Not Forgotten

by Kenneth Bae

  During his visits, the political officer also gave me little things that made life more bearable, including toilet paper. I wondered why he bothered, since toilet paper is a basic item the prison should have given me. I learned the answer when I ran out of the paper the political officer had brought to me. I asked the guards for more, and they brought me a roll of rough, brown paper that reminded me of the cheap paper towels in public bathrooms. Only then did I realize that I had been using the toilet paper enjoyed only by the ruling class and upper party members.

  Converting to juche was never going to happen, but while I was in the detention center in Pyongyang, I had read many North Korean books, including Kim Il Sung’s eight-volume memoir from his revolutionary days. Kim Il Sung wrote six of the books himself. Another writer put together the other two using Kim’s notes. I read all eight while I was waiting for trial. I had seen the movie many, many times, so I thought I might as well read the books. I also read Kim Jong Il’s book that outlines the entire juche system. The books gave me insight into the beliefs and worldviews of the North Korean people that I could not have gained otherwise. If I ever hoped to engage in an intelligent conversation with them about the one true God, I knew I needed to understand their system and their concept of God.

  I had arrived at the labor camp on May 14. Just over a month later, in late June, the chief prosecutor came to see me.

  “Well, it looks like your government doesn’t care about you,” he said. “They don’t act like they did back in 2009, when the two reporters were here. President Clinton came and took them home. I know, because I was the prosecutor in that case. But there is no Clinton this time, or anyone else. No one has come for you. Maybe no one comes because you are not a full American.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “I am an American citizen.”

  “Yes, but you are Asian. You are not white.”

  “The two reporters in 2009 were both Asian. I don’t see how that matters.”

  “It matters,” the prosecutor said, “because something is different. Perhaps you have not done enough to convince your government of the seriousness of your situation.” He took out a stack of blank paper. “You must write more letters instructing your family to do more for you. You need to be very firm in your appeal. You need to let them know how desperate your situation is here. Otherwise, you will probably be here until I retire.”

  Isn’t that the idea? I wondered. After all, the chief prosecutor was the one who had asked for a fifteen-year sentence.

  This conversation made it very clear that he never intended for me to be there long. My arrest, conviction, and sentence struck me as a show of force put on to prove something to America and the world. Now more than ever, I did not believe I was going to have to stay there more than just a few more weeks. Every other American that had been detained in North Korea had been released in a few weeks to, at most, a few months. I knew my time was coming.

  I still believed God’s promise: he was going to bring me home without any harm coming to me or to anyone else. I clung to that promise like a lifeline.

  I doubted a new set of letters would make much more difference than the last set, but I wrote them anyway: one to my wife, one to my mother, and one to my sister. So many letters had already been written to the highest levels of the United States government, including the president himself. I didn’t think one more was going to push everyone to do more than they already were. But, if nothing else, the letters at least let my family know I was okay. I knew they wanted to hear from me. They all had to be very worried about me.

  I finished the letters, and the chief prosecutor took them to mail them. That night I endured more television propaganda extolling the virtues and wonders of the Great Leader. The next day I woke up at six and was back out in the fields by eight.

  This was my new routine.

  This was my new life.

  I did not know how long it might last. At least it couldn’t last longer than fifteen years. I prayed it wouldn’t last fifteen more days.

  FIFTEEN

  THE WHOLE WORLD NOW KNOWS

  “Give thanks to the LORD Almighty,

  for the LORD is good;

  his love endures forever.”

  —JEREMIAH 33:11

  FROM THE DAY I was arrested, I had not wanted any press coverage of my case. I hoped to resolve everything as quietly as possible, so that later on I could return to North Korea and resume my work. Looking back, I realize that was never going to be possible, but I held out that hope all the way through my trial. In my letters and phone calls, I asked my family not to go to the news networks. There were stories in the media about my arrest, and Bill Richardson’s visit to North Korea grabbed a lot of headlines a few months before my trial. However, my family stayed quiet. They didn’t do interviews or make public statements about me.

  However, once my conviction and sentence went public, so did my family. Today I am very glad they did.

  North Korea actually broke the news of my conviction through their official state news agency. The story was picked up by every major news outlet, including all the cable news networks, the BBC, and the New York Times. Commentators jumped in and said the sentence was a ploy to force America to open talks that would recognize North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power. I was now a bargaining chip, they said.

  The US government refused to play along. A State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, held a news conference in which he called on the DPRK to grant me amnesty and my immediate release.

