Not Forgotten

by Kenneth Bae

  After several days I finally asked the guard what was going on. “Why is everything so different this time?”

  “You haven’t paid your bill from the first time you were in here. You owe the hospital a lot of money. They can’t afford to do much for you until it is paid,” he said.

  Mr. Disappointment had told me that I owed €101,000 from my first hospital stay. He wanted me to ask the Swedish ambassador to ask the United States government to pay my bill before they admitted me a second time. I had already signed a promissory note pledging upon my release to repay the US government for any expenses I incurred, including my hotel bill from Rason and all my medical bills. I guess they thought the United States would just hand over money to them after that. When they didn’t, the North Koreans expected me to pay it. With the exchange rate at that time, the total had already come to around $130,000.

  “I don’t have access to that kind of money,” I said to Mr. Disappointment.

  “You better come up with some sort of plan,” Mr. Disappointment said. “Health care is free for North Koreans, but you aren’t North Korean.” The level of care I now received because of my unpaid bill reinforced how true that statement really was.

  The only upside to being back in the hospital was I got to see my only friend in North Korea. On my first walk through the halls, I went over and tapped on the glass of the courtyard window. Immediately the dog jumped up. As soon as he saw me, he jumped against the window, barked, and wagged his tail so hard I thought his legs were going to fly off the ground. It was nice to see a friendly face, even if it was the face of a dog I could interact with only through a window.

  The dog was the only one glad to see me. Mr. Disappointment kept up his regular visits with me. As if it were possible, he brought even more disappointment than before.

  “It is highly unusual nothing has been done to get you home,” he said. “It looks like they have forgotten all about you. I don’t think you are going anywhere.” He always said that. Then he dropped a new bomb: “I don’t know if anyone has already told you this, but the time you spend in the hospital does not count toward your fifteen years. Only the time you spend in the labor camp counts toward your sentence,” he said.

  I did the math in my head. I had been sentenced on April 30, 2013. Since then I had spent five and a half months in the labor camp, and five and a half months and counting in the hospital. At this rate, my sentence looked more like thirty years than fifteen. Now I was really depressed.

  However, not long after my return to the hospital, Ms. Cecilia Anderberg, from the Swedish embassy, came back to see me. She brought me some magazines and newspapers that were a few months old already, along with some fresh mail. She also gave me some treats, such as chocolates, cookies, and even Diet Coke. The magazines gave me a glimpse of the world beyond my walls, which helped. The mail revived my soul.

  “Stay strong,” she told me. “People are working very hard to get you home.”

  As soon as she left, a guard took away the treats before I could taste even one. Mr. Disappointment told me that it was for my own safety. “We cannot allow food from outside without inspection,” he explained.

  I never saw the treats again. Someone enjoyed the treats, but it wasn’t me.

  Spring gave way to summer. Summer 2014 was very hot in North Korea. By the first of July it had climbed to one hundred degrees nearly every day. My room was somewhat air-conditioned, which helped. The hallways were very hot when I went out for my walks.

  I felt sorry for my friend the dog. He had a thick, light brown coat of fur. He had to be miserable in this heat. Even so, he was always so glad to see me when I walked past the window. Like me, he was stuck here, a prisoner. He appeared to be nearly as forgotten as I was. When I walked past him, I said to him in my mind, No one knows how I feel except you. You and me, we’re the same here. Prisoners.

  No one even knew his name. I asked the guards and even a couple of the nurses, but no one seemed to know or care. That only made me relate to him more. I didn’t have a name either, just a number.

  One July morning I walked past the dog’s window and tapped on it, but he didn’t jump up. I looked around the courtyard, wondering where he might be. He had never failed to greet me until today.

  The courtyard looked different. The dog had made a mess of the place. An old Ping-Pong table had sat in one corner, and he had chewed a good-sized chunk off of it. Today the table was gone, and the courtyard was clean. It almost looked as if the dog had never been there. I wonder where they took him, I thought.

  Then it hit me.

  Today was the beginning of a Korean festival known as Sambok, which celebrates the hottest season of the year. The first day of Sambok is called Chobok. Traditionally, Korean families have a feast on this day. When I was growing up in Seoul, we celebrated with a chicken dinner. But that is not the traditional dish among the poor families of North Korea. They cannot afford chicken, so they use a different source of protein.

  My heart sank as I went back to my room. All I could think about was the dog, my friend, the only one in all of North Korea who genuinely seemed to care about me.

  About an hour after I returned to my room, my door opened. The head nurse brought in my lunch. Instead of the usual semi-Western-style meal I normally ate, she carried in a big, steaming bowl of soup. I glanced down at it. The soup was loaded with meat.

  I didn’t have to ask, but I did. “Is that . . . ?” I couldn’t say it. “Is that . . . the dog that was in the courtyard?”

  The nurse smiled and said, “Yes. It is a celebration day. Enjoy.”

  I nearly threw up. “No, no, no, take it away. I cannot eat it.”

  The nurse looked at me as though I had lost my mind. In her eyes, how could anyone pass up such a rare treat?

  “Are you sure?” she said, not wanting me to miss out.

