Like others who went, “I started realizing there were vast differences between Russia and North Korea. I started facing a dilemma. What really changed me was the fact that I had a radio room that no one could enter. There I listened to Korean-language broadcasts every day usually KBS and broadcasts from Moscow. There was so much difference between their accounts of events and the North Korean version.
“I had a wife and a one-year-old daughter in North Korea when I left there. While in Russia I sometimes went to Khabarovsk to buy things to take back to North Korea. It was a seven-day round trip. One day while I waited in a park to return to the camp, by chance I met a South Korean preacher and we struck up a conversation. Nothing serious, but we planned to meet again. The next time I was in Khabarovsk, the preacher had returned to South Korea and another preacher, Yu Jae-hee, came and we talked a while. I was always concerned that State Security would find out.
“A close friend and schoolmate was at the camp as a logger. I let him listen to all the overseas radio broadcasts, and I was concerned they’d find out about that. On August 20, 1994, he was caught by the manager of the logging camp and arrested. As soon as I heard that, I knew I had to escape. I didn’t intend to come to South Korea. I went to Khabarovsk, and had to work for my living expenses. After two months I went to the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok to apply to defect. Permission didn’t come easily. While I waited I worked as a merchant. That made me known to some Korean residents of China, who reported me to North Korean State Security because there was an $8,000 re-ward for catching me.
“On August 30, 1995, State Security officers in cooperation with armed Russian police came after me. I was cornered on top of a three-story building. I ended up on the ground with both legs broken and was sent to the Russian police hospital for casts. The State Security officers thought I couldn’t escape with two casts, but I got away that night. I stayed in seclusion for a while and then applied to the International Red Cross in Moscow to become a refugee. The Red Cross and the South Korean consulate helped me.”
Shin had no job at the time I spoke with him but said he hoped to put his radio and cable experience to work in the telecommunications field.
For me, on the basis of those interviews, the verdict on the Russian logging and mining camps was obvious: from the standpoint of human rights the camps were far more an opportunity than they were a problem. Even that great majority of workers and officials who did not defect would have returned to North Korea with some changes in their outlook as a result of their liberating experiences in Russia. Their knowledge of the real world would, to some extent, have percolated into the common understanding. While some foreign editorial writers and activists for human rights campaigned against the camps and urged the Russian leadership to shut them down, I only wished there were more of them.
Instead, the number of North Korean workers in Siberia peaked at around 15,000 and then approximately 90 percent were sent home when Russia experienced a financial crisis in 1998. In April 2002, during a period when Pyongyang was focused on reinvigorating its economy, its national airline instituted twice-weekly service between Pyongyang and Khabarovsk. North Korean Prime Minister Jo Chang-dok, on a trip that month to promote economic exchange, asked the Russians to accept at least ten thousand laborers. The request was denied.2
TWENTY-THREE
Do You Remember That Time?
If any North Korean’s story ought to be made into a sequel to Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, that might be Pak Su-hyon’s. Pak was born on October 28, 1966, in Kyongsong, North Hamgyong Province, the son of a disabled father who was on welfare and a factory-worker mother. Considered to have a relatively “good” family background in the North Korean context, he grew up getting his ticket punched in all the right places for a young man eager to rise in station. He was a member of the leaders’ bodyguard service—a super-loyal military unit, so large that Pak never personally encountered Kim Il-sung. Studying at a medical college in the east coast port city of Chongjin, Pak by the early 1990s was hungry like most other people but at least could look forward to a good career. But then his brother was caught stealing food. On the North Korean principle that the misdeeds of an individual call into question the loyalty of his whole family, Pak was forced out of college and reduced to working in the electrical factory that employed his mother.
Disillusioned, he defected to South Korea in 1993. When I met him on February 7, 1994, I encountered a passionate and humorous man who was preparing to resume studies of traditional herbal medicine, which he had begun in the North. His stature was small; his face, pointed. The word “elfin” came to my mind. Wearing a generously cut new suit with wide lapels, grinning a survivor’s “wry grin as he related some of the worst of his misfortunes, Pak listened intently to my questions and took his own notes on them before he replied to each. Here is his story, pieced together from his answers:
The biggest problem now is the food shortage. There isn’t enough food for the people. How can they have food for cattle and other livestock? That’s why you didn’t see any during your 1992 visit.
Until the 1970s it was all right. From 1976 to 1979 the food shortages started. Those shortages were even worse than the ones of the early 1990s. They cut the rice ration in half. We speculated it was due to lack of supplies donated by the Russians. Or it was used for something else instead of being distributed to the people. But in the 1976 to 1979 period, people still had hope. North Koreans believed very strongly in the ideology of Kim Il-sung. And from 1979 the government did resume supplying all the rations. Also from that year some people plowed their own land. That was the “privatization” movement.
