Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (8 page)

Until 1974 I stayed in the army and led a simple life of training for the military sports team. Then the team was dissolved and the military sent me to Kim Chaek
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Technological Institute for college education. So I, who’d never taken great interest in books, ended up studying mechanical engineering at one of Pyongyang’s most prestigious universities. North Koreans regard Kim Il-sung University and Kim Chaek Technological Institute as the top two schools in the nation. I stayed at the institute until 1980 as a member of the college sports squad, which was established as part of the intercollegiate sports network. Kim Il-sung University had a similar sports team, which was then headed by Kim Pyeong-il, the half brother of Kim Jong-il. Our Kim Chaek Technological Institute team was headed by a very kind man named K who took good care of me. K was himself a graduate of the Revolutionary School, so it did not take long for us to bond. We sports team members were always popular among girls, especially those from the countryside who dreamed of remaining in Pyongyang after graduation by marrying a native Pyongyangite.
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Although I was far from being tall or handsome, I was constantly sought after by those country girls while I played all kinds of sports—soccer, volleyball, basketball, etc. This was the time when I met the very famous Hong Yeong-hee, the heroine of the celebrated revolutionary film
Flower Girl
. I remember her as not being so pretty, but rather innocent looking, with tiny freckles all over her face. So many girls were after us, and life was easy, like a breeze. In the morning I was supposed to sit in classrooms, and in the afternoon I trained. As usual, I was far from being a successful student. Most morning class time was spent on a rooftop smoking with buddies. Instead of advanced mathematics, the members of the sports team were given junior high school-level arithmetic, so we did not have to worry too much about flunking. This is how I managed to graduate with honors from a top university without busting my head too much. While other students were eating rice mixed with barley in the student cafeteria, we sports team members ate white rice with plenty of meat at a faculty club. I remember that at Kim Chaek Technological Institute there were foreign students from countries such as Cambodia and Tanzania, all of whom were sponsored by the North Korean government. Since education was free for all in North Korea—from tuition to room and board—it created much pressure on government finance. Once a nutritionist published a thesis in which he stated that noodles made of barley root were a good source of energy. Eager to save money on student food, the state experimented with the idea. But the coarse texture of the noodles gave its consumers bleeding during bowel movements and the economical idea, no matter how appealing financially, had to be promptly suspended.

In 1978, K, the graduate of the Revolutionary School who directed the Kim Chaek Technological Institute sports team, became a big shot. He was promoted to colonel and was made the director of a political bureau within the Korean Workers’ Party. Upon my graduation in 1980, he called me to offer a job as chief of the Wonsan military outpost in Gang-won province. With the acceptance of this job I would be promoted to the rank of captain. I thanked him and told him that I would consider the offer. But when I learned that the Korean Workers’ Party had already visited Kim Chaek Technological Institute for a background check on me, I knew the choice had already been made. I did not object to remaining under this caring person’s mentorship. So I set out to the small town of Wonsan as the chief of the military outpost. Upon my arrival in this remote locale, not too surprisingly, I found out that I only had five subordinates. A captain with five subordinates! What kind of commander is he supposed to be?

