by Sungju Lee
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lee, Sungju. | McClelland, Susan.
Title: Every falling star : how I survived and escaped North Korea / by
Sungju Lee and Susan Elizabeth McClelland.
Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002463 (print) | LCCN 2016014432 (ebook) | ISBN
9781419721328 (hardback) | ISBN 9781613123409 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Sungju—Childhood and youth—Juvenile literature. | Lee,
Sungju—Family—Juvenile literature. | Boys—Korea
(North)—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Homeless boys—Korea
(North)—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Street children—Korea
(North)—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Survival—Korea
(North)—Juvenile literature. | Korea
(North)—History—1994-2011—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Korea
(North)—Social conditions—Juvenile literature. | BISAC: JUVENILE
NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage. | JUVENILE
NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Political. | JUVENILE NONFICTION
/ People & Places Asia. | JUVENILE NONFICTION Social Issues /
Homelessness & Poverty.
Classification: LCC DS935.7773.L44 A3 2016 (print) | LCC DS935.7773.L44
(ebook) | DDC 951.9305/1092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002463
Text copyright © 2016 Sungju Lee
Cover and book design by Julia Marvel
Photograph copyright © Getty Images
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I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THOSE I LEFT BEHIND
IN NORTH KOREA.
—Sungju Lee
Some family names have been changed to protect relatives still living in North Korea. The names of my brothers, though, are real, in the hope that they are still alive and will read this book.
Until we meet again.
—Sungju Lee
A BRIEF HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY KOREA
For thousands of years, successive dynasties and monarchs ruled the Korean Peninsula. The last and most influential dynasty was the Joseon. In 1876, the Japanese coerced Korea to sign a treaty that eventually ended the Joseon Dynasty. Under the Japanese, the Korean people were largely oppressed. Former landowners were pushed off their properties, and others were forced to work as slave laborers for Japanese overlords. Many of the houses, monuments, and buildings built during the Joseon Dynasty, and most of its traditions, were destroyed. Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, sought to integrate the region into its own empire.
With the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II, Japan’s territories were taken away. The Korean Peninsula was divided into two separate, yet temporary, governments and economic zones: the North, which was overseen by the Soviet Union, and the South, which was overseen by the United States. The plan was to unite the two regions into one with a general democratic election. The Soviet Union placed guerrilla army leader Kim Il-sung, who had returned from exile in China in 1945, as head of the North’s temporary government. He managed to persuade the Soviets not to take part in any election. He clung to socialism and rejected American-style democracy. He felt the entire region should be communist.
In 1948, the South was granted independence from the United States, becoming the Republic of Korea. Shortly thereafter, the North became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. North Koreans refer to their country as Joseon, after the last dynasty. Like its namesake today, the Joseon Dynasty was dubbed the “Hermit Kingdom” because it sealed itself off from the world in an attempt to ward off invasion.
The political and economic systems of the two nations couldn’t be more different. The South has a democratic government and a capitalist, free-market economy. North Korea, on the other hand, is a communist state, with one political party and no elections. Most things, including property, are publicly owned. Until the breakdown of the state’s food-ration program in the early 1990s, all food, clothes, and necessities—including housing—were allocated by the state, based on an individual’s need and standing within the Communist Party.
Kim Il-sung believed that it was only a matter of time before the ideology of the North swept the South. He believed that the two regions would unite under communism. He was convinced that South Korea was funded by—indeed, was a “puppet nation” of—the United States. The Korean War, from June 1950 to July 1953, involved a United States–backed South Korea vying to unify the entire peninsula under its government versus the Soviet-backed North Korea aiming to do the same.
Aside from the war, which resulted in few geographical changes but a dramatic increase in tensions between the South and the North, the early years of Kim Il-sung were not that bad for North Korean people. There was a revival in the arts; the creation of monuments, museums, buildings, hotels, and theme parks; work, including an increase in farming and industry; and plenty of food through the centralized ration system.
Kim Il-sung gained a cult following during his years as leader of North Korea, largely because of the dissemination of books, films, radio, and television shows that made the people distrust Westerners, China, and Japan and revere, almost like a god, their leader and his life and government. All television and news outlets were monitored by the government; the result was that the state and Kim Il-sung were described only in positive terms. Deniers and critics of the regime were sent to political and/or labor camps, often with their entire families.
In the 1990s, North Korea suffered several blows. First there was the breakdown of the communist state of the Soviet Union in 1991. The many countries under its rule were allowed to form their own governments. (The Soviet Union itself become the pseudo-democratic country of Russia.) As a result, North Korea lost its main trading partner and its primary source of aid. Then a series of weather anomalies resulted in devastating floods, which caused a shortage of domestically grown products. If this wasn’t enough to drive the nation into famine, the breakdown in the central ration system certainly did. On July 8, 1994, Kim Il-sung died. His son, Kim Jong-il, became his successor. Kim Jong-il was poorly equipped to deal with these strains.
