by Alana Terry
In some way, I secretly envied Mee-Kyong and the relationship she shared with Agent Pang.
Of course, it was miserable being used by any camp officer, no matter how many extra rations you received. But at least Agent Pang cared about Mee-Kyong, even if he was violent and possessive in his passion. Because Agent Pang and my employer, Officer Yeong, worked in the same part of the factory with only a small partition separating their workspaces, I could usually hear what was happening between Mee-Kyong and her lover. They fought fairly often, Mee-Kyong daring to raise her voice and Agent Pang accusing her of falsehood and working himself into a fit until he beat her. He would then spend the next half an hour apologizing to Mee-Kyong and telling her how much he loved her. Then other times I heard sweet whispers, moans of pleasure, even laughter coming from Agent Pang’s office in the back hallway.
How different were my lunch breaks spent with Officer Yeong. When Matron Sung blew her whistle, those of us girls who served as office maids in the factory went to the rooms of our respective guards, usually to the hostile stares of the other prisoners. When I entered Officer Yeong’s work space, I didn’t distract him from his business but applied myself quietly, fulfilling some of the basic cleaning duties that he assigned me my first day on the job.
When Officer Yeong finished whatever he was doing, he summoned me over, sometimes with nothing more than a grunt or a nod. For the rest of my lunch break, I did whatever I could to find something to occupy my thoughts, to deaden my senses, to remind myself that I was lucky to be here with Officer Yeong because, after all, I needed food to survive.
While thus engaged, I would hear the laughter of Mee-Kyong next door with Agent Pang and inwardly regret that my afternoons with Officer Yeong were the closest I had ever come to experiencing true love or romance. Unlike my naïve friend, however, I had no delusions about my employer. I knew that in a matter of weeks or months, Officer Yeong would tire of me and find his next replacement.
Mee-Kyong, on the other hand, clung to the desperate notion that somehow she and her agent would break free from their political destinies. Mee-Kyong was convinced that Agent Pang loved her as much as she loved him, and she imagined that their devotion to one another would somehow enable them to forge a future together. Her passion made Mee-Kyong so blind that she couldn’t even see the high-voltage fence that surrounded Camp 22. As much as I envied my friend’s idealism, as much as I fantasized about the kind of passion she and Agent Pang shared, I pitied her blind lack of reason. For her own sake, I dreaded the day when Mee-Kyong would find out once and for all what the cruel and unsympathetic world was really like.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize soon enough that Mee-Kyong’s need to cling to Agent Pang would not only cost us our friendship, but jeopardize my very life.
On a cold September afternoon, I was in Officer Yeong’s office, polishing his framed photographs of various higher-up officials from Pyongyang. Officer Yeong was an ambitious, not yet middle-aged politician, who looked toward a future in Pyongyang as a high-ranking government executive. I learned from Mee-Kyong that our respective employers were political rivals, both competing for the same position as Camp 22’s Chief Officer of Productivity, an obvious catalyst into a Pyongyang career. I knew nothing of Officer Yeong’s family life, though I guessed he was probably married. While Mee-Kyong’s Agent Pang was charming and flirtatious, my Officer Yeong rarely displayed any emotion whatsoever. If he did have a wife, I imagined she must be bored married to a man whose only passion was for the Party and his own career advancement. Due to the nature of my relationship with Officer Yeong, however, I tried to avoid thinking about his wife at all if I could help it.
During one lunch break, Officer Yeong brooded over a thick file. The autumn rain beat against the garment factory’s steel ceiling, partially drowning out the conversation between Mee-Kyong and Agent Pang in the next room. I polished Officer Yeong’s portrait of the Dear Leader, wondering if I might be fortunate enough to make it through the entire lunch break without having to interact with my employer. On the other side of the partition, I heard Mee-Kyong scream.
“You filthy whore!” roared Agent Pang. I forced myself to wipe my rag across Kim Jong-Il’s portrait, as if my sole purpose in life was to rid the Dear Leader’s face from dust specks and fingerprints. “How long were you going to wait before telling me?” Agent Pang’s voice exploded from the other side of the partition. “The whole blasted nine months?”
