also spoke badly of their leader, Andropov. Although working for the Soviet government, the people we met were rough sailors at heart and became even rowdier when they drank. They spoke freely of everything. They took us visitors to an impressive buffet-style restaurant where an array of seafood was served—marinated herring, smoked salmon, oysters, sturgeon—and everyone could eat as much as they wanted. Small children ran around the table with their rosy cheeks and sharp noses blazed red by the Siberian blizzards. When I gave a fat little blond girl an affectionate pinch on the nose, she smiled back and shrieked: “Nel’zia!”
⁷

The fall of 1988 was the most glorious moment of my career as a foreign currency–earning officer at the West Sea Asahi Trading Company. My boss, K, wanted to promote me to a higher post within the NSA by letting me contribute 360,000 U.S. dollars directly to Kim Jong-il under the exalted appellation of “loyalty funds.” This was a common practice in North Korea. Many elderly Koreans who were living in Japan and whose children and grandchildren lived in North Korea were avid contributors, as they had access to foreign currency and wanted the North Korean regime to take good care of their descendants. The lavish contributions were not limited to hard currency, but included any goods with considerable value. Once a farmer came across a 300-year-old ginseng root and sent it to the Dear Leader as a loyal tribute. Such events were widely publicized in the media to encourage emulation by others. In 1988 when I contributed my loyalty funds, Kim Jong-il was in need of foreign currency more than ever. That year South Korea was hosting the Seoul Olympic Games, and the world’s attention was directed toward the southern part of the Korean peninsula. In order to compete with the Olympic Games, North Korea hosted the grandiose 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students. This festival had been held twelve times previously, but in 1989, its scale became exponentially larger to compete with the Olympics. I still remember how I walked into the Central Committee building of the Korean Workers’ Party and handed over my loyalty funds. Within the Central Committee, a director of the 39th Bureau was exclusively in charge of Kim Jong-il’s private funds. I spent the following month in happy anticipation, knowing that I would be somehow acknowledged for my contributions by the Dear Leader and the party. Indeed, slightly over a month later, I heard that the Dear Leader had signed a letter ordering the party to look out for my family. In North Korea, such a letter was a guarantor of success not only for myself but also for the entire generation of my children and grandchildren. When such glory was bestowed by the Dear Leader, there were celebrations for the recipient. I was summoned to the Central Committee and received the letter in a solemn ceremony. I was swelled with pride and happiness. My wife was wiping tears of joy. My wide-eyed son, too young to understand the meaning of the occasion, was in my wife’s arms in wonderment. The next day, the North Korean People’s Army newspaper reported the ceremony in a large column, praising my patriotic action in the most flattering manner.

We Are All Happy

As my personal life was evolving along the preset course of happiness—secure job, residency in Pyongyang, marriage, children, promotion, and recognition by the party and the Dear Leader himself—I also saw many unspeakable things that stemmed from systemic problems within the society. In the city of Shinuiju in the early 1990s, there was a group of vagabonds, come from the countryside because the economy there was so bad. People nicknamed them penguins, as they moved in groups and wore dark, tattered rags. They had no place to live or work, so they carried bundles of personal belongings—dirty blankets, dented pots, shoes with holes, and other minor items. They lived mostly by begging or doing odd jobs, such as transporting sacks of imported flour from China and getting a sack as payment. I still vividly see images of those penguins and think that they looked more like refugees from the Korean War era than citizens of the glorious happy socialist republic.

Because my job as a foreign trade official allowed me to travel all around North Korea, I witnessed many tragedies that other people with restricted mobility would not have seen. The situation in Pyongyang was not as terrible as elsewhere, but in the early 1990s, even Pyongyangites were struggling with food problems. The food ration system was becoming dysfunctional just like everywhere else in the country, but the citizens were better off because of power they abused. The ones with influence could usually get whatever food they wanted through underground channels. The ones who had overseas relatives or a chance to travel overseas were also relatively better off than most people stuck in the country because they could get their hands on foreign goods, which were highly desired among wealthy North Koreans ready to pay any sum for them.

