In Order to Live

  • • •

  Meanwhile, my mother and the North Korean woman who stole our bread had been sold to a da laoban, a “big boss” in the trafficking world who went by the name of Hongwei. There was a hierarchy of gangsters who specialized in North Korean bride trafficking, starting with the suppliers on the North Korean side of the border, through wholesalers like the bald Korean-Chinese broker in Chaingbai, and the couple in Chanchung. Kingpins like Hongwei were at the top of the chain, and often had a network of other retail brokers working for them.

  Hongwei was Han Chinese—the majority ethnic group in China—and he didn’t speak a word of Korean. He was tall and in his early thirties, with a long face and a full head of hair. As the group traveled by bus and taxi deep into China, my mother had no idea where they were going. They stopped for the night at a dark, cold house in the country. An old man arrived and built a fire for them, and Hongwei gestured to my mother that this was her husband; she had to sleep with him. But they had tricked her: it was just another broker. This ring of human traffickers always used the women before they were sold, including Hongwei. My mother had no choice but to accept it.

  The next day, Hongwei took my mother and the other North Korean woman to a house in the country outside the city of Jinzhou, about three hundred miles northeast of Beijing. There he cleaned them up and gave them some new clothes and cosmetics. The other woman was sold quickly, but my mother took much longer to find a suitable match. For the next several days, Hongwei took her around to meet different men. She felt like a sack of potatoes in the market as they haggled over her price. The men said she was too skinny, or too old, and her price kept coming down. One woman brought her mentally damaged son to buy her, but my mother refused. (The brokers generally won’t force women to accept matches, because they know they will just try to run away, which is bad for business. But if they are unreasonable, they will beat them or turn them over to the police to be sent back to North Korea.) Finally, a family of farmers arrived with a son who was in his early thirties and still unmarried. My mother was sold to them for the equivalent of about $2,100.

  That day, they brought her to live in their farmhouse in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. It was very humble, built of stone and plaster with a metal roof. It was early April, so the fields were furrowed and ready to be planted with corn and beans. My mother had only a few words of Chinese by now, but she was able to show her new “husband” that she wanted to use his phone to call me. At first he refused, but after a few days of her crying and begging, he agreed. I was so happy to hear her when she called the fat broker’s cell phone and he turned it over to me.

  “Have you seen Eunmi?” I asked.

  “No, little daughter,” she said. “I haven’t seen anybody else from North Korea.”

  I could tell by her voice that she was in terrible shape. She hadn’t slept for days and she couldn’t figure out how to tell her new family that she needed some sleeping pills, the kind she took at home when she could afford them. Now she was sorry that she had agreed to leave me behind. She couldn’t protect me anymore, and she hadn’t found my sister. I tried to make her feel better, telling her not to worry because everything was fine, and she had a phone number where she could reach me any time.

  That was the last time she was able to make a call for many weeks. The family locked up their cell phone, their money, even their food. She discovered that she was expected to be not just a wife to this Chinese farmer but a slave to his whole family. She had to cook and clean and work in the fields. Time after time she begged them to let her call her little daughter again, but no matter how much she cried, they didn’t care. To them, she was like one of their farm animals, not a human being at all.

  Thirteen

  A Deal with the Devil

  My mother had been gone for only three days when Zhifang tried to rape me.

  His apartment was laid out with two bedrooms separated by a hallway. I was sleeping by myself across the hall from Zhifang and Young Sun when he crawled into my bed in the dark. He smelled of alcohol and his hands were rough when he grabbed me. I was so shocked that I started kicking him and struggling out of his grip.

  “Quiet!” he whispered. “You’ll wake her up!”

  “If you don’t let me go I’ll scream!” I said. So he reluctantly left me alone and went back to his sleeping girlfriend.

  A couple of days later, he tried it again. This time he gave Young Sun a lot of alcohol until she was passed out drunk, and then he came to my bedroom in the middle of the night. Again I fought him off by kicking and screaming and biting. I thought the only way to save myself was to act like a crazy person. I was so wild that he knew he would have to damage me badly or even kill me to finish what he started. And then I would have no value. So he gave up.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you can’t stay in this house anymore. I’ll sell you to a farmer.”

  “All right,” I said. “Then sell me.”

  A few days later, the man who had bought and sold my mother returned to take me away.

  • • •

  Hongwei was not his real name, but then he lied about everything. He told me he was twenty-six, but he was actually thirty-two years old. He didn’t know my real age because the fat broker Zhifang had told him I was sixteen. Nobody told the truth.

  I was trying to learn Chinese, but I could understand very little. And Hongwei could communicate with me only in gestures. He took me to a Chinese restaurant for breakfast before our long journey. But I was so terrified that my hands were shaking. Every broker I had met in China had wanted to rape me, and I assumed this one was no different. Hongwei kept gesturing for me to eat, but I couldn’t. Even though I was still skinny and malnourished, I no longer had an appetite. Food was the reason I had come to China, and now the thought of it made me sick.

