Jia: A Novel of North Korea Read online

  A Novel of North Korea

  By HYEJIN Kim

  Introduction

  Imost ten years ago, during a summer spent traveling - - through England, I met a paunchy middle-aged man on a double-decker bus. When he caught sight of me, bent over from the weight of my backpack, he smiled and asked, "Where are you from?"

  "Korea," I replied, clutching the pole next to the door. The next stop was nine.

  "Which Korea?"

  I frowned; I didn't understand what he meant.

  "South Korea or North Korea?"

  I was completely thrown. I watched his face for another moment. South or North? I wondered.

  Showing my bewilderment, I answered, "South" and got off the bus. I stood there for a while, looking back at the bus.

  To me, there was just one Korea. My upbringing was strictly anti-North Korea, and discussion of North Korea was shunned. I had never thought of North Korea as a real country and North Koreans as real human beings. In comics and cartoons, North Koreans had red faces or bony features and their leaders were all monsters. Every year, on the anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, I had to hand in an essay and a painting reviling North Korea. That was the only time I could use my favorite color-red-as much as I wanted.

  When I was an infant, my father, a young, passionate history teacher who was curious about other political systems, was convicted of being a North Korean sympathizer. His possession of socialist books was taken as evidence that he worked for the North by the dictators who then ruled South Korea, and his comments to friends and colleagues about problems with the Park Chung Hee administration confirmed to prosecutors that he was a dangerous man. When my father left for prison, my first birthday hadn't yet passed. Seeing my father five years later, when he was finally released, I cried and shouted at him to get out of my house. I remember his bald head terrifying me.

  North Korea and the South Korean dictatorship had created a five-year gap in the relationship between father and daughter; my hostility toward him cost my father many tears.

  I came to know my father's history when I was 14 years old, when my mom told me his story, and since then I have seen North Korea as both a constant threat and a beguiling Pandora's box, an object of curiosity that we shouldn't open. Until we can. For me that time came several years ago, when I spent a year living in Shenyang, the hub of northeast China.

  On a stifling summer weekend early in my stay, a friend invited me to her grandparents' house. Far from Shenyang, their town lacked modern facilities and seemed to be inhabited chiefly by the elderly.

  My friend's grandparents are chosur jok, a term that refers to ethnic Koreans who live in China. The province ofLiaoning, which borders North Korea, has several chosur jok towns, most of which developed with the migration of Koreans to China earlier in the twentieth century, when Japan made the Korean Peninsula a colony. Living together in northeast China, these Koreans have managed to maintain traditional Korean customs in a foreign land. In the past few years, however, the villages have emptied out, as young people like my friend are lured to the city for work.

  In the late afternoon, my visit complete, I headed for the bus station, declining my friend's offer to see me off. I didn't want to take a minute of joy away from the wrinkled faces of the two who were hosting their granddaughter. After a twohour wait at a dusty, windy bus stop, I fought my way on board my ride home; competition to survive among 1.3 billion Chinese begins and ends with getting a seat on the bus. I had already learned to give up hope of ever sitting-there was no way to beat the Chinese people. I decided to stand.

  "Sit here." A clear female voice emerged from the surrounding clatter, giving me a small start: someone spoke Korean.

  A lovely face smiled, looking up at me. With her hand, she patted a small empty space on her seat. Her strong accent made me think she must be a chosut ok, and she probably thought I was one as well. Her big eyes and small hand were poised for my reply. She tried to make a space for me, and when I tried to refuse, she kept smiling, and said, "Why not? It's only going to get more crowded."

  That was how I met the woman I have come to call "Jia." As more and more people scrambled onto the bus, just as she had predicted, we exchanged a few polite questions over the screaming and shoving of our fellow passengers. The commotion in the bus was like a small war.

  I asked her if she was born in Liaoning.

  She replied lightly, "No, I am North Korean."

  The instant I heard it, I could feel my heart quicken. I am talking to a North Korean right now, I thought; North Korean, not South Korean.

  "I came here two years ago," she continued.

  I smiled at her but couldn't look directly into her eyes. I was afraid somebody had heard what she had said. There might be some North Korean agents among us, who would catch her and take her to the police. My new friend seemed not to care. She asked me where I was heading. We discovered we were both heading to North Station and spent the rest of the ride in silence. Every now and then I stole a glance at her; she had a big bag, but there did not seem to be anything in it.

  As the bus began to empty and seats were freed around us, Jia and I stayed put in our shared seat, looking out the window in silence. The tall buildings of downtown Shenyang blocked the strong winds of the outlying area, and the hazy world turned into a clear and colorful one. Eventually we pried ourselves from the seat and stepped off the bus, but our good-bye was not a final one; Jia and I became friends.

  What attracted me to her? The purpose of my stay in China was to learn about the Chinese people, not other Koreans-let alone North Koreans. Was I motivated by the curiosity that had been building in me for decades? Soon, I learned about Jia and her compatriots, I entered the world of "other Koreans," whose lives had previously been closed off to me. I wanted to tell their stories for many reasons, perhaps the most important one being the simplest: because these other Koreans walk the Earth with us.