I remember how in the early 1980s, I learned about the unfortunate former Korean Japanese (
buksong gyeopo
) in the city of Hamheung. These were ethnic Koreans who had previously resided in Japan but decided to return to the Korean homeland and chose the north over the south as their legitimate land of origin. Because of their ties with relatives in Japan, these former Korean Japanese were known to be better off than average North Koreans. Those in Hamheung were visited by the local party members and were urged to contribute to the construction of Kim Il-sung’s statue. The visitors gave false promises of granting Pyongyang residency in return for their donation. Having contributed a handsome amount, one Korean Japanese waited and waited for a reply, became anxious, and started to pester the local party official about the transfer of residency. Annoyed by the frequent contact, the party official agreed to meet the Korean Japanese late at night by a warehouse on the outskirts of town. When the hopeful Korean Japanese showed up, the official chopped off his head with an ax. Then he chopped up the body, put the parts in a trunk, and dumped it into the sea. When the trunk was found by fishermen, the local authorities ordered the murderer to investigate the case! In the end, the criminal was exposed and publicly executed.

There is a less grim incident about a former Korean Japanese that I heard from my colleague at NSA. It was quite common for Korean Japanese to cremate ancestors, put their remains in jars, and keep them in the house. When the time came to commemorate the dead ancestors in an annual ceremony (
jesa
), the Korean Japanese would bring out the jars, bow in front of them, and offer sacrifices. Cremation was not a custom known to North Koreans, so when a pair of thieves broke into a former Korean Japanese’s household, they thought that the remains in the fancy jar was some kind of herbal medicine that a rich Korean Japanese had sent to their relatives in North Korea. So the thieves stole the jar, made a potion out of the remains, and guzzled it down like a special treat. When the former Korean Japanese found out about what happened, he was outraged and despaired, but in the end, he had to give up the idea of accusing the thieves, because now they were the only remains he had of his parents and he would have to invite the thieves to sit instead of the jar and offer sacrifices in annual ceremonies for his ancestors!

But not many stories end in laughter.

In the early 1990s at the Chilgol Collective Farm located in Mangyeongdae—Kim Il-sung’s birthplace—a horrendous mass murder of thirteen people took place. The incident came to public knowledge when a surgeon went to a marketplace to buy pork for his father’s birthday and found unusually fresh meat on the stands. But soon, because of his professional training, he was appalled to realize that what he was looking at was none other than human flesh. He asked the butcher for a price and found out that it was below the market rate. He bought one kilogram and headed straight to the police station, where he threw the meat on the chief’s desk and yelled at him.

“You bastards, what have you been doing while an atrocity like this was happening in our town?” the surgeon shouted out.

“What is this crazy fellow doing here throwing meat on the desk?” the chief of police yelled back.

“Look carefully, filthy swine, what you are looking at is human flesh!”

Only then did the police chief realize what he was looking at—that amorphous flesh, still exuding the fresh smell of blood. The ensuing investigation revealed that the entire family of the butcher was involved in the frantic cannibalistic spree, which was motivated by deep economic trouble. The family set up a stand in the farmer’s market in town and spotted rather stout peasants who were trying to sell sacks of rice. The wife approached these unsuspecting vendors to buy rice and told them to come to her house to receive payment. When she brought them to her place, located far away from the busy streets, her husband and brother would kill and butcher them with sharpened knives. The men would immediately take out fresh flesh and the wife brought it to the marketplace while the men burned the remaining body parts in a furnace. The team was caught after they had butchered their thirteenth victim. Those in the military in charge of security, including myself, knew about the incident soon after it happened from the criminal report.

Unbelievable incidents of cannibalism are too numerous to list in their entirety, but the common theme among these events is that people will do unthinkable things when they are famished to death. People will turn into animals to survive. In the mining town of Bukchang in southern Pyeongan province, state food rations came to a halt in the late 1980s. Things turned really bad and many disappeared due to starvation by the early ’90s. A man in his sixties spent all day looking for grass and tree bark in the mountain foothills, gradually dying of exhaustion and hunger. But one day, he saw a burial ceremony in the mountains as he was leaning against a tree and eating bark. Later that night, he came back to the burial site, dug out the ground, opened the coffin, and dragged the corpse down to his hut. He marinated the dead person’s flesh and preserved it in a large jar. When the old man was caught, he was consuming the marinated flesh of the third corpse he had found. Another incident in Haeju in Hwanghae province involves an old woman who went mad and dipped her grandchild head first in a large pot of boiling water. Her daughter-in-law was out to beg for food while the mother-in-law was taking care of the infant. The grandma passed out when she heard the child scream, never to open her eyes again. It was springtime, which was the toughest season for people in the countryside—long before the new crops would yield a harvest and long after the last grain from the previous harvest had run out.