• • •
I was about to become a teenager, and was beginning to be curious about romance. My girlfriends and I fantasized about the couples we saw in those movies, who looked into each other’s eyes and spoke with such soft, beautiful accents. We tried to imitate them, and when boys would ask us out, we made them speak like South Koreans. Of course, “going out” in North Korea was much more innocent than even the tamest scenes we watched. I had seen romance only in the movies, and I had no idea what Pretty Woman was doing when the camera looked away. We were still completely innocent. All I cared about in Pretty Woman were the beautiful clothes that Yong Ja and I tried to re-create for our paper dolls.
It’s so embarrassing to say, but I never knew kissing was meant to be romantic. Because my mother and father gave me lots of kisses when I was young, I thought it was something everybody did to show affection. There is no such thing as sex education in North Korea. Maybe mothers or doctors talked about sex with a girl before her wedding day, but I never heard about that. Several times, as a child, I had asked my mother how I was born, but she only told me that I would find out when I grew up. The boys, I think, were just as innocent as the girls.
In Hyesan, it was still rare to have your own landline telephone, and only the wealthiest had cell phones. The only way for a boy to make a date with a girl he liked was to go find her. Of course, parents didn’t want their daughters meeting with boys. That generation still thought dating was scandalous, so the boys had to find ways to get past the barricades. I knew a few boys who wanted to date me, and each tried climbing the stairs to our eighth-floor apartment and knocking on the door.
My mother would get upset and yell through the closed door, “Get out! Go away!” She wouldn’t let me out. To get around her, the boys gave me a signal in school, and in the evening they would come by and stand outside the building, shouting the code name so that I could hear it and make an excuse to come down. Of course, my sister also had boys wanting to date her. And there were lots of other teenage girls in the apartment building, so after sunset it got very noisy out there.
I was never really interested in dating anyone until I met Chun Guen, my first love. At eighteen, he was five years older than me, and he was in his final year at a special high school for the brightest students in all of Ryanggang province. He was taller than most Korean men, with pale skin and a quiet voice. We ran into each other while I was visiting some family friends who lived in his building, next to ours. At first Chun Guen would just nod or say hello as we were passing in the hallway or on the street. Then one day he asked me out. I really wanted to go out with him, but I had to refuse. I knew that our story could only have a sad ending.
Because my family was new in that part of town, Chun Guen didn’t know that I was the daughter of a criminal. He came from a very wealthy and powerful family. His father had studied abroad and earned a PhD and was now a distinguished professor of agriculture at the university. His mother was a very important political person with a high rank in the Workers’ Party. If his parents were to find out that we were together, he would be in big trouble. And if he were to get serious about me or marry me, it would destroy his life. Chun Guen would never be able to join the Workers’ Party, never get to study at the best universities and have a distinguished career. I would be like a wound, a burden to drag him down. So I kept telling him no.
But he was persistent. So one day I agreed to come up to a party at his apartment while his parents were out. It was an innocent thing. There were lots of older boys and girls from his school. I was the youngest, and definitely the poorest guest. Suddenly I became very aware of my shabby, secondhand clothes and the holes in my pants. In Korea, we take off our shoes before we enter someone’s home, so everyone could see how many times I had mended my ugly socks. It was humiliating to see myself among all those rich kids.
Chun Guen’s apartment seemed huge—the same size as ours, but for only one family instead of three. I was astonished to see orange peels and eggshells in the garbage. Eggs were such rare delicacies in my family; we ate them only for New Year’s and special occasions. And oranges were such a luxury that I had never eaten a whole one in my life—just a small piece when my father brought one home when we were wealthy. Throwing out the peel was such a waste.
I tried to pretend that I belonged there, and that I understood what everybody was talking about. Chun Guen was trying to explain how he used a computer in school, and I nodded politely and smiled, even though I had never seen one. Ordinary schools in North Korea did not have such things. I was so embarrassed that I got upset with Chun Guen for no reason and left early. I ran all the way home.
I thought that was the end of it, but Chun Guen was very patient and forgiving. And whenever I saw him I felt a twinge in my chest that was not hunger. So I agreed to see him sometimes, but only if he agreed to keep it a secret. We had to wait until it was fully dark to meet; if any of the neighbors saw us together, it would be too dangerous for him. When we saw each other on the street, one of us would cross to the other side or go a different direction.
Chun Guen found out where I lived, and one night he came and knocked on my door. My parents were impressed: my mother thought he was so respectful, so generous and smart. My father asked me to invite him for dinner. But I said no. I didn’t want him to see how poor we were—and I still hadn’t told him my father was a prisoner. What was the point? I knew I could never marry a man like Chun Guen. There could be no happy future for me. I would never go to college and would probably end up as a poor farmer’s wife, if I didn’t starve to death first.
