by Young-Ha Kim
After she leaves, Song-uk whines like a child: "I won't ask you to do something like this again, really. Just this once. I can't sleep at night because I keep thinking about it. I can't study because I can't concentrate."
"You're so stubborn."
"No, Ma-ri, you're too old-fashioned. Why is everything else okay but not that? We're not even married."
"Aren't you worried that you might lose me?"
"Yeah, but I know that you'll be fine with it in the end."
Where does he get this confidence? She's starting to realize that it isn't going to be easy to make his desire wane.
"I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be back." Ma-ri takes her purse into the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror. Crow's-feet adorn her eyes and her hair is losing its luster. Through the door that is slightly ajar, she glimpses Song-uk's confident face. He's young, and he'll be young for a while. And I'm getting older. It's the bare truth. A kid on a student's budget, with bad fashion sense, is controlling a woman with money and a good job. Other than his youth, what does he have that I don't? She feels the way she does when she uses one of her credit cards, knowing full well that she's nearing the limit, hoping against her better judgment, telling the clerk, "This one will probably go through." She can sense defeat looming, but she doesn't want to acknowledge it just yet.
A woman enters the bathroom, taking a lighter out of her purse.
"Can I bum a cigarette?" Ma-ri asks.
The woman, whose hair is in a short, straight bob, hands her a Marlboro Light. The woman stands by the window, while Ma-ri smokes in front of the mirror. She feels calmer. Fine. I'll do it. He wants it so badly. I'll do it. But not too easily, no. I'm going to make him regret asking me to do that, make it so that he'll be too embarrassed to talk about it to his friends. No, what am I thinking? I can't do it. Of course I can't do it. No means no. Ma-ri takes one last drag, snuffs out the cigarette, and washes her hands.
She goes back to the table. The waitress is serving their food and doesn't move out of the way, although she knows Ma-ri is waiting to get past her. Ma-ri sits down after the waitress finally leaves. Song-uk frowns as he picks up his fork. "Did you smoke again?"
"Yeah, I was feeling nauseated. Does it smell really strong?"
"You promised you were going to quit."
"I did, but..."
"You know I hate it."
"Sorry, I'll really quit."
"Promise?"
"Yeah. Come on, eat." She cuts a small piece of tomato and cheese. "So," she says.
He looks up. "Yes?"
"Why do you hate it when women smoke? I'm curious."
"I don't mind women smoking in general. I just don't want my woman to smoke."
"Why not?"
"What?" Song-uk, unable to answer this unexpected question, sinks deep into thought. Why doesn't he like for his woman to smoke? It's an interesting question. Sometimes he thinks the girls who smoke on the benches in front of school look cool. He likes the way women wearing evening gowns in films noirs smoke long, thin cigarettes. So why does it bother him when Ma-ri smokes? "I don't know. I just thought of this, but maybe it's that I don't like the expression a woman makes when she smokes."
"What about it?"
"It's like she's complacent or something, when she's leisurely blowing smoke. It makes me feel like they're pushing me, or guys like me, away. You know what I mean?"
"No, not really."
"Um, well, in high school, the girls would always be talking and giggling in groups. Guys feel uncomfortable when that happens. It's like they're laughing at us. They're definitely laughing, as if to say, 'Look, we don't need you, you guys are stupid. You're always checking us out, even though you pretend that you're not.' You know, something like that. And that's what it's like with smoking. They're always closing their eyes to better enjoy it. When they do that I feel small."
"You're jealous."
"Yeah, I think so. I think women really understand pleasure." He lowers his voice. "Like, you come so many times. A guy comes once and that's it. And we don't scream or faint when we're coming. Sometimes I wish I were a woman."
Hearing those words, a switch somewhere inside her flicks on, unleashing an intense surge of lust. She wants to leave right now and roll around naked on a white-sheeted bed. She wants to practically beg: I won't smoke anymore. I'll do whatever you want. Just get up and let's go to the nearest hotel right now. Suddenly, the kid sitting across from her looks like a powerful sultan.
"Am I boring you?" Song-uk asks.
"No, it's interesting. I think that makes sense."
"There's a book called War and Violence, and it says that soldiers rape and kill women when they're at war because they want to get back at them for having been oppressed by them. During peacetime women ignore soldiers, snickering at them when they walk by and refusing to have anything to do with them."
