How I Became a North Korean Read online

  Only my baby mattered. I stroked the tight drum of my stomach, the beautiful life of four months that knew nothing of this room. I pictured a curled fist of webbed fingers, a giant bean of a body, and carried love and fear inside me.

  Within a few weeks I resorted to the only plan possible. I started with a man whittled down to a chopstick. My stomach had swelled and my breasts were heavier now and tender at their tips. The man shyly sneaked looks at me, this shell in which I was protecting two beating hearts, and said, “You could be a pregnant schoolgirl.”

  He was old enough to have a daughter in school. I missed Eomma. I kept one leg up, one arm curved across my waist.

  “Is that what you like, pregnant schoolgirls?”

  I slipped off the robe.

  He nodded and rambled on nervously. “Women are too skinny these days. It’s all that dieting. If you eat tomatoes all day, it’s a tomato diet. Watermelons, a watermelon diet.”

  “What’s a diet?”

  He laughed and explained dieting to me. The concept was shocking. But Nam Joseon was also a country with more cars than bicycles, where people freely traveled without punishment. It wasn’t real to me yet, but I knew it was a safe country where a future was possible. Though its people were sick, I wanted to go there.

  “Help me,” I said finally to him, as I would to each of my men, and waited for his response.

  One of the girls slit her slender wrist with a shard of mirror. The ajumma took our mirrors away. One moved like a broken ox. One girl wrapped herself in a padded coat that hid her body of fish bones whenever the ajumma allowed us to pace the halls. My memory comes in fragments. Nothing is chronological. In my sleep I walked through the paint-peeled walls of our underground fortress, out into the white sunlight and back across the frozen river toward home. When the girl used the mirror on herself, I thought it could have been me. Maybe it was the end of my second month—or the third?—when the man I had waited for arrived.

  I glimpsed a faint gold cross hanging on the wall behind him, took the risk, and told him where I was from. He viewed me calmly from his leather chair, as if he had already known before he called. The man I would later call Missionary Kwon fixed his gaze on me until I—even I!—had to look away.

  Finally he said, “I’m a powerful man. I can do anything. I could buy your freedom for you.”

  I looked behind me, but of course there was only a wall.

  “Why would you do that for me? You don’t know me.”

  I didn’t really believe this. A man would do many things for a stranger if she was young and beautiful enough.

  “You’re not the first group of girls I’ve found this way. I’ve raised enough money this time to get many of you out.”

  He settled back into the chair that rose with imperial gravity behind him. His frozen face looked incapable of expression.

  I tried to hide my excitement. “What do you want from me?”

  “What could you possibly give me that I would want?” He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Take off your clothes, in case there’s trouble.”

  I jerked the cord loose and let the robe fall, surrounding me in a sea of scarlet. His gaze remained steady despite my ripe shape. He didn’t seem particularly interested, at least not in the way I was used to. I felt desperate for his attention—to use my little power not to become a pregnant woman sent back across the river with a baby believed to be Chinese-born, of impure blood.

  He said, “Why did you cross?”

  His question cornered me. “Who are you, really?”

  He wagged a finger at me. “I’m here to help you. Are you always so suspicious?”

  I crossed my legs. “I have no reason to trust you.”

  His image wavered on the screen, then steadied again. “Do you have a choice?”

  Of course I didn’t.

  “How long have they held you?”

  “Someone could be listening.”

  “The server’s routed through South Korea—what your people call Nam Joseon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s my job to know these things. So? Your crossing? There are people who need to know these things before I can do anything for you.”

  It didn’t matter which side of the river I was on. Men asked the questions and women answered. Maybe that is all power is: the right to demand and expect answers. But before I learned what he could do for me, I heard someone at the door and the man ended the video call.

  Sometime after the third meal that divided our day, the man called again.