An arrogant athlete from the capital city of Pyongyang, I felt like this small place could not handle my energy. The town itself was not much to speak of, inhabited by people who did not know anything beyond the confines of their remote mountainous basin. However, in terms of the North Korean military industry, Wonsan was a rather important site. It then had five major factories—Munsan iron mill, a chemical factory, a car plant, a pipe factory, and a refinery. It supplied a designated amount of products and energy for the North Korean military. Munsan iron mill, for example, had to supply 10 tons of zinc per year. Five subordinates were supervising each factory, but even to my inexperienced eyes, the supply system was not working well. There was too much corruption and ineptitude among workers and managers in these factories. I devised plans to change that in a short period of time, so I urged my subordinates to spot key managers of factories and gather them for a free vacation. I decided to win their hearts first, so I took them to the scenic tourist site of Geumgang Mountain resort on the east coast, where everyone enjoyed bathing in a hot spa. Then I took them for a tour of Pyongyang and even visited K’s office in the Central Committee Building of the Korean Workers’ Party. K greeted us with typical generosity and even promised the visitors that he would promote them to posts in Pyongyang if they performed well at their workplaces. Every manager’s mind was swollen like a balloon with hope by the time the delegation returned to Wonsan. They must have been in wild reverie, wondering if it would really be possible to move to Pyongyang. While their daydream continued, I set out to reorganize their managerial posts so that they would be under one another’s surveillance. I transferred the production manager of the iron mill to the car plant, whose manager was transferred to a chemical factory, whose manager, in turn, was transferred to a pipe factory, etc. Then I went around and told the workers in the pipe factory: “Look, the new manager from the chemical factory has tremendous connections with the Workers’ Party. If you don’t do a good job, it’s going to have a big impact.” To the workers in the car plant, I said: “The new production manager from the iron mill has an influential cousin in the army. You’d better show him your best.” This way, everyone started to watch their performance and everyone else’s. I also made good use of my connections with athletes. The manager of the Munsan iron mill sports team had been a member of the Revolutionary School judo team, which automatically established a very trusting relationship between us. This way I exponentially boosted the production quantity. The year I supervised five factories, we yielded 50 tons of zinc instead of the required 10 tons. For the army’s annual consumption of 500 kilograms,
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this was a remarkable surplus, which could bring in much profit when sold abroad. Back then North Korea exported one ton of zinc for $1,500 to Japan.

Pleasantly surprised by my outstanding performance, K wanted to give me a chance to make extra foreign currency with zinc production. Like every other work unit, the National Security Agency (NSA,
Gukga bowuibu
) within the North Korean military had its own foreign currency–earning department. K knew well that I was a trustworthy subordinate. As an unmarried orphan with no family to provide for, I was not as corrupt as others. As a military athlete, I was used to obeying commanders’ orders. I must have seemed the perfect candidate to take on the lucrative task of earning foreign currency within the military unit. Soon after I sent him a report of the surplus in zinc production, he announced that I was going to keep supervising five factories in Wonsan. At the same time, I was being transferred to the Pyongyang foreign currency–earning division within the NSA. The division worked under the name West Sea Asahi Company, a joint venture between a pro-North Korean company in Japan and the North Korean army unit. Even though it had the name of a private enterprise, it operated under direct military leadership to earn foreign currency for the North Korean leader’s political bureau. Recruited by a powerful superior who completely trusted me, I was on the way to rapid success and promotion. With an outstanding record of performance under my belt, I was returning to Pyongyang the same year I was sent to Wonsan! K also sent me a Nissan jeep to facilitate my business trips between Pyongyang and Wonsan. With permission to travel for business, I gained mobility to go anywhere I wanted, which was an impossible dream for ordinary citizens, who needed permits even for a short trip. The Nissan jeep served as my companion for more than ten years on every major road in North Korea, from the northern Sino-Korean border to the very southern port city of Nampo, as I drove through, and sometimes intersected with, other people’s lives in North Korea.

Marriage and Children

Y stepped into my life as a shy young woman, betraying the stern look of her military uniform. When I first saw her on a date our mutual friends set up, she was a petite soldier whose entire experience had been confined to the regimented life in the army. Never had she ventured beyond what was set out as models of revolutionary life by the party. Not until our first encounter had I realized that someone could look so pretty in a military outfit.

