by Young-Ha Kim
"I don't think so. He's a little young for that. Now that he's on the move, we'll keep an eye on him for a few days. He'll run someplace, now that we've shaken him up a bit. It's also possible that he's just going to confess everything. These assholes are like grasshoppers, they all jump when one guy does."
Chol-su pours himself some coffee and sits down at his desk. Jong starts flipping through a newspaper. Chol-su's thoughts wander not to Kim Ki-yong, but to Ma-ri. Her youthful cheeks that lead to her graceful neck and then finally to her full, still perky chest. Her ivory blouse and contrasting brown eye shadow seem to reflect her conflicted self-perception, in limbo between youth and middle age. Her sophisticated makeup hides fine lines and dark circles but still reveals the fact that she's aging, demonstrating her resolve not to give up on her looks. Every pore on her body is bursting with this contradiction. Maybe that's why he felt suffocated sitting next to her in that small car. Even though it was only for a brief time, he felt ambushed by the strong womanly scent rolling off her in waves. It wasn't perfume; it was something different. Frankly, she wasn't that beautiful a woman. But something about her made her glow, enhancing her attractiveness. Everything about the test drive was different from Chol-su's everyday life—Ma-ri, wearing a sleek suit, the car worth over forty million won, the fancy showroom. Chol-su suddenly wishes—no, he craves—that he were rich. He's sick of his government employee life. On the same day every month, he uses his entire paycheck to pay his credit card bill. No matter what happens at work, he's trapped into staying, imprisoned by the pension he would receive upon retirement. Would he be able to grab the attention of someone like Ma-ri? What would happen to Ma-ri if Ki-yong were caught or went back north? She'd be shaken, the foundation of her life would crumble. Would it be possible then? Would he be able to be with her?
***
THE MUSIC CHIMES, signifying the end of fifth period. Like a radio whose frequency is suddenly jumbled, the classroom fills up instantly with various kinds of noise. Kids shoot out of their seats and wander around the classroom, gabbing. Hyon-mi thinks this must be what life is like for molecules when water reaches its boiling point. Her desk starts buzzing and her pencil rolls off onto the floor. She takes out her cell.
"Come to the teachers' office."
It's a text from her homeroom teacher. She gets up and tells A-yong, "Our homeroom teacher wants me to come see him at the teachers' office. Can you tell Viper if I'm late?"
"Sure."
Hyon-mi pushes past her classmates and heads to the door. When her homeroom teacher sees her come through the doors of the teachers' office, he smiles and pulls a swiveling chair toward him. These days he's obsessed with the Book of Changes. He spends every available moment determining the fate of his students. "Sit, sit," he offers.
"It's okay."
"No, it's for me, so my neck won't hurt looking up at you."
Hyon-mi perches on the chair, which is padded with a flowery cushion.
"What's going on with the school beautification project?" her teacher asks.
"I'm going to do it with Jae-gyong and Tae-su, from the art club."
"Will two be enough?"
"I think so."
"What about Han-saem, too?"
"Han-saem?" Hyon-mi hesitates; she isn't fond of Han-saem.
"Get her to do it, too," he instructs.
Hyon-mi nods. "All right, I will."
"Okay, that's it. See you later."
Hyon-mi stands up, bows, and bumps into Soji at the door.
"Hi, Ms. So," Hyon-mi says.
"Hey, Hyon-mi." Soji reaches out to stroke the girl's hair. "Want to sit?" she asks, going to her desk. "How's your mom?"
"She's fine."
"You're looking more like her the older you get."
Hyon-mi purses her lips, unhappy. "No, everyone says I look like Dad."
"Hmm. Ma-ri used to be really smart and cool."
"Really?"
"Of course. There were a lot of cool girls back then, and your mom was one of them."
"I don't believe it."
"Why not?"
"Mom's just, I don't know. I don't know." Hyon-mi shakes her head. She has never once thought that her mom was smart or intelligent. She thinks those words describe students like her. Of course, once upon a time her mom was a student, but it's still an odd way to think of her.