“It’s not my fault!” Mee-Kyong cried out. I winced when I heard the sound of something crash.
“You lying dog!” Agent Pang snarled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Officer Yeong raise an eyebrow slightly as he studied his notes. “When did you stop taking your pills?” Mee-Kyong was crying. “When did you stop?” Until then, I didn’t know Mee-Kyong was taking contraceptives. Agent Pang must have been supplying them to her surreptitiously. I couldn’t hear Mee-Kyong’s answer, only her sobs.
“You disgusting prisoner! How long have you known?”
“Two months,” Mee-Kyong lied. Another thud was followed by Mee-Kyong’s groan.
“You refuse to take care of things with pills?” Agent Pang questioned. “That’s fine with me. There are other ways to prevent problems like this.” His voice now sounded disturbingly calm. Mee-Kyong’s grunts came at regular intervals. With trembling hands, I dusted the ornate frame that held yet another copy of the Dear Leader’s adipose profile, but I froze immediately when Mee-Kyong mentioned me by name.
“It’s prisoner Song Chung-Cha’s fault.” I was so startled by Mee-Kyong’s words that it didn’t occur to me just how scared I should be. “She’s scheming with Officer Yeong. They’re plotting together to make sure that he becomes the next Chief Officer of Productivity.”
I didn’t dare look at my employer, but I felt his body tense as he heard the lies meant to incriminate us both. I knew Mee-Kyong well enough to guess what she was doing. If she could turn Agent Pang’s anger on to someone else, it would only be a matter of minutes or hours before her lover soothed the wounds that he himself inflicted, all the while proclaiming his eternal love for her.
Agent Pang was silent for a moment, and then he declared, “You’re a lying whore.”
“I swear it,” Mee-Kyong insisted. “Chung-Cha found out about the pills. She was already pregnant by Officer Yeong, so she forced me to give them to her. She took them all so that she miscarried. I swear it’s the truth. She told me that if I said anything or did anything about it, she’d report you to the Camp Director for the pills you gave me. It’s all Chung-Cha’s fault. She wanted to find a way to help Officer Yeong advance while discrediting you.”
I felt Officer Yeong’s glare heating up the back of my neck. I forced myself to continue dusting.
Mee-Kyong succeeded in averting her lover’s wrath, but she still continued to spew out incriminations against me. “Prisoner Song Chung-Cha is a Christian pig.” It wasn’t until then that dread first hooked its talons into my spine. I had told Mee-Kyong that my father was arrested for Christian activity, but that’s the most she and I ever talked about matters of faith and religion.
“She sings hymns under her breath,” Mee-Kyong charged. It was a serious offense for a prisoner to hum even simple children’s songs. Singing hymns was a felony, comparable to spitting on the face of the Dear Leader himself. In Hasambong, Mother wouldn’t let Father teach me any religious songs for fear that I might whistle the tune in public and incriminate us all. I knew Mee-Kyong was lying to protect herself, but when the guards searched my record and discovered my parentage, the National Security Agency would have no reason to doubt Mee-Kyong’s words. “Chung-Cha quotes verses to the other prisoners from that Western book of lies. She even tells her dorm mates to convert and become Christian pigs like herself.”
Overcome with dizziness, I wanted to sit down but stood frozen in my place. I saw my employer reflected in the glass from one of his frames. Officer Yeong’s body was rigid, his jaw clenched. My report
ed sins, which were about as serious as a prisoner at Camp 22 could commit, would cast a poor reflection on him as well. I was certain Officer Yeong was thinking about the Chief Officer of Productivity position, and I hated him for having used me the past eight months only to now regret the way my alleged crimes would harm his reputation.
I heard heavy boots march out of Agent Pang’s room. I clenched my jaw and braced myself. Like a trapped animal I waited. The offenses my friend had just accused me of were weighty enough to land me back in the detainment center where another guard like my father’s tormentor Agent Lee would break me down until I confessed to these crimes and countless others. If I were ever released back into the main camp, my body would be so broken and decrepit from my punishment that I would never find a position as an office maid again.
