Nothing to Envy (35 page)

Even the prison camp officials had given up on reeducation. They merely went through the motions, reading the lectures handed out by the Workers’ Party without enthusiasm. Everybody seemed to be in on the lie.

One day as the women were picking corn, the camp director came to deliver an impromptu lecture in the cornfield. It was the usual fodder. He urged them to arm themselves with the ideology of Kim Il-sung against the temptations of capitalism and to commit themselves to their nation.

Then he asked for a show of hands: Who would promise not to run away again to China? The women squatted in sullen silence. Oak-hee looked around. Not a single woman raised a hand.

After an uncomfortable silence, the prison director spoke up. “Well, if you go to China again, next time don’t get caught.”

In fact, Oak-hee was already plotting her next move. One day she was assigned to weed the vegetable fields outside the concrete walls of the compound but within the barbed-wire perimeter fence. Oak-hee spotted an elderly woman tending goats on the other side of the fence. Glancing around her to check that there was no guard near her, Oak-hee spoke to the woman through the fence. She offered her a deal: Oak-hee would give the woman her underwear if she would
tell Oak-hee’s mother where she was. Underwear is scarce in North Korea and Oak-hee’s was new, having been purchased recently in China. The old woman agreed.

Oak-hee squatted down and removed her underpants. She rolled them up into a ball, inserted a small note with her mother’s address, and handed them over the fence.

World Cup celebration, Seoul, 2002
.

M
RS. SONG WAS NOT SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT OAK-HEE WAS
at Nongpo. She’d thought it was only a matter of time before her daughter landed in prison. She hadn’t heard anything from Oak-hee since she’d run away from her husband three years earlier, but Mrs. Kim had assumed she was in China with the rest of those whores and traitors. If she’d betrayed the fatherland, she deserved to be in prison. But a daughter is a daughter. Mrs. Song couldn’t let her firstborn languish in Chongjin’s most notorious detention center.

After so many years spent surviving on the edge, Mrs. Song had swallowed many of her scruples. She’d also developed street smarts. She learned long ago that you could bribe your way out of almost
any predicament. As long as you weren’t caught cursing Kim Jong-il, you could get out of a death sentence with enough money. So she went to the black market and bought ten cartons of cigarettes at 50 won each. Then she asked around until she found the national security office in charge of Nongpo, all the while muttering under her breath that her wayward daughter had cost her a week’s income.

A few days later, Oak-hee appeared at her front door and collapsed into her mother’s arms.

Mrs. Song shrieked when she saw her. It was October, already cold, and Oak-hee was nearly naked and barefoot. Her shoes had been cut apart by the security guards at Nongpo, who thought she might be concealing money in the soles. She’d torn off her shirt sleeves to use as menstrual rags. She’d given away her underwear. What remained of her clothing was in shreds. Her hair crawled with lice. But when Mrs. Song gave her a bath, she could see that Oak-hee was healthier than she’d been before she left the country. Even after weeks of eating only gruel and the kernels of raw corn she picked in the fields, Oak-hee had good muscle tone. Her complexion was pink, glowing.

Oak-hee talked incessantly. In a torrent of manic energy, she spoke about everything in China—the white rice they ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the markets, the fashions. Her discourse was part travelogue and part political screed. Mrs. Song and her two younger daughters gathered around to listen.

“What’s life like in South Korea?” they asked.

Oak-hee didn’t know firsthand, but she’d watched plenty of South Korean television while in China.

“South Korea’s a rich country. Even the Chinese can’t dream of the riches in South Korea,” Oak-hee told them. “I swear I’ll go to South Korea before I die.”

The sisters sat crossed-legged on the floor as Oak-hee held forth. At times they were fascinated, at other times horrified. The middle sister, who was married to a railroad security guard, was the most straitlaced of the three. Her big eyes opened wider and wider as Oak-hee went on. Hesitantly, because she’d always been intimidated by Oak-hee, she interrupted.

“But our general has worked so hard for us …” She pointed to
the father-and-son portraits her mother had dusted just that morning.

