The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
Page 18
The collapse happened suddenly. The clearest measure was the whiting that Koreans traditionally hang out to dry on the walls of their houses: the visible decline in the fish’s numbers, which began in 1988, was a sign writ large of the nation’s economic crisis. By 1990, drying fish were nowhere to be seen. That was also the year when the country’s rice distribution was severely mismanaged. Here is one aspect of the current famine that doesn’t attract enough attention. Besides the production problems that arise from inadequate work incentives, fertilizers, and working tractors, there is also the problem of distribution. The Yodok canton, for example, was still running surpluses as late as 1990, but no trains were available for transport. The only alternative transportation was the country’s aging fleet of run-down trucks, which kept breaking down on the unpaved roads. Rice that was needed in the city sat rotting in the countryside, while manufactured goods the country people needed never left the city.
As the situation worsened, peasants began raising their own goats and dogs and expending less energy on the collective farms. Considering how little their monthly salary of 100 to 150 won bought, they had little choice. A dog cost 300 won, a goat 400, a jar of honey 150. To keep from starving, peasants began cultivating thousands of hills abandoned by the collective farms, turning much of the countryside into a Far West of appropriated tracts. Demonstrating the same courage and tenacity I later discovered among the merchants of Namdaemun,5 these peasants often worked their new plots at night after putting in a full day on the collective farms. Under the direction of incompetent, corrupt bureaucrats, they spent the daylight hours dozing off and dragging their feet. But at night, when time came to provide for their families, they worked like demons. Unfortunately, private farming was a major cause of flooding in 1996–97, because deforested slopes susceptible to soil erosion led to landslides and a dangerous buildup of the riverbeds. Though the Party was fervently opposed to private land use, the peasant movement grew so strong that the Party had no choice but to give ground. It never formally changed its laws, but it grudgingly tolerates the practice, and is content merely to remind the peasants that in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea no land belongs to a single owner, and that anyone taking possession of a plot risks having it confiscated. The movement and its revolts have been so vast that the Party has only moved to dismantle the most egregious land grabs. This is all very revealing of North Korea’s present situation and its inevitable slide from communism to capitalism.
This wild trend toward privatization—or appropriation, if you prefer—explains why peasants are now having an easier time procuring food than workers who live in small towns, where famine has struck hardest. But the peasants suffer from another privation, of clothes, which they must buy from outlaw traveling salesmen. These merchants buy their stock on the cities’ black markets or from one of the handful of surviving sweatshops and factories. Sometimes clothes are smuggled in from China. When I was still living in North Korea in the early 1990s, the terms of exchange were heavily weighed against the peasants. A pair of 40-won nylon socks cost them two kilos of corn. An egg earned them 1 won; a bottle of oil, 10 to 15 won; a chicken, 60 won; but it cost 100 to 150 won to buy fabric for a suit of clothes; 400 won for a pair of Japanesesewn pants; 100 to 130 won for a short-sleeved shirt made in China—and 250 if it were made in Japan. This explains why relatives of former Japanese residents always came to visit North Korea with armloads of socks, clothes, and alcohol, whose exchange value was astronomical.
The generosity of our family in Japan certainly made a big difference in our lives. It enabled us to purchase the benevolence of guards and minders and slowly to inch our way closer to Pyongyang. As a matter of law, former prisoners are not allowed to leave the zone where they have been assigned to live. As a matter of practice, bribery makes everything possible. We wrote to relatives asking for help, careful to disguise our meaning, so as not to provoke the censors. North Koreans are permitted to send letters out of the country as long as they don’t criticize or complain about the regime. When our relatives suddenly received a letter from us after ten years of silence, they had a fairly good notion of what had become of us. During the years of our disappearance, they had made several attempts to visit us in North Korea and were repeatedly turned away by the police, who told them we were on vacation. There was much concern in Japan about all the North Koreans who had suddenly left on extended vacations. Petitions got circulated about the issue. Korean residents in Japan appeared on television to talk about the disappearance of their relatives. Maybe some of this even played a role in our release, though my grandfather’s death probably had more to do with that. While we will probably never discover what really became of him, it was believed that the authorities waited for a convicted political criminal to die before releasing his family.