  We took a series of buses to Hongwei’s home territory, which stretched from the ancient city of Chaoyang to the bustling port of Jinzhou. The buses made frequent stops, and at one of them a vendor came on board to sell ice cream to the passengers. Hongwei bought one for me. I hadn’t eaten for a long time, and suddenly my appetite returned. I couldn’t believe how something could be that delicious. I ate the whole thing and even kept eating it in my mind when it was finished.

  That night we stayed at an inn in a small town outside Jinzhou. By the time we arrived that evening, I was again too upset to eat anything. So Hongwei took me to a grocery store to buy some supplies. I could tell he wanted me to pick out things that I needed, but I had never seen such luxury items, so I tried to tell him I didn’t need anything. He went ahead and selected things for me. He picked out a fancy toothbrush, soap, and a pretty towel with embroidery. He saw that my skin was rough because of malnutrition and the cold, dry wind that blew in North Korea during the winters, so he bought me some moisturizing lotion. These things were so nice that I started to relax. I thought maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

  When we arrived at the inn, he showed me a kind of cell phone that I had never seen before. Not only could you talk with it, but it played music and had a camera that took pictures. Hongwei was showing me how it could play back videos when my mother suddenly popped up on the screen, waving and saying hello. I got so excited I couldn’t believe it.

  “Umma! Umma!” I cried into the phone, grabbing it from his hands. I thought she was talking to me, so I tried to answer her. Hongwei was shocked. He had no idea that the woman he had just sold was my mother. Just like with me, he had been showing her the phone and took a video of her to demonstrate how it worked.

  When I realized that my mother was not talking to me through the phone, my heart sank. But it was so good to see her face, and I thought this meant I would be seeing her in person soon.

  Later that night, Hongwei gestured to me that he was my husband so I must sleep with him. Then he tried to rape me.

  Again I fought back, kicking and biting and screami
ng like a madwoman. I made so much noise that I’m sure it sounded like a murder was taking place in our room. So Hongwei gave up and went to sleep. I spent the night with my back to the wall, staring out with bloodred eyes, waiting for him to try again.

  The next morning, Hongwei tried to win me over with gifts and kindness. He took me to a store and bought me a pair of jeans, a sweater, and some running shoes. I had seen those kinds of shoes while I was secretly watching Chinese television in North Korea. It had been my dream to own a pair. Now that dream had come true and I was still miserable. I was beginning to realize that all the food in the world, and all the running shoes, could not make me happy. The material things were worthless. I had lost my family. I wasn’t loved, I wasn’t free, and I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but everything that made life worth living was gone.

  • • •

  After a day in that small country town, Hongwei hired a taxi to take us into Jinzhou. He had rented a one-bedroom apartment in a four-story building in an older neighborhood near the zoo and a big park. To me it seemed like a nice place to live, but I was terrified to be there with Hongwei. Once again, he tried to rape me. Once again, I fought him off like someone with nothing to lose, like there was a demon inside me. I was so filled with fear and rage that even if he accidentally touched me in my sleep, I would start screaming and crying so hard that I couldn’t stop. I would almost pass out, and I think it really scared him. Hongwei realized that he couldn’t take me by force unless he was willing to destroy me.

  So Hongwei locked me in a room in the apartment for days or weeks—I have no idea how long. He opened the door only to bring me food. But I still wouldn’t change my mind. So one day he decided to try showing me the reality of my situation.

  We traveled for two or three hours to a house in the countryside where Hongwei introduced me to a young, pregnant North Korean girl who lived with a Chinese man. Hongwei had her translate, just to make sure I understood him: if I refused to sleep with him, he was going to sell me off to a farmer. He wanted me to understand that he was offering me a much better alternative.

  “Let him sell me,” I said to the girl.

  Hongwei shook his head in disbelief. He left me alone with her to think it over. She told me Hongwei was expecting to get a high price for me because I was a virgin and obviously very young.

  I thought I could trust this girl because we were both North Koreans, and she would take pity on me. “Will you rescue me?” I asked her. “Can you help me escape and find my mother?”

  She told her husband, and they agreed. We made a plan. While Hongwei was not paying attention, I slipped out the back door, jumped over a fence, and ran to a tumbledown old house in the woods. The girl’s Chinese mother-in-law soon joined me. A few hours later, a man on a motorcycle arrived to take me to a house deep in the mountains that belonged to one of their relatives.

  When I got there, I realized I had been tricked. The North Korean girl and her husband had stolen me from Hongwei, and now they were trying to sell me themselves. They came to visit me in the mountains with another broker, and the girl told me, “If you agree to sleep with this man, he will find you a rich young husband in a big city. You won’t have to marry a farmer.”

  I still refused. I told them I would die before I let that happen.

  The North Korean girl spent a week or so visiting with me while she tried to persuade me to be sold. I had a lot of time to practice my Chinese during this time, and I picked it up quickly.

  Meanwhile, Hongwei had called in some of his gangster friends to help find me. They rode their motorcycles all over the area, searching houses and sheds for my hiding place. The couple who stole me told Hongwei that I had run away, but he didn’t believe them. He tried threatening them to get me back, but they stuck to their story. The Chinese man who had taken me even offered to help in the search.