“Can’t you see? Your general has turned you all into idiots,” Oak-hee snapped.

The youngest sister, Yong-hee, divorced and living with their mother, was more sympathetic to Oak-hee’s opinion, but she worried about her sister’s outspokenness. The family had gone through enough heartbreak; they didn’t need more trouble. Although Mrs. Song’s house was freestanding, someone might be lingering outside.

“Just be careful. Let’s all be careful what we say, okay?” she warned Oak-hee.

After her mother and sisters had heard their fill of her stories, Oak-hee started talking to other people. The
ajummas
who lived in the neighborhood clucked their tongues, but were curious just the same. They dropped by in the afternoon to welcome Oak-hee back and gathered around to listen.

Open your eyes. You’ll see our whole country is a prison. We’re pitiful. You don’t know the reality of the rest of the world.”

Whenever an image of Kim Jong-il came on the television, Oak-hee flew into a rage. “Liar! Cheat! Thief!” she would scream at the television.

Mrs. Song finally lost her temper. Oak-hee’s loose talk put the family at risk—it was treacherous. If it wasn’t her own daughter speaking like that, Mrs. Song would have felt compelled to report her under her obligations to the
inminban
. Despite all that had happened, Mrs. Song remained a believer.

“Shut up. You’re a traitor to the country,” Mrs. Song screamed at Oak-hee.

Oak-hee was startled—her mother rarely raised her voice—but she was not about to shut up. She taunted her mother in return.

“Why did you give birth to me in this horrible country?” Oak-hee shouted. “Who do you love more? Kim Jong-il or me?”

Mother and daughter fought incessantly. After forty days at her mother’s house, Oak-hee was sufficiently recovered from her ordeal in the prison camp to move on. She told her mother and sisters that she had learned from her earlier mistakes and would try again to make money in China. Only this time she wouldn’t get caught. Mrs.
Song grudgingly loaned Oak-hee more money. She was sick with worry, but at the same time relieved to see her daughter go.

EIGHT MONTHS PASSED
without word from Oak-hee. Then, in June, a woman came to Mrs. Song’s door claiming to have news of her daughter. Mrs. Song braced herself. Oak-hee must be back in prison, she thought. She would have to bail her out again. But no, the woman said Oak-hee was working near the Chinese border and was doing very well indeed. She wanted to repay her mother and had some clothing and gifts for the family, but she feared she might get arrested if she came back to Chongjin. Wouldn’t Mrs. Song please come to visit her instead?

Mrs. Song hesitated. She didn’t know this woman. She hadn’t traveled since the accident in 1995 that had unleashed so much grief on her family. She didn’t really need money; her biscuit business was doing well. The Songpyeon market now had stalls for the vendors and a roof. She paid rent and had a license. She felt like a proper businesswoman. She had remarried, too—sort of. It was more of an arrangement with an elderly widower who needed somebody to help keep house, but the man was kind and relatively well-to-do. Mrs. Song was living more comfortably than ever before. She had no reason to make a risky trip to the Chinese border, but she was still smarting over the 500 won she’d spent bailing Oak-hee out of prison. The strange woman promised Mrs. Song she wouldn’t have to take the train—Oak-hee had arranged for a private car. Mrs. Song was impressed. She accepted.

On a hot, rainy day in June 2002, Mrs. Song left for Musan. She packed just an overnight bag. She would spend the night and ride back in the morning. But when they arrived there was no sign of Oak-hee. Mrs. Song had been told only that Oak-hee was working at the border. The woman hadn’t specified which side of the border, but now she made it clear: Oak-hee was in China.

“You’ll have to go to China to get the money and clothing. Your daughter is waiting for you,” the woman told her. She introduced Mrs. Song to a man she said was her husband. “Don’t worry. He’ll take you over.”

Mrs. Song had come so far. Could she turn back? They took another car up a road toward Hoeryong, another border town. Then they waited for dark.