  The characters in this novel, Jia included, are an amalgam of what I saw for myself in China, what I heard from North Korean border crossers and those assisting them, and what I encountered in my research documenting asylum seekers and North Korean society. My original plan to stay in China for two months was stretched to a year, and during that time, I stumbled across a variety of people with links to North Korea: Chinese-born Koreans who had North Korean neighbors, church groups sympathetic to North Koreans, and activists who took risks to help North Korean border crossers. The last group welcomed me, a curious outsider, on their dangerous trips. At first I felt that observing such underground activities was a lucky opportunity, but as time went on I came to feel that it was my destiny, both as a writer and as a Korean.

  Over several months in 2001 and 2002, I met with the woman who was the inspiration for Jia. When we first met, she was quiet and shy, but she had the confidence and tranquility of someone who let her life progress with the flow of time. The more time I spent with her, the more that confidence came to the fore, along with her passion and firm hopes for a better life. Her eyes, full of enthusiasm for the future as well as yearning for lost loved ones, continued to stir my mind long after I left China. They led me to put this story to paper.

  My hope is that readers will gain a better understanding of the lives of North Koreans-beyond the lens of geopolitics or ideology-and see what I have seen in one woman's eyes.

  Hyejin Kim

  Singapore, March 2007

  TIME LINE

  Part 1

  My Secret Childhood

  don't know when I was born. I don't know whether my -mom ever saw my face or just left for the other world without a glimpse of me. I still wonder whether my father is alive or dead. After giving birth to me, my mother didn't ge
t enough to eat-no bowls of miyeokguk, no honey, eggs, or pork-not even the most basic food for a woman just out of childbirth. Instead, my grandmother soaked the placenta and umbilical cord in water, drained them of blood (they shrink and turn white), cut them into tiny cubes, and coated them with sugar so that my mom could swallow each piece in one bite. She wasn't supposed to chew, in order to protect her teeth, which were still soft from the punishment of pregnancy, but she was too weak to swallow. In the end, this sustenance didn't help enough; perhaps she didn't want to share this world with me.

  My grandmother liked to say I was a troublemaker even in the womb. It seemed I wanted out as soon as possible. My mom often rolled on the floor, clutching her stomach after a flurry of my kicks; they were sure I would be a boy, that I had been a soccer player in my previous life.

  My grandmother's face would bloom with a smile when she said, ` Jia, you don't know how happy we were when we saw you for the first time. We were so relieved that you were an adorable girl, and not the tough little nut of a boy we were expecting. Your sister and I couldn't handle that, and now I don't have to worry about you going crazy about soccer and coming home injured, like your father did when he was a boy."

  My father's and mother's photographs were hidden in a recess of my grandmother's closet. My grandfather didn't allow me to see them, and when he discovered me holding my parents' pictures in my hands, he scolded me bitterly. He also shouted at my grandmother; he didn't know she had held on to them, and that whenever I wasn't feeling well she dandled me on her knee and showed me the photos for comfort. She would talk for hours about my father and mother, their love for each other, and my mother's extraordinary beauty.

  In his individual photos, my father never smiled. His thick hair was brushed straight back from his forehead; his eyes were two long slits, staring directly into the camera, as if in challenge. He looked stubborn, with his triangular face and thin lips. In the photos with my mother, however, he was transformed: his eyes turned to half-moons as he smiled; he looked like a bashful boy.

  When my father saw my mother for the first time, dancing in her traditional hatibok with the grace of a pink-winged butterfly, he fell in love instantly. When I saw the pictures, I envied her big eyes, straight legs, and thin waist. She put on such bright makeup and wore beautiful dresses, and always smiled in her pictures. I wondered if she still smiled in the other world.

  My sister also remembered our mother. When my body was feverish, she would hold my hand in bed and talk about her.

  "At first, I despised you. I believed you took Mom to the other world. I didn't want to see you or take care of you at all. You would cry for days at a time-you were always hungry, because we couldn't feed you well. I even prayed you would go back to your world and Mom would return in your place. But Jia, you're my treasure now. I can't stand it when you're sick-don't be sick anymore." We fell asleep hugging each other tightly. Her hand was like magic, and my fevers never lasted very long.

  When I was small, I came down with any and every disease a child could have. Vomiting was a regular part of my life; fever frequently occupied my body. My grandparents and my sister worried whenever symptoms of a new disease came on, because they couldn't get suitable medicine. Sometimes they had to watch over my ailing body helplessly for several days, never sleeping. I don't get sick easily anymore. Perhaps my trials as a child gave me the strength I have now.

  There weren't many people in the part of North Korea where my family lived. Mountains stretched in all directions, and what few people there were fit into either of two categories: "extremely bad" and "commonly bad." The extremely bad were locked inside barbed-wire fences, and the commonly bad lived outside the fence. We were fortunate to be in the second group. The "inside people," as we called them, had faces stained with coal ash and were perpetually bent over, their eyes staring at the ground, no matter how old they were. The men in dark-green uniforms, however, had clean faces and shiny shoes.

