It wasn’t until later that I found out what happened. The broker told my mother that he wanted to have sex with me. She had to think quickly—he couldn’t know I was her daughter and only thirteen. He might send us back to be captured by those border guards. So she explained to him I was too sick, that I had just had an operation and my stitches would tear.
“I’ll be gentle,” he said.
“No, you cannot!” my mother cried.
“What’s it to you?” he said. “Why do you care about this girl?”
“I’m her aunt,” my mother said. “We weren’t supposed to tell you.”
“What’s going on here?” he said. “If you’re going to be trouble, we’ll just send you back to North Korea and they’ll arrest you.”
“We won’t cause you any trouble,” she said. “Take me instead.”
He pushed my mother down on a blanket in the dirt, one he had obviously used before, and raped her.
A few minutes later, the broker reappeared around the building with my mother. Just then a car pulled up to the shack. All of us climbed in with the driver, my mother and I in the backseat, and we rode for a while along the river. I could sense something was badly wrong, but I still had no idea what my mother had done to protect me.
“Umma, what happened?” I asked. I kept forgetting not to call her “mother.”
“Nothing, don’t worry,” she said, but her voice was shaking.
I was not used to traveling in a car, and I soon began to feel sick to my stomach. My mother put my head in her lap and held my hands tightly. But when we rounded a bend in the river, she told me to look up. From the window we could see the dark buildings on the North Korean side of the river.
“Look, Yeonmi-ya. That may be the last you see of your hometown,” my mother said.
My heart jumped a little as we passed our apartment building. I knew my father was in there, waiting for us to come home. I swear I could see a flicker of light at the window, like a signal from my father to me. But my mother said no, it was my imagination. There was never a light.
Our next stop was the broker’s apartment in Chaingbai.
“What’s happening here?” my mother asked the young North Korean guide.
“Just listen to these people and everything will be fine,” he said.
The bald broker’s wife was ethnic Korean like himself, and paralyzed from the waist down. Her mother lived with them and took care of her. The broker’s home had electricity, and now that he could see our faces clearly, he flew into a rage. “These women aren’t eighteen and twenty-eight,” he bellowed at the guide. My mother tried to stick to our story, and she was able to convince the broker that she was actually thirty-four instead of her true age of forty-one. But when he looked at me, he could tell I was just a child. The broker made a phone call and started arguing with someone in Korean. I could tell it was about money.
The wife, who was sitting up in her bed watching everything, finally explained what was going on.
“If you want to stay in China, you have to be sold and get married,” she told us.
We were stunned. What did she mean, “sold”? I could not imagine how one human could sell another. I thought people could sell only dogs, chickens, or other animals—not people. And what did she mean, “get married”? I could not believe what was happening.
When we hesitated, the broker’s wife lost her patience with us.
“Decide now! Decide!” she demanded. “Get sold or go back. That’s the only way it works.”
Ever since I had grabbed my mother’s hands and refused to let go, a change had happened between us. From now on, I would be making the decisions. My mother looked at me and asked, “What do you want to do?”
Without thinking I said, “I want to eat something.” We hadn’t had a bite of food all day, and everything else was so confusing and terrifying that my focus became very narrow.
“Yes, Yeonmi-ya,” she said. “But do you want to go back to North Korea?”
I thought for a short time. If we were sold, I figured that at least we would all be in the same village, and we could plan our next move when we got there. We could find Eunmi, and we could have something to eat.
“I want to stay in China,” I said.
“Good,” the bald broker said.
“Do you know anything about my older daughter, Eunmi?” my mother asked. “She was supposed to go to China and we haven’t heard from her.”
The bald broker told us he had expected to receive two girls a few days ago, but they never showed up. He had even tried again the day before we arrived, but couldn’t make the connection. As far as he knew, they were still in North Korea. But he assured us that the girls would be in China soon, and that we could all meet in the village where the other defectors were living.
“Okay,” I said. “We agree.”
He made another call, and soon a very fat Chinese man and a skinny woman with a North Korean accent arrived. They sat down with the bald broker and negotiated our price right in front of us. The fat man, Zhifang, was another mid-level broker along the chain of traffickers who would eventually sell us to our “husbands.” We learned that a mother with a young daughter would normally be sold together for a much lower rate than two healthy young women who could be sold separately. So the North Korean traffickers had lied to the bald broker, and now he was lying to this Chinese middleman, hiding the fact that we were mother and daughter and trying to convince him that I was really sixteen years old to get a higher price.
Zhifang kept looking at me and saying, “Come on, tell me your real age!”
There was no way I could convince him I was older because I was so little. I admitted that I was really thirteen.
“I knew it!” Zhifang said.
Finally, they reached a deal. My mother, who had been sold by the North Koreans for 500 Chinese yuan, the equivalent of about $65 (the value in 2007), was being bought by Zhifang for the equivalent of $650. My original price was the equivalent of $260, and I was sold to Zhifang for 15,000 yuan, or just under $2,000. The price would go up each time we were sold along the chain.