"You think so too? You think women ignore you?"
"Well, not really, but I feel like sometimes they're teasing me."
"When?"
"You do it too, Ma-ri."
"Me?"
"Like now, when you know how much I want it and all you do is tease me for months."
"But..."
"Don't make excuses, you know it's true."
"I still have a cast," she says, her tone already apologetic.
"I like it better with the cast. It's sexier. When will I ever be able to do it with a woman in a cast?"
His seafood risotto is getting cold. She keeps thinking that his food shouldn't get any colder, not food that will go into her young lover's mouth. She looks anxiously at the risotto. Her fingertips are trembling, and a faint shudder of disgust shoots up from her shoulders to her chin.
She blurts out, "Fine."
"What?"
She cuts the remaining mozzarella in half. "I'll do it."
"Do what?" he teases.
"Forget it then." She watches as his mouth stretches into a grin.
"Really?" He's so thrilled, truly, with all his heart. His eyes sparkle.
Forgetting for an instant exactly what is making him so happy, she is simply happy that she can make him that elated.
"Thank you, thank you," he says.
She slides another piece of cold cheese onto her tongue. She can't taste anything. "But I don't want it to be with someone you don't know. I want it to be someone you know well, someone who can keep it a secret."
"Okay, I know someone who's perfect for this. He's in my class in school. He's one of my best friends from childhood. He even passed the first round of the bar exam, and basically he's an awesome guy."
"So passing the first round of the bar exam makes him awesome?"
"Well, that's not what I meant. I mean..."
She holds up her hand. "Stop, I don't have to know everything. It's fine if you're really that close."
"How's tonight?"
"Isn't that too soon?"
"Too soon? I've been waiting for months!"
She's actually relieved. She can't believe she refused for so long, when he's this giddy. She feels a little guilty. "You're really excited about this, aren't you?"
"I'm so proud of you is all. How about seven?"
"Okay."
"Dinner's on me."
"It's fine. You're a student, I know you have a tight budget. It will be my treat," Ma-ri offers.
"Are we going to go somewhere good?"
"What do you want to eat?"
"He likes barbecued pork belly. What about that restaurant with the wine-marinated pork belly?"
"Sure, I'll see you there."
Trembling slightly from all the excitement, Song-uk shovels the remaining seafood risotto into his mouth, checking his phone as he eats. When it buzzes with the arrival of a new text, he switches his fork over to his left hand and starts typing with his right thumb. She figures he must be texting his law school friend. What is he writing? Is he already telling him about her? She gulps down the lukewarm water. The waitress
comes by and fills her empty glass. She feels deserted, like she's abandoned in a vast open space, even though she's sitting in the middle of a bustling restaurant. She takes out her cell phone. There are two texts, one from Ki-yong.
—Might be late tonight. She wonders what's come up. The next text is from Hyon-mi.
—B-day party after school. Will eat dinner there. Don't worry.
She feels unsettled that nobody will be home for dinner. It's as if her family is conspiring to push her toward Song-uk. She sends a message to Hyon-mi that she will be late, too, but just types "OK" to Ki-yong. When she glances up, she catches Song-uk looking at her. Thin veins are crisscrossing the whites of his eyes. For some reason she thinks of a lump of fish roe in a pot of overboiled stew.
HYON-MI CHECKS THE text message that has just arrived in her inbox. She returns her lunch tray to the front of the room and heads down to the snack bar with A-yong for some banana milk. Hyon-mi's addicted to banana milk; she craves it even after she drinks three or four cartons. Milk in hand, the girls walk toward the bench near the flower bed outside. A gaggle of girls pass by them, and Jin-guk appears close behind.
"Hey," A-yong calls.
Jin-guk only notices them then.
"Hi," A-yong says again.
"Hi," Jin-guk replies, blushing slightly. A couple of boys passing by glance at them.
"So who's coming later?" A-yong asks.
Jin-guk looks around. "You guys and two of my friends."
Hyon-mi interjects: "Do we know these guys?"
"No, probably not."
"Oh, they don't go here?"
"No, they don't go to school."
"They don't go to school?" A-yong asks, surprised.
