Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

There was yet another last wish that would be harder to fulfill. Tae-woo wanted his family in South Korea to be notified of his death. The request sounded like the hallucinations of a dying man.

  Notwithstanding the nearly half century that had passed since the Korean War, there was no postal service between North and South Korea and no telephone service. The Red Cross was not permitted to carry messages. (It was not until 2000 that some highly choreographed family reunions were held, but only for a fraction of those people separated by the Korean War.) Mi-ran and her siblings assumed their South Korean grandparents were long dead, but had not a clue about their father’s sisters. To contact relatives in South Korea seemed utterly impossible.

  THE YEAR AFTER Mi-ran’s father died, her sister So-hee came rushing into the house. She was out of breath, her face flushed with excitement. She’d just spoken with a friend who had admitted to traveling back and forth to China. He knew people there who could help them get in touch with their father’s family. Once you were inside China, he assured Mi-ran’s sister, you merely had to pick up a telephone to dial South Korea.

  Maybe they wanted to try?

  Mi-ran and So-hee were suspicious at first. You could never trust anybody who wasn’t family. This was exactly the way that the secret police entrapped people.

  After a few days of deliberation, they decided the friend was sincere. He had relatives in China, as well as a whole network who could help. He knew somebody with a truck who would drive them to the border; a border policeman who knew exactly where to cross the river and who could bribe the appropriate people to look the other way; a cousin with a house just across the border where they would be safe. The plan was for Mi-ran and So-hee to go together for a few days. They confided in only one person, their newly married sister, who was sworn to secrecy. However, she couldn’t keep such a big secret. She blabbed to their mother, who put her foot down.

  “Unmarried girls can’t go alone to China,” she decreed. Already rumors had circulated that North Korean women were raped or kidnapped to work in the sex industry or killed and had their organs stolen. Mi-ran’s mother wasn’t to be crossed.

  They huddled in a family conference, arguing about what to do. Mi-ran’s brother insisted that, as the man of the family, he should go alone. Their mother wasn’t okay with this option either. He was only twenty-two years old, the baby of the family, her only son.

  Finally it was decided. Mi-ran, So-hee, and their brother would go, along with their mother. It would be a family trip. Her recently married sister didn’t want to go, and they didn’t dare tell the oldest sister, who was living with her husband and children in a military compound and would have never approved.

  MI-RAN’S FAMILY HAD never been among the most faithful—her mother scoffed at the women who dusted the leaders’ portraits every day—but they weren’t actively opposed to the regime. The most daring among them, as it turned out, was Mi-ran’s brother, Sok-ju, who unbeknownst to the others had been listening to South Korean radio with earphones at night. The others didn’t care much about current events; they were all too busy working to think about the outside world.

  Relative to other North Koreans, Mi-ran’s family was thriving in the new economy. Her mother was still operating the corn mill. They weren’t hungry; they weren’t in trouble with the law. They didn’t have a pressing reason to leave North Korea. But opportunity presented itself and once they pursued it, one thing followed another, the plan gained momentum, and it was too late to turn back. The ramblings of a dying man had become an imperative that was propelling them toward the border.

  They would go to China to contact her father’s relatives in South Korea. They had no idea whether they could locate them or if their relatives would be glad to hear from them. They didn’t dare think about actually going to South Korea.

  All the elements of the plan fell into place within just a few weeks. In their harmonica house, with its paper-thin walls and nosy neighbors, they couldn’t do anything that would betray the agitation within. They had to maintain an outward appearance of calm. Nothing could look like it was out of the ordinary. They couldn’t sell off possessions to raise money for the trip. They couldn’t nail boards over the windows to secure their house.

  Mi-ran had one urgent task in preparation for leaving. The night before their departure she took out a carefully wrapped bundle from her clothing cupboard. It contained every letter she had ever received from Jun-sang. She had kept them with all the gifts he had given her over the years. Her most prized possession, the butterfly-shaped barrette decorated with rhinestones, she would leave behind. The letters had to be destroyed. She ripped each one into tiny pieces before throwing them out. She didn’t want anybody to learn of the decade she and Jun-sang had spent obsessed with each other. Nobody knew except his brother and two of her sisters. Now more than ever it was important to keep the romance a secret.