  Through his connections in the trafficking world, Hongwei eventually learned where I was being hidden. He approached the couple with a deal: Unless they cooperated with him, he would report them to the police, and the girl would be sent back to North Korea. But if they returned me unharmed, he would pay to buy me back. They took the deal. So Hongwei bought me twice. I never learned the exact figure, but I know it was a lot more than the price he had paid to buy me from Zhifang.

  When another man on a motorcycle showed up at my mountain hiding place, I thought that I was finally being rescued. Instead he took me into town, where Hongwei was waiting with a group of hard-looking men.

  “Are you all right?” Hongwei asked. “Did they hurt you?”

  I shook my head no. I could understand more of what he said now, but I didn’t want to speak to him.

  Usually when North Korean slave-brides run away from their brokers, they are badly beaten or even killed. But Hongwei didn’t do that. He seemed so happy to have me back that he bought a big restaurant dinner for all the gangsters who had helped him in the search. We took a bus back to Jinzhou that night.

  As we walked from the bus station to the apartment, I was feeling very strong and calm, because I had already made the decision to kill myself instead of accepting this life. I had lost control of everything else, but this was one last choice I could make. I had cried every single day since I left North Korea, so much that I couldn’t believe I had that many tears inside of me. But on the last day of my life, there would be no more crying.

  Just as I had given up, Hongwei was filled with hope. He was not a religious man, but he sometimes prayed to the Buddha. The whole concept of religion was foreign to me. In North Korea, we worshipped only the Kim dictators, and our faith was in juche, the doctrine of nationalistic self-determination created by Kim Il Sung. Practicing any other religion is strictly forbidden and could get you killed. But in North Korea, fortune-tellers are popular (although not officially sanctioned), and many people are superstitious about dates and numbers. So I understood Hongwei’s extremely superstitious nature. He counted the steps as he walked to the apartment, and when we got there, he burned the same number of joss papers—fake money that is sent to the afterworld as offerings to ancestors. He hoped this would bring him luck with me. But it did not work.

  Once again he tried to rape me. He pinned my arms to the bed, but I bit him and kicked him hard and got away. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, then held it to my throat as I stood on the balcony.

  I was raving and screaming in Korean, “If you come near me, I’ll jump!” He couldn’t understand what I was saying, but he could see in my eyes that I was ready to die.

  Hongwei spoke in a soothing voice, saying “Biedong, biedong,” which means “Don’t move” in Chinese. He used simple words that I could understand, and gestures to describe a bargain he had in mind. “You be my wife,” he said. “Mama come. Papa come. Sister come.”

  Suddenly, he had my attention. I slowly put down the knife. We sat down and, still using pantomime and simple words, he laid out his offer: If I would live with him as his xiao-xifu, or “little wife”—meaning mistress—he would find my mother and buy her back. Then he would find my father in North Korea and pay for a broker to bring him to China. And he would help me find my sister.

  And if I didn’t do this? He obviously couldn’t sell me, so he would turn me in to the Chinese police. I would never let this happen, of course.

  I couldn’t really think logically at the time, but I recognized an opportunity to do something that was not just for me. I had thought only of myself for most of my life. But now I had a chance to choose my family over my own pride. I was willing to die to avoid the shame of being raped. But now I had another choice: to die selfishly or to save my family.

  But first I had to consider: could I trust this man?

  Everything I had been told since I left North Korea had been a lie. But something about the way Hongwei presented this bargain made me believe he was sincere. After all, he had been so determined to find me afte
r I ran away. He knew that if he didn’t keep his word, I would kill myself, and in his own barbaric way he seemed to have genuine feelings toward me.

  In the end there was no choice at all.

  • • •

  For a long time I thought of it as a business negotiation, not rape. Only now, with the passage of time, can I accept what transpired in all its terrible dimensions. I was only six months past my thirteenth birthday, and small for my age. When Hongwei pressed himself on top of me, I thought I would split in two. I was so scared, and the act was so painful and disgusting and violent that I thought it couldn’t really be happening to me. After a while I actually felt like I had left my body and was sitting on the floor next to the bed. I was watching myself, but it wasn’t me.

  As soon as Hongwei was finished with me, I went to the bathroom and showered for what seemed like hours. I felt so dirty. I felt such despair. I rubbed my skin until I bled, and that made me feel a little better. I discovered that physical pain helped me feel less pain inside, and for a while pinching and scratching myself with a rough cloth became a habit. Sometimes it was the only way to escape the aching in my heart.

  When Hongwei checked to see why the shower was running so long, he found me on the bathroom floor, limp and nearly drowned. He didn’t say a word as he carried me back to bed, but I could see that tears were running down his face.

  I felt like I was losing my mind. The sexual act was so repulsive that I threw up every night. For a long time I couldn’t eat more than a few spoonfuls of rice in a day. Eventually I became numb, and Hongwei thought I was recovering. But I was just going through the motions of being alive while watching myself from a distance, like I was playing a role in a movie that never seemed to end. All that was left inside me was a smoldering hatred for this man. I fantasized about killing him in his sleep and running away. But where would I go now? And who else could save my family?