  My grandparents strictly forbade my sister and me from walking along the fence. Sometimes I looked down at the camp from high up on the hill; I could see the contrasting faces of the residents and the guards.

  We didn't talk with our neighbors much. People seemed to be too tired to talk to each other. Adults left their house early and came back with black dust on their faces. My grandfather and grandmother were not exceptions. My grandfather had back trouble and often coughed up phlegm. My grandmother's problems were not as serious, as her job cooking for the white-faced guards in the camp was less dangerous than his. I spent many evenings waiting for her to come home with leftovers, like rice cakes or glutinous rice jelly. "Today was a lucky day for you girls," she would say, shuffling through the door with a wrinkled smile.

  Surrounding our house were mountains and an enormous valley, with trees and grass everywhere in between. The water was clean; we could drink it without a care, and my sister and I swam every day. Whenever I wasn't sick, I was outside until late into the evening; I wanted to make up for my bedridden life with outdoor activities. Our grandparents assigned homework daily, usually the collection of mushrooms and herbs. Every night, huddled close together, we cleaned our harvest thoroughly, and the next day our grandparents brought it to the camp. My sister and I spent the days searching the mountains and valleys for new things to do and see. We held races to see who could swim faster; though I was much younger than my sister, my long arms and legs helped me win, or at least get abreast of her. It could be she simply gave me the chance.

  I was curious about people and other places, and I read all the books my grandmother kept in her closet. They helped my sister and me forget about the gray faces and the thick, pointy wire fences, even for an hour. The photos in some of the books thrilled me, transporting us to places we had never been and introducing us to people we had never met. I had so many questions about what I saw in the pictures: the high buildings, the people walking on pavement, and especially the kids my own age dressed in nice clothing. These were photos taken in Pyongyang, North Korea's biggest city, and from first sight, I dreamed of living there and walking those streets. My grandmother answered all my questions kindly, explaining everything in detail.

  There was only one rule: I was never to ask about my father. My family's refusal to talk about him convinced me he had done something terrible. Often I hugged my grandmother and grumbled that I despised my father, knowing he brought my family tragedy. I knew it was his fault that my mother was dead, and that we lived in such an isolated place. I cursed him over and over, but my grandmother consoled me, whispering that he never meant to hurt us. He was smart, she'd say, he just wasn't lucky. That's why people tried to hurt him. It was not his fault. His only fault was being born in the wrong place.

  I learned my parents' story the day before my unexpected farewell to my grandparents and my sister. I didn't even get the chance to boast to my sister about what I had learned from Grandmother. I didn't know it was the last gift she would give to me.

  My Father's and Mother's Story

  veryone said that my father and mother never should have met, that it was the beginning of a tragic story. My mom was from a good family; as an only child, she was given everything she could have wanted. Her family belonged to the "core class," the highest of the three government-assigned categories. Mom's father occupied a high position in the army, and her mother was a vice principal at a small college. She inherited her father's outstanding physique, and took advantage of it by studying at a professional dancing school.

  Dancers shouldn't be afraid to face any kind of dance: that was her dancing philosophy. Wearing the traditional hanbok, she was fragile and sweet in her movements, like a flying butterfly, but when she donned a military uniform, her movements expressed the spirit ofa strong and passionate revolutionary soldier. Success as a famous dancer was every woman's dream in North Korea. My mother's talent and good background, and the support of her family, suggested that she would become the most famous dancer in Pyongyang. Then she met my fa
ther.

  It was a bad match. My father, by contrast, had a coinplicated family: they belonged to one of the lower classes of society, the "wavering class." My great-grandparents on my father's side were exploited by the Japanese in the early part of the century; their mistake was to own too much land and to have too many servants. My grandfather grew up seeing his father regularly beaten by Japanese police and eventually stripped of his property.

  When my grandfather was 15, a single incident changed his life forever. A secret guerilla group agitating for independence passed through the town. They were caught by the Japanese police but resisted their captors, eventually killing them. After taking food and weapons from the police warehouse, the group hastily disappeared. The episode left the town's young people excited and anxious.

  Several days later, my grandfather disappeared from his house with only these written words: "I'm leaving to be a hero for my country." He went to northeast China and instantly joined a guerrilla group. At that time, it was difficult to stage independence activities against Japan in Korea. Some Koreans protested with their feet, moving to northeast China and Joining Chinese nationalist or communist groups. Others conducted their own, purely Korean, activities. There were many young people like my grandfather: passionate about punishing the Japanese.

  He didn't take on the colors of any faction, and he wasn't interested in ideology; his purpose was to see how many Japanese soldiers and policemen he could kill. He and his comrades lurked about in villages at night, looking for targets, and gathered in the mountains during the day. They learned how to make bombs and produce dynamite, using them to punish the Japanese police and the Korean stool pigeons. Their radical strategies made it difficult to get regular financial support from the usual associations that secretly funded such activities. They were always hungry, always cold, as they traveled back and forth between northeast China and the northern tip of Korea.