  Mi-ran told herself they were going just for a short trip to make the telephone call, but in her heart, she knew she might never come back—whether or not their South Korean relatives would accept them. After they were gone, they would be denounced as traitors. “She received an education through the benevolence of the party and she betrayed the fatherland,” she could almost hear the party secretary saying. She didn’t want her guilt to rub off on Jun-sang. After she was gone, his life could go on as it had before. He could find himself a suitable wife, join the Workers’ Party, and spend the rest of his life in Pyongyang as a scientist.

  He’ll forgive me, he’ll understand, she told herself. It’s in his best interest.

  MI-RAN LEFT THE next morning, a small backpack slung over her shoulder. She mounted her bicycle and casually waved good-bye to her mother and brother. The plan was for everyone to leave the house separately to avoid attracting attention. Later in the day, her mother would pop her head into a neighbor’s front door to mention she was off to help one of her married daughters with a baby for a week or two. That would buy them a little time before the police were notified that they were missing.

  They met up in Chongjin, where Mi-ran’s sister had an apartment. Mi-ran and her sister went off together on foot to find the man with the truck who would drive them to the Chinese border. Mi-ran felt unnaturally calm, as if each motion were purely mechanical. She was doing what she had to do, detached from the consequences of her actions. But as she was walking with So-hee, she happened to glance across the street and her heart stopped.

  She saw Jun-sang walking in the opposite direction, or at least it appeared to be him. Mi-ran had excellent eyesight, so even across six lanes of traffic she could swear it was him, even though it was October, when he would be ensconced in his research at the university. Her first instinct was to cross the wide street and hug him, which of course she couldn’t do in public, but there was so much she needed to tell him. She wanted him to know that she cared for him, that she wished him only the best, and that she had him to thank for encouraging her to go to teachers’ college. She would tell him that his enthusiasm for life had given her the courage to do as much as she had with her life, including what she was about to do. She was sorry if her actions might hurt him in the short term, but… She stopped herself. Just as soon as the words formed in her head, she realized it would all come gushing out and she wouldn’t be able to keep the secret. It would compromise her family and his as well, if he were to know.

  She kept walking on her side of the street, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds until the man who may or may not have been Jun-sang was out of sight.

  THEY RODE IN SILENCE in the back of the truck, to Musan, the mining town where Mi-ran’s father had been sent as a prison laborer after the Korean War. It was a ghost town now, its mines and factories closed. But beneath the lifeless exterior, the place was teeming with smugglers. The town is situated near one of the narrower stretches of the Tumen River and, along with Hoeryong and On-song, was developing into one of the hubs for illegal border crossings into China. It was a growth industry, perh
aps the only one in North Korea. The truck driver specialized in bringing people without passports or travel permits to the border. It was out of the question to take a train, since document checks were strict.

  If anybody spotted the family, they wouldn’t have suspected that they were fleeing their home. They wore their best clothing underneath their everyday clothes, hoping not to look like pathetic North Koreans once they got to China. Their attire also supported their cover story—they were attending a family wedding in Musan. They carried only enough luggage for a weekend excursion. Stuffed inside were a few family photographs and dried seafood, fish, squid, and crab, Chongjin’s gastronomic specialties. The food was intended not for their own consumption, but for bribes. There were two checkpoints along the fifty-mile route to Musan. A few years earlier, they wouldn’t have dared drive to Musan without permits; but this was 1998 and you could buy almost anything with food.

  THE CROSSING HAD BEEN carefully scheduled for a moonless night, at the exact time that the border guards were most likely to be asleep. The location was on the outskirts of Musan, where the guardposts were spaced two hundred meters apart. The time and place of their crossing had also been coordinated with a guide on the Chinese side of the river who was expecting a “parcel” to arrive after midnight.