As much as I despised the time I spent with Officer Yeong, I regretted that I would have no other way to earn extra rations if I survived the cruel torture that I knew awaited me.
Broken Vessel
“He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.” Psalm 107:20
As you read my words, beloved daughter, I pray that you are living in safety, with nothing to cause you excessive pain or fear. You have no need to know everything I suffered during my second stay in the underground detainment center, so I will recount only a few important details.
After Mee-Kyong’s betrayal, I was taken directly to the underground chambers and locked in a small box. The sleep I managed to find was haunted with nightmares of my father’s torturer, whom I never saw during my second detainment but whose menacing laugh still echoed in the concrete walls.
I was finally let out of my cage and made to sign a statement confessing to my numerous crimes: sleeping with a guard, taking stolen contraceptives, blackmailing a National Security agent, spreading religious ideology, and singing Christian hymns. I never learned what happened to my friend Mee-Kyong, whether Agent Pang paid his comrades enough yuan to keep her out of trouble or whether he rejected her, whether she gave birth to his illegitimate child or whether she simply disappeared with no God or lover or friend to rescue her. The last time I saw Mee-Kyong was when the guards dragged me out of the garment factory. Mee-Kyong, bloody and sniffling, was crumpled on the floor of Agent Pang’s office. She looked up at me as the officers hauled me away. When our eyes met, Mee-Kyong let out a haunted, guttural wail that still plagues my memory to this very day.
In spite of the pain of her betrayal, I wasn’t angry at Mee-Kyong. She acted out of fear and self-preservation. Mee-Kyong wasn’t created to face suffering. She was too full of laughter and joy, a Korean maiden who ought to have been riding ponies in centuries past with brightly colored ribbons in her hair and a host of suitors vying for her love, instead of languishing away as a common criminal behind an electric fence. I carried around in my heart a debt of gratitude toward Mee-Kyong for the way she helped me survive as a child at Camp 22. My next four years of detainment due to Mee-Kyong’s accusations – at least as I reconciled it in my own mind – repaid that debt.
Beloved daughter, there is no need to speak of the crimes that I witnessed or the hopelessness that engulfed me during those years underground. I’ll just tell you that there is a God who works all things together for good. I’m convinced it was his providence which led me to the detention center, because it was there that I met the Old Woman.
Starved and battered, my body broken after years of punishment for my alleged sins, I was dying. I had been feverish for several days and was already beginning to hallucinate. Visions of eternal torture and unrest tormented me. I didn’t remember enough of my father’s Bible to know if I would be welcomed into a blissful paradise when I died or if a future of even greater torture and torment awaited me. I knew I should be frightened, but my body was too weak, my brain too affected by the fever to think clearly. In my delirium, I couldn’t even tell if the beings walking outside my cell were real men or not. At times I imagined they were either angels or demons coming to escort me to my eternal destiny.
“What about this one?” one of the creatures said.
“She’s not going to last long anyway.” The voices sounded disorganized and chaotic. My eyes were closed. Rainbow-colored waves crashed and spiraled around in front of me.
“All the better. I still don’t understand why the commander agreed to her request.”
“You know her story. No one dares to deny the Old Woman anything.” The creatures were in my cell. I opened my eyes but couldn’t focus on anything. Black boots came closer and then receded until they were small specks in the distance.
“When did the prisoners in solitary confinement earn the right to request cellmates?”
The two bodies picked me up by my hands and feet. At their touch, I realized the men were made of flesh and bones. I tried to twist myself free. Did they think I was already dead? Were they there to bury me prematurely? I wanted to call out, but my mouth was parched and my throat burned.
“You know how it is with the Old Woman. Even the Commander is afraid of her.”
“After what happened, I don’t blame him.”
They carried me down a set of stairs. I never knew there were more levels in the underground detainment center. Was this where they stored the corpses? I strained to free myself from their hold.
