Dear Leader

by Jang Jin-Sung

  In 2002, so as to reduce his people’s dependence on China, Kim Jong-il issued an order for North Korean companies trading under Party auspices to cease business activities with China. But, among other factors, the North Korean economy was already much too reliant on cheap imports from China. Cracking down on the sale of Chinese goods in the markets could only lead to rising prices and a strengthening of the black market economy. As economic decentralisation would result in the loss of societal and political control, Kim Jong-il rescinded his order after just three months.

  When I wound up my explanation, Cho-rin’s uncle shook his head slowly as if in disbelief. ‘Is this really true, what you’re saying?’ he asked. Muttering that only someone from the heart of such a corrupt regime could know these things, he took a final large gulp from his glass and repeated the number ‘three’ several times, as if it were his prophecy that the current North Korean regime would not last beyond three generations. ‘Tell you something,’ he said, ‘I might be in an ethnic minority, but all the same I’m glad – no, grateful – to have been born a citizen of China, not North Korea.’

  5

  MEETING CHO-RIN’S

  ‘INTENDED’

  AFTER THESE CONVERSATIONS, Cho-rin’s uncle treated me with great respect. When he left for work in the morning he made sure to knock on my door and say goodbye. He phoned the house at least twice a day to ask if there was any snack or small treat I wanted him to bring home. Each time, Cho-rin would take advantage of the opportunity to ask for various delicacies that she wanted too.

  I enjoyed an extravagant three days in this manner. Nevertheless, every morning, I made it my first task to phone Mr Shin. He kept reassuring me that I had luck on my side, but the more I heard this, the greater I feared for Young-min. What if he had forgotten Mr Shin’s phone number through some trauma he’d suffered? I mentioned this to Mr Shin in a roundabout way. Mr Shin said that the graver danger was that Young-min might give away his phone number under interrogation, as the authorities would then track us both down.

  I understood his concern. His wife was a North Korean refugee too. When I asked about sending someone to check Young-min’s relative’s home again, Mr Shin made the excuse that he was very busy. Cho-rin, who was standing next to me, asked me to pass the phone to her. I wondered if she’d had an excellent idea that a man wouldn’t have thought of.

  ‘Hello!’ Cho-rin’s voice was cheery as always. She continued, ‘Please help find his friend. After all, it’s only locals like us who can help, as we speak the language and know the area. And please come with him to Shenyang! I’ll take you all out for a delicious meal.’ She was about to return the receiver to me when she paused for a moment, took it back and added, ‘Well, goodbye for now!’

  Mr Shin was very curious. Was she my girlfriend? How was it that we were staying in the same house? He remarked that she had a distinctive way of speaking, full of affection, and, without giving me a chance to explain, added, ‘Congratulations!’ Then he assured me, promising several times, that he would send someone to Young-min’s relative’s house that very day.

  In terms of her cousin’s piano tuition, Cho-rin was also one step ahead of me. If I played the tyrant, wielding a kitchen knife in front of the child, Cho-rin led the way with empathy. When the boy was about to lose his temper because he was unable to get the notes right, she got the answers right on his behalf, so that his pride wouldn’t be injured. To deal with his whingeing, Cho-rin appealed to the family ties between them. Now and then, she would pretend to get very upset and tearful, saying that she would get in trouble with the scary piano teacher if he continued to misbehave – although of course I had no such thing in mind. Nevertheless, it worked, and the fierce tiger would return to being a ten-year-old boy.

  Once, saying he was tired, the boy bolted from the room. When words couldn’t coax him back, Cho-rin tried a new tactic. In order to pique his jealousy, she sat next to me on the piano stool. It must have irked him, to see us ignoring him like that, because he screamed from the other room that if she didn’t get off the stool at once, he would hurl it out of the window. As she translated those words for me, she rested her head on my shoulder.