  Mi-ran was traveling alone. Her mother, brother, and sister had gone earlier, per the arrangement. It was better if family members crossed separately. If caught alone, you could plausibly claim you had wandered over because you were hungry. With a little luck, you would get a light sentence, maybe a year in a labor camp. If an entire family was caught, it would be judged a premeditated defection and the punishment would be much, much worse. Exactly what, Mi-ran didn’t know, since she’d never met anyone who’d run away. She tried hard to dispel such thoughts from her mind.

  A guide escorted her out of Musan, down a dirt road that ran parallel to the river. When the road ended at a cornfield, he left her. He gestured to her to cross the field and keep walking in the direction of the river.

  “Just go straight. Keep walking straight,” the guide told her.

  By now Mi-ran’s unnatural calm had evaporated. Her body was trembling from fear and cold. The October day had been Indian-summer warm, but the temperature dropped to an autumnal chill by nightfall. Only a few stubborn leaves were still clinging to branches. The bareness of the trees left Mi-ran exposed. It was well past the harvest by now, and as hard as she tried to walk quietly, the dried corn stems crunched under her feet. She was sure somebody was watching, about to grab her by the scruff of the neck.

  Without light to guide her, it was difficult to follow her orders to just go straight. Which way exactly was straight? Where was the river anyway? Shouldn’t she have reached it by now? She wondered if she’d gotten turned around in the cornfield.

  Then she almost collided with a wall. It stood directly in her path, looming high above her head and stretching as far in either direction as she could see. It was white concrete, like the wall around a jail or a military compound. Had she walked into a trap? She was certain now she’d walked the wrong way. She had to get out of here. Fast.

  She edged her way along the white wall. As she followed it with her hands, the wall got lower and lower until it was easy enough to climb over. She understood now. It was a retaining wall for the river embankment. She scrambled down to the water.

  Autumn is the dry season in Korea so the river was especially low, only reaching her knees, but it was so cold that her legs turned numb. They felt like they were made of lead as her sneakers filled with water. She had forgotten the instructions to roll up her pants. She was sinking into the silt. She lifted one leg, then the other. Step by step she inched forward, trying hard not to slip and topple into the water. Keep walking straight, she told herself, echoing the words of her guide.

  Suddenly Mi-ran felt the water receding to her ankles. She pulled herself up to the riverbank and, sopping wet, looked around. She was in China, but she couldn’t see anything. There was nobody there. She was completely alone in the dark. Her throat was clenched and dry, but even if she’d had the wherewithal to call out, she dared not.

  Now she was truly panicked. She looked back behind her at North Korea. She saw from the other side the white wall that had so confused her. Beyond that the cornfield adjacent to the road where the guide had left her. If she could find that road, she could walk back to Musan. From there she could catch a train to Chongjin and the next day she would be home. She would go back to her teaching job. Jun-sang would never know she’d nearly run away. It would be as though none of this had ever happened.

  As she contemplated her options, she heard a rustling in the trees. Then a man’s voice.

  “Nuna, nuna.”

  Her brother was calling her, using the Korean word for “older sister.”

  She reached out for his hand and was gone from North Korea forever.

  CHAPTER 15

  EPIPHANY

  Apartment blocks in Chongjin.

  AT UNIVERSITY IN PYONGYANG, JUN-SANG WAS UTTERLY DEPENDENT on the vagaries of the postal system to stay in touch with friends and family back home. He had several regular correspondents besides Mi-ran. His mother used to write him with tidbits of information about her dogs. His father would prod him to study harder: “For the sake of Kim Il-sung and the Workers’ Party who have given you so much,” he would sign off his letters to please the censors he assumed were reading them. During the bitter winter months, when the railroad employees were suspected of burning the mail to keep warm, Jun-sang would sometimes go for months without a letter. So he didn’t worry when several of his letters to Mi-ran went unanswered. When October, then November, passed, and December came without a word from her, he became concerned.

  When he arrived in Chongjin for his winter vacation he was preparing to ask his brother in his most nonchalant voice if he’d seen Mi-ran around. But his brother preempted his question, blurting out, “She’s gone!”