Soji asks, "By the way, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"I don't know. Well, I think ... uh, you're not going to laugh at me, right?"
"Of course not."
"I think I want to be a judge."
"Yeah?"
Hyon-mi studies Soji's expression. "You're already making fun of me. You're like, Oh, you're so predictable."
"No, no. Why do you want to be a judge?"
Hyon-mi answers gravely, "I think the law is the most important thing in society. If there weren't laws, people would be exposed to the violence of the majority and wouldn't be able to defend themselves. You know what happened with A-yong, right? Without laws, kids like A-yong wouldn't get any protection. I think the law is able to give at least some power to the weak."
Hyon-mi's determination reminds Soji of Ma-ri, back when she believed that good and evil divided the world, that people knew how to tell them apart, that the world would become utopian if everyone just followed her conscience, that to achieve a utopia it was necessary to overthrow the oppressive government and eliminate those who profited from it. Ma-ri had looked just like Hyon-mi when she believed that could be easily achieved. Soji wonders if the passion shared by mother and daughter is the product of genetic makeup.
"You look at the law in a very interesting way," Soji comments. "It seems to me that other kids look at the law as a means to punish those who commit crimes."
"Well, of course there's that too. But the real purpose of the law is to protect the weak. It was only because of the law that they were able to get those kids who streamed that footage of A-yong, and that's why they were able to stop it before it got out of hand." Hyon-mi's voice grows louder and more impassioned.
Soji is starting to feel self-conscious in front of the other teachers. "That's true, actually," she concedes.
"Everyone laughed and made fun of her but the law was the only thing that was on her side."
Soji nods, taking in Hyon-mi's smooth forehead, and wonders what the girl will look like when she grows up. Hyon-mi is on the brink of becoming an adult. She's a little surprised that Hyon-mi is praising the purity of the law and the system without any reservation. "You don't think there can be bad laws?"
Hyon-mi tilts her head. "What do you think is a bad law?"
Soji can't think of anything, and realizes that she hasn't pondered that kind of question in a long time. Students usually ask such basic questions, the kind adults have ceased thinking about.
Hyon-mi seems to understand Soji's embarrassment. "That's why we have a legislature, so that bad laws can be changed. They'll change them gradually."
"You sound so mature, Hyon-mi. Do you have a boyfriend?"
Hyon-mi, turning pink, starts stuttering. "No. I mean, well, not really. Uh, I'm only in eighth grade."
"Apparently even elementary school kids have boyfriends these days."
"Oh, well, that's just little kid stuff. What do they know about life?"
"Oh, so you know about life?" Soji covers her mouth, unable to suppress her laughter. The music comes on the loudspeakers. Hyon-mi leans forward to say something else, but Soji points at the ceiling, as if the music is playing from there. "The music, Hyon-mi, you should get to class."
"Okay, see you later," Hyon-mi says, bowing to her teacher, and runs off.
THREE COUNTRIES
2:00 P.M.
KI-YONG ENTERED COLLEGE in the South in 1986. During the previous year, he had taken a prep course in Noryangjin, studying for the high school equivalency exam and college aptitude test. Though he didn't graduate, he majored in English at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies,
and he always liked math, so those subjects weren't much of a problem. He did have a harder time with the other subjects. With his inadequate South Korean vocabulary, it would have been difficult to pass if the exams hadn't been all multiple choice. Compared to the four brutal years he had spent as an agent trainee, studying in a warm library was like heaven. Also, subjects like politics, economics, and citizen ethics helped him adapt to southern society. Citizen ethics, which taught him about the importance of putting the state and societal morals before anything else, was familiar. It all made sense if he replaced "state" and "nation" with "Leader" and "Party." Like the prince and the pauper in Mark Twain's classic, the ethics of the South and the North were similar enough that when they ran into each other, each recognized something in the other.