• • •
It was wintertime now, and things were getting truly desperate for my family. There was a problem with the old railroad system that relied on electric power to move the trains. The power grid in the north had become so weak that the train from Pyongyang had to stop before it got to Hyesan, then turn around. After a while it stopped coming at all. My parents were waiting and waiting, but it never came. Now the only way to bring the metal from Pyongyang was by car, and that was impossible. My parents had nothing to sell, and nobody would loan them more money. They were spending cash that had been set aside for the business, and soon even that would be gone.
Our apartment was always cold when the wind whipped off the river, and my father walked to the mountains every day to look for wood to keep us warm. He would eat the snow to fill himself up. My mother did whatever small business deals she could in order to buy a little corn or frozen potatoes. But now we were hungry all the time. I no longer dreamed of bread. All I wanted was to have something to eat for my next meal. Skipping a meal could literally mean death, so that became my biggest fear and obsession. You don’t care how food tastes and you don’t eat with pleasure. You eat only with an animal instinct to survive, unconsciously calculating how much longer each bite of food will keep your body going.
My parents couldn’t sleep. They were afraid they might not wake up, and then their children would starve to death. Once again, as they lay awake at night, they wondered what they could do to keep us alive.
Ten
The Lights of China
My family’s fortune had changed forever, and never did that seem clearer than during the Lunar New Year celebration at my uncle Park Jin’s house in February 2007. When I was young, my father was the richest in his clan, and everybody came to enjoy the holidays at our house. But now my uncle was the wealthy one who hosted the parties. And instead of treating my father like a brother, he ordered him around like a servant. In fact, during the months that my father had lived with my aunt and uncle in Hyesan after getting out of prison, they had made him sweep and clean the house. The family blamed my father for ruining their lives. Their songbun status had never been very good in the first place, and now, because he was a convicted criminal, it was much worse. Even my cousins mistreated him in front of his family and former friends. At the New Year celebration, they wouldn’t let hi
m sit and talk with the neighbors who used to eat and drink at his table. It was an extraordinarily difficult evening, but my father accepted it with weary resignation.
Before he was arrested, my father had been a brilliant, funny, irreverent man. But even as a thirteen-year-old girl, I could tell that his time in the prison camp had broken his spirit. He couldn’t look a policeman in the face, not even the ones who used to joke and drink with him at his table. My father used to love South Korean music; now he refused to listen to it. He was afraid someone might hear it and report him. He sang only one song after he came out of the camp, “Our Country Is Worthier Than My Life,” with the lyrics “The green forest flutters in our land and mountains, and I didn’t plant even one tree. . . .” He wasn’t the same person I’d known as a child.
I was so grateful when the New Year’s party was over and we could finally leave.
It was two and a half miles from my uncle’s house to our apartment building. My father stayed behind while my mother and sister and I walked home by ourselves along the dark river, guided only by flashes of light from the fireworks in the sky over China. I lived in North Korea, the country where we were supposed to have nothing to envy, and all I felt was envy—desperate envy for the people on the other side of the river. I still didn’t dare to think about why we couldn’t have so many things in North Korea, but I knew that I wanted to go where there was light and food. It was like being drawn to a flame without thinking about why. I wish I’d known at the time what that light really meant to North Koreans like me. Following it would cost me my innocence and, for a while, my humanity.
• • •
Every New Year, Kim Jong Il gave a statement that we all had to memorize. In 2007, it was more of the same: the North Korean people were stronger, our enemies would be defeated, the economy was getting better. But we could no longer believe the propaganda because our lives were just getting worse. My parents finally could take no more. They knew their daughters had no future here, so they began to discuss a way out.
We knew a man who had gone to work in Russia. It was basically slave labor, but at least he was fed so he didn’t starve. And he was able to save enough money to start a successful business when he came back. My father knew another man who was sent to Libya as part of a labor force that earned foreign currency for the regime. When he returned, he told us that his life in Libya was very lonely—for three years he didn’t see his family. But he could eat. And sometimes he even ate chicken wings.
We were all so hungry we wanted to hear every detail. He said that the Libyans ate lots of chicken—which was astounding to us—but they don’t usually eat the whole bird. They cut off the wings and sold them for so little even North Koreans could afford them. Libya sounded like paradise to us. My father had wanted to go abroad, and hoped he would find a way to make some money to send back to us. But he never took the opportunity, and now it was out of the question.
North Koreans have always been told that the rest of the world was an impure, disgusting, and dangerous place. Worst of all was South Korea, which was a human cesspool, no more than an impoverished colony of the American bastards we were all taught to hate and fear. My father had no desire to ever go to South Korea, but China was different. Maybe if we could find a way to get across the river, we might have a chance.