  “Gone? Gone where?” Jun-sang couldn’t accept what he was hearing. He hadn’t had a hint that Mi-ran was planning a trip. She always told him everything she was doing, didn’t she? Though he’d thought that her letters were perhaps a little chilly over the summer, that maybe she was brooding over his reluctance to commit to marriage, he couldn’t believe she’d leave without a word. He squeezed his brother for information.

  “They’re all gone. There’s a rumor they’ve gone to South Korea.” It was as much as his brother knew.

  He went to her neighborhood to investigate. First he circled around as though he were conducting surveillance; he couldn’t bring himself to get any closer. His stomach was clenched; he could feel his pulse racing in his neck. A few days later he returned. He planted himself behind the wall where he used to wait for her to come out all those years they were dating secretly. He saw for himself: another family was living in her house.

  Over the course of the vacation and in subsequent visits home, he kept returning to the house. It was not so much to gather information—nobody knew much beyond the rumors—but to do penance. What an idiot he had been. He hated himself; he had been every inch the indecisive intellectual, weighing every move until it was too late. It had taken him so long to ask her to marry him that she was gone. In truth, he had wanted to ask her to run away with him to South Korea, but didn’t have the courage. Throughout their relationship, he imagined himself as the one in charge. He was the man, he was two years older, he had a university degree. He brought her poems from Pyongyang and told her about books and movies she’d never heard of. But in the end she was the brave one and he was a coward. Nobody knew for sure, but he could feel it in his heart—she was in South Korea.

  Shit, she did it before me, he said to himself.

  IN FACT, SHE DID it before almost anybody.

  In the nearly half a century that elapsed between the end of the Korean War and Mi-ran’s defection in October 1998, only 923 North Koreans had fled to South Korea. It was a minuscule number
if you consider that while the Berlin Wall stood an average of 21,000 East Germans fled west every year.

  Most of the North Koreans who defected were diplomats or officials traveling abroad. Hwang Jang-yop, a leading academic and official who had been one of Kim Jong-il’s professors, walked into the South Korean embassy in Beijing on his way home from a business trip. Occasionally a North Korean soldier would defy all odds and wriggle through the DMZ to defect. A handful of fishermen sailed to South Korea.

  The North Korean regime took extraordinary measures to keep its population locked up. Fences were erected along the beaches in Chongjin and other coastal cities in the early 1990s to prevent people from sailing off to Japan. When North Koreans left the country on official business, they had to leave behind spouses and children who were effectively held hostage to assure their return. Defectors had to be able to live with the knowledge that their freedom came at the expense of loved ones who would likely spend the rest of their lives in a labor camp.

  That changed in the late 1990s. The famine and the economic changes in China gave North Koreans new motivation to escape. From the border, they could see shiny new cars scooting along the wharf by the Tumen River. They could see with their own eyes that life in China looked good.

  The same networks that had helped Mi-ran cross the river quickly expanded their operations. They charted new routes across the Tumen, locating the narrowest crossing points and bribing the border guards. If you couldn’t swim, you could pay somebody to carry you across. The numbers of defectors grew exponentially. By 2001, it was estimated that 100,000 North Koreans had sneaked into China, a small percentage of whom eventually defected to South Korea.

  Traffic flowed both ways. North Koreans poured into China; Chinese goods poured into North Korea—not just food and clothing, but books, radios, magazines, even Bibles, which were illegal. DVDs stamped out by Chinese pirating factories were small and cheap. A smuggler could cram as many as a thousand DVDs into a single chest, with a layer of cigarettes on top as a bribe for the border guards. DVD players, too, were made in China and cost as little as twenty dollars, which was within the means of North Koreans earning money privately in the new economy. Big sellers were Titanic, Con Air, and Witness. Even more popular were South Korean movies and melodramatic and syrupy soap operas. South Korean situation comedies supposedly depicted the lives of working-class people, and North Korean viewers paid special attention to the kitchen appliances and the quality of the clothing of the characters. For the first time, ordinary North Koreans could watch, in their own language, dramas free of messages about Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. They were offered a glimpse (albeit an idealized, commercial glimpse) of another way of life.