  “Yes, please take it away. Bring me anything but that.”

  “Okay,” she said, confused. “Suit yourself.” She carried the soup out of the room, disappointed.

  A little while later she returned with some fried chicken and a bowl of broth. Apparently they had cooked the chicken very quickly, because when I cut into it, blood oozed near the bone. I dropped it back on the plate. I decided I wasn’t hungry after all.

  I walked back to my bed and collapsed on it. All I could think about was my friend. Even though we had never actually touched, I missed him terribly. The two of us were alike. Prisoners. Forgotten.

  Is that what is going to happen to me? I wondered. Are they just toying with me before they chop me up, not literally but metaphorically? Is my time in this prison going to end as horribly as the dog’s?

  As I write this more than a year later, my heart remains heavy. I still miss my friend.

  The weeks turned into months. Mr. Disappointment grew more and more agitated during his visits, as if it were my fault I was still a prisoner.

  Unbeknownst to me, several people had offered to come to North Korea to negotiate my release. These included Rev. Jesse Jackson, Franklin Graham, and Congressman Charles Rangel of New York. That wasn’t good enough for the North Koreans. In 2009, when Laura Ling and Euna Lee were in prison, former president Clinton came over. That’s what they wanted this time. Twice they had rejected special ambassador Robert King, and they had refused to talk to former New Mexico governor and UN ambassador Bill Richardson when he had come over.

  More than once I brought up Ambassador King and Bill Richardson with Mr. Disappointment. Every time he replied, “Why don’t they send someone higher up?” Higher up meant a former president.

  “Who would you have them send?” I asked one day. “There are only four former presidents living. Jimmy Carter is nearly ninety and in poor health. He can’t come. Clinton’s wife is going to run for president in 2016. He can’t do anything that
will jeopardize her campaign. That leaves George Bush and George W. Bush. I don’t think you want either of them.” I didn’t have to say it, but I knew the North Koreans hated George W. Bush for labeling them as part of the axis of evil after September 11. “So who do you want to come?”

  “Well, that wasn’t a problem in 2009,” Mr. Disappointment replied. After hearing this many times, I finally said, “You want Clinton? Okay, I will write letters saying you want President Clinton to return for me, but I am telling you, it won’t work.”

  I wrote a letter to my sister asking her to request President Clinton come over. I did it only to appease Mr. Disappointment and everyone else who read my letters before they were sent. When the Swedish deputy ambassador came to see me in August 2014, she told me flat out, “The State Department said President Clinton cannot come.”

  I repeated this news to Mr. Disappointment, who I assume relayed the information up the chain of command. He seemed very disappointed by the news. I think he and everyone else in the DPRK leadership were ready to be rid of me once and for all.

  At the end of July 2014, Mr. Disappointment decided I needed to do another interview to increase the pressure on the Obama administration. I suggested we open it to all media again.

  “No, that is not a good idea,” he said.

  “What about just CNN or AP instead of Choson Sinbo?” I asked.

  He gave my suggestion a lot of thought, then finally consented. But when it came time to do the interview, only Choson Sinbo was there. Apparently, the DPRK leadership trusted only their unofficial voice to the outside world.

  Right before the interview, Mr. Disappointment said to me, “You are going back to the labor camp as soon as this is over. Make sure you say that.”

  I was not surprised. After nearly two years in custody, I had come to understand this tactic was all part of their strategy. They made threats, put me in front of a camera, and had me beg the United States to do something. Finally, to show how serious they were, they sent me to the labor camp to carry out my fifteen-year sentence. The message was clear: “If you want your people back, you better get over here and humble yourself before the Supreme Leader.”

  The morning of my latest Choson Sinbo interview, my nails were trimmed and my head shaved. Unlike before, I did not have to write out my statements ahead of time, although Mr. Disappointment asked me what I was going to say.

  “Just stick with the main themes,” he reminded me. “You need your government to bring you home, so ask for it.”

  When the interview started, I said to the camera, “I feel left behind by the US government.” I repeated the statement in both English and Korean to make my meaning clear. I used the words left behind rather than abandoned because the latter was too strong of a term. Up until this point I had never said anything negative about either the United States or the DPRK governments. I had always thanked the United States for all they were doing and urged them to keep trying. But this time I knew I needed to use a phrase that would grab a headline back home.

  I made a few more statements and then closed with, “I am going back to the labor camp right after this interview.”

  That caught the reporter off guard. “You mean today?” she asked.

  “Yes. As soon as we are through here, I will be escorted back.”

  The interview ended. I was told to pack. A few minutes later I found myself back in the middle seat of a minivan with covered windows, on my way to the prison camp for the third time.

  When I walked back into room 3 in the labor camp on July 29, 2014, the guards seemed genuinely shocked. More than one said, “We’ve never had anyone come back here a third time.”

  “You know me,” I said. “I just can’t stay away.”

  I had been away for four months. It was spring when I left. Now it was one of the hottest summers anyone could remember, much hotter than the year before. My room was sweltering. However, because we hadn’t had much rain, fewer bugs invaded my room through my open window. I was thankful for that.