My parents discussed their options in voices so quiet not even a mouse could hear them. We still had some relatives living in China, but my parents had no way to get in touch with them. Maybe if we could make it across the border we could find them and ask for their help. We all knew they were rich over there. We had seen Chinese television and all the luxuries it advertised. We knew people who had visited China legally, including Uncle Park Jin, and they said the Chinese all had plenty to eat. There were also rumors that young North Korean women could easily find jobs in China. A number of teenage girls had dropped out of sight recently, and people were whispering that they had gone to China. Maybe Eunmi and I could find work, too. My mother had also heard that in China there were not enough children, and because my sister and I were still very young, we might find people who would adopt us.
But in a place without an Internet or an outside newspaper, it was impossible to get reliable information. If you asked too many questions, you could be reported. So we had no idea if any of these rumors were true. My parents knew the black market, but they sold the metal only to smugglers who brought it to China; they had no connections of their own on the other side of the border. Ordinary smugglers didn’t trade in people. That was a much more dangerous operation. And surveillance was too tight to risk crossing the river alone. We would need a broker to bribe the border guards and guide us across. But where could we find one?
My parents asked Eunmi and me to see if we could discreetly ask around and find out how the other girls were getting into China. My father urged my mother to go with us, too, if she could find a way. He would stay behind, he said, because he didn’t think he could find work across the river. And he was worried about the family he would leave behind in North Korea. When women escaped to China, the government didn’t get all that upset about it, and their relatives were usually not punished. But if a man like my father was to defect, the government would be very hard on his brother and sisters and their families. They might lose their jobs as doctors and professors, or even be sent to prison. Even though my uncle had treated him so badly, my father still felt loyalty to his family.
Besides, he didn’t think we would be very far away. “After you go to China and once you are doing great, come down to the river at New Year,” he told us. “Go to the beach where we always swim and wash our clothes, and I will meet you there.”
My sister and I started asking our friends if they knew anything, and I kept my ears open for any information. One day I overheard a strange story a woman from the neighborhood was telling her friends. She said she knew a young woman who crossed the river and started knocking on doors in Chaingbai. Some people let her in and gave her lots of delicious foods and some pretty new clothes. Then they told her they wanted her to marry their son. She was not happy with the arrangement and tried to come back to Hyesan the way she came. But this time she was captured and arrested by North Korean border guards. One of the neighbors remarked that the girl was stupid to reject such a generous offer.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
Looking back, I wonder how we all could have been so naïve. None of us even knew the concept of “human trafficking,” and couldn’t imagine anything so evil as selling other people. And we weren’t really capable of critical thinking because we had been trained not to ask questions. I actually thought that if we could just cross that river without being arrested or shot by the soldiers, Eunmi and I would be okay. But then, when you are so hungry and desperate, you are willing to take any risk in order to live.
• • •
Even as we were planning our escape, I was still secretly seeing Chun Guen. Our relationship was so innocent, we had never even held hands. One night when my building was completely dark, we stood in the stairwell at the end of the hall where an open window looked over the river. As always, the lights from Chaingbai glowed in the distance. I was cold, so he draped his jacket over my shoulders and put his arms around me.
I asked him, “What would it be like living there in all that brightness?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
I couldn’t tell him about our plans to go there. It didn’t matter anyway, because I knew he was leaving to start his military service in April. Usually young men go into the army for ten years. But because his parents were so rich and powerful, it was arranged that he would have to serve for only two years. Then he would go to university. His brilliant future was already laid out for him, but he told me he wanted me to wait for him. My family was still new enough in the neighborhood that he hadn’t heard about my bad background. “Eight years, Yeonmi-ya,” he said. “Wait for
me that long, and I’m going to marry you.” He said he would find a way to come see me every month no matter what. It broke my heart to hear him. Suddenly those lights I had always longed for seemed so cruel to me.
The next morning, Chun Guen came by to pick me up for a trip to the jangmadang in Hyesan. It was bad weather, so he paid for a motorcycle taxi to take us. It was a little bit different from a regular motorcycle because it had four wheels and an open trunk in the back. We climbed into the trunk and covered up under a tarp to keep out the cold rain. When we arrived at the market, he told me to pick out any necklace that I liked. I chose a pendant in the shape of a key. He told me he was the owner of the key that would open my heart. I smiled at him, but inside my heart was like stone.
• • •
I could not find a broker to take us to China, but Eunmi thought she had found one. She didn’t know the name yet, but she said we would have to go soon. Spring was coming, and the river would melt if we didn’t leave quickly.
But before we could make a plan, I woke up one morning with a high fever. “What’s wrong, my daughter?” I heard my mother’s voice from far away. I was so sick I couldn’t even open my eyes. Then I started throwing up. Before long I had broken out in big red splotches all over my body. I felt like I was going to die. We heard rumors that a bad virus had crossed into our country from China, but nobody knew what to do about it. My mother borrowed money to buy some medicine for me, but days passed and I wasn’t getting better. I had a terrible pain in my stomach and I couldn’t keep any food down. I was getting so skinny and weak I couldn’t even walk. So they took me to the hospital.