Young-min spoke first: ‘You know that saying: “When a small man drinks he vomits, but when a great man drinks he designs a revolution”? Well, what I’m saying is, that southern Chosun book … it made me feel …’
I interrupted him. ‘Let’s go to South Korea.’
Young-min’s fingers froze on the rim of his glass.
I continued, ‘There’s no other way. For the sake of those we love, we can’t risk confession. You know what this country is like. You more than anyone else know what this country is like.’
He didn’t need any persuasion. He seized my hand and, as if that were not enough of a gesture, pulled me close in a tight embrace. ‘You’re right, we’re leaving,’ he said. ‘We’ll die either way, so it doesn’t matter for us. I can’t even breathe any longer here, knowing what I know. Be killed at home or on the road, what’s the difference?’
There was no point in wasting time once we had confirmed our decision, and we began to plan our next steps. We agreed to turn up for work as usual in the morning. Luckily, as we had established, the bag that Young-min had mislaid contained no direct personal identification linking it to him, so as long as I kept my wits about me, I could buy some time. When the Ministry of State Security tracked me down from the book, I would argue that I had simply misplaced my bag. In any case, it would take a day for them to put a surveillance team in place, and my status as one of the Admitted would prevent them from acting too hastily. We would make our way north during this time. The only way out of the country was to cross the border into China, as it was impossible to cross the DMZ into South Korea. A travel pass could be obtained from a former classmate at Kim Il-sung University, who worked in Pyongyang at a cross-border trading company. He was always in need of money, and a decent bribe would sort him out. By a stroke of good fortune, we found that there was a 9 p.m. train scheduled to leave Pyongyang the next day towards the border region. If we were to get on this train, we must pretend everything was normal until the time came for us to leave.
After planning these things, I hurried to pack my bag. As I would have to go to the train station straight from work, we decided that Young-min would take my rucksack. He could leave work in the afternoon. I stuffed into my rucksack everything I could think of. I did not forget my secret manuscript of poetry. It was my voice, and I would take it out of the country with me.
‘See you at 7.30 p.m. at Pyongyang Station,’ I said.
Young-min nodded, turned to go, but then swung back and seized my arm. He dropped his gaze as if he were lost for words, but then spoke in a low but firm voice.
‘If we get caught, we will commit suicide.’ The word ‘suicide’ felt like a tangible object being passed from his tender heart to mine. I felt strangely thrilled by the thought that death could be a conscious choice: I had the means to decide my own fate.
A FAREWELL SIN
5
ONCE I’D SEEN Young-min off into the night, I went to my room and lay awake in bed. I was not especially dreading exile, which would begin in less than twenty-four hours. What I feared the most was the scale of what I had to leave behind. I felt sick that my mother and father must live out their remaining days in a world from which their only son had suddenly disappeared. Yet I could not say goodbye to them.
They would not let me go if they learned of my plan. They would kill themselves first. Once I left the country and officially became a missing person, I knew how the Ministry of State Security would interrogate them. If they so much as suspected that my parents had been aware of my intention to escape, they would be convicted of assisting a traitor. It was better by far for them to remain ignorant, so that they could face the authorities in complete innocence. I tried to take a little comfort from the knowledge that they’d live one day longer in the belief that everything was all right.
Filled with such excuses, I buried my face in the pillow in order to muffle my crying. I hugged it tight, to restrain myself from lashing out at the walls. As I cried and silently begged my parents for forgiveness, dawn broke. It was my last morning at home.
I heard my mother call me from the dining room, saying that I’d be late for work if I didn’t hurry. I was suddenly terrified of coming face to face with my parents. This might be the last time I ever saw them. What would I say? How could I say it? My father shouted through to me that breakfast was going cold. I looked in the mirror and hastily rubbed my eyes. Seeing my own reflection, I wondered if I had ever before been so self-conscious in front of my parents, and fresh tears blurred my vision. If I emerged like this, with bloodshot eyes, they would ask questions. In my panic, I took a pair of dark sunglasses out of the drawer. As I walked into the dining room, they both questioned me at once.
‘What are the sunglasses for?’
‘My eyes are a bit sore.’ I managed to make up an excuse, but my voice carried the hint of a tremor.
My mother jumped from her chair and approached me. ‘Let me see.’
I instinctively turned my face away from her. ‘It’s all right, no big deal. I just wanted to dress up a bit.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t hurt them? Let me see.’
I held her hands in mine and pleaded, ‘Yes, I’m sure. I need to impress someone today.’
My father responded brusquely, ‘But what’s the point of wearing those things at the breakfast table? Are you going to keep them on?’
I flinched. He’d caught me out, and I couldn’t sit here eating breakfast wearing shades without a better excuse. I want to sit here with you. This is our last meal together. I could not utter the words. As I imagined my distraught parents later regretting how they saw me off into the unknown without eating, the tears welled once again.
‘It’s all right, my eyes really are fine. Don’t worry.’ I smiled as I spoke, though my eyes were wet. I quickly hugged my mother, wiping the tears away behind her back. She seemed much smaller than I had thought her to be. She was unfamiliar, although it was she who had raised me. My arms felt unusually long and heavy and I wanted to step away from her, but could not bring myself to.