  The lemon scent of her hair infused my body. All at once, I forgot about the boy. When the boy screamed again, Cho-rin took her act to another level, putting her hand on mine as it rested on the keyboard, then lifting it to put my arm around her shoulders. I was overcome by the sense of intimacy. In North Korea, no man would dare make bodily contact with someone else’s betrothed, and a woman would never take the lead in such a way. Moreover, from Pyongyang to Shenyang, all I had had to touch were rough things. Even when I’d grasped Young-min’s hand, my hand had been met by trembling and the sense of a life that was barely holding on. The warmth of Cho-rin’s hand on mine awoke in me the touch of life. I became focused on my breathing and worried that my slightest movement might shatter the stillness of the moment. When Cho-rin lifted her head again, I wondered if she too felt that time had stopped for us alone.

  As Cho-rin tried to allay her cousin’s tantrum, I went into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. I wanted to wash off my shamelessness. Yet, even after I’d wiped my face with the towel, I felt the same. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw too many layers hiding my real self from the world.

  I told myself that there would have been no double meaning behind Cho-rin’s actions. She genuinely wanted to help me, and she was satisfied with that. If that weren’t the case, she wouldn’t still enjoy laughing with me in the same way as when we’d first met. Neither would she put her head on my shoulder and take my hand as a mischievous ploy to annoy the boy. I had no right at all to expect Cho-rin to have for me any of the feelings that she had towards her fiancé. In fact, I was indebted to her for her many kindnesses and felt obliged to repay them in such a way that I would never regret it.

  Suddenly, I heard Cho-rin scream from the other room. The sound was all the more shocking because the scream came when I had been re-examining my emotions for her and feeling repentant. As I ran out of the bathroom, I saw that the boy had embarked on another outrage while I was out of sight. With Cho-rin resisting, he was attempting to put his hands under her shirt.

  Cho-rin struggled to push him away, but the boy did not budge. She was not strong enough to stop him grabbing at her breasts. I rushed to pull him off her from behind, and he yelled so loudly that his body trembled in my arms. Seeing that Cho-rin was on the verge of tears, I gave the boy a hard smack on his backside, then pulled him off her with all my strength. Just as I was about to start shouting at him, I realised that clenched in the boy’s hands were Cho-rin’s bra and a piece of cloth torn from her shirt. At the same time, Cho-rin gave a cry. I quickly shut my eyes as Cho-rin stood there almost naked, covering her breasts.

  I swung the boy round to face me and block her from my view. As I turned, I heard Cho-rin run out of the room. The boy flailed in my arms, and at that moment I was full of hatred for him. I held him tightly by the wrist and dragged him to his room. I wanted to confine his energy in there until he offered an apology.

  Although I spoke no Chinese, the boy must have understood my resolve. ‘Sit there!’ I commanded. The boy complied with my Korean and put his arms around his knees. Once, when I’d thrown a tantrum as a young boy, my father had confined me to my room. When I heard my mother argue with him, saying I should be allowed out to join the family for dinner, hers had been the most welcome voice in the world. But my father insisted that discipline was more important than dinner, and I was not allowed out until after the meal. That was perhaps the first time in my life that I thought of one’s right to eat as something important.

  I leaned over the boy and pointed my finger at him. ‘Don’t you dare leave this room.’

  With those words, I left him in his bedroom. But in the living room, the awkwardness remained in the air. It was so quiet that, when I sat on the couch, I flinched at the sound of the leather underneath me. At first,
I worried about how upset the boy must be. But as the minutes went by, I became more concerned about Cho-rin. Would she be sitting down in the other room, or would she be standing? I didn’t know what to do with myself. Perhaps twenty minutes later, I heard the boy’s bedroom door swinging open.

  Although I had left him to calm down, he had spent the time stoking his rage. I had no strength left to deal with him when the boy ran to the front door. Holding up his shoes to put them on, he turned to me and shouted, ‘Shabi zai zi!’ As he opened the front door to leave, he shouted, ‘Shabi, wo da si ni!’

  He slammed the front door behind him and the words continued to ring in my ears. With the boy gone, it was even more awkward. Without knowing what the words meant, I muttered to myself, ‘Shabi zai zi, shabi, wo da si ni.’ Looking up absently, I started at the sight of Cho-rin.