  I spoke rapidly this time, mostly telling the truth. The person I exaggerated for him was pathetic and needy, though my real situation was desperate enough without my flourishes. Wasn’t he allured, moved by pity? Convinced I was worth saving? He rubbed his chin with his bony fingers, listening patiently but wearily. Nothing I said seemed to shock or interest him. I kept talking, my underarms dampened with sweat.

  “That’s enough.” He aimed his gold-tipped pen at the screen. “I understand the situation.”

  “Help me, please. I don’t have much time.”

  His distant, sympathetic gaze traveled down my body, then back up. “I know.”

  “I’ll pray every night for your help.” I said this too hurriedly; it made me sound insincere.

  “You shouldn’t be ashamed,” he said when I wrapped the robe tightly around me. “You’re a beautiful woman. A woman’s body is one of God’s most beautiful creations.”

  I watched his interest lift and fall. Lift, fall. I didn’t know how to read him.

  • • •

  One day we were lined up in the corridor, arms raised above our heads and legs fanned out, toes touching the toes of the next person. Our bodies merged into one as the ajumma’s hand traveled up our robes. It moved vigilantly across every part of our bodies, looking for a weapon. How different my life had become: so specific, so small.

  “A set of chopsticks has disappeared,” said the madam. “Before you hurt yourself and create a mess for others, you may as well turn it in.” She marched up and down past the dozen of us.

  Utensils disappeared, so we began eating rice and kimchi with our hands and drank our soup straight from plastic bowls. Sometimes a piece of kimchi or a spoonful of savory dwenjang helped me escape. One bite, and I was back at home, in my village, past the checkpoint and through the concrete walls surrounding our grid of houses. It was winter, and the walls were heavy with drifts of glittering snow. My nose burned from the cold, but there was a fire going in Eomma’s kitchen. I was finally safe, near the warming flames. As Eomma stirred a pot over the burning agungi, making bean curd to sell at the market, I touched her broad back.

  Eomma, I said, I’m finally home. Eomma turned and I saw that it wasn’t her at all, but a man from the Ministry of People’s Security in my eomma’s navy dress who struck me on the head with the boiling cast-iron pot.

  But I wasn’t daydreaming anymore. My dark dreams were real, the pain was real, and I was struck, and struck again.

  The two black suits in my room moved with grace for such large men. One of them knocked aside my tray. Stew splattered and dried anchovies scattered across the floor. I backed away against the bedpost; there was nowhere to go. They didn’t hurry. I begged; it didn’t help. The hand that slapped me across the head came down so slowly; the pain wasn’t as bad as the waiting.

  “Save me?” said one man. One of his eyes was welded shut and his knuckles were tattooed with Han characters.

  My plans had been discovered.

  “Some guy’s offered to buy you and any others from your country. What have you been saying to our customers?”

  Something was about to change. The snowdrifts blocked me in, and I shivered in the cold.

  15

  Danny

  The week waiting for Missionary Kwon brought out t
he worst in us. Gwangsu began talking to himself about escape, Cheolmin started kicking Gwangsu in the shins, Yongju ground his teeth while sleeping, and Bakjun began masturbating all night without bothering to take it somewhere more private, or at least it seemed that way to me each time he interrupted my sleep. Only Namil was unaffected, as long as he got three square meals a day. I waited for a chance to use Missionary Lee’s cell phone or for Missionary Kwon to expel me for challenging him in front of the Bangs—whichever came first. If anyone could help my friends, it was my mom—I just needed to reach her.

  The day Missionary Kwon returned, Namil was napping on the floor as stiff as a mummy, the Bible spread over his eyes; Bakjun was staring down at the words as if they were Egyptian hieroglyphs. While I drew Bible scenes on cardboard cards for them, Cheolmin ran back and forth across the room, slamming his body into the walls. He halted and screamed, “There’s a hole in my stomach! I can’t take it!” then ran again.

  “You can, you can and you will.” Yongju stopped recopying the Book of Isaiah into a notebook. “We have to.”

  Missionary Lee wiped at the sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip. “It’s Missionary Kwon’s orders. I’m sorry.”