‘What’s up with you today? You’re acting oddly,’ she chided me.
A mother can see into her child’s heart merely by looking at his shadow. Stepping back from me, she tried again to look into my eyes.
My father intervened. ‘Let him alone, he’ll be late for work.’ If he hadn’t spoken at that moment, I would not have been able to stop her from finding me out.
I quickly crossed the living room and made my way towards the front door. Only when I had reached the threshold did I steal a look behind me. I longed to see my parents one more time. But the living room was empty and I could hear them talking together in the kitchen. My father was complaining about my older sisters, saying they were useless at keeping in touch, and that he wanted to see the grandchildren more often. How could he have known that I was a much worse child to him than my sisters had ever been?
Once I left the house, I might never be able to return. I saw my parents’ shoes by the front door. My chest felt tight, as though I was suffocating. The farewell bow I could not offer them I offered to their shoes instead.
As soon as I left the house, my tears erupted in bitter sobs. I knew that the Workers’ Party could take away my right to life, but it had also taken away my right to say goodbye to my family, and I had to deceive them to the end. I wept as I remembered my mother’s last words: ‘Let me see your eyes.’ Why had I stopped her from looking into her son’s eyes? My body trembled with angry regret.
When I arrived at work, my colleagues came up to me. ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’ they asked. I lied that I had an eye infection, and this led to a stroke of luck. After our morning meeting, Supervisor Park Chul urged me to go to a doctor, saying that he had suffered from something similar in the past. On the pretext of getting my eye infection seen to, I was able to leave work at eleven that morning.
I made my way to the trading company where my classmate from Kim Il-sung University worked as
the head of surveillance. In North Korea, all workplaces have someone in charge of surveillance. In the case of companies that deal with foreigners or employ North Koreans who travel overseas on business, there are many surveillance officers. I knew I could go to this friend of mine for a special travel pass.
In North Korea, there is an ordinary travel pass and a special travel pass. They are differentiated by a red line drawn across the special travel pass. Provinces such as Hwanghae or South Hamgyong are generally classified as ordinary regions, because they lie inland. The capital city of Pyongyang and regions that lie near the borders with South Korea or China are considered special areas. Only local residents or those with a special travel pass may legally set foot in these regions.
The special travel pass for Pyongyang has a single red line drawn across it; a pass to enter the border regions displays two red lines. In this regard, a travel pass is not like a passport, which allows an individual to leave the country. Instead, it is a method of control over domestic travel. According to standard procedure, a special travel pass can only be issued after the approval of the Ministry of State Security has been obtained.
Fortunately, by this time, the forces of marketisation set in motion by the mushrooming black markets in North Korea had reached officialdom. Anything could be bought if you had enough foreign currency. North Korean trading companies, whose raison d’être was to conduct business with companies based in China in order to earn foreign exchange for the Workers’ Party, were assigned a larger quota of special passes than any other official institution. And in North Korea, whether you were the state or an individual, you had to sell whatever you had in order to survive. My old classmate had constantly been prodding me to send people with foreign currency his way, to buy his allocation of blank special passes.
I went to his office and told him what I wanted. He said that although he generally sold them for US$200, he would sell me mine for only US$100 because we were old mates. Although my monthly salary of 2500 won (around US$2) was higher than most North Korean salaries, this was still not enough to sustain anyone’s livelihood. Ordinary North Koreans made their living in the black markets, and cadres lived through special rations and bribery. A UFD cadre could make around US$100 each month by selling off the special rations from abroad issued through the Department.
But I was also privileged by family connections. Officially, North Korea operates two separately compartmentalised economies, referred to as the People’s Economy and the Second Economy, the latter encompassing the military sphere. My relative headed the Middle East office of Bureau 99 in the Second Economy, overseeing North Korea’s arms deals in the region. He was one of the wealthiest men in North Korea, and was able to offer a minimum of 10 million American dollars in ‘loyalty remittances’ to Kim Jong-il every year.
There was no way that he could have made his money – enough to give regular gifts to his relatives and pass round Mercedes Benz cars – by actually selling North Korean weapons. I learned from him that North Korean rockets sold fairly well in the Middle East until the end of the 1980s because they were cheap, but various factors led to deals becoming harder to secure after that time. In the early 1990s, as the Soviet bloc collapsed, he had seized an opportunity to move between Ukraine and the Middle East, setting up arms deals. Out of these successes, he built himself a reputation as a highly sought-after weapons negotiator. Kim Jong-il recognised his work and bestowed on him the highest medal in North Korea, the Award for Heroic Effort, not just once but twice. My prized new Shimano bicycle made in Japan had been one of many gifts from him too. As one of Kim Jong-il’s Admitted and known among my friends as ‘the man who always carried at least US$1000 in his wallet’, I was able to buy a blank special pass without arousing undue suspicion. The only thing my classmate asked when I handed him a US$100 note was for me to give him the amount in two US$50 notes instead, because counterfeit US$100 bills had flooded the domestic economy when a Party directive to use them in trade with China had backfired. Now, even individuals avoided them as much as they could in their private transactions.