Thanks to the power of money, we escaped the dreadful life of the North Korean backwater. Want to make a telephone call? You’ll have to pass through the operator . . . and hold the line. . . . And to reach Japan, endless troubles. Officially, of course, it is quite possible. In fact, only special—that is, tapped—telephone centers are equipped for the job, and they only accept foreign currency. Want to go out? There is only one movie theater for the whole canton. And while the prices are risibly cheap, the film will infallibly be some glorification of North Korea, its army, the anti-Japanese partisans, and so on. Everyone struggled to get by, and those with no other resources stitched their living together by selling plastic bottles, nylon socks, and army surplus shoes and clothes, which were valued for their durability. Army “surplus” was the basis of a flourishing black market trade organized by army officers. It left the lowly North Korean foot soldiers wearing threadbare old uniforms and canvas boots that couldn’t keep out the rain.
For permission to leave our canton, we had to pull out all the stops. A local pass could be had for a pack of cigarettes and a small quantity of alcohol, but an authorization to move to the Pyongyang area required much more than that. For a long time our efforts were going nowhere, but a visit from our family changed everything. The Security Force agents, who had been treating our appeals with indifference—not to say contempt—suddenly took an interest in our well-being. They began talking to us and even stopped us in the street to shake our hands! Conditions were evidently ripe for some discreet negotiations. With the aid of a few rather sumptuous gifts—most notably, a Japanese color television—my sister and I were allowed to join our uncle in Pyungsung, a city twenty miles outside Pyongyang. The scientific research center in Pyungsung had requested him to rejoin the post he had held before his internment. As a student at the polytechnic university he had finished first in his class, and his talents were widely recognized. After Yodok, he resumed his chemistry studies, and in 1991 received his doctorate. He was in a good position: the institute’s employees were treated as citizens of Pyongyang. It may come as a surprise to some that a former political prisoner was allowed to earn a master’s degree and doctorate; but the fact is that my uncle worked in a field where he could be closely monitored and controlled. He also had the benefit of some fabulous luck: the institute’s vice-president was his college roommate; and the roommate’s uncle, one of Yodok’s chief administrators, informed his nephew that the reasons for my uncle’s arrest had been minor and that his personal file was clean.
Living in Pyungsung, I was much closer to my mother and able to visit her regularly, sometimes with my sister, but most often alone. We were always happy to see each other. She cooked up little meals for me and bought me clothes. Yet there were a number of things worrying me. Since authorizations for visiting Pyongyang were hard to come by, I often traveled without them, in blatant violation of the law. The community police chief, who was a woman, usually turned a blind eye as long as I came up with a bribe, but how long would she continue before blowing the whistle? I was putting not only myself at risk, but my mother, too. Eventually, I decided to cut back on my visits.
I also had to think about my futu
re. My uncle was pressuring me to enter the university, something my father had always wished. By making the choice now, I would finally obey him. I took the entrance exam, distributed gifts among members of the placement committee, and was accepted to the university for light industry at Hamhung. I would have preferred Pyongyang University, but as a former political prisoner my chances of getting in were close to nil. I attended classes at Hamhung for several months but never found my niche. One problem was that I lived as a boarder in a home to which I had absolutely no connection. The second problem, which eventually proved more debilitating, was the xenophobic atmosphere of that provincial town where “strangers” from other regions were neither liked nor welcomed. To make things worse, the town was full of hoodlums, and I had had quite enough of fighting in the streets. I considered transfering to the university in Pyungsung, but that would have been no easier than getting into Pyongyang. So in the autumn of 1991, I decided to abandon my studies and moved back to our apartment in Pyungsung.
