Without You, There Is No Us (13 page)

Of course, they had been lied to themselves, all their lives. I thought about this the evening that Rachel pulled me aside and whispered: “Have you heard of Dangun?”

Dangun is the mythical founder of Korea, whose first kingdom is traced back to 2333 B.C. He was said to have been fathered when Hawnung, the son of the Lord of Heaven, breathed on a bear that turned into a woman. It appeared that Rachel’s students had been taught that Dangun’s remains had been excavated by Kim Il-sung in 1993, the year before his own death. (This was clearly meant to plant in people’s minds the idea that he was predestined to rule Korea, and to legitimize his son, Kim Jong-il, who would come to power in 1994.) The students talked about their desire to visit the Dangun gravesite in the heart of Pyongyang. Rachel found the students strangely gullible, yet it was she who roamed the ditch beside the teachers’ dormitory, searching for the spot where the sacred bell from the first church of Pyongyang had “accidentally” been found on the PUST campus. We believe what we want to believe. If these sad people wanted so desperately to hold on to the myth of their Great Leader as the rightful heir to Dangun, who could blame them? The blame really lay with those who perpetuated these stories to control the masses.

And so I went from love to pity to repulsion and distrust, then back to empathy and love again, and these switches of feeling were confusing. I reminded myself that I did not come from a place where mind games were a prerequisite for survival to such an extreme degree, a place where the slightest act of rebellion could have unimaginable consequences.

Slowly, I became used to the expressions on their faces as they lied or said things they regretted, and I began to be able to tell which statements were true and which were not, which students never ever faltered, and which sometimes made slips. But there were some evenings when I did not want to play this guessing game, when my disappointment was so profound that I chose to sit with the students whose English was the poorest so that they would be less likely to lie to me.

This feeling was akin to heartbreak, and it took me a while to make sense of it—until one evening after dinner, looking at the students dotted across the schoolyard with their buckets, on garden duty, which seemed to happen more frequently as we neared Victory Day, July 27, it occurred to me that it was all futile, the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity, because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of politicians drew a random line across the map, separating families who would die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land. On that evening, as a sun the color of mournful pomegranate fell behind the Forever Tower, behind the smoke stack, behind this city, this school, behind the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.

11

S
UNDAY
,
JULY
24
WAS
ELECTION
DAY
IN
PYONGYANG
, but for us it was a day of prayer. My fellow teachers had been asking for permission to visit one of the two churches in Pyongyang, and our destination was Bongsu Church. President Kim was with us that day and explained that it was not a real church but that we were to respect their desire to show us they had religious freedom, which they did not. The DPRK regime is known for repressing unauthorized religious activities with arrests and even executions.

From the bus, we could see that the mood was celebratory, the streets filled with people, with many of the women in brightly colored, billowing
hanbok
(Korean traditional dress). I saw a new slogan on a building:
LET
US
ALL
PARTICIPATE
IN
THE
ELECTION
AND
SUPPORT
THE
REVOLUTION!
Young children in school uniforms—white shirts, navy skirts or pants, red kerchiefs—sang loudly and marched in groups, waving plastic Kimjongilias and Kimilsungias and holding up a sign that read
LET
’
S
BUILD
OUR
SOCIALIST
NATION
TO
FOLLOW
OUR
GREAT
GENERAL
KIM
JONG
-
IL!
They were gathered in long lines every few blocks or so, in front of big red signs that said “Voting Booth.” We were told that the people were electing their city and county representatives, that the election happened every four years, and that anyone over the age of seventeen could vote.

There were even fewer cars on the street than usual, and President Kim told us that on Election Days, only the military was allowed to drive. Although we had been cleared for the trip, we were pulled over by a guard. Mr. Han seemed very upset and told him that the bus was full of foreigners, and that we were late for something important. Ten minutes later, we were permitted to drive. Usually the bus circled the same area, passing the Grand People’s Study House, Juche Tower, Potonggang Department Store, and the Koryo Hotel, which were all within a radius of a few blocks, but that day we took a different route. Along the way I saw women doing laundry in the murky waters of the Potonggang River, which ran through the heart of the city. Men fished from its banks. People were squatting and cutting grass or sweeping streets as usual. There was no litter whatsoever. I also noticed a few bony women stooping over pools of water on the ground with buckets. They would pour earth into the water, let it soak up the water, then shovel the wet earth back into the buckets and dump it into a pile. This seemed to be Pyongyang’s version of a storm drainage system. We drove past a big lily pond and saw someone fishing there as well. Perhaps those people were done voting.