In those days, he didn't have a woman to distract him or even a drinking buddy. He studied hard, and, that winter, he was able to gain admission into the math department of the prestigious Yonsei University. On a cold day, with the damp wind freezing his ears, he crossed the large field at Yonsei, dotted with patches of snow and ice, to read the list of accepted students posted on the bulletin board. Eighteen-year-old students, who had confirmed their admission over the phone but still came out to personally find their exam numbers on the list, were chatting in groups around him. Ki-yong knew why he, who had been at the top of his class at the University of Foreign Studies, had been selected to be sent south by Liaison Office 130. They needed agents who could get into the South's prestigious universities.
Ki-yong's mission was an audacious attempt. Pyongyang was observing with interest the South's rapidly growing leftist student activist movement. At the time, in 1986, with Kim Yong-hwan of Seoul National University leading the way, Juche Ideology was at the cusp of popularity, poised to spread across college campuses nationwide. The North Korean leaders believed they needed a new process to create better agents. Before, they used undercover agents disguised as immigrants, as well as homegrown communists. Pyongyang's new, ambitious plan was to get a well-trained agent to infiltrate a college freshman class in the South and have him mature and develop with budding student activists.
For Ki-yong, college life in Seoul was amazing. At the end of March, forsythia began to bloom, competing fiercely with the busily flowering azaleas. The freshmen took one group picture after another in front of the primary-colored flowers. The flowers were so brilliant that even eighteen-year-old youth paled next to them. April was even more gorgeous. Magnolias broke off branches and fluttered to the ground at the lightest sprinkling of rain. From the back gate of the women's university beyond the small hill, the intense scent of lilacs drifted with the southern wind. Ki-yong often sat on what was known as Turgenev's Hill behind the medical school and read the Russian greats of the nineteenth century and Korean classics of the 1970s, borrowed from the library. He was amazed that nobody ever looked for him. In Pyongyang, happiness at school meant he could promptly respond when his name was called, then relax until he was called again. But in Seoul, the time outside of lectures was all his, and no one cared if he didn't go to class. He wasn't required to attend nightly critiques and he wasn't forced to find fault with himself and confess his failings to his peers.
In May, a menacing mood permeated the campus. The smell of tear gas hung heavily in the air. Protests to amend the constitution to provide for direct presidential elections started in Inchon and spread to other cities. A hurricane of change was approaching. Young activists, armed with passion and ideology, breathed in the revolutionary energy, but Ki-yong was oblivious to these changes. All he could see were cherry blossoms covering the hills and girls around him in short skirts. It was to be expected, since he didn't know what South Korean colleges had been like before 1984. He'd never lived through the days when a government-controlled students' national defense corps represented students instead of the student government, riot police ate side by side with students on campus, and a few die-hard activists were arrested for breaking large windows of the library and distributing literature, roped together. In movies, characters who travel through time often go back to important moments in history. They arrive just as the fire that will kill Joan of Arc is being kindled, or as Napoleon is marching toward Waterloo. In some ways, Ki-yong was just like them, having been dropped into the making of history. The only difference was that he didn't know what would happen next.
On a hot June day, after the flowers had given way to greenery, he knocked on the door of the Political Economic Research Society, which was housed in the student union. Four young men and one young woman greeted him in the smoke-filled room. That sole young woman was Ma-ri.
One of the older students told them, grinning, "You two should be friends since you're both freshmen. But don't fall in love or anything." Later, when they got together, Ki-yong and Ma-ri remembered this half-joking prediction of their destiny almost at the same time and, like many couples, used it to paint the story of their love as a product of fate.
That day in June, Ki-yong sat on a creaky wooden chair and chatted with them about his interests. The room was musty and stagnant from cigarette smoke; a portable butane burner lay next to a nickel pot with strands of old ramen stuck to the bottom. The room was furnished with an old sofa, one side of which had been chewed up by rats. A rolled-up khaki sleeping bag and a guitar had been flung on the sofa, and a reproduction of O Yun's wood carving of a masked dancer and Sin Dong-yop's poem "Kumgang" were hanging on the wall, side by side. They asked him where he was from and why he wanted to join the group. A junior explained that they studied politics and economics, which weren't dead disciplines, as the group focused on putting the theories into practice in the real world. Ki-yong replied that he had always been fascinated by the contradictions inherent in society, but because he hadn't been able to figure out the fundamental reason for such contradictions, he wanted to find like-minded people with whom to discuss these problems. The upperclassmen, who had been trying to recruit freshmen, liked his answer. They took Ki-yong to a bar near the school and drank fermented rice wine together. A few months later, he participated in his first protest with one of the upperclassmen.