I had to choose a calling outside the university. While I weighed my options, the aid that poured in from my relatives in Japan saved me from poverty. People in the West are familiar with the situation in Cuba, where part of the population subsists on packages sent from family members in the United States and Europe. In North Korea, the manna comes from Japan. The further the North Korean distribution system declines, the more necessary this influx of currency becomes. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there were times when even ration tickets—forget about the rations themselves—stopped being distributed. The only way to get anything was by distributing gifts. Fortunately for us, my family was rich enough to earn the friendship both of the county’s Party secretary and its manager. The packages and letters from Japan came by mail, via a ship that still makes the fifteen-hour voyage between Niigata and Wonsan once a month. Every package is checked, of course, but only products made in the South are forbidden. Even money is let through. What we needed most, though, was medicine and secondhand clothes.
As far as allowing in visitors, the authorities are of two minds. On the one hand, they are delighted to welcome visitors bearing hard currency. On the other hand, there is always the danger these visitors will disseminate news of the country’s troubled political and economic situation. Thus, when a Japanese family comes for a visit, the entire canton is ordered to clean up and look smart. Every village and home that is likely to be seen is swept and improved. Sometimes the authorities go a step further: in advance of our family’s arrival, we were moved into a large two-room house, with a shed in the back, so that we might play better hosts. Just before my relatives arrived, Security Force agents dropped by with our orders. We were neither to mention the camp nor complain about anything whatsoever. We could chat, but it was forbidden to mention anything implying criticism of the government. To make sure we obeyed, agents listened in on our conversations around the clock. By the mid-1980s, after some ten years of protest—much of it from the Chosen Soren—the authorities decided to limit their surveillance to the daytime. Not that it really mattered. If we wanted to have a frank discussion, we only needed to give the agent a little money to go for a walk. . . . The authorities, in any case, really have nothing to fear from visiting relatives—who know the danger they would be putting their family members in if they talked.
EIGHTEEN
THE CAMP THREATENS AGAIN
Around this time, I reestablished contact with my friend Yi Yongmo—the boy who once became delirious in the middle of class. His family had been released from Yodok four years before we had, but it now looked like they might be on the verge of being sent back. The Security Force had begun calling in his father for interrogations and occasionally summoning my friend as well. We were very close and saw each other often. He told me about his fears and vented his anger against the regime. As a former prisoner, I also was under surveillance, and his friendship could bring me trouble. In the spring of 1991, Yong-mo’s father was accused of criticizing Kim Jong-il, and the whole family was sent back to the camp. I haven’t heard from my friend since. Is he still alive? He was always a little scrawny, and I fear the worst. . . . He often had fainting spells, during which he broke into a cold sweat. I loved his mind. He was my best and most faithful friend. Apart from my family, there is no one I miss more. For a time I worried that he would be tortured and made to confess about our counterrevolutionary conversations. In North Korea, every political criminal is tortured: Yong-mo had criticized Kim Jong-il and sung South Korean songs, and for this he was surely beaten and deprived of food and sleep.
I could have continued to live in Pyungsung in relative peace had I not been accused of illegally tuning into South Korean radio. These transmissions I picked up featured songs, covert messages aimed at Party cadres, and analyses of the situation in the North. One program featured interviews with renegades. Another surveyed news from around the world. This was how I learned of the fall and execution of the Ceausescus and of the establishment of diplomatic ties between South Korea and Russia; but it was Nicolae Ceausescu’s demise that most impressed me. He was an intimate of Kim Il-sung and had come to visit him many times. I was dying to tell people the news. Was I indiscreet? Perhaps, but I think my real mistake was listening to those programs too often and with too many people. I felt the surveillance of the Security Force gradually tighten around me. The agent who usually took care of my bureaucratic needs in exchange for gifts and loans was avoiding me; worse yet, he wouldn’t accept my gifts. Was it now compromising to receive something from my hand? One day, I managed to corner him and get the scoop. “You’re under surveillance,” he admitted. “A buddy of yours ratted on you for listening to South Korean radio.” After making me promise never to reveal my source, he fingered my accuser. I was flabbergasted—it was someone I considered a friend! I never had a clue.