Things did improve around the end of 1979. But in 1984 the government sent rice to South Korean flood victims. That caused a great shortage at home. Certain amounts of grain had been provided regularly to each household, but from that point supplies became irregular. When the 1989 youth festival came we worked up some hope because there were lots of food supplies for that one week of festivities—although, of course, the rural areas were not as favored as Pyongyang.
Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il said we would concentrate on improving agriculture and put factory workers into the fields. People believed in those intentions, but by 1992 we felt it was only words and had given up hope. Now people realize it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse year by year.
In the distribution of food grains to each household, they started substituting all kinds of grain and even flour for rice. Sometimes the supplies didn’t get through. From January to March you would get the food supply. Then for a long time they wouldn’t give you any. Then later, in July, they would give you imported grain. Again, with the harvest, they would resume the supply. From March to July people would borrow food. In July they’d have to pay it back with the rations they got then, so they would have little left to eat. After coming to Seoul I saw a South Korean documentary of the Korean War period. It was called, “Do you remember that time?” But in North Korea conditions were that same way again, forty years after the war.
Even when food was distributed, sometimes there wasn’t enough for everyone in the village or neighborhood, so you would have to be on your guard to make sure your family would get its rations. They wouldn’t give advance notice of when the distribution would be held, so little kids were assigned to watch. If those children saw someone getting food supplies they would run home and shout, “It’s time!” Previously, people had thought it was shameful for a man to line up for rice—that was women’s work. That changed. It had become like a war. Lots of people would sleep in front of the distribution center waiting for the time.
In our family there are four brothers. I’m the second. The brother who got caught stealing food is the third brother. All of us were in the military. No family has sacrificed more. My third brother entered the service in 1989. He was maltreated in the military and caught pneumonia, so he was mustered out in the spring of 1991 and sent home. When he got home there wa
s nothing to eat in the house.
Earlier, this had been a problem that everyone shared, which made it somehow more tolerable. But some people had become wealthy—they might have relatives in Yanbian, China, or in Japan, who would help them out. My brother couldn’t stand it, so in May of 1992 he went to the storeroom of a wealthy family who had relatives in Yanbian, and he stole grain. South Koreans are horrified by the thought of a thief. But in North Korea, two out of three people have stolen. The fields are collectivized. At harvest time people sneak in and poach food. It’s the government’s property, so they figure who ever gets there first gets the food. There are military guards, and lots of people are shot dead when they try that. If you’re not shot, for stealing one handful of grain you can go to prison for maybe two or three years. Or you might go to a camp for unpaid labor in the fields for six months or so. North Koreans used to think field work was the lowest. A factory worker caught stealing food and sent to the fields thought he’d gotten the worst punishment. In 1991, Kim Jongil de creed that anyone stealing food would be sent to do farming. But the thing is, now people want to go.
I’ve stolen food many times. It would be hard to find a university student or soldier who had not stolen. Both men and women steal food. In the collective fields the managers would display posters saying, “This field is my field.” The poster was supposed to encourage the farmers to work harder. But I took it to mean that this collective field was my field. Even after four months in South Korea I have to be careful about what I eat because I’ve got stomach ulcers, like 80 to 90 percent of the North Korean population. The digestive juices flow, and there’s no food in your stomach, so the juices eat through the wall of your stomach. Ulcers aren’t even considered an illness, since everybody has them.
Even though I had to steal food, I didn’t question the ideology. The education system makes you think of politics and real life as two separate matters. So I thought that, even though life was hard, our ideology was sound.
I was in Chongjin Medical School studying traditional herbal medicine. I had studied almost four years when, in July of 1992, my brother was caught and sent to prison. The family whose grain was stolen asked me to replace the stolen grain. I replied: “My brother is in prison. How can you ask me for the grain?” We had a brawl and they said, “How can such a person as this be a university student?” They tattled to the authorities and I was expelled from med school. That was the time when communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was collapsing. Universities were enforcing strict discipline. Kim Jong-il said, “Now’s the time for action. Punish the ones who should be punished.” When I was expelled in 1993, about twelve others were expelled at the same time.
In your later career, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il would judge you according to three qualifications: Had you been a party member? A university graduate? In bodyguard service? I was a party member. After bodyguard service I was on the way to earning my university degree. So I had figured my life would be great. But getting expelled from the university ended my dreams. That’s why I defected. At the time when I was joining the bodyguard service, Kim Il-sung had warned, “Trust is everything. Don’t betray us and we won’t betray you—but if you ever become a traitor then we want you out of our sight.”
I had kept my part of the bargain. I didn’t have big doubts while I was in the bodyguard service. And in university all they talk about is the continuance of socialism. I agreed that socialism was the only ideology for our country. My major doubts came only when I was expelled.