"Yeah, why, does that matter?" Jin-guk's expression reveals that he was expecting such a reaction. "But they're not the kind of guys you think they are."
"Oh, so what kind of guys do we think they are?"
"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Jin-guk retorts.
Hyon-mi and A-yong exchange glances.
Jin-guk, fidgeting uncomfortably, scratches his head and adds, "But I hope you do come."
Hyon-mi and A-yong look unconvinced. A-yong speaks for them both: "Well, we'll think about it."
Jin-guk's cheeks grow redder. "Okay, text me later."
"Have fun, even if we don't come."
"Aw, no, you guys really should come," Jin-guk tries once more, then leaves for the snack bar.
Hyon-mi tosses the empty banana milk carton into the trash can. They trip along the flower bed toward the flagpole. A group of boys, squeezing in a game of basketball during the lunch hour, run around with their hands outstretched, like apes.
"Jin-guk's kinda weird, huh?" A-yong comments.
Hyon-mi nods. "Yeah, don't you think his friends would be weird too?"
"Yeah, but I like that."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't like the kids at our school." A shadow falls across A-yong's features.
Hyon-mi squeezes her friend's hand. They burst into giggles and break into a run. They stop abruptly, breathing hard.
"My mom's working late today," Hyon-mi remembers.
"Yeah?" A-yong welcomes this piece of news. "Then we can go home a little late."
"What about your cram school?"
"Whatever, it's just one day. I wish I didn't have to go, like you."
"I wish I could go, but my stepmother won't give me the money."
A-yong laughs and playfully punches her on the shoulder. Hyon-mi yelps an exaggerated "Hey!" and bolts into the building, A-yong on her heels. The music indicating the end of lunch follows their footsteps and echoes through the campus.
THE HILTON HOTEL IN PYONGYANG
1:00 P.M.
KI-YONG WALKS west from Chongno sam-ga, weaving through the crowd, reading the signs. He sees these signs every single day, but today they seem brand-new. Familiar sights meld with the unfamiliar, creating a jarring harmony. To Ki-yong, everything in Chongno is at once familiar and foreign. It's the one place that didn't feel alien to him when he first reached Seoul, but in the twenty years since, it's never grown more familiar. Although it's in the center of Seoul, it always seems like a street on the fringes of the city. At the same time, it feels the most authentically Seoul.
ONE DAY, back when he was a member of Liaison Office 130, Ki-yong and his comrades filed onto a bus with boarded-up windows. Lit only by faint dome lights, everyone looked washed out. The bus drove all around Pyongyang, making it hard to figure out where they were being taken. Suddenly, they started to go downhill, as if sinking, and after a long while the bus jerked to a stop. Everyone raised their heads to look through the windshield and saw barricades, the kind often set up at checkpoints. Just beyond the barricades stood a concrete structure that looked like a bomb shelter, its igloolike entrance covered in camouflage. There was also a metal gate just wide enough for a bus to squeeze through. The gate opened and the bus entered the darkness. This building was well concealed from American satellite patrols, so secure that it was probably even safe against atomic bombs. The bus kept moving for a while before it finally stopped. They disembarked. Following the guide's orders, they marched, single file, toward a squat gray building.
They were led into the changing room and were ordered to place their clothes in a basket on a shelf. They received new clothes, socks, and shoes. Are we in a correctional facility? someone whispered in Ki-yong's ear. It wasn't an outlandish thought. Ki-yong had seen a film about Auschwitz when he was in high school. He had thought it was interesting that the beginning of one's stint in a concentration camp was identical to that of being inducted into the military. Both required the new arrivals to take off their clothes and change into uniforms, their heads were shaved and they were ordered to bathe. But this time they weren't shaved or ordered to bathe. Ki-yong was quietly relieved.
The group left the changing room through a different door, and immediately let out a yell of surprise. They were standing in the darkened streets of Chongno in Seoul. People wearing South Korean clothes milled about on sidewalks of plum-colored bricks, neon signs flashing above their heads. Mounds of fruit lay piled in bins in a grocery store, next to a bar selling OB beer on tap. The grocery store and a nightclub flanked the police station. Though none of them had been to Seoul, that didn't seem quite right. But everything else appeared to be very authentic. There was even a beggar, prostrate on the street with his palms outstretched, a rubber mat covering his legs, just like in the South.