I met my future wife Y in Pyongyang after my job transfer. She had just turned twenty, fresh out of Gang Geon Military School.
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Y’s father was an influential person. He had a Volvo assigned to his post. He had lost his wife when Y was only a child. She was the first of four children, two sisters and two brothers, and she literally became the mother for her younger siblings. My future wife had an appropriate class background, was a party member, and had unflinching loyalty to the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. She worked as a political advisor for the Korean Workers’ Party, which was a well-regarded leadership position in North Korea. She was so devoted to the teachings of Kim Il-sung that she sacrificed herself to uphold the Great Leader’s ideals: she suffered chronic back pain after she single-handedly attempted to save a large board where Kim Il-sung’s instruction was inscribed. “Let us defend Kim Il-sung’s great ideals with our own lives” was the phrase she held onto when a gust of wind was knocking it down. She threw herself toward the falling board but was caught underneath it, the heavy board falling on her back. Her love for the Great Leader was such that she was literally ready to defend his ideals with her own life.

We got married soon after our first date. What was there to wait for? She was young, pretty, and had a good class background, and I was longing to have a family of my own. I was twenty-eight and she was twenty. In a typically modest North Korean wedding, we became husband and wife in late 1978. Our Great Leader Kim Il-sung criticized sumptuous weddings as remnants of feudalism and instructed everyone to avoid wasteful ceremonies. He instructed that the ceremony should be as simple as possible and the wedding presents be as practical as possible. There was no such thing as a honeymoon in North Korea. In the countryside, however, the weddings looked much like the ones from the old prerevolutionary days when all villagers were invited to drink and make merry, which often ended in carousing and fistfights. Then villagers would bring cargo trucks and have the newlyweds sit in the front seat while family members and friends sat in the open back of the truck to visit Kim Il-sung’s statue and pay respect. Villagers usually had no fancy gifts for the newly married couple, so they would bring things such as a bowl of just-harvested rice or a basket full of vegetables. In urban areas, especially in Pyongyang, things were little different. In the morning, family and close friends gathered in the house of the bride or groom and took pictures in front of a table set up with apples and pears. The newlyweds also bowed to their parents. When this short ceremony was over, two or three cars were mobilized to transport the couple and their family and friends to visit Kim Il-sung’s statue in Mansu Hill to lay flowers and pay respect. Then the party moved on to scenic sites in Pyongyang for more photo shoots. We visited Changkwang Street—one of the liveliest streets in Pyongyang—to take our photos. The newly married also exchanged gifts. Normally brides presented their grooms with a wristwatch while the grooms presented their brides with a ring. As I was working at the foreign currency–earning department, I had access to foreign currency stores. So I bought my wife an 18-karat gold ring with some kind of precious stone in the middle, I do not remember exactly what, and also presented her with imported fabric so that she could make a new Korean dress for the wedding day. Normally these ceremonial clothes would not be worn again and simply be put away in a dark corner of one’s closet, so families with few resources passed down these wedding garments from generation to generation.

It took Y and me some years to bring our first child into this world, since our first baby was lost on the altar of Kim Il-sung. In every household as in every public space, there is a portrait of Kim hanging high on the wall. Underneath it is a box called a “casket of devotion” where the cleaning supplies—clean cloths and feather duster—are stored. My wife would religiously clean the Great Leader’s portrait every morning. That was the first thing she did when she woke up. Even late into pregnancy when she was very close to the delivery date, she kept cleaning, until one day she fell off the chair while dusting the portrait. The shock took our first baby away. After this incident, she kept having miscarriages until we were blessed to see the birth of our first son in 1987.

Children

At last!

My first child was born in 1987 at the Pyongyang Military Hospital. Having grown up as an orphan, I longed for a family of my own. Moreover, since we had lost several babies in succession, the birth of my son B felt like an incredible gift, more than I could ever have asked for. I insisted that my wife deliver the baby at a military hospital, since that was the only facility I could trust for an important occasion like childbirth. Civilian hospitals were short of medical equipment and skilled doctors, which significantly limited their capability to basic matters, such as writing prescriptions, and not much else. Three years later, we were again blessed by the birth of a daughter, J. Although children of the same parents, our son and our daughter were as different as they could possibly be in their nature. If B was a taciturn gentleman, J was a frivolous coquette.