“In the tunnel they broadcast all the programs from South Korean television and radio. It was my work to watch and listen. Even during practice sessions we had transistor radios attached to our belts and continually listened. In the tunnel you get 700,000 to 800,000 South Korean won in fifteen days and you have to use it up. The tunnel has its own economy. You live there fifteen days or one month a year for training and during that time you buy products.”
(I nearly gasped in wonderment as Ahn described that elaborate facility set up to train spies in conspicuous consumption while much of the rest of the population went hungry. To me it remains an unforgettable image.)
“I’ve been in there three times. It’s like a holiday. But there aren’t any girls in the discos. Men demonstrate how the hostesses pour drinks.
If women were inside the tunnel it would be too much like South Korean society and there would be trouble. But we were instructed in how to interact with South Korean women.
“Training in the tunnel was to enable us to meet other spies, kidnap important officials and so on. Fifty South Koreans have been kidnapped. The people who teach you South Korean customs and dialect in the tunnels were kidnapped from South Korea. The authorities wanted to bring important figures for that, but it’s hard, so those were ordinary citizens. One was a university student who was kidnapped while camping in a tent with friends during vacation in a coastal area. Basically the whole practice drill is so that we can adapt ourselves to South Korean ways during peacetime missions to the South.
“We got other training for wartime. We practiced wartime kidnapping of generals from a moving vehicle, and from a building whose security force we had to penetrate. We learned to destroy South Korean telecommunications, get on a warship secretly and destroy it, bomb an institution. We had highly developed light-weight explosives and learned the basic structure of a ship, the layout of the bridge, where to plant the explosives.”
Q. Does the regime plan reunification by force?
A. “They always have that dream of reunifying through force, but there aren’t enough resources now—they’re very weak. So they’re trying to find other ways. Thus, they’re holding the nuclear card and trying to negotiate. Whenever they get their strength back they’ll start dreaming their dreams again. Peaceful reunification can only occur through capitalist South Korean society overtaking North Korea. [If a federation or confederation is arranged] people in North Korea will be influenced by the lifestyle of the South and will oppose the northern regime. So to maintain their regime they believe they have to take over South Korea and get rid of capitalist ideas. They teach you that.”
Q. The elite must save their positions?
A. “They don’t put it that way They would say ‘for the people.’ They say that basically socialism is for the people while capitalism is for an elite few. They propagandize by saying if North Korea is absorbed into South Korea it will be a world for the small elite instead of a society for the people.”
Q. How could anyone believe that in a country where the elite live well and the people live like dogs?
A. “Ordinary North Koreans didn’t know the real circumstances in South Korea. They’re brain-washed. Now, most North Koreans do know that South Korea is wealthier. There’s been a lot ofchange in the way people think since the 1989 youth festival brought lots of capitalistic lifestyle into the country. But even ifthey acknowledge that South Korea is wealthy, people believe that ifreunification takes place they have to take its wealth and distribute it among themselves.”
Q. How firmly are reunification and food supplies linked together in North Koreans’ minds?
A. “Reunification is not the only prospect for eating well, but food is one factor in their hope for reunification.”
Q. What’s the level of fanaticism among student spies?
A. “At the academy there are between three hundred and four hundred students, sixty to eighty per class year. I have no way of knowing how many are fanatics. But not all are. And even those who are fanatic adopt that posture because it’s the way to get ahead. They aren’t fanatics on general principle. If the North Korean regime were to collapse, the people who would be the leaders in helping to bring it down would be the people in the South Korea infiltration unit.”
Q. Did people say that?
A. “I never heard such talk, it’s just an opinion. There’s a saying in North Korea: ‘The dog you trust the most will bite you.’ I did hear that saying. The people in the division hate Kim Jong-il more than anyone else does. Everyone used to be willing to sacrifice for the mission, for Kim Jong-il. But some things happened to change that. In 1989, he visited the South Korea infiltration division. He likes speed. He got on one of the speedboats there. And he did lots of promiscuous stuff with women he had brought there. People talked against him— ‘How come we sacrifice for him?’ Eight people disappeared suddenly after Kim Jong-il’s bodyguards ratted on them.
“There was the Kim Hyon-hui case, too. She did her best, but when she was caught her parents were sent to a camp. The old man who died on that mission—Kim Sung-il—his family-was sent to prison. After seeing that, we thought, ‘No matter what we do, if our missions become known to the world we’ll be in trouble.’ So we were very unsure about our futures. Even if-we did our missions well, if the fact we had done espionage became known our families would be sent to political prisons.”
Q. Did you meet Kim Jong-il?
A. “I never personally met him but saw him during training.”
Q. Does he have a speaking problem?
A. “I hear he speaks well one-on-one, but doesn’t talk in a very courteous way. He’s not deferential.” (Ahn interjected that he admired my “objectivity.” The regime hated that, he said. It wanted people to be either positive or negative. If they-were negative, it could change them.)
