by Alana Terry
He was dead.
Closing my eyes, I finally managed to roll Shin off me. I ran ahead, leaving Shin’s body there at the edge of the riverbank.
I didn’t stop. Nearly blinded by tears and fright, I ran for what felt like hours until I collapsed. I crawled on my belly underneath some bushes with briars that tore at my coat and scratched my face. As I wiped Shin’s blood on the snowy dirt beneath me, I was confronted with the horrifying truth that I was alone, an illegal immigrant in a foreign country. I had no family. I had no friends.
And now, I didn’t even have anyone to guide or protect me.
PART FOUR
Sanhe
Jilin Province
China
Words Without Knowledge
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42:5-6
I didn’t know the name of the city I was hiding in. I had no idea which road would take me to Yanji. And what would I do there if I managed to find it? Shin was dead. The winter coat he purchased for me back in Kimchaek was stained with his blood, and my ears still rang with the sound of machine guns. The moon was low on the horizon. It wasn’t dawn yet, but I guessed sunrise was only a few hours away. Whatever plan I was about to conceive, I needed to come up with it soon.
I was too scared, or else I would have fled back to North Hamyong Province that very night. Although my terror of guard dogs and watchtowers kept me on the Chinese side of the border, I didn’t know where to go or what to do next. To travel to Yanji in search of some disabled seven-year-old didn’t make any sense. Even if Shin’s daughter was alive and I was somehow able to trace her whereabouts, I would only endanger the child as well as her caregiver by contacting them.
The starlit sky looked just like it did when I gazed up at it as a young child in my Hasambong home, only now I was completely alone, a refugee lost in a country that didn’t want me and wouldn’t shelter me.
And why didn’t God let me die instead of Shin? So that I could perish alone and forsaken in a foreign land? Why did Shin turn around to help me? Shin’s training as a detention guard should have taught him to leave me as easy prey for the guard dogs. Wouldn’t it be better if I perished and Shin lived? Then Shin could have gone on to find his daughter. Whom did I have in China? Whom did I have in the whole world?
Why did you bring me here? I demanded of God, who seemed to be mocking me by my mere survival. Any idealistic dreams I once held about China being a land of promise and freedom were dashed. Shin was dead. Although I didn’t yet know about the significant bribes the Chinese police offered for refugees, I did know they would send me back to North Korea if they found me. If Shin hadn’t helped me escape Camp 22 in the first place, I would be asleep now in the dorms. In an hour or two I would wake up to another shift in the fabric-cutting line. I wouldn’t have blood stained on my coat and on my face. I would know when my next meal would be, even if it was only a few bites. Why did you ever let me flee? I asked under my breath. It would have been better for me to die than to live.
I pray, beloved daughter, that you have never felt so abandoned, so hopeless that you have dared utter such blasphemous words. But as I hid myself, stained in Shin’s blood, I poured out my heated complaints before the Lord. I demanded that God give me an account for my father’s cruel and painful death, for my mother’s slow and silent one, for the Old Woman’s desecrated memory, for Shin’s decision to help me escape Camp 22 only to perish and leave me stranded in a foreign country.
I wish that I could tell you how God spoke soothing and comforting words into my soul as I hid trapped under a thorn bush. But he did not.
Nor was he silent.
The Almighty responded to my complaints. And when he did, I was horrified at my outburst and my appalling lack of faith.
The stars shone above, each one proclaiming that the Creator I accused of injustice and wrongdoing was infinitely more powerful than I could ever fathom. The cold wind stung my face, reminding me that the God I charged with negligence was to be feared more than any National Security agent, armed border patrolman, or ravenous watchdog. The thorns of my hiding place broke open my skin. I had no choice but to admit that my misery didn’t compare to the punishment I earned by my own rebellion against God. In spite of my life’s nearly unbearable trials, I was still experiencing more grace than I deserved.
That night, I saw myself as I never had before. I was not Song Chung-Cha, Hyun-Ki’s righteous daughter who was occasionally forced by circumstances to go against God’s commands. I was Song Chung-Cha, who never once lived up to my name, who had no righteousness or piety at all to offer the Almighty to atone for my grave offenses of bitterness, doubt, and faithlessness.
I accused God of sin when he allowed my father to perish. I assumed that a holy God would excuse my adulterous relationship as Agent Yeong’s office maid because I was doing what I had to do to survive. I denied God’s omnipotence when he didn’t intervene while I was mistreated by over a dozen guards in the Old Woman’s cell. I spent years at Camp 22 living in either passive or open rebellion, refusing to bend my knee to the God that failed to prevent my family’s arrest so many years earlier.
I was horrified at my own shortcomings. To spend a lifetime in the detainment center seemed a far more bearable sentence than to fall into the eternal judgment of the God I had spurned repeatedly over the past twenty-one years.
Have mercy! my tormented soul pleaded. I remembered what Shin told me just hours before his death: “No mortal could ever earn the favor of the Almighty. We can’t do anything good on our own.”
Have mercy! my wounded spirit cried out into the terrifying darkness. My sinfulness and rebellion were so obvious to me now.
Have mercy! I begged again to the just and righteous Judge of both the living and the dead. It wasn’t until that moment, when I was almost certain that the earth would swallow me whole and deliver me directly to the gates of hell, that I felt God’s loving touch.
Beloved daughter, I wish I could be telling you this story face to face. You might read my words and imagine that the Almighty isn’t compassionate toward us, or that he doesn’t understand the pain and wounds of our hearts. The Almighty does see our brokenness, and he reaches out to us with indescribable grace and love. It’s just that I couldn’t accept his mercy and forgiveness until I first repented of my own rebellion against him.