  The day after my trial, my sister, Terri, made her first of several appearances on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. “We just pray, and ask for leaders of both nations to, please, just see him as one man, caught in between,” Terri said to Anderson. “He’s a father to three children, and we just ask that he be allowed to come home.”1

  Terri became the face of the efforts to bring me home and my voice to the world. She wrote an editorial for the Seattle Times, reached out to high-profile officials who could help—including President Carter, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Albright—and did interviews with everyone who asked. In 2014 she twice visited Washington, DC, and even had a meeting at the White House. She spoke with National Security Council members and visited with undersecretary Wendy Sherman at the State Department. In another trip, she pleaded my case to Secretary Kerry.

  Terri wasn’t the only one who spoke out about me. My family also started a grassroots effort to bring me home. My son, Jonathan, created a petition at Change.org calling on North Korea to grant me amnesty. All together 177,552 people signed the petition.2 Bobby Lee, a friend of mine from college, created a website and a Facebook group to raise awareness of my case. Later, Terri’s college roommate, Laura Choi, and her husband, Isaac, took over maintenance of the website. They posted all the latest news about me and asked people to contact the State Department, Congress, the White House, and anyone else they could think of to urge them to bring me home. Euna Lee and Laura Ling started a letter-writing campaign for me, because they remembered the letters they had received had sustained them during their four and a half months of captivity in North Korea.

  Even basketball Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman got in on the act. He read about my story in the Seattle Times and then tweeted, “I’m calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him ‘Kim’, to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose.”3 I’ll talk more about Dennis Rodman later on. I’ve never met him, and he said some things later in my imprisonment that really caught my family off guard and hurt them, but in May 2013, I think my family and friends welcomed anyone speaking out for me. If it was going to get me home, they were all for it.

  Of course, I didn’t know any of this was going on. I couldn’t get cable news in the labor camp, nor did I or anyone else have access to the Internet. The Swedish ambassador told me my sister had appeared on
CNN calling for my release, but that was all I knew. For me, the growing media frenzy might as well have taken place on another planet. I remained prisoner 103. I spent my days working in the soybean field and my nights reading while the television bombarded me with stories of the glories of the Great Leader.

  The incessant propaganda made me feel even worse than I already did, and I felt pretty awful. The prison doctor came to see me once a week. He always asked how I felt, which I answered honestly. I told him my back hurt, and I was losing a lot of weight, and my entire body ached. No matter what I said, he always replied, “What did you expect? This is a labor camp. Of course your back is hurting. Work will make you feel better.”

  On most of his visits he gave me some of the medicines I needed, but not all of them. A couple of months in, he tested my blood sugar levels and announced to me, “You are normal. You do not have diabetes anymore. See, I told you work would heal you.” If my diabetes had improved, it had to be because of the weight loss. I was not sure how much weight I had lost, but I knew my clothes had become very loose.

  I was also starting to feel the effects of my lack of sleep. The light that never went out was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to the heat and the insects. The prison was very hot, so the guards opened the windows, which did not have screens. Throughout the day my room filled up with flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. At night before I went to sleep, I closed my window, but that only made the room hotter without solving my insect problem. So many bugs came in during the day that I spent most of the evening trying to kill them so I could try to sleep. Even after I killed what I could, more bugs flew in through the cracks around the window, drawn by the light shining in my room. Their incessant buzzing and dive-bombing made my nights miserable.

  One afternoon in late June, I was out in the field, dripping with sweat, when I noticed a film crew taping me. The chief prosecutor was with them.

  “Keep working,” he said. “Do not pay attention to the camera.”

  After a few minutes of filming, the cameraman put down his camera and went inside. The prosecutor took me by the arm and said, “Come with me, 103.”

  He led me back to my room, where a camera was already set up on a tripod. A woman sat in a chair nearby, waiting for me. The prosecutor introduced us. “This is a reporter from Choson Sinbo, and she is here to interview you,” he said. Choson Sinbo is a pro–North Korean newspaper that operates out of Tokyo, Japan. The name literally means, “The People’s Korea.” “She will ask questions, and you must be truthful. We plan on releasing the video to Western news agencies. Maybe then your government will do something to secure your release.”

  The chief prosecutor told me to be truthful, but I knew I was to say only that which the North Koreans considered true. If I complained about my treatment in any way, I would suffer.

  “Do you want me to change into clean clothes first?” I asked.

  “No. You are fine,” the prosecutor said. “The reporter is going to ask about your physical conditions and how you are treated. Make sure you tell her how well you have been taken care of here.”

  This was a true statement in the prosecutor’s mind. Compared to the average North Korean serving time in a labor camp, I was in a four-star resort.

  “You must also ask your government to get busy for you,” he reminded me. “Perhaps they have forgotten you. This interview should jog their memory.”

  “I understand,” I said. I thought for a moment about what I could and could not say. I also glanced at my arms. My prison uniform was filthy and ill fitting. I had filled it out a month earlier; now it hung on me. My head had also been freshly shaved a day or two earlier. I hated it when I got a new haircut. It was a reminder that I was not going anywhere soon.