By the time they arrived at the river, it was ten o’clock and still raining. The river was swollen, sloshing over its banks and turning them into slippery mud. Mrs. Song could barely tell where land ended and the river began. Two men in the uniforms of North Korean border guards had joined them. One lifted her like a child onto his back and the other took the arm of the first to balance them as they teetered across the river. They stumbled a few times and nearly lost their footing. Mrs. Song was sure she would be dropped and swept away by the currents. Like most North Koreans of her generation, Mrs. Song couldn’t swim. But before the scream building within her could surface and give voice to her wishes
—take me back, take me home—
they were climbing out of the river. One guide gave the border guards some money and then disappeared into the water to cross back to North Korea. Mrs. Song and the other guide made their way through the darkness into China. They climbed a hill through the night and by daybreak were walking into a small village.

Then they got into a taxi, something Mrs. Song had never done before. Cars, trucks, scooters, and carts converged down narrow streets heading toward the market. Horns blared. It was 8:00
A.M.
and the shops were opening. The security gates over the display windows rolled up with the screech of metal against metal. The shopkeepers switched on music that rang out from big speakers over the doorways. Loud, horrible music, Mrs. Song thought. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears. If this was capitalism, she didn’t like it. Too noisy. How could Oak-hee live in such a terrible place?

Mrs. Song’s guide stopped to buy eggs, sausage, and pigs’ feet for their breakfast. They headed out of town and drove down a dirt road to a cluster of houses that made up a village. They went inside one of the houses. The guide introduced Mrs. Song to the owner of the house and his teenage daughter. They were ethnic Koreans of Chinese citizenship and spoke in virtually the same dialect as Mrs. Song. They showed her around. The house wasn’t anything remarkable—redbrick walls, a tile roof, a homemade wooden fence that
formed a courtyard out front—but it was crammed with all sorts of appliances: a stereo, a water purifier, a color television, a refrigerator. The man kept opening the refrigerator door, pulling out different things to eat and drink. Beer, fruit, kimchi. When they laid out the food the guide had brought, there was more to eat on that table than Mrs. Song had ever seen outside of a wedding feast. Everything she might possibly desire was here, everything but Oak-hee.

“Where’s my daughter?” Mrs. Song asked.

The man looked at her and mumbled something unintelligible. Mrs. Song asked again, this time more sharply.

“She’s gone to look for work,” he answered. Mrs. Song wasn’t sure that she believed him. Her hosts were nice, maybe too nice: Mrs. Song thought they were hiding something, but she was too exhausted to push further. She fell into a fitful sleep. When she woke up and there was still no sign of Oak-hee, she was gripped by a terrible suspicion: I’ve been kidnapped.

MRS. SONG DIDN’T KNOW
if she should try to run away. Where would she go? She didn’t know where she was. The original guide had left. Should she confront her hosts with her suspicions? And what had happened to her daughter? The couple kept reassuring her that Oak-hee had been delayed and would be back soon. The next day Oak-hee finally called. She spoke over a scratchy line and it sounded like she was far away. She tried to reassure her mother that everything was fine, that she would see her very soon, that she should rest.

“Where are you anyway?” Mrs. Song asked suspiciously.

“In Hanguk,” Oak-hee answered.

Mrs. Song had never heard of the place.

“Where is that? Near Shenyang?” asked Mrs. Song, referring to one of the largest cities in China’s northeast, about three hundred miles from where she was staying.

“Farther. I’ll call you tomorrow to explain.”

North Koreans call their country Chosun and their estranged neighbor Nam Chosun, literally South Korea. The South Koreans use an entirely different name for their country. They call it Hanguk.

In the next telephone call, Oak-hee clarified that she was actually in South Korea. Mrs. Song couldn’t believe it. She was so angry she shook with rage. She worried she was having a heart attack. Of all the bad things that Oak-hee had done in her life, from her childhood pranks to her foul mouth to her stint in prison camp, this was over the top. She had crossed over to the side of the enemy. She had paid these people to trick her mother into defecting. Mrs. Song had never been so angry in her life.