Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (11 page)

In 1992, I was on the way to Jeongju on a business trip. As I was driving on an unpaved road in the countryside, dry dust rose along the sides. I saw a woman walking ahead of me, so I slowed down to avoid raising too much dust. As I drove by, I noticed that she was standing there, barely moving. She looked as if she was going to collapse in a minute. I stopped the car and offered her a ride, although this was against the company rule. She was covered in sweat smeared with dust and fatigue. Her reddened eyes were completely covered with mucus. I asked her where she was from and where she was headed. The woman could barely talk due to exhaustion, but after a short break she told her story. Her husband was a worker in a chemical factory in Anju. They had two children, but as the food ration had halted, there was no way to survive in their hometown. So she and her husband each took a child and went in search of food. She was from the farming village of Jeongju, so she left the child at home and was on her way to town, hoping to find some food there. She has eaten nothing for three days and had no idea where the husband and the other child might be. I had some hard-boiled eggs that my wife had packed for me, so I offered her one. She took an egg in her palm but could not lift it to her mouth. Her arms were shaking so hard, as if they could not sustain the weight of an egg. When I dropped her on a small street of her hometown, I looked at her back, walking slowly toward her parents’ home. It was a half-demolished hut, and it did not look like the exhausted woman would get much there.

But even before the conspicuous economic hardship began to leave macabre scars in the early 1990s, in April 1982, I witnessed a public execution of a fifty-year-old man in Nampo, a port city near Pyongyang. Back in 1982, the food-rationing program in North Korea was still functioning normally and people had not begun to suffer from starvation. Still, there were many people struck with hardship, especially in the countryside. The executed man worked for a collective farm where he supplied water. One day, when he was working on a plot of land near a mountain, he saw a young woman, a neighbor of his, climbing down the mountain with a large sack on her back. She worked for a shipyard in the same town. One of her supervisors was struggling with neuralgia, and she had heard that azalea brandy can relieve the pain. So she went to the mountains to gather flowers, of which there were plenty on the hills in April. But the man thought she was returning from work with a sack of rice, a food ration from her workplace. When he demanded the sack, the girl meekly replied in shock: “Ajeossi,
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why would you want this sack?” She was so shocked that she could not continue talking. The desperate man raised a sickle to threaten her, but then he was seen by an elderly man of sixty-five years plowing the land down the hill.

“You bastard, leave her alone, why would you want to kill her?” When the elderly man started yelling at him, the aggressor froze that moment, left the girl behind, and started to chase the man. But ironically, the fifty-year-old could not catch up with the sixty-five-year-old. The latter ran fast for his life and escaped the danger. The fifty-year-old returned to the hill where he had left the young woman. Even though she had had enough time to escape, she could not move an inch because of shock. She was still shivering and in a moment, fell under the swing of the sharp sickle. When the man lifted what he thought was a sack of rice, he was surprised by how light it was, as it was filled with flower petals. Now a murderer, the flustered man returned home, packed all his belongings, and became a fugitive at his sister’s, in the next village. There he was arrested, tried, and when the first snow fell in November, brought to an execution ground. I was in Nampo to transport glasses for my superior, K, then and happened to witness this man’s execution, where I heard all the details of his crime. In retrospect, 1982 seemed peaceful, but it could have been the very beginning of food crisis that prompted this man to murder a neighbor for what he believed was a sack of rice. The government made a public display of this case to establish law and order, but the majority of witnesses felt a very different sentiment than the one intended. As I remember, the people who gathered at the execution ground saw a dark cloud spreading over the fate of their country where people were destined to kill each other for a sack of rice. Everyone was silent, but their hollow gazes seemed to ask:
What will happen next in the unknown future?
Could we have known back then that this was only a prelude to indescribable tragedy to come?

Downfall of a Model Citizen  
3

Family Secret

As my own life evolved into a pattern of normalcy, I became increasingly interested in my own background. Where did I come from? What happened to my birth parents, and how did I end up in the orphanage? None of this was known to me and I burned with curiosity whenever I thought about these questions. But as I was very busy with my work in the trade company, there was little time to contemplate my unknown past. Eventually, my curiosity grew into determination that I should find out about my parents. To have grown up as an orphan gave me an advantageous martyr’s status in North Korea, since I had lost my parents while they were defending the country. I also benefited from my adoptive parents’ influential roles in the party. Even though we were not tied by blood, having had them as my parents at one time enhanced my profile. But despite all this, I had an increasing desire to find out about the parents I had never met. Every day I was facing the mystery called myself—an enigma that had to be unburdened for me to be able to live on.

I decided to visit my dear nanny, Kim Hye-hwa, the woman who had raised me at the orphanage. I called the orphanage and inquired about her. The year was 1988. She was a retiree living with her stepdaughter in the town of Byeokseong in Hwanghae province. When I had a chance to stop at a business bureau nearby, I visited her house unexpectedly.

“Oh my, my goodness … I never dreamed of seeing you today!”

My dear nanny shed a stream of warm tears as she immediately recognized me on her doorstep. I had visited her only few times since moving back to Pyongyang in the late 1970s, and it had been almost ten years since we’d seen each other, but she was the same as before, kind and loving, now simply older and weaker. She was an honorary director of a local orphanage of which her stepdaughter was in charge. I was relieved to see that she was being taken care of by her stepdaughter and son-in-law, who worked for the local party organization. I asked her about how I ended up at the orphanage. Luckily, she had taken copies of all the records of those orphans she personally reared with her when she was transferred from Pyongyang to Byeokseong. She looked up mine and found out that a young man named H had dropped me off. There was a record of his address: Daepyeong village in Hwanghae province. The old nanny copied the address and gave it to me with a significant look.