  What will my family think when they see me? I wondered.

  “Mr. Bae,” the reporter started. “How is prison life? Is it bearable for you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “life is bearable. I mainly work on the farm from morning until dinnertime, eight hours a day. I’ve never farmed before, so this is all new to me. But the people here are very considerate, and they do not work me too hard. However, my health is not in the best condition, so there are some difficulties. But everyone here is considerate and generous, and we have doctors here, so I’m getting regular checkups.” I did not mention that the checkups mainly served as a way for the doctor to tell me that I would feel better if I worked harder. “Although my health is not good, I am being patient and coping well. And I hope that with the help of the North Korean government and the United States, I will be released soon.”

  “In your trial, you refused the DPRK offer of an attorney to represent you. Why did you do this?” the reporter asked. She read the question from a piece of paper. The question seemed designed to show the world how they had respected my rights and had given me a fair trial.

  “I admitted to the charges,” I said, “so I thought that it wasn’t really necessary to have a defense lawyer during the trial. I admitted my crime and apologized for it.” I did not mention anything about how I couldn’t meet with my lawyer ahead of time. Given the circumstances, I didn’t think such details were going to do me much good.

  “Do you have anything to say to the North Korean government and your own government?” she asked.

  “I know what I did is not easily forgivable, but I hope that things will work out so that I can be with family again soon. The Fourth of July is my father’s seventieth birthday, so I hope I can be with him on this very special day. So my hope is that North Korea will forgive, and the United States will try harder to get me out speedily. I am asking for their help.”

  I paused. Thinking about my father’s birthday reminded me of everything else I had missed. Emotion overcame me.

  “I am an only son . . . My father . . .” I could barely get the words out. “I really hope to go to congratulate him on his birthday.”

  After the interview I went back to work in the field. My father and the rest of my family filled my thoughts. I hoped seeing me would comfort them. Even though we had spoken on the phone a couple of times, there is nothing like seeing someone to reassure you that he or she is all right. I also hoped it might move North Korea and America to negotiate my release.

  Weeks passed after my interview, and nothing happened. My first soybean plants started coming up. With nothing left to plant, I spent my days pulling weeds by hand.

  One day in early July, the warden came out to me. “You are too slow!” he complained. “If our people were working on this field, we would have been finished a long time ago.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, sir,” I said.

  “Your best isn’t very good. Look at our field over there,” the warden said, pointing to the field where the guards worked when they weren’t standing over me. “Do you see how much further along our plants are than yours? Do you see how beautiful our field is? That’s what yours should look like.”

  I thought of reminding him that they had several people working their field while I was all on my own. I also thought of mentioning how my field was on the side of a hill while theirs was down in the valley. Instead I said, “That’s a pretty field, but for the plants to grow really well, you need help from heaven.”

  “What are you talking about?” the warden said.

  “You need help from heaven, from God, to send the rain and the sunshine and everything plants need to produce a large harvest,” I said.

  The warden scoffed. “Heaven?” he laughed. “We have our juche agriculture system given to us by Kim Il Sung. As long as we follow his methods, we’ll always have a great harvest. We don’t need any god to help us.” His voice rose as he said this. He was really angry that I had mentioned God and questioned the power of juche.

  That night thunder and flashes of lightning woke me up. I heard rain pouring down. Then I heard some
sort of commotion from inside the building. People were yelling, and I heard footsteps running up and down the hallway and the outside door slamming. I was too tired to get up and look out my window. Instead I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The next morning I saw the warden go past my room, visibly upset. “What happened?” I asked.

  “There was a flood last night. The entire bean field is underwater. It’s all lost,” he said. This was a huge blow because these beans were supposed to feed the guards and the rest of the staff.

  When I went outside, I noticed everything was not lost. The guards’ field was washed away—but my field was fine. I felt a little like the Israelites when the plagues hit Egypt but left them alone.

  I smiled and prayed to myself, Lord, you are really humorous. You sure made your point here!

  I needed this reminder of God’s faithfulness, because June and July were very hard months for me. The days were so hot that the guards quit standing around me in a triangle. Instead, they found a shady place and watched me from a distance. I tried striking up conversations with them, but they were not open to talking, except to make sure I knew they were in charge.

  One day when it rained, I worked inside, scrubbing the floors by hand with a scrub brush. I worked on my hands and knees, like Cinderella. I dropped the scrub brush in a bucket of water, pulled it out, and scrubbed part of the floor. Then I used a towel to wipe it clean and dry. One of the young guards came by after I’d done about a third of the hallway near my room. “You call this clean?” he yelled. “This is not quality work. Do this again!”