“High officials in North Korea are getting prepared just in case the regime collapses. All ordinary people hate the elite and everyone hates Kim Jong-il. Ordinary people still worship Kim Il-sung.”
Q. How did you escape?
A. “I made a run across the DMZ into Kyonggi Province, carrying two bombs to blow myself up if necessary an AK47 assault rifle and a small pistol [assembled on the pretense of a training session]. The South Koreans saw me cross. I headed for a South Korean camp. No North Koreans noticed me leave.”
THIRTY-ONE
Neither Land nor People at Peace
“The Supreme Committee for the Struggle of National Salvation has reviewed Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s crimes, and sentences them to seizure of their wealth and execution.”
Lim Young-sun claimed to have printed that sentence on slips of paper, then distributed them in the northeastern part of North Korea in September 1991. On the reverse side of the fliers, which were about one-fifth the size of a standard sheet of typing paper, was this further message: “All you soldiers and working citizens, form combat units and fight. Hurray for a triumphant, free people!” The former People’s Army first lieutenant said that he and some anti-regime colleagues had carved a rubber stamp from a tire to print the fliers. He picked up a young woman passenger and bribed the conductor to give them both seats on the crowded train, then used his chatting with her as a cover while he tossed handfuls of fliers from the window as the train moved through the desolate region. Lim’s motive? As usual with defectors, it had begun with personal disappointment. Lim said he was outraged that his father had been mistreated by the regime and that his own career was limited on account of questionable family background. In his twenties, he “decided to get revenge on the regime for what it had done to my family name.”
A slender, rather good-looking man, Lim was thirty when I met him in 1994. (Yes, he wore a gold watch.) “When I started learning to write,” he told me, “the first thing I learned to write—even before my own name—-was ‘Kim Il-sung’. Even though I didn’t know my parents’ birthdays, I knew the birthdays of Kim Il-sung and his ancestors. I was a very ideal student. I parti
cipated in a parade with Kim Il-sung and went on stage wearing a red kerchief as a children’s corps member. I don’t know if you could call it love, but I did revere Kim Il-sung and I would have done anything at all to show my loyalty. The whole process of daily life is a testing of loyalty toward Kim Il-sung. I just thought everybody lived that way It seemed normal to me at the time. I was in my twenties before I started thinking it was strange.
“Father came from South Korea to the North during the Korean War. He was a volunteer in the Uiyonggun, the army of South Koreans fighting on the North Korean side. All those were volunteers. But there are always conflicts between Koreans from different regions. North Koreans don’t like South Koreans, because they’re more intelligent and better educated, and they have the potential to take over the regime. Father was one of the five best architects in North Korea, but his work was not properly acknowledged as the others’ work was. He resented that. Superiors or subordinates were given credit for his work. People from South Korea always confront a limit. It’s hard to break through that, regardless of your abilities.”
When Lim was born in 1963, the family lived in the captial, Pyongyang, where his father was designing buildings. The father was a party member. Lim’s mother worked in retail. Lim was the third son in a family of three boys and two girls. “We were comparatively well off, living in a three-room masonry house with television, radio and phonograph—but no refrigerator at that time. Then my father’s South Korean background got in the way of his career.” In 1976, the year of the Panmunjom axe-killing incident, “we had to move to North Hamgyong Province, to a cooperative farm where my parents both became farmers. Father was reduced from high party official to ordinary party member. The reason they gave was, in preparation for the war to come, they had to decrease the Pyongyang population. Of course, my parents understood the real reason: family background.
“I heard my father complain a lot. But I was too young to think of much. I just thought the family was moving. In the country, we lived in one room of a farmer’s mud-walled house. There was no kitchen. We had to build our own outside, with planks. We took our TV with us but there was no reception in that remote area then, so we sold it eventually. As life got harder, we also sold the radio and the phonograph. We had a Japanese-made loom and sold that, too. As for clothing, it wasn’t that bad. We took a lot with us, and some of my dad’s schoolmates in Pyongyang sent us clothing. But the food I ate was mainly potatoes and corn. There were some Chinese cabbages and radishes, but we couldn’t make kimchee without the other ingredients— pepper powder and so on. We just soaked the vegetables in salt water. The place is near Mount Paektu, very mountainous. I had to walk six kilometers to school, each way Actually you could hardly call it a school. It was a storage room. The teachers had licenses but their standard was low. In some aspects, I knew more than the teachers. It was very undeveloped, like a feudal society.
“I took the university entrance exam. Since childhood I had dreamed of studying economics at a university. But because my father had been expelled from Pyongyang, and despite lots of bribes by my mother to school officials, they assigned me to an agricultural college. I didn’t want to attend it, so I didn’t go. To ameliorate my family background I decided to enter the army in 1980, when I was seventeen. I was an ordinary soldier for eight years, then took one-year officer training and got a commission. I served at a missile base and underground airbase in South Pyongyan province. When I was in the army, I was second to none in study and practice. I was so diligent I won seven medals. But always there were limitations on account of my family background. I couldn’t go to the academy.