As I hurriedly rose to leave after we had concluded our business, he called out to me, ‘Hey, where are you going? You have to put the traveller’s name on the pass.’
‘Oh, I’ll just write it in later.’
‘Are you crazy? Just because it’s blank doesn’t mean you can fill it in any old how. You need a cipher for it to work.’
I had no choice but to give him Young-min’s name and identity as well. As my old classmate wrote our names, occupations and dates of birth in the special pass, he explained to me how my birthdate should be combined with this week’s cipher for travel in the border regions. I hadn’t known that such a cipher even existed, and I feared that my ignorance would sooner or later present an insurmountable and unforeseen obstacle to my escape. I stuffed the pass deep into my pocket and turned to leave. ‘Take care not to defect across the border!’ I heard him shout after me, and I glanced back over my shoulder to see him grinning. I gestured light-heartedly as if I were dismissing his joke, but inside I was stung.
With the special travel pass in hand, every step I took from here on would be in execution of that very plan – to defect. My legs trembled as I returned to Office 101. When I entered through the small gate and passed the guard, I walked more quickly. On my return to the office, Supervisor Park Chul looked up from his desk. ‘The First Party Secretary wants to see you. Be quick about it.’
A sense of dread washed over me. Before making my way to the First Party Secretary’s office, I went to the bathroom and hid the special travel pass between my foot and the sole of my shoe. It was all I could do by way of preparation. As I climbed the stairs, my head was filled with macabre thoughts.
I took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the Party Committee room. The sound echoed to the end of the corridor. The door opened and the secretary flinched when she saw me. She picked up the phone and spoke into it: ‘Comrade First Party Secretary, Comrade Kyong-min is here to see you.’ After putting the receiver down, she suddenly became courteous and even held the door open for me to enter the room.
From the doorway, I glimpsed the Workers’ Party flag arranged under the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. The red Party colours seemed a sterner shade of red than usual. When I stepped inside, before I noticed the First Party Secretary, I saw three unfamiliar men waiting for me. There was a man who looked to be in his early fifties wearing a dark green coat, and two others, wearing black coats and in their early or mid-forties. As their eyes fell upon me, I imagined that each man had been trained to perceive my real thoughts. I already felt like a condemned criminal.
Lying on the long table that divided the room was the southern Chosun book that I had lent to Young-min, along with his notebook. My heart sank to my stomach.
The oldest of the three men spoke first. He did not get out of his chair, but his swagger was noticeable. ‘We’ve come from the Ministry of State Security.’
It was all the more terrifying to hear that name – the merest hint of which is enough to silence a crying North Korean child – from the mouth of one of its agents. Not only that, these men would be from the infamous Section 10 of the Ministry, who specialised in interrogating North Korea’s most senior men. No one else had the clearance to set foot inside UFD premises.
‘Why was this book found outside the premises without authorisation?’ the man asked.
To that point-blank question, I answered that I must have slipped it into my briefcase while in the office, and taken it home without realising. I’d then misplaced the briefcase.
Another man cut me short. ‘Choose your words carefully, comrade. We have checked with your colleagues and none of them has ever seen you with that briefcase. We checked for fingerprints, and the bag isn’t yours. We will discover the identity of its owner in a few days. Are you going to wait till then, or confess now?’
I spoke more forcefully. ‘I will repeat what I said before. The brie
fcase belongs to me. The prints you found must belong to the thief who took it.’
The three men took turns to question me in rapid succession. Where had I bought the briefcase? What time had I left work on the day it was mislaid? Was there a witness? When had I noticed that I had mislaid the briefcase? Where might I have mislaid it? Who was at home when I returned from work? If I had misplaced my briefcase, why had I not alerted the authorities earlier? Had I been trying to read sections of the book that had been blacked out? What other items had I put in the briefcase?
I responded feebly that it was just the book. Seeing me stumble, one of the men asked what I had scribbled inside the notebook. I caught myself just before falling into the trap.
‘You want to know what I scribbled in the notebook?’
When his colleague responded, I noticed how he put a slight emphasis on the fact that he was referring to my notebook, and I realised what was happening. Young-min’s notebook contained Young-min’s handwriting, not mine. If I claimed the notebook was mine in order to reinforce that the briefcase was mine, they would have the contradiction they needed because of the contrast between my handwriting and Young-min’s, and the case would be sealed.
I made as if to recollect my thoughts, and the men scrutinised my face for involuntary blinks or muscle movement. But I answered confidently.
‘I don’t remember what’s written in it,’ I said. ‘The notebook isn’t mine. I picked it up on the street and put it in my briefcase, because I didn’t want the paper to go to waste.’
Tapping the table with his pen, the older man said sarcastically, ‘So the briefcase belongs to you, but the notebook in the briefcase does not belong to you. Well, we seem to have a problem here. But the fingerprints on the briefcase will reveal all. I shall give you one last chance to come clean, before the results are confirmed tomorrow. The fact that you took a restricted publication outside these premises is a treacherous crime in itself. But if you tell us who you lent the book to and who else might have had access to it, you may be let off lightly. Confess before tomorrow morning to Comrade First Party Secretary. Understood?’
Dear Leader Page 10