The country plummeted into a famine that some estimate killed more than a million of its approximately twenty-four million people. In a desperate attempt to save their lives, North Koreans began to leave the country. It’s nearly impossible to escape North Korea by heading directly to South Korea because the border between the two countries is heavily mined with explosives. Therefore, the main escape route is through China to Mongolia, Laos, or Thailand. China, however, does not recognize North Koreans as refugees but, rather, as illegal work migrants. Any North Koreans found in China are returned, where they face prison for trying to escape.
North Korea is indeed a Hermit Kingdom: a true-to-life dystopian
nation.
It’s against this backdrop that my story takes place.
PROLOGUE
My toy soldier peers over a mound of dirt not far from where my father, abeoji, my mother, eomeoni, and I have just finished our picnic, near the Daedong River in Pyongyang.
My father and I are setting up the toy soldiers to reenact one of the decisive battles in which our eternal leader, Kim Il-sung, ousted the Japanese army from our country, Joseon—or, as most in the West know it, North Korea. My father is in charge of the Japanese troops. My own troops are separated, with part of my army standing behind my general. The rest are hidden in a bush near the river. My father’s army is positioned in the middle.
I am carrying a wooden pistol that my father carved and painted for me. My mother is playacting as my army nurse. The blanket on which we had our picnic is now the hospital.
My father has drawn a thick Hitler-like mustache on his general using my eomeoni’s eyebrow pencil. She’s not happy because he broke the pencil’s tip. In fact, every time my father and I play war games, he uses—and ruins—her makeup to decorate his toy soldiers.
“Okay, your general will be our eternal leader, Kim Il-sung,” my mother snaps. She is very testy today. She really wants to defeat my father. “Since we don’t have telephones or walkie-talkies, our troops need a way to communicate with each other. So take these.” She slips some smooth stones into my hand. I know what she is about to say next. She is going to use my father’s own military tactics, which he taught me during other war games, against him.
“Designate one of your soldiers to be in charge of relaying your general’s orders to your troops who are trapped on the other side of the Japanese. This soldier must sneak through the forest and, at the big rock,” my mother says, pointing, “lay stones so that your other troops know what the eternal leader wants them to do. The stones are codes. One stone means stand down, it’s too dangerous to attack; two stones mean get ready; three stones mean attack the Japanese when the moon hits the sky at the highest point in the night.”
I bow to my mother and pick up one of my sergeants. I make him my guerrilla messenger. He will steal through the pine and oak trees, leaving my coded stone orders by the big rock.
I can feel it in the air. Victory. After all, Joseon always wins. We are the best country on earth!
I’m six years old.
Little do I know this military tactic will one day come to save my life.
I dream. And in my dream, I’m a general in the army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. I’m leading my unit in the April 25 parade celebrating the foundation of the Korean People’s Army. Our leader, Kim Il-sung, formed the army in 1932. Well, back then, the army was really nothing more than bands of guerrillas. Today, it’s one of the largest armies in the world, with nearly nine million members. Our country’s population is only about twenty-five million, so that’s a lot of our people in the military.
Okay … back to my dream. The main road in the nation’s capital, Pyongyang, in front of Kim Il-sung Square, is lined with people cheering and waving white magnolias and long cherry blossom stems. The entire city has come out for the parade. They always do.
Wearing the uniform of the North Korean army, my chest held high and showcasing line after line of my badges, I march, my sword by my side. My gun, the semiautomatic Baekdu, named after the birthplace of my eternal leader’s son, Kim Jong-il, is held stiffly across my body. My eyes are focused, like lasers, in front of me. My knees swing high as the band behind me performs the song “Parade of Victory.”
While I don’t look at them directly, the women in the crowd wear traditional North Korean dresses in colors reserved for such special occasions: floor-length puffy dresses with ribbons in soft pinks, baby blues, and rich creams. I also know that yellow, orange, and white balloons dance across the cloudless azure sky.
I turn my face only when we pass the stage at Kim Il-sung Square, where our supreme leader, Kim Il-sung, stands. I salute. I know he is looking on with pride. My entire unit is polished, walking in precision, servants to him, our eternal father, protecting our nation from South Korean invasion, ruthless Japanese expansion, and the American culture of excess that threatens our way of life.
Joseon is the best nation in the world, and in my dream I am so proud of being able to give back and make North Korea even safer.
That dream was long ago, when I lived in a large apartment not far from Kim Il-sung Square. My father was in the army. It was my destiny to follow in his footsteps. I was being raised to be a military officer in the Korean People’s Army just like him. He held a high position, and I would, too.
¤ ¤ ¤
Our apartment had a refrigerator that was always stocked with meats and fresh vegetables. We had a color television and a baby grand piano on which my mother played the folk songs “Arirang” and “So-nian-jang-soo.”