  She was standing at the other end of the living room, seemingly unable to come near or to look at me. Even her hand, which touched her eyebrow and then her lips, moved unnaturally. As if her change of clothes did not fit her well, she pulled distractedly at the hem of her shirt. When I caught myself standing there in a daze, I too felt awkward. Then our gazes met and we both blushed. She was the girl whose modesty had been compromised, and I was the boy embarrassed by it.

  I escaped into the piano room. This part of the house comforted me more than anywhere else. I sat on the stool and opened the lid of the piano. The black and white keys were like black pupils set against the white of an eye, all of them looking into my heart.

  ‘Play me something, please.’

  From behind me, Cho-rin’s voice sounded very close, as if confirming that we two were the only ones in this part of the house. It seemed that no music could transcend the sound of her voice, but what should I play?

  I wanted to play a short and simple piece that would linger. I remembered teacher Choi Liang’s words, which he often repeated in our music history lessons: ‘All his life, Beethoven composed dark music. There was one bright song among them that he wrote for a lover: “For Elise”.’ I began to play this piece for Cho-rin. She seemed to enjoy the all too familiar tune, but for me, this time it was different. With every phrase, I felt the plight of Beethoven, who had lost his love in life but left his music behind him for eternity.

  About half an hour later, Cho-rin’s uncle and aunt came through the door together. Before he had finished taking off his shoes, the father called for his son. At the noise, Cho-rin frowned and went to greet her uncle. It sounded as though she were making a long complaint. The mother said she would go look for the boy, who was probably playing video games in the nearby arcade. But the father replied in an irritated voice that she should not bother. When she brought out the tea, her husband called me into the living room. I took my seat and he asked me to repeat exactly what his son had said to me. Not knowing the context, I did as I was told.

  ‘Shabi, wo da si ni! Shabi zai zi!’

  The wife tutted and Cho-rin said agitatedly, ‘See, there’s nothing he won’t say!’

  I was curious to know what the words meant, but kept quiet on seeing the seriousness of the father’s reaction. ‘Anyway, that’s that,’ he said eventually, massaging his temples. ‘Is there any news about your friend?’ He spoke kindly, perhaps to change the subject.

  ‘No, not yet. I called my contact in Yanji this morning and he said he was sending someone to the relative’s house.’

  ‘Good. I’ve been using my connections too, to find a way through South Korean businesses, so we may have some good news soon. You’ve had a long day. Let me treat you tonight.’ He took 350 yuan from his wallet, and continued, ‘You haven’t been out since coming to stay here. Tonight, why don’t you go out on the town? I’ll allow it just for this evening. Cho-rin, show him the sights of the city!’

  ‘Good thinking, uncle. Great minds think alike! My fiancé returned today from his business trip to Shanghai, so we’d planned to go out anyway.’ Turning swiftly towards me, Cho-rin said, ‘Let’s all go out together. My fiancé wants to meet you. He’s richer than me, so he can buy dinner. How does that sound?’

  I felt a little embarrassed. In fact, I felt very uncomfortable at Cho-rin’s excitement at the prospect of our night out together, my emotions in turmoil at the thought of spending an evening with both her and her fiancé. I made the excuse that I wasn’t feeling well, so that the two of them could spend some time without me. Cho-rin didn’t reply, but lingered as she did up the buttons of her coat. Her uncle and aunt both urged me to go out with Cho-rin and her fiancé. As I slipped the money into my pocket, I resolved to go, because I could now repay Cho-rin’s kindness one way or another. She had taken the time and trouble to help me, although I’d had nothing to offer her in return. But now, I did have something. It wasn’t so much the money as that, with it, I had regained a dignity that I had lost while on the run with no possessions other than my tattered bundle of poems.

  ‘Yes, Cho-rin, I’ll join you for dinner.’