Nothing pleased security agents more than identifying recidivists and sending them back to the camps. Gifts were the only way to keep the agents at bay, and by this point the gifts had to be both lavish and plentiful. How I hated these men. Once I made it to South Korea, I had no scruples about trying to make their lives as miserable as possible. Whenever I gave interviews, I mentioned how surprised I had been after my denunciation to find myself interrogated by two agents who were my longtime friends and radio-listening companions. I wanted revenge! Those slimeballs probably wound up in the same place they usually sent others. I imagine they’ve expiated their sins by now, and as far as I’m concerned, they can go free.
In the early 1990s, few North Koreans dared tune in to radio transmissions from the South. Many more do now. I got my two radio receivers from a Pyongyang store where you could get just about anything: cigarettes, beer, clothing, shoes. The only things they didn’t have were products made in South Korea—and, of course, they only accepted hard currency. Even foreigners shopped there. Since the sale of radio receivers wasn’t as closely monitored as might be expected, I was able to get away with registering one and paying hush money on the second. Listening to South Korean radio had to be done with extreme caution. The poor soundproofing of most North Korean dwellings could easily give us away. To avoid being overheard, my fellow listeners and I took the radio and buried ourselves three or four at a time under a mound of blankets. Only the antenna remained visible.
The other challenge was avoiding static. The signal was always clearest between 11:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. We liked listening to the Christian programs on the Korean Broadcasting System. The message of love and respect for one’s fellow man was sweet as honey to us. It was so different from what we were used to hearing. In North Korea, the state-run radio and television, newspapers, teachers, and even comic strips only tried to fill us with hate—for the imperialists, the class enemies, the traitors, and who knows what else! We could also tune in to the Voice of America and catch up on the international news from which we had been severed for so long. We hungered for a discourse to break the monopoly of lies. In North Korea, all reality is f
iltered through a single mind-set. Listening to the radio gave us the words we needed to express our dissatisfaction. Every program, each new discovery, helped us tear a little freer from the enveloping web of deception. Knowledge that there was a counterpoint to official reality was already a kind of escape, one that could exhilarate as well as confuse. It is difficult to explain, for example, the emotions we felt on hearing it demonstrated, proof positive, that the North had actually started the Korean War, not the American imperialists, as we had always been told.
Radio programs from the South made it possible for us to sharpen our criticisms of Kim Il-sung’s regime. We had long been aware of all its shortcomings, from corruption to repression, from the camps to food shortages, from its ravishment of the population’s work ethic to its obscene wastefulness, most apparent in its sumptuous birthday celebrations in honor of our two idols, father and son. We had plenty of evidence by which to judge the regime—and judge it harshly. What we lacked—what the radio provided us—were the connective elements we needed to tie it all together. The programs furnished us with an overview of the system as a whole: its origins, the reasons behind its current difficulties, the absurdity of its official boasting of self-sufficiency in light of its pleading for international aid. I think my friends and I were proud to be in the know. I wanted very much to tell my uncle about what I had discovered, but I didn’t dare; while I knew he would love the South Korean songs, I feared he would forbid me to listen.
There was still a chance my activities might place him at risk, in spite of his ignorance. For everyone’s sake, my main objective would have to be parrying as much of the danger as possible. My friend An-hyuk, who lived in a neighboring county, had also gotten wind of the investigation the Security Force was conducting on me. According to him the agents were proceeding slowly, hoping to throw a dragnet around the entire subculture of illicit auditors. An-hyuk, who also listened to South Korean radio, was facing the same danger I was. Our backs were to the wall: we could either wait for the Security Force to pick us up, or we could try to escape. The options were equally dangerous, but the second presented a glimmer of hope. An-hyuk had sneaked into China once before. On his way back, however, he was arrested for illegal border crossing and sent to Yodok, where he spent the next year and a half. That’s how we first met. Later, after we were both released, we kept in touch by mail. It was in one of his carefully coded letters that he revealed that we were in trouble and needed to talk. Our code was simple but effective: we wrote the exact opposite of what we truly meant to say.