I will never forget the burning humiliation of listening to these negotiations, of being turned into a piece of merchandise in the space of a few hours. It was a feeling beyond anger. It’s still hard to fathom why we went along with all of this, except that we were caught between fear and hope. We were numb, and our purpose was reduced to our immediate needs: Get away from the dangerous border. Get away from this terrible bald broker and his frightening wife. Get something to eat and figure out the rest of it later.
Once our prices were settled, the North Korean guide, Zhifang, and the woman all left the apartment. Then, finally, my mother and I were given something to eat. I couldn’t believe it when the mother-in-law set a whole bowl of rice and some spicy pickled cucumber in front of me. I had never seen cucumber in winter, and it was like a miracle to taste it now. Eating all that rice seemed impossible. In North Korea, I would have to share my food with others and always leave something in the bowl. At home, eating all your food is rude and shameful, because you know your host will eat what you have left. But here in China, there was so much rice that you were allowed to eat a whole bowl by yourself. And there was more food in the garbage can in this apartment than I might see in a week in Hyesan. I was suddenly very happy with my decision.
• • •
At five o’clock in the morning, with heavy snow blowing in circles around the apartment building, a taxi arrived and parked around the corner. We went outside, and the bald broker told me to wait by the gate. Then he threw my mother to the ground and raped her right in front of me, like an animal. I saw such fear in her eyes, but there was nothing I could do except stand there and shiver, begging silently for it to end. That was my introduction to sex.
When he had finished, the bald broker led us to the taxi and
pushed us into the backseat. Both of us were shocked and speechless. There was another North Korean woman, in her early thirties, already inside. She had just crossed the border, too. Zhifang’s helper, whose name was Young Sun, sat in the front, next to the driver. Young Sun explained to us that we were all going to another place before we were sold. My mother and I huddled together and tried to be calm. I was carsick most of the way, and very little was said as we drove through the Chinese countryside. At the end of the day, we finally stopped on the outskirts of what seemed to be a large city. My mother couldn’t speak or read Chinese, but she had studied a little English in college. She saw a sign in both Chinese and Western characters that said we were in Changchun, the capital of Jilin province.
Already the air seemed different in China. In North Korea we lived in a haze of dust and burning trash. But in China the world seemed cleaner and you could smell wonderful things cooking everywhere.
Young Sun lived with Zhifang, the fat broker, in a neighborhood of modest apartment buildings—all of which seemed very fancy to me. After she let us into their apartment, the first thing she asked was, “What do you want to eat?”
“Eggs!” I said. “I want to eat eggs!”
I hadn’t had more than a few bites of egg since my father was arrested, and then only at New Year’s. But Young Sun fried five whole eggs and gave them to me. While I sopped up the rich yolks with soft bread, my opinion of China improved even more.
Later, we learned Young Sun’s story. She had been some kind of smuggler in North Korea, where she got into debt and went broke. Zhifang offered her a job if she would come to China and live with him. Now, instead of transporting the women he bought at the border, he sent her instead. That way she took all the risk. She was living with him like a wife, but they were not married. She had no rights and no identification papers, so she could be arrested at any time and sent back to North Korea.
Virtually all defectors in China live in constant fear. The men who manage to get across often hire themselves to farmers for slave wages. They don’t dare complain because all the farmer has to do is notify the police and they will be arrested and repatriated. The Chinese government doesn’t want a flood of immigrants, nor does it want to upset the leadership in Pyongyang. Not only is North Korea a trading partner, but it’s a nuclear power perched right on its border, and an important buffer between China and the American presence in the South. Beijing refuses to grant refugee status to escapees from North Korea, instead labeling them illegal “economic migrants” and shipping them home. We didn’t know any of this, of course, before we escaped. We thought we would be welcomed. And in some places we were—just not by the authorities.
North Korean women were in demand in the rural areas of China because there were not enough Chinese women to go around. The government’s population control strategy prohibited most couples from having more than one child—and in Chinese culture, a male child is more valued. Tragically, many female babies were aborted or, according to human rights groups, secretly killed at birth. China ended up with too many boys, and not enough women to marry them when they grew up. The ratio of male to female was especially unbalanced in the rural areas, where many local young women were lured to the big cities for jobs and a better life.
Men with physical or mental disabilities were particularly unlikely to find wives, and these men and their families created the market for North Korean slave-brides. But brides weren’t cheap, sometimes costing thousands of dollars, or the equivalent of a year’s earnings for a poor farmer. Of course, trafficking and slave marriages are illegal in China, and any children that result are not considered Chinese citizens. That means they cannot legally go to school, and without proper identification papers, can’t find work when they get older. Everything about trafficking is inhuman, but it’s still a big business in northeastern China.
After my mother and I and the other North Korean woman had eaten and rested, Zhifang, who had returned from Chaingbai separately, sat down with us to discuss what was going to happen next. He said another Chinese man would be coming by to take us to the countryside to match us with husbands.
“Can’t we be sold together?” my mother asked. “This girl is really my daughter, not my niece.”