“She’s convulsing.” The guard at my arms grabbed me even more tightly.
“Looks like the Old Woman’s guest might not be as good of company as she expected.” The men chuckled while bright and magnificent colors spiraled in front of my eyes. I no longer felt the men at my hands and feet, nor could I sense my body swaying between them. A spiraling rainbow danced before me, lulling me into a painless, dreamless slumber.
The next thing I saw was a pair of blue eyes staring down at me. I blinked and sat up with ease. The burning fever that raged through my body for the past several days was gone. My throat wasn’t sore or swollen anymore. I readily found my voice.
“What happened?” I asked, staring into a face full of deep wrinkles and furrows. I had never before met a Korean with such eyes.
“You are well again,” sang out a deep, craggy voice. “The Lord Almighty has granted you healing.” Was this an angel? I glanced around to determine if I was dead or alive. My body no longer ached, but I was confined in a small cement cell. I still wore the same oversized prison uniform I was given years ago. It was stained with blood and bile. This was certainly not heaven, but I felt healthier and stronger than I had in weeks. I couldn’t be in hell either.
“Where am I?”
The Old Woman’s entire face smiled. Her blue eyes twinkled. “You are in the humble cell of Myong Kyung-Soon. And I welcome you, blessed child. You are my very first guest in twenty-three years.”
I stared at this ancient, blue-eyed Korean. She reached into her prison uniform and pulled out a piece of bread. I wondered if my mind was deceiving me. During my time as a prisoner, I had forgotten the taste and texture of bread entirely.
“Please eat with me, righteous daughter.”
“You know my name?” I questioned.
The Old Woman studied me for a moment. “Yes, you are a righteous daughter. I am pleased to meet you, Little Chung-Cha.” With that, she broke the roll of bread in two, giving me the much larger of the pieces. Then, to my utter astonishment, the Old Woman raised her eyes, lifted up a glowing face toward the cement ceiling, and prayed in a loud and fearless voice.
“Gracious Father, King of the Universe, I praise you for this bread. And I praise you for my little daughter, Chung-Cha, whom you sent here to relieve my loneliness after twenty-three years of solitary confinement. Jesus, I ask that you bless this bread for the sake of my little daughter and nourish her spirit as you have already healed her body by your power and might. Amen.”
Bewildered, I glanced around for the guards I was sure would come and beat the Old Woman for her blasphemy against the state. When no one arrived, I feared that I was so delirious my mind had co
njured up the image of the Old Woman. But the bread she gave me was real, and as I ate, its nourishment strengthened my very soul as if by some strange power.
“My little daughter Chung-Cha has had a long and difficult journey.” The Old Woman stretched out her leathery hand and tucked my hair behind my ear. My body trembled as my mind raced over the past seven years: the beatings I received from my school teacher, the humiliation I endured as Officer Yeong’s office maid, the torture I experienced in the underground detainment center. In all that time, I couldn’t recall anyone touching me with such gentleness.
I looked in amazement into the Old Woman’s deep blue eyes, and I began to cry. I was no longer a twenty-year-old woman but a young girl of twelve, overcome with grief and heartache. The Old Woman wrapped her arms around me and stroked my lice-infected hair.
“Peace, little daughter,” she whispered, leaning her chin on top of my head as she held me close to her chest. “Peace, little one. The God who heals, the Great I Am, will bring rest and comfort to your soul once again.”
Healing Balm
“I will heal their waywardness and love them freely.” Hosea 14:4
“Little daughter,” the Old Woman remarked one afternoon, “in the past weeks, you have told me about your friend Mee-Kyong. You have told me about the tragic events that led to your detainment here. You have told me about your mother and about the way she lost hope so many years ago. But you have not told me anything about your father. Why do you think this is?”
I sighed. In the refuge of the Old Woman’s cell, I found a rest my spirit never knew before. The Old Woman taught me hymns, the songs that my Mother refused to let me hear for fear that I would end up in a place like this. I listened for hours as the Old Woman voiced her prayers of praise and thanksgiving to the God whom I forsook so long ago.