The authorities said I could come back and try to be readmitted the following year. But they knew I had no way of leading my life after my expulsion. Generally if you are expelled from university they send you to the mines. I didn’t do anything for two months, then went to a factory. A high official helped me avoid being sent to the mines. During those two months’ rest before going to the factory, I thought a lot and realized that ideology is irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. What’s important is the people’s lives. As long as life is good, any regime is all right. I turned my back on the regime in an instant.
Most people’s opinions of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il haven’t changed. Most ordinary people don’t know about the extravagant lives of those two, or about their faults. They blame high officials under the Kims for their problems. They believe Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are ?well-intentioned but that high officials working under them don’t carry out their policies properly. But those high officials do know all the faults of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. I’ve talked to some officials. While ordinary people blame them, high officials blame Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.
But you have to be very careful about saying anything critical, even to someone you consider your close friend. No one can say anything about the Kim family dynasty for example. One word equals prison. Oh, people who knew each other well might remark that Kim Il-sung’s regime was more totalitarian than Hitler’s—but being more totalitarian than Hitler wouldn’t be considered necessarily a bad thing. People like one-party rule. Kim Il-sung explained that European socialist countries fell because of the multi-party system.
I had one friend with whom I was especially close. We had known each other for a very long time, and our families also knew each other well. Our fathers worked together. My friend was also expelled, from Pyongyang University in 1993 because of family background. He had come home in hopes of defecting to South Korea. We were able to open up to each other after getting drunk. In bantering fashion one of us said, “Let’s go to South Korea.” We realized we meant it. We didn’t tell our families or even our girlfriends.
At first we planned very secretly to go via China on September 15, 1993, but we didn’t have the money so we decided to wait. I sold some things—antique porcelains—to a Chinese trader who came to North Korea, and then we had the money. We crossed the border into China October 1. There are lots of military guards at the border, so it’s very difficult to get across. We bribed a guard, saying we would just go across and return the same day. For that we spent 4,000 won, enough for one TV set on the black market. It’s about four years’ salary for a university graduate.
Even after we crossed the border to Yanbian in China it still wasn’t easy. We visited friends and relatives but couldn’t tell them our real plan. We told them we would be going back to North Korea. A relative gave us some money and we went to Tianjin port in China, where we stowed away on a ship that people said was going to Inchon in South Korea. A crewman found us but sympathized and hid us again. We showed ourselves when the ship was in sight of Inchon.
There was a lot to surprise me about South Korea. In North Korea I had read about South Korea’s world-record accident rate and had felt critical of the South Koreans, considering them disorderly and violent. At the time I couldn’t imagine a place with so many cars, or I would have understood. I was shocked to see such huge numbers of South Korean–made cars on the streets. And I was actually impressed with the traffic order compared with the chaos of China, where cars drive wherever the drivers want.
I like Seoul. I had not imagined it would have all these high-rise buildings. I’m surprised there is a place like this in the world. I’m very fortunate to realize before I die that there is a place like this. I’m sorry for North Koreans who will die without learning about such a life.
I first looked at people’s shoes, because in North Korea shoes are often stolen. South Koreans are much taller than North Koreans. And I noticed that compared with North Koreans, South Koreans are heavy. They have more meat on them, look like they have drunk a lot of milk. If there’s a war between North and South, the North Koreans don’t have a chance, physically. South Koreans have nice complexions. In North Korea it’s very hard to find a beer belly, but here everybody’s stomach is bulging out.
I was shocked, also, at the reaction of South Koreans to foreigners. In North Korea everybody looks up to foreigners. In Seoul they don’t pay that much attention.
I saw a sign after I arrived in
South Korea that said, “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.” I was astonished to think that South Koreans had the concept of love.
When foreigners visit, North Koreans have to pretend that their stomachs are full and that they lead wonderful lives. Pamphlets instruct people how to behave in front of foreigners. In fact, even during 1976–79, despite the food shortages, I believed that North Korea was better off than the South. But as the years went by, South Korea became a very prominent country while North Korea declined. Now, except for really uneducated people, most people know that South Korea is a much more powerful country in world politics. They’re very distressed by the knowledge.
I was in Kim Il-sung’s bodyguard service from May 1982 to August 1989. To be a bodyguard, you don’t volunteer. You have to be selected. Fortunately my family background was very stable. At the time, I felt delighted. It was a great honor.
One forbidden thing I was able to get away with as a bodyguard was listening to radio stations other than the official one. Starting in the 1990s lots of radios got into North Korea from China. You could buy them in the dollar stores. Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung also give radios as presents. When you bought one, the government person would fix it so that only one frequency could be listened to. But high officials, national security and military people, can get radios without such blockage, both short-wave and regular AM-FM radios. As for a radio stuck on one frequency, of course you can reverse that. However, they check it periodically. If they find you’ve altered it, they’ll take it away. A lot of people alter their radios, listen, then change them back before the next inspection.
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader Page 64