The fat broker didn’t seem surprised to hear this. “I’m sorry, but you and your daughter will have to be sold separately,” he said. “I paid a price for each of you, and that’s the only way I can get my money back.”
“But my daughter can’t get married,” my mother said. “She’s only thirteen.”
“Look, don’t worry. I agree she’s too young,” Zhifang said. “I’m a human being just like you! How could I sell a thirteen-year-old girl into marriage?” He told us that if my mother agreed to be sold separately, he and Young Sun would keep me with them, and raise me until I was older. Then they would make a decision. Meanwhile, they would give my mother their contact number so she could always be in touch with me.
My mother and I discussed it for a few minutes, and we agreed this was probably the best situation we could hope for.
My mother said yes, she would be sold without me.
“Good,” Zhifang said. “Now, what else do you want to eat? If you want a watermelon, I will buy one for you tomorrow.”
• • •
The next morning, Zhifang and Young Sun took me outside for my first real look at China. We walked by some shops, and I saw a mannequin for the first time in my life. I didn’t know if it was a real person or a fake.
Young Sun saw me staring and said, “That’s just a doll, little one.”
I couldn’t believe there were so many products in the stores. And there were restaurants and vendors selling all kinds of food. You could buy roasted corn on the street, and kebabs made out of kinds of fruit I had never seen before. The only one I recognized was a strawberry, which I had seen in a schoolbook.
“I want that one!” I said, pointing at the fruit.
They bought it for me, and I had my first taste of strawberry. I couldn’t believe anything could taste so good. I could go on eating it forever. At first I was concerned that these luxuries were too expensive, but my new friends told me not to worry about it.
By now I thought that China had to be the best place in the world. I had nearly forgotten the horrors of the past couple of days. My mind was filled with all the things I had to learn. I didn’t like not understanding what people were saying around me, so I asked Young Sun to teach me a few words of Mandarin Chinese. The first were: “Zhe shi shen me,” which means “What is this?” Everywhere I went, I pointed and asked “Zhe shi shen me?” and Young Sun would give me the word.
During that first walk, Young Sun had to explain traffic patterns to me to keep me from walking into the road. We didn’t have traffic lights in Hyesan, and there were very few cars anyway. In Pyongyang, I was too young to notice how it was done. But here you had to look up and watch for a signal before crossing or you would get run over. Before long it all became too overwhelming. I got dizzy seeing so many bright, different colors and people. The smell of gasoline and barbecue and car exhaust made me so sick I almost threw up in the street.
The couple steered me back toward the apartment. When we arrived, they told me it was time to say good-bye to my mother. Zhifang was going to take her and the other woman to the next man to sell them. Suddenly I snapped out of my dream. My mother was leaving and I was going to be left with strangers. She tried to be brave for me, and I could see the resolve in her delicate, weary face.
“Be a good girl,” she told me. “Clean the house every day and cook for these people so they can see the value of keeping you here.” She showed me the fat broker’s phone number on a piece of paper folded in her pocket. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. Maybe Eunmi will be waiting when I get there.”
The night before, the brokers had given us soft Chinese white bread wrapped in plastic. It was so delicio
us that I decided to save half of mine to give to my mother to eat on her journey. But when I went to find it, the other North Korean woman had stolen it and eaten it herself. I had nothing to give my mother as we hugged good-bye.
• • •
I cried for a while after my mother was gone, so to cheer me up Zhifang and Young Sun took me out to a restaurant for dinner. It was the first time I had been to one since my trip to Pyongyang with my father. I had never seen disposable chopsticks before, and Zhifang and Young Sun showed me how to separate them without breaking them. Then they ordered huge plates of pork and peppers and fried rice. I ate until my stomach refused to take any more.
That night, Young Sun started teaching me some lessons in hygiene. I had never seen a toilet before, and she explained to me how to use it. I thought you were supposed to perch on top of it, like the drop toilets we used in North Korea. She showed me how to wash my hands in a sink, and reminded me of the proper way to use a toothbrush and toothpaste. We had been so poor after my father was arrested that we used salt on our fingers to brush our teeth. She also told me how Chinese women used disposable pads during their menstrual periods. Back in North Korea, we just used a thin cloth that we had to wash, so I had been confined to the house for days every month. When she handed me the soft cottony pad wrapped in thin plastic, I had no idea what to do with it. And it smelled so nice I wanted to save it for some other purpose. But I thought the concept was great because it gave women much more freedom.
The next day, she took me to a public bathhouse where women take showers together in one room. I had seen showers in movies, but this was my first experience. It was so wonderful to feel warm water coming down all over me. Young Sun scrubbed me from head to toe with real soap, and then she sprayed my head with something to kill the lice and put my hair in a shower cap. Everybody in North Korea had lice, and there was no way to get rid of them. So this treatment was a huge relief.
A few hours later, we were finished with my transformation. I had clean hair and new clothes when I walked back to the apartment. When Zhifang saw me, he smiled and said, “You look so shiny!”