The church was near a group of apartments that looked like a slum. The cement buildings were run-down and the first-floor windows had no glass, only metal guards. I glimpsed one man’s face through the dark hole that was a window, and whatever was inside looked even darker. But before I could even reflect on it, our bus had zipped past and pulled up before a big, modern, nondescript building topped with a cross, reportedly built with donations from South Korean Christians. A man in a pastor’s gown came down the front steps to welcome us. Although we were late because we had been stopped, the entire church had been expecting us and had waited to begin the service.

Inside, about a hundred parishioners and a choir sat in almost perfect silence on the pews. They were mostly women between the ages of thirty and fifty. As we entered they turned toward us and smiled in unison. They looked reasonably well off, although not as affluent as our students, and for a moment I wondered why those people were not at the voting booth. We were directed to front-row seats and given brand-new Bibles and hymn books in Korean and English. Each of us was also given a set of headphones and a device so that we could listen to the service with the aid of simultaneous translation. When you turned it on, a perky voice said, “Welcome to our church,” as though it were an English conversation lesson. Next to the pastor was a projector screen on which we could see ourselves. I looked around to see who was filming us, but it was impossible to tell. Soon a woman in a shiny
hanbok
went up to the altar to recite a prayer—really more of a beseeching soliloquy about unification, the sorrow of the Korean people, and the evils of those who had separated us. It sounded as though she had performed it many times before.

The sermon was much the same. The pastor talked about the evils of the South Korean regime, which, backed by the American imperialists, kept Korea divided. This crime would be punished, he insisted, quoting Romans 6:23— “For the wages of sin is death …”—to underscore his point. At some point we all had to go to the front and sing to our North Korean Christian brothers and sisters, who put on happy and excited expressions as if on cue. We were encouraged to take photos throughout.

I kept looking at the faces of the pastor and parishioners, which revealed nothing. It was all theater, and I was part of it. They were pretending to be Christians, and we were pretending to believe them. I remembered that we had been instructed to pray secretly, with our eyes open, while we were at PUST. Here the situation was reversed: our group prayed openly and North Koreans performed what seemed to be a charade. Perhaps when they spoke of God they privately substituted the words “Kim Jong-il.”

It was a relief to listen to the choir, which sang so fervently and beautifully that I wondered if they had been selected for their singing talent. This was not such a terrible duty, I thought. They could come here and daydream for an hour and sing. Their friends might even envy them such a cushy assignment.

Then they sang a tune that was oddly familiar to me. It had been my paternal grandmother’s favorite hymn. She hummed it often, though she wasn’t much of a Christian and only went to church when her panic attacks took a turn for the worse. Before the panic attacks, she had been an atheist, although, as with most Korean families, there were traces of Buddhism and Shamanism in our family’s past.

My grandmother had married my grandfather at sixteen, borne three children and raised them, lived through the Japanese colonization, and nearly died of malnutrition during the Korean War. But she rarely talked about any of that. Instead she talked about the women—my grandfather’s women, one of whom was a
giseng
(geisha) who moved in and took over the master bedroom. It was not clear whether this mistress was a real
giseng
or a common bar hostess, as these women inevitably came and went too quickly for my grandmother to learn their real identities, but this
giseng
, or fake
giseng
, would drink
jungjong
(sake) with my grandfather every night, and it was my grandmother’s duty to bring them trays of food. My grandmother always said that it was my grandfather’s roving eyes that caused her panic attacks.

It was after every doctor concluded that her illness was imaginary, including one who recommended that she try sucking on mint candies as a remedy that she visited the local priest and turned toward Jesus. For her, Jesus was a way of dealing with my grandfather’s womanizing. When he was between women and feeling remorseful, he would reluctantly take her to church, always declaring that no one would see a Gwangsan Kim, a descendant of great Confucian scholars, carrying a Bible in public. And so he would carefully wrap his wife’s Bible in newspaper before tucking it under his arm, and he would leave her at the threshold of the church, never once crossing it himself.

It seemed unfathomable that life had led me to this unlikely place, this fake North Korean church where I sat listening to a fake choir with a group of real believers and stumbled on the memory of my grandmother and her halfhearted Christianity. But in that moment I realized that whether she had been a true believer or not, church had offered her some comfort in her tortured life, and I was grateful for that.

Soon we were ushered out and encouraged to take a Bible and a hymn book with us as souvenirs. The parishioners smiled and waved and sang, “Let’s meet again,” and the pastor stood outside and posed for pictures with all of us. And we got on the bus, all the parishioners still waving at us, and then we could see them walking away all at once, quickly disappearing into Pyongyang’s streets as though they had dispensed with their morning duty.