Our home had three bedrooms, but while I had my own room, every second or third night I would creep into my parents’ room and snuggle in between my mother and father. I liked smelling my mother’s lavender and rose perfume, faint on her clothes and pillow, and feeling my father’s musk-scented breath on my cheek. Lying between them made me feel safe from the monsters that I learned at school were always wanting to invade my country and enslave me: the Americans, the Japanese, and the South Korean army, which, of course, is controlled by the United States.
In a small house right beside our apartment building lived my dog, Bo-Cho, which means “guard.” Bo-Cho was a Pungsan, bred in the mountains of Ryanggang Province. Pungsans are rare, and only special boys got them as pets, or so my mother told me. On summer nights, when the crickets chirped and I fanned my face with my hands to keep cool, I would sneak down and curl up beside Bo-Cho, nestling in close to his soft white fur. With our heads poking out the front door of his doghouse, his facing down and resting on his paws, mine looking up at the stars, I’d talk to him about Boy General, the best television cartoon in Joseon. “The show is set during the Goguryeo Dynasty, which, so you know, ran from about 900 to 1400,” I would explain. “The boy general’s father passed away in the battlefield. When the father was killed, his sword went to his son, who became a great boy general and defeated many invaders. The story means that boys can be strong and protect their country, too.”
I’d awake in the mornings with the soft dew dampening my face and clothes, and I’d return to my bedroom before my mother and father knew I was even gone.
My father had a big important job. But exactly what he did in the military I never knew then, and I don’t want to say now, because we may still have relatives in Joseon who could face imprisonment if the government found out I was sharing my story. When my father wore his uniform, I’d stare at all his badges, particularly the stripes and stars indicating his rank, and his awards for bravery. In the mornings, I would imitate him, sipping black tea and reading the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, followed by the Joseon Inmingun, the newspaper of the Korean People’s Army.
When the humid summer air turned fresh again, I knew school was just around the corner. On those mornings, I’d don my school uniform and leave the apartment with my father, holding his hand as I skipped down the stairs. We’d say goodbye outside; then he went his way and I went mine. But I would often stop and watch him as he walked down the road. His gait was crisp. His manner was polite to those he passed, friendly but official. Everyone bowed to him.
“I want to be like you when I grow up,” I had told him.
He had smiled.
“Good. You’re learning how to obey and be a good citizen.”
My school, a long concrete building, was co-ed and for students between the ages of seven and eleven. We always began our day with a bow and by listening to stories about our eternal leader, Kim Il-sung. My favorite was the Learning Journey of a Thousand Miles. It’s about our eternal leader as a small child, living in exile with his family in Manchuria. When he was
about ten, Kim Il-sung was sent by his father back to his Joseon hometown, Mangyeongdae. Our eternal leader had to journey alone and was given no food and no clothing other than what he wore on his back. Traversing winter storms, mountains covered in ice, and jagged crags, and encountering attacking falcons and hawks and predators, including tigers, he passed through many valleys full of death. He made it safely to Mangyeongdae, mostly because of the help of strangers, other Koreans.
After storytelling, we would quote sayings from our eternal leader and occasionally from Kim Jong-il. “The first priority for students is to study hard,” our class would call out in a loud voice, standing up, our backs straight, our eyes glued to the wall in front of us. “We must give our all in the struggle to unify the entire society with the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. We must learn from the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung and adopt the communist look, revolutionary work methods, and people-oriented work style.”
History—or what I now call propaganda—was often the first, fourth, and final subject of the day, and the lessons almost always began with the same introduction.
North Korea was founded in 1948 after a long battle between our Japanese oppressors and the liberation army of Kim Il-sung. Our fearless leader braved battles with no food, in the chill of deep winter, walking thousands of miles to lead his armies to rid this land of the foreigners who had taken our natural resources for themselves and turned our people into slaves. Our eternal leader made rice from sand on the shores of the Duman and Amnok rivers to feed his armies and turned pinecones into grenades when his armies were weaponless …
Wow! This man was, of course, my idol! I wanted to be brave and magical, just like him. He was everyone’s idol.
When I was a small child, my mother told me the Myth of Dangun. Dangun is said to be the grandson of heaven. His story began when his father, Hwanung, wanted to live on earth. Hwanung fell to Baekdu Mountain, where he built a city in which, aided by heavenly forces, humans advanced in the arts, sciences, and farming.
A tiger and a bear told Hwanung that they wanted to be human, too. Hwanung ordered them to eat only cloves of garlic and mugwort for one hundred days. The tiger gave up, but the bear pressed on. When the bear became human, she was pregnant and husbandless. Hwanung married her. The bear’s son, Dangun, became the leader of the heavenly kingdom on earth and moved the capital to outside Pyongyang.