  On Wednesday, July 30, I reported for work. The field had already been planted, so the warden had to find something else for me to do. The guards were working on a new road on one side of the prison compound, so they put me to work on it as well. On one side of the prison yard was a dried stream. In the stream’s bed were round rocks about six inches across. My job was to move rocks from the stream to the road, a distance of about 150 yards.

  The prison gave me a four-wheel cart to use for my work. I piled rocks into the cart, pushed it across uneven ground to the other side of the yard, dumped them out, and placed them wherever the guards wanted them. By noon the temperature was close to 100, with very high humidity. By midafternoon it had to be at least 105. I stripped off my uniform shirt to stay cool. Unfortunately, the sun baked my back. When it came time for meals, I didn’t have much of an appetite. Although I must have drunk at least two gallons of water a day, I never had to take a bathroom break.

  In spite of the heat I sang throughout the day. I started singing in the morning as I got ready to go outside. I sang while I worked. And I sang in the evenings during the power outages that occurred nearly every day. When the electricity went off, I could not read or watch TV, so I sat in the complete darkness of my cell and sang love songs to Jesus. I was so tired I could not even open my eyes, and my body ached, yet I thanked God for letting me endure another day. It was my time with my Savior and Lord.

  Singing through the day was nothing new for me. But this time I found myself singing the same song over and over. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Korean, I sang an old hymn by James Black called “Where Jesus Is, ’Tis Heaven.” I love the lyrics:

  Since Christ my soul from sin set free,

  This world has been a Heav’n to me;

  And ’mid earth’s sorrows and its woe,

  ’Tis Heav’n my Jesus here to know.

  O hallelujah, yes, ’tis Heav’n,

  ’Tis Heav’n to know my sins forgiv’n,

  On land or sea, what matters where?

  Where Jesus is, ’tis Heaven there.

  Once Heaven seemed a far off place,

  Till Jesus showed His smiling face;

  Now it’s begun within my soul,

  ’Twill last while endless ages roll.

  What matters where on earth we dwell?

  On mountain top, or in the dell,

  In cottage, or a mansion fair,

  Where Jesus is, ’tis Heaven there.1

  I changed the words to the last verse, however. Instead of “In cottage, or a mansion fair,” I sang, “In hospital or in prison.”

  The guards, I knew, were listening, especially on the dark nights, when sound travels far. The entire camp could hear the singing of an American Christian prisoner. Everyone there knew I was in chains because of my faith in God. When my faith did not waver, even after being sent to the labor camp for an unprecedented third time, they started to ask, “What is it you have that I don’t? How can you sing and be joyful at desperate and hopeless hours? Where does your hope come from?”

  Not long after I came back to the labor camp, a guard came to me privately and asked, “Pastor, what benefit would I get if I believe in God like you?” I think he knew the answer just from the song he had heard me sing. Then he asked, “What price do I have to pay to believe in God like you? What will it cost me?” I explained how there is no financial cost. However, to believe in Jesus means surrendering all to him.

  Then came the final question, the one that I could tell bothered him the most. “If God is real, why are you still here? You have been here longer than any other prisoner.”

  I answered honestly. I told the guard that it was God’s plan for me to be there, and that plan includes him and the other guards. “Without me, how would you hear about God and Jesus, his Son?”

  The g
uard thought for a moment. “That’s true. I have never heard any of this before,” he said. The guard didn’t follow up with another question. Instead, he went back to his post, thinking carefully about our conversation.

  It’s funny. When all I had wanted to do was go home, my conversations with the guards had never gone very deep. However, once I accepted this place as God’s will for my life, and I started praying, God, use me, instead of God, save me, doors opened.

  Don’t get me wrong. My third stay in the labor camp was miserable, physically and emotionally. Day upon day of hot, backbreaking work wrecked my body. I woke up every hour at night because my hands were numb and my body ached. My pain was real, and it was intense. But even in the midst of my suffering, God was with me. His presence is why I was able to rejoice in my suffering, and that is what opened up doors to truly share the good news with those around me.

  When I took the words of the old hymn seriously and truly believed that “Where Jesus is, ’tis Heaven there,” then and only then did the doors swing open for God to really use me to touch people’s lives. I had become the missionary I prayed I could be.

  TWENTY-TWO

  NOT ALONE

  Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

  —1 PETER 3:9

  CECILIA ANDERBERG, THE Swedish deputy ambassador, came to see me two weeks after my return to the labor camp. As she usually did, she brought me some newspapers, new magazines, and some chocolate. (The chocolate disappeared the moment she left, as it always did.) On this visit she also brought me something better than chocolate: news that two other Americans were in custody in the DPRK and would face trial.

  I wanted to ask her what they had done and if they were missionaries like me. If they were, then I thought the North Koreans were in trouble. Two of us made a company; three was a church! But I did not ask, because I knew the DPRK officials listening in on our conversation did not want me to know such things. Even without knowing what the two new American prisoners had done, I knew this was good news for me. With three of us in custody, the odds of a deal being worked out between the North Koreans and the Obama administration increased. Ms. Anderberg also assured me that she was going to try to have me sent back to the hospital, for which I was thankful.