“From 1986, I acted as a screen-writer for the army movie studio. The studio is in Pyongyang, but I remained in my army unit and wrote scenarios based on observing other soldiers. Through this I started meeting high officials, people from the central party. I got to know about the high life they were living. I don’t care that much about Kim Il-sung’s lifestyle, but to keep his power he’s destroying the people. In most aspects my own situation was improving, but I doubted the regime: Why were my opportunities always limited because of my family background?
“The head of the Department of Movie Creation under the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces was Li Jin-u. I got close to him. He talked about the problems of the regime. I became associated-with the anti-regime movement within the ministry. In 1989, Kim Jong-il issued an instruction that as a present to Kim Il-sung we had to reunite North and South by 1995. But when Kim Jong-il gave that instruction, some people in the ministry did not want forceful reunification. They wanted it done peacefully, no matter how long it might take. Their goal was to get rid of Kim Jong-il in a coup d’état. They wanted to attempt a coup d’état either when Kim Il-sung got physically feeble or when Kim Jong-il really wanted to start a war.” I asked why the plotters opposed starting a war. “Do you. want war?” Lim replied. “These are the normal people. It’s the abnormal people who would want war.”
Lim said he had not been directly a part of the plotters’ organization, which numbered in the hundreds of members. But he and some young colleagues were moved to form their own, much smaller organization. “First, I wanted to oppose war. Second, I didn’t like the succession of Kim Jong-il. I wanted minimal freedom for the 20 million North Koreans. But basically, we did not want to be the people to initiate change. Because I was young, I didn’t want what I was doing to have any political color. But since I knew all the guys in other organizations I wanted to prepare to help if some organization started a coup d’etat. We pondered for about a year on how to make the biggest impact.” In September 1991, he boarded the train from Mount Komu in North Hamgyong Province to Chongjin and, during his ride, distributed about 400 of the printed fliers. Colleagues on different routes distributed about 600 more.
“The authorities investigated for about a year to find out who did it,” Lim said. “I was always stressed, fearing capture. Probably the reason I wasn’t caught is that my people were among the searchers.” But mean-while the larger anti-regime organization in the military was discovered and crushed. “State Security agents in the ministry found out about their attempt. They got rid of them by late 1992, arrested them all. At the New Year in 1993 Kim Il-sung made a speech. The State Security man who caught the plotters was promoted from major general to full general. The group arrested included a vice-marshal and nine or ten other general officers, one of them four-star. They were going to have an armed coup, get rid of Kim Jong-il and resume talks with South Korea. Yi Bong-yol was rumored to be the four-star general involved. I’m not sure of the others. I didn’t dig up details for fear I’d be arrested myself. Word on this came via the State Security people in the military units. I never saw the documents, but in each department they had official discussions of what had happened inside the ministry. When State Security felt something was fishy, they bugged the houses of some officers, got evidence and secretly arrested them. People thought they’d just gone on long trips, and only later heard they had been arrested. Along with the generals, about 200 to 300 were said to have been arrested, with half of those executed and half sent to political prison. I don’t know the method of execution, but at that time they had started using the electric chair in North Korea.
“A year after we distributed the fliers it seemed the coast was clear for me, but in February 1993 they resumed investigating the incident. In North Hamgyong, my home province, a special State Security force was formed to find the criminal. They investigated anyone who had ridden a train there in September 1991. It was discovered I had visited the province September 24, 1991, and stayed about ten hours, so State Security suspected me. In March of 1993 they found some evidence at my home.” While the authorities worked to nail down further evidence, Lim made his preparations and fled to South Korea via a third country.
There is much drama in Lim’s account. Perhaps that owes something to his skills as a screen-writer. In South Korea he published two books about his experiences. “When
I first defected, South Korean intelligence people knew of the flier incident very well,” he wrote in the second volume, River That Runs South. “One of them said, ‘Did you know that Kim Jong-il promised to bestow the title of “hero” on whoever could find the truth of this incident?’”
While Lim’s accounts were gripping, some readers were skeptical. Defector Oh Young-nam said he had been a captain in State Security in Pyongyang from June 1991 until April of 1993, covering the entire period when Lim supposedly was the object of intensive investigation. Oh told me he had not heard of the flier incident even though he was in charge of an inspection department combatting spies and anti-government movements. He added that the regime was “very fast to act in such a case. If someone puts out a leaflet with anti-government information, there’s no possibility of getting away. The intelligence net-work is very well kept. Sometimes sons would report on fathers. I never really trusted my wife, because I’ve seen too many cases where wives reported on husbands. Thus there is no open opposition.” Due to extreme shortages, Oh added, “you can’t find clean A-4 paper anywhere, even in an office. You can use a kid’s notebook, but I can’t imagine someone tossing full packs of leaflets.”
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Page 80