  He had banished Cheolmin from lunch for the second time that week for not memorizing his daily Bible verse.

  “He won’t know if you let me eat or if I piss in my pants, since he’s never around.”

  “I made a promise. It’s my duty.” Missionary Lee looked fatigued. “And if you keep using such language, I won’t have a choice but to report you.”

  “He’s never been to school, so how can he read?” Bakjun bit off the skin from his thumb. Of course he was also talking about himself. “And now he has to memorize the Bible?”

  Memorize wasn’t exactly the right word for it. In the missionaries’ defense, outside of the daily Bible verse the boys were assigned, they weren’t expected to know much more than the Bible’s stories in the right order. But it was a strange new world for them, even if the version we were reading was in their Joseon language and not the Korean two cousins removed that was spoken in South Korea. Seeing it through their eyes, it had become strange for me, too. I wondered about the mysterious ways of God and about how long you could keep a group of teenage guys locked up without consequences.

  Namil said, “Do you always have to do what Kwon wants you to?”

  “All promises are a promise to God.” Missionary Lee clapped his hands together and brightened. “How about some snacks? I can do that.”

  The rare treat went wrong when Cheolmin grabbed the last Choco Pie and knocked over Bakjun’s bottle of Coke. I set it upright in a flash, but a quarter of it had spilled, and everyone scrambled to rescue their notebooks and Bibles.

  “You stupid ganna saekki.” Bakjun kept his voice low so it wouldn’t carry to Missionary Lee’s room, where he was resting. He was always resting those days, which should have been a sign. “That was mine! When do we ever get to drink this stuff?”

  Bakjun was sweeping the spilled liquid into his palm when Cheolmin smashed the crown of his head with his elbow.

  I locked Cheolmin’s arms behind him the best I could. I wasn’t about to push my luck with a guy who’d begun talking about returning to his country and joining a legendary gang.

  Bakjun’s eyes narrowed into flints. The tension in the air scared me; for the first time I sensed that in the confined space, there was nowhere for their energy to go. I released Cheolmin and sprinted to the middle of the room, threw my arms wide, and said the first thing I could think of.

  “Once upon a time it was the darkest night ever imagined. God dipped his hand into that darkness and when he opened his arms”—I spread mine out—“he divided the dark from the light.”

  “This is stupid,” said Cheolmin.

  “Listen to Daehan,” said Yongju. “You two can have my Coke and Choco Pie.”

  “The light was as bright as the white in a burning fire, a dove’s wing, the streak of a missile across the sky. That was how bright it was.”

  I described Adam as he wandered through the unruly topiary of nature and showed them how lovely he was, how innocent. Soon enough I was there with Adam and Eve, strolling through Eden, the sting of orchids thick in my nose, the green foliage wrapped around the trees like a sarong, listening to the larks and nightingales. I admired those fateful apples, so luminous that they reflected Adam back to himself like a mirror. I was singing one of the greatest songs that man has ever known, and I was flooded with love and hope. But whether that love was for the story, for comfort, or for faith, I didn’t know anymore. I continued until the fate of the world’s first man and woman unraveled and the end came: “Dust you are, dust you will return.”

  I opened my eyes. No one had moved.

  “It’s not a bad story, when you say it that way.” Bakjun cuffed me on the head, sending happy tingles through me.

  “I’ve never heard a nightingale sing,” said Yongju. “I like the sound of it. Nightingale.”

  Cheolmin spat into the air and caught the descending blob in his fist. “Those Bible stories are a load of shit. Everyone knows that.”

  “Everyone?” I said. “Have you talked to the entire world’s population and checked? Do you have any idea how many of us have infiltrated the planet? In China alone there are more than two billion homo sapiens wreaking havoc . . .”

  “There he goes, acting like he’s intellectual when he’s just a homeless Joseon-jok. There’s easier ways to get out.” Cheolmin flashed both palms covered with tiny drawings at me, his version of crib notes.