Soon afterward, I visited the village and asked for H. Villagers told me that the man was now working as the general manager of a food factory in a nearby town. I knew that visiting him might take some time, so I was ready to move on when an old man on the street corner started to scrutinize me and asked, “Isn’t your name S?”
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I sharply turned toward him.

“Yes, it is,” I replied.

“Can’t you recognize me?”

The man had ordinary features of an aged person—sagging cheeks and deep dark circles around his eyes, which made it difficult to see them.

“No, I cannot,” I murmured.

“Silly me, of course not. You were only an infant when you left. How could you have remembered anything, you poor thing? … As for me, I am a very distant relative of your mother.”

Having said this most surprising thing, he sighed deeply and lowered his gloomy eyes. A chill ran along my spine. On the one hand, I felt stunned to have met a relation, the first person I knew to be connected to by blood, but on the other hand, I was shocked by the old man’s ominous reaction. If he was a distant relative of mine, why did he look so dejected? Wasn’t he glad to meet me, if he hadn’t seen me since I was an infant? I did not want to ask him anything more. The odd reaction of the old man was like a bucket of ice water poured onto burning curiosity, and I did not feel like inquiring about my past any longer. I wanted to return to my home in Pyongyang as soon as I could, to the familiar faces of my wife and my son, the warm embrace of my loving family.

But on my way back to Pyongyang, a twist of fate made me pass a large sign of the food factory outside the village where H worked. It was just a few minutes away on the road from the village. I could not resist the temptation to put an end to this strange journey of self-discovery. When I drove in, the guards requested my identification since I was not wearing my military uniform but civilian clothes, as I often did on business trips. Upon inspecting my identification they realized that I was a lieutenant colonel in the People’s Military and cordially let me in. When I stepped into H’s office, he scrutinized me with an arrogant air. He had a noticeably condescending attitude, quite becoming of a general manager at a factory overseeing five to six hundred employees. Under his supervision, they were operating a confectionery, a distillery, and a bakery. During that time of harsh economic conditions, this was a highly coveted position in North Korea. When the state-controlled food ration system could not guarantee distribution any longer, food was better than cash since everyone was willing to barter what they had in order to survive. If one had access to food, it surely meant one had access to power.

“What brings you here?” H asked me, swaggering noticeably.

“I had something to ask you,” I answered.

“We do not have any bottles of spirits to give away at this time,” he intercepted coldly. Obviously he thought a military officer had come to bully him for free stuff, just like my daughter’s kindergarten teachers would ask for free things from me.

“Do you work for a market?” he asked.

“No, I have something to discuss with you,” I told him impatiently.

Noticing the seriousness of my expression, he dismissed all the secretaries in the office and closed the door. I waited a few seconds and asked, “Do you happen to know the person by the name of S?”

His face changed that moment. The obvious arrogance disappeared and instead he appeared pale and frozen, dumbfounded by what he had just heard. In unsettling stillness, he glanced over my face; his cheeks twitched, then tears welled up in his eyes and ran down his face in two rivulets.

“I am your maternal uncle. Your mother is nearby, staying in our village,” he told me in a trembling voice.

I could not say a single word, nor could I breathe.

After some silence, he continued to reveal my true background.

Uncle told me that I had a sister, a year older than I, who had died of hunger after the Korean War. I had an elder brother too, but my maternal grandmother had urged my uncle to drop me at the orphanage and send my brother to Revolutionary School in fear that we would not be safe with our own family. Uncle was a teenager just about to graduate junior high school when he laid me in a cart and brought me to the orphanage. He left his address, hoping that I would be able to find my way back to him someday.

“What happened to my mother?” I asked, barely breathing.

“I wish you wouldn’t ask that question.”

“I must know. How in the world can I not ask about her when I just heard that she is alive?”

“We all suffered a great deal because of your father.”

My uncle told me that my father worked as a peddler crossing the 38th parallel during the Korean War. Nobody knows what really happened, but the North Korean government soon arrested and executed him for having spied for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. My uncle escaped punishment because in legal documents, my parents were recorded as divorced at the time of my father’s arrest, and therefore Uncle and Father were no longer related. Uncle later went on to earn his doctorate and became a distinguished specialist in fermentation. Having proved his professional skills and dedication to work, he worried less about being persecuted for having been connected to an American spy.

My brother had come to see my uncle in 1986, two years earlier. But unfortunately, he was not alone. A political advisor from the party came along to verify his class background in order to recommend my brother for membership in the party. My brother was a skilled worker who distinguished himself with diligence and talent, so his superiors had decided to reward him by admitting him. Every North Korean had to have their family background checked and verified in order to be promoted or initiated into the powerful organization. This was why my brother visited his hometown, which he had left at the age of seven. There was simply no way he could have known about the disastrous repercussions his visit would bring. The party member who accompanied him almost fainted when he accessed my brother’s file: he did not expect to see the heinous description of “American spy” in the record of a model worker. The party member was a sympathetic man who told my brother he would act as if he’d seen nothing that day. Not having seen his own family record but realizing that there was something seriously wrong with it, my brother urged Uncle to tell him everything. It did not take long for him to realize that he had no future in North Korea. He believed that he’d survived this time, but sooner or later his record would be revealed. It was only a matter of time. To be the son of an American spy is the worst kind of record any North Korean could have, and he seriously contemplated escaping. He gathered a group of friends who shared his plans and prepared to flee. But a hidden spy among the group divulged the plan to the authorities before it came to fruition. My brother was arrested and accused of being the son of American spy who plotted to betray his country. He was shot in front of a large crowd at his own workplace, which had praised him as a model worker. My mother was also arrested upon his execution and was sentenced to hard labor. Having served her term, she had nowhere else to go but her hometown, where she was living quietly, out of sight.