That afternoon, some teachers were shown an election booth. They were urged to take photos, and the standard pretty female guide explained how votes were cast. According to her, there were two candidates’ names on the ballot, and Pyongyang citizens chose one of them, just as they might in any other free country. One of the teachers, however, who taught English to the counterparts said that those in her class had let slip that there was only one candidate, handpicked by the government, so Election Day really meant that you showed up and picked that candidate. Did this mean the government had set up a fake election just for us? Beyond the church and the election booth and the people lined up to vote, what else was there for our eyes only? Did the lights in the windows go dark as soon we drove past them?

At dinner that night, my students asked, as usual, what we had done that day. Since we were not supposed to talk about Jesus with them, I asked what they had done. They all answered that they had voted. This was the first election in which they had been able to vote, and they found it very exciting, they said. The school did not have enough vans to transport all 270 students into the city, and I knew they were never allowed out anyway, so I asked them how they had traveled to Pyongyang. They walked, they told me. I could not believe what I was hearing, but I pressed on. It was about ten minutes to Pyongyang by car, so I casually asked how long it had taken them to walk there. On this, their answers varied. Some said thirty minutes; others said one hour. What time had they left? Some said 8 a.m.; others said 9. However, we had left at 9 that morning, and we had seen no trace of them.

THE
NEXT
DAY
, at the staff meeting, we were told we had to reimburse PUST for gas and for the meals for our minders and driver. It was a modest amount, five or ten dollars for each of our outings, but considering that we were teaching for free and had spent our own money, or that of a sponsoring church, to fly there, it seemed strange that we were expected to pay to be guarded.

Then we were told that the Arirang Mass Games, a major festival that celebrates the DPRK each August, would cost each of us as much as $400 if we wanted to go. The school recommended that we purchase the mid-range tickets for $225. I had seen the games during one of my previous visits and was taken aback by the price. Once you got over the novelty of seeing tens of thousands of children forming the petals of Kimjongilias or Kimilsungias or a hammer and sickle, you couldn’t help but imagine the countless hours they must have forced to rehearse. A few other teachers seemed shocked at the price but agreed to buy tickets since they did not know when they would return. This was always the case with North Korea. It was like the bad boyfriend whose presence could never be depended on, so you always had to seize the opportunity to spend time with him when he made himself available.

The next piece of news was delivered by Dr. Joseph, who looked almost embarrassed as he asked everyone for donations to feed the students. According to him, “the others”—the counterparts, I assumed—kept urging him to make a personal donation of $500 or more for “a meal with plenty of meat in it.” I suspected that the meat was not for the students but to satisfy the greedy demands of the counterparts. One of these men often liked to repeat, “Oh, you’re Comrade Kim Suki. You caused us much trouble. You have no idea what a headache it was for me to get your visa. After all I went through for you, maybe you should thank
me
.” I felt quite awkward the first time he said this but laughed along with him, pretending that it was a joke.

This kind of extortionary behavior was typical in transactions with North Korea. During the New York Philharmonic’s visit, I had met a number of South Korean journalists who were rather jaded by the antics of North Korea and uniformly said that to understand North Korea, you needed to follow the money. The money that funded PUST came from individual donors around the world, as well as from the South Korean Ministry of Unification, with no contribution that I knew of from North Korea. Apparently, the rest of the world was feeding and educating the children of their leaders. On a micro level, there were the frequent requests for small sums of money that we had gotten used to. The counterparts wanted to be fed, and we were expected to accommodate them.

The last bit of news was slightly alarming. Dr. Joseph told us that, according to the counterparts, some of our students would not be going home for the summer break. Only
some
students would go home, Dr. Joseph said. Some of the richest ones, most likely. I could already guess who among my students would be chosen. The differences among them were obvious. A few used smooth white sheets of paper, the kind we were used to back home, for their homework, but most used the rough, brownish paper that was the norm. The white-paper users were often the same boys who owned electronic dictionaries, had glowing complexions, and spoke better English.

It turned out that the students’ entire year was meticulously mapped out. During breaks, they either stayed on campus doing extra work or worked at some sort of collective farm. None of it was their choice. Dr. Joseph clarified that there was no such thing as a vacation in the DPRK. Sarah confirmed this. The theme of the reading she had to teach that week happened to be “vacation,” and she had realized that the vacation here was different from our idea of vacation. There was time set aside for recreation, such as playing sports, but there was no such thing as a prolonged holiday. All students had six days of school per week, and on Sundays many had duties to perform. This schedule did not change much during their vacation, since they either attended schools for Juche meetings or Daily Life Unity critiques, and the rest of the time, they were ordered to work at collective farms. This was a country where no one was allowed free time.