  Namil slung an arm around me, so close that his unwashed hair trailed its oiliness across my cheek. “At least he knows something. At least he’s saying something worth listening to.”

  “And where’d your fancy long words and your fancy learning get you, dongmu?” said Cheolmin. “Here, with us.”

  I slung my arm over Namil’s shoulder. “I enjoy learning.”

  “‘I enjoy learning,’” Cheolmin parroted back in a squeaky voice that sounded nothing like mine. My stomach tightened. I was exposed again in a circle of boys and there was nowhere to hide. I prepared myself, curled up roly-poly on the floor to protect myself from his fists, but they never came.

  Instead, Yongju asked, “Who’s your real enemy? Who are you really angry at?”

  He approached Cheolmin gently, like a rustling leaf. “Daehan’s one of us, too, and right now we’re all we have.”

  No one had ever defended me before; no one had ever been on my side. I was touched; I was speechless.

  Maybe my life would have spun out differently if Yongju hadn’t crouched on the floor and put his arm around my shoulders and one around Cheolmin’s. But he pulled me into his musk and amber, drew me into the secret fraternity of men, until I was drowning in the oceanic span of his long arms, finally lost.

  I hadn’t recovered when Missionary Kwon arrived later that afternoon; maybe I have never recovered. He cleared his throat, his eyes resting on Cheolmin, who was sleeping facedown on the dojjari. I was teaching Namil how to do a handstand, and he tumbled to the floor feet first as I let go of him and sprang to eager attention, hands at my sides. I’d be more useful to them on the outside anyway, I told myself. I wanted to leave immediately, even if it meant facing my parents.

  I could have timed Missionary Kwon’s steps toward Cheolmin with a metronome. He inspected him, then disappeared down the hall and returned with Missionary Lee.

  “Is this how you’re running my safe house?” Missionary Kwon’s quiet voice could have needled straight through a bolt of wool.

  “We were just taking a break.” Missionary Lee frantically shook Cheolmin by the shoulders.

  Missionary Kwon pulled up Cheolmin by his armpits and held him like a scarecrow. Missionary Lee did nothing. Cheolmin grabbed Missionary Kwon’s hands and dug in with his nails, his fac
e screwed up with so much fury that I ducked as if his fists were flying at me.

  “You could have hurt him!” said Missionary Lee, but he stayed half-hidden behind Yongju.

  Still holding him by the armpits, Missionary Kwon lifted Cheolmin into the air until their faces were inches apart. “I hear you haven’t been very successful in memorizing your daily verses.”

  “He’s only missed a few, and he’s really trying,” said Missionary Lee.

  “Missionary Kwon, I am trying.” Cheolmin’s eyes were hard and cold.

  The missionary set him back down.

  “No dinner today for you. No verse, no food. We’ll stick to this every day until you conform fully to my rules. I’ll come personally to check if I have to, but I expect . . .”

  He frowned, drawing out the fine lines under his eyes. “I expect Missionary Lee will be honest in his reports.”

  Cheolmin said, “You heard. I tried. I got most of it.”

  “Most? If the Lord’s sacrifice of his own son saved us from most but not all of our sins, would that be enough to bless us with the eternal gift of heaven?”

  “And if I give up? Are you going to starve me?” The bulldog look came over Cheolmin’s face.

  “No, don’t try blackmailing me. I don’t recommend that. One girl I tried to help—she went on a sort of strike. She wouldn’t study or read the Lord’s words—she abandoned her soul. I can tell you we were patient, and we moved her from safe house to safe house for more than three years.”

  A chorus of voices, including mine, said, “Three years?”

  “We tried so hard not to give up on her . . . The discipline’s for your sake, jaashik. You North Koreans can’t understand our system, but trust me, I’ve done this work for years. Without discipline, this house would be utter chaos. Most Christians won’t even take kids like you in, because of the potential trouble.”

  “They’re good boys.” Missionary Lee approached Cheolmin and wrapped his arms around his neck. “They’re God’s children, too!”