  Cho-rin was excited to be seeing her fiancé and, now that I’d made up my mind to go with them, I was excited at the prospect of leaving the house for the first time. We were both impatient to leave. When her aunt told her to be careful and avoid attracting the attention of the authorities, Cho-rin waved away her warnings and left the flat first. Five minutes later, she called the house phone and I went down to find a taxi waiting for me outside the building. Cho-rin waved at me through the taxi window, telling me to hurry up. She was wearing mittens. It occurred to me that I might buy her a pair of leather gloves.

  As I looked out of the taxi window, I was amazed more by the number of people on the streets than by the brightly lit streetlamps and dazzling neon lights. I asked, ‘Is it a national holiday in China today?’

  ‘No, why do you ask?’ she replied.

  ‘Then where are they all headed to? Is there a mass-mobilisation event happening?’

  ‘We don’t have stupid things like that in China! It’s like this every day. Actually, the crowds are smaller than usual today because of the cold.’

  It still didn’t make sense to me. In Pyongyang, the busiest time of the day was the evening rush hour, between 7 and 8 p.m. Within one or two hours at most, the streets cleared like a tide gone out. And because everything in North Korea ran according to a centralised system, you couldn’t go out for a meal just because you wanted to. Even Pyongyang’s famous Okryugwan cold-noodle restaurant shut at 8 p.m., and you couldn’t just pay with cash. To enter the restaurant you needed a special coupon issued as a privilege by the Light Industry Section of the Workers’ Party. This coupon system first appeared around 1992, when food rations began to shrink. The system was introduced in an attempt to uphold the integrity of state-determined prices, which were the pride of North Korea’s Socialism. But from 1994 onwards, by which point the ration distribution system had completely collapsed, many of the state-run shops and restaurants that accepted special coupons and state prices began to close down.

  As prices determined by market forces took hold in the economy and overrode the prices set by the state, the notion that a state salary could support one’s livelihood was undermined. The average monthly salary of around 150 North Korean won became so worthless that it could not feed one person for even a day, let alone for a whole month. Unable to provide for its people, the Party had no choice but to turn a blind eye to illegal trade and the markets that popped up all over the country. But as this ‘grey’ economy quickly mushroomed and ordinary North Koreans stopped turning up for their state jobs in order to fend for themselves, the situation became a black hole that sucked in the Party’s ability to retain control over its people.

  On 1 July 2000, North Korea announced the 7.1 Measures in a desperate attempt to claw back its monopoly of control, as channels of livelihood spiralled beyond its reach. Ironically, the international community welcomed the measures, referring to them as evidence of North Korea’s willingness to consider reform. In reality, the non-state-controlled economy had had a
declaration of war made against it by the Party, which had become drawn into a battle that continues today, as it struggles to retain its monopoly of control in the face of unplanned market forces.

  The 7.1 Measures implicitly acknowledged that there was a discrepancy between state prices and market prices, by increasing the average state salary from 150 won to 2000 won. The Party urged the people to return to their state jobs, saying that it would actively oversee the regulation of market prices. But the toxic combination of sudden salary rises and severe crackdowns on market prices resulted in soaring inflation. As prices spiked along with the rise in salary, an average monthly income from the state could buy just five eggs. Finally the Party could impose some form of control over the markets only by legalising some of them, charging rent and restricting opening times.

  In Pyongyang, the Party’s powerbase, none of the pedestrians out on a dark night could have been mistaken for individuals out to enjoy the evening. Instead, all of them – including children, university students and soldiers – would be citizens mobilised for political events or training exercises such as Pyongyang’s Gathering of One Million, Arirang Mass Games or a Troop Review. Seeing the busy streets of Shenyang and marvelling at the combination of lights and people, I wondered how this could possibly be a regular occurrence and not a festive exception. How did all these people earn enough to live like this? How did the Chinese Communist Party come to tolerate it? It was astonishing to me.

  Lost in these thoughts, I realised too late that we had arrived at our destination and that Cho-rin had handed over the cab fare. If Cho-rin insisted on paying for the small things today, I told myself, I would pay for the large things.