"Hey, you're a really fast runner!" the upperclassman commented, in awe of Ki-yong's speedy retreat from tear gas. After that, Ki-yong remembered to slow down and put less force in his arm when throwing rocks. When winter vacation approached, an upperclassman from Mokpo approached him. "I think you're ready for intensive study."
"Oh, do you really think so?"
"You can't change the world with only passion and a sense of justice. You need to be immersed in revolutionary ideology so that you can lead the masses and arm the workers."
Ki-yong followed him into an empty lecture hall, where a group had gathered: members of other student organizations he'd encountered at protests as well as unfamiliar faces. A deeply tanned guy came up and offered his hand, saying, "Nice to meet you. I'm Lee Tok-su."
Tok-su first advised them of the secretive nature of the gathering. "This meeting is top secret, even from other members of your organizations. You must realize that you are the driving force of the revolution, and you should be proud of this. As a member of the vanguard, you should be as strong as steel, be the best you can be, and be a model for the masses."
But in Ki-yong's eyes, Tok-su was far from a steely revolutionary vanguard. His gaze was forceful, but he was really only a frightened twenty-two-year-old kid. "Our pressing goal is to adopt the ideology of Kim Il Sung as our revolutionary coda and complete South Korea's revolution, driving American imperialists from our land." Tok-su then taught them the secret lingo. Kim Il Sung was KIS, Kim Jong Il was DLCK for Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, Juche Ideology was JI or Sub, North Korea was NK. Ki-yong quietly memorized the secret code, but the exaggerated seriousness of the meeting in the empty lecture hall made it seem like a farce. Were these really the revolutionary vanguards who would overthrow the South Korean regime? These young kids, with peach fuzz still on their faces? Would they be able to survive
the KCIA's notorious torture and go on to overthrow the oppressive state? Ki-yong had a hard time believing it. The revolutionaries he had been used to seeing in the North were old men in their seventies, like Oh Jin-woo and Kim Il Sung. Of course, Kim Il Sung started the revolution when he was in his twenties, but that never felt real to him, since he associated the revolution only with what he saw in the North's propagandist operas like Bloodbath. Despite his reservations, Ki-yong became an activist of the NL camp at this meeting.
Scholarly pursuits in the name of the revolution occurred in the dead of night. During the day, the members participated in legitimate organizations, like the student government or other groups, but at night, they met with the education cell and learned about Juche Ideology. Fearful and hesitant, they met clandestinely and learned about Kim Il Sung's days as a freedom fighter against the Japanese occupation, exchanging looks of awe and referring to Kim Il Sung as Dear Leader and Kim Jong Il as General. For Southern youths in their early twenties, having been indoctrinated in anti-Communist education in schools, speaking this way felt vulgar, much like hearing a prim woman referring to a penis as a cock. At first, it was difficult for them to refer to the two heads of state as Dear Leader or the General, but once they did, they shivered with the excitement that came with breaking the law.
Of course, it was different for Ki-yong. He had to hide the ideological tattoo that was inked into his soul. Since he didn't grow up in a place where people had to refer to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in code, he sometimes slipped and uttered their names together with their titles, and received warnings from the upperclassmen who were vigilant about security. He quickly learned to appear hesitant as he shut his eyes tightly and recited in a low voice, "Long live the great general Kim Il Sung," just like the others. Like gangsters who took turns stabbing their brothers who had betrayed them, they ensured their safety by becoming accomplices to the same crime. Saying those words was definitely a violation of the law. And this surreptitious vocalization might have been the most important initiation rite, more so than learning about the forbidden Northern ideology. Perhaps Juche Ideology spread so quickly precisely because it was so dangerous.