The store clerks, hotel employees, and cops were people who had been kidnapped from South Korea or who came up north voluntarily. They spoke with perfect South Korean accents and came to work each morning to this mini-Seoul, re-creating the life they had once known. In the grocery store, the owner swatted at flies settling on apples while a woman who seemed to be his wife worked on the books, but it was impossible to know whether they were really a couple.
Lee Sang-hyok strode out through the revolving doors of the Hilton Hotel, a surreal sight for Ki-yong and his comrades, who had rarely had the chance to lay eyes on him. Grinning like a movie star, he came down the stairs and stood before the agent candidates.
"Hello, everyone!" His speech would have normally started with "Comrades!" but this was the Seoul style. Ki-yong and his fellow candidates answered like Seoulites, too: "Hello!"
Lee Sang-hyok swept his arm toward the street. "So, what do you think? Amazing, isn't it?"
"Yes!"
"Don't answer in unison. Nobody answers a question in chorus in Seoul. Do you understand?"
Nobody answered.
"The Republic's film functionaries completed this street to the best of their ability, under the guidance of our beloved leader, Comrade Kim Jong Il. Here, you must behave as if you were actually in Seoul."
Ki-yong's field adaptation training had taken place right before Shin Sang-ok, one of South Korea's top directors, and his wife, the popular actress Choi Eun-hee—who had been kidnapped ye
ars earlier under Kim Jong Il's orders—escaped and returned to the South. Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee evaded their North Korean handlers in Vienna and escaped via the American embassy. The media coverage following their escape revealed the mysterious Northern leader's love for movies, which went beyond the usual film buff's appreciation.
Kim Jong Il kidnapped his favorite director and actress and ordered them to make movies in North Korea. He appeared on set, revised the script at his whim, and even directed the actors. So it was only a matter of time until the dictator came up with the idea of using elements of film production to improve the training of South-bound agents. An ardent fan of movies and the opera, Kim Jong Il eventually transformed all of North Korean society into theater. Eighty thousand people gathered in a stadium to conduct the Mass Games. Youths waving red flags marched through the streets in time to war songs. A couple of lead actors and hundreds of thousands of extras created gigantic epics.
There was no such thing as an individual in the North. According to the Juche Ideology, which dictated that societal life was more important than biological life, every person had to belong to a group. A person's identity was represented by the Socialist Working Youth League, the Democratic Korean Women's Union, or the Workers Party of Korea. Every group met daily or at least a couple of times a week for critique sessions, living in a prison of watchful eyes. In a society where everyone submitted their inadvertent mistakes to their comrades for judgment, nobody could evade the gazes. Like actors on set, North Koreans went about their days, conscious of the eyes of the "director" and "cast." And an actor couldn't only be careful of his own mistakes; he also had to be vigilant about the others' transgressions. Any error would stop the cameras and invite the director's wrath.
Strangely, the Seoul set didn't feel foreign to the trainees. It was still fundamentally Northern in character, despite attempting to replicate Seoul exactly. The real Chongno wasn't beautiful, no matter how you looked at it. Chongno was a jumble of dirty, unwholesome elements and flashy, sophisticated ones, but it was above all organic. Chongno had a naturalness about it, like the way a dandelion seed lands on a yellow squash blossom sprouting from an old tile roof. The set in Pyongyang, though clean and orderly, felt fake, illuminated by high-wattage artificial lights instead of the sun—it was too different from what it was trying to be. Obviously, the architect of the set saw a different aesthetic value. For Kim Jong Il, it must have been like his own private, miniature theme park. In five minutes, he could go from Chongno to London's Piccadilly Circus. It was rumored that there were other pseudocities beyond the streets of fake Seoul, where the Dutch, British, and French lived—a world where an aging American deserter of the Korean War who had married a Thai woman kidnapped from Macau could drink Sri Lankan tea with a French woman tricked into coming to Pyongyang under the guise of a job opportunity. In certain respects, they weren't any different from the foreigners who moved to Tokyo or Seoul to teach English at private institutes, since it was their job to teach foreign languages to agents to be dispatched to the South. The only difference was that the foreigners in North Korea could never leave.