Only seconds after my own guilt silenced my profane charges against the Almighty, I was surrounded by warmth. Even the air I breathed felt sacred. I couldn’t see anybody, but I was certain that Jesus himself was in the thorn bush with me, holding my head on his lap, pouring his grace into my war-torn soul, healing my spirit’s deep wounds with the gentle touch of his nail-scarred hands.
The questions that had plagued my soul for years remained unanswered, yet where there was previously turmoil and unrest, there was now peace and the unshakable certainty that God is both loving and powerful. Even though men are brutal, sinful from birth and unable to do any good, even though innocent children, worrisome mothers, and courageous fathers each suffer every day in God’s created world, I knew in my heart that God is still good. And somehow, in the core of my spirit, I was certain that I was loved and cherished more than I dared imagine.
The wind howled, and the night sounds mourned the darkness that had covered the entire earth since sin first entered the world. I was a stranger in a foreign land, hungry and disheveled, but in my soul there was light and rejoicing.
I was a child of God. I was his righteous daughter. And I was loved more than I had ever dreamed possible.
Haven
“They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven.” Psalm 107:30
I didn’t intend to fall asleep. I was startled to see the sun above me when I woke up the next day. I was still lying underneath the thorn bush and could hardly move. The asthmatic sting in my lungs reminded me that I had been running yes
terday. How far? I knew that something devastating happened, but my groggy mind refused to wake up as fast as I pleaded it to.
I looked around as far as I could from my hiding place and saw nothing familiar. All too slowly, I recalled fragments of the previous evening: machine guns in the night, blood on my cheek, a prayer whispered in hiding.
And then I remembered everything.
My breathing sped up. My throat constricted. Begging myself to remain calm, I thought through my options. I could turn myself in to the North Koreans, but that would only mean torture and a future back in prison. I couldn’t return to Hasambong and live secretly there. I had been imprisoned in the camps since my childhood and didn’t know how to survive on my own. But what was I supposed to do in China to avoid getting caught? I didn’t know anything about Chinese geography; I didn’t even know what province I was in.
At first, it seemed that my only choice was to return to my own country and surrender myself to the Korean guards. Perhaps after their interrogations, they would let me live out the rest of my days in a labor camp like the one I left only three weeks earlier. If I claimed that Shin kidnapped me, I might get a lighter sentence than other border crossers.
Then I remembered the godlessness and hopelessness of my years at Camp 22. Was my faith strong enough to sustain me through that much suffering again? Spending the rest of my life in the same bleak spiritual stupor was a fate worse than death itself.
I must confess to you, beloved daughter, that if I had a weapon with me that day I would have been tempted to end my life right there in the thorny copse. I was terrified of the road ahead of me, certain that it could only lead to more heartache, more suffering, and more trials to test my fragile faith. If God let me down even one more time, I would never have the courage or spiritual stamina to trust him again. I was too scarred by my past and too terrified of my future to realize that God’s hand could guide me there on Chinese soil.
Because I was in such an emotional state, perhaps you will not be surprised when I tell you that it was nearly evening when I finally crawled out from under the thorns. My heart was weighed down with so much fear and uncertainty that I spent another hour or two crouched between two bushes, cringing in fear at the slightest sound. Other than a pair of sparrows, the area was deserted. I wondered just how far I ran last night. The watchtowers and the riverbank were now out of sight.
Somewhere in the recesses of my memory, the Old Woman’s words played over again in my ears: “The Lord will lift you up on angels’ wings. God Almighty will himself provide you safe escort beyond prison walls, over rivers, even across borders of nations.” Yet with the Old Woman’s prophecy of hope came so many doubts about God’s goodness and power like those that tormented me ever since Father’s death. How can a powerful God watch idly while his children suffer? If God was able to keep me safe, why did he allow Shin to die? If it was truly the Almighty who orchestrated my passage into China, why was I here, cold and hungry and deserted?
In the midst of my thorny sanctuary, I envisioned how many ways I could end my life if I only had the right tool. It was the cruelty of fate that I had no choice but to live. And then, while images of quick and easy suicide played through my mind, the taunting voice of my father’s torturer echoed in my memory:
“Song Hyun-Ki hanged himself less than an hour ago, a coward in death just like he was in life.”
I stood up. I wouldn’t follow in my father’s path. I wouldn’t shirk away from my destiny, be it torture or sanctuary. I would face my future, whatever it held.
I prayed for protection and stepped out of my thorny retreat. I looked ahead and sucked in my breath. There, less than a hundred meters away, stood a house with a cross hanging in the window, lit by a small candle and scarcely revealed behind a thin curtain.
I stumbled uphill toward the hope of shelter. I realized that this building could be a trap of the Chinese border patrolmen designed to hunt down desperate refugees. But I had no other choice. I stepped up to the house and knocked on the door.
A young man opened it. He was Korean, as was the teenage girl and the older man who stood behind him. As soon as they let me in, all three of them set to work. The younger man examined the blood stain on my coat as he helped me out of it but said nothing. The older man handed me a blanket to wrap around my shivering body. The girl started a fire and gave me a rag to clean my face. A few minutes later she passed me a bowl of rice and broth, which filled the hollow emptiness in my stomach and warmed my aching limbs. After I ate, she guided me to a bed in a room set apart from the main living area. “Please try to rest. Tomorrow, when you have the strength, you can tell us about yourself.”
When I saw the bed, covered with a faded quilt and soft feather pillow, all laid out and prepared as if these people had anticipated my arrival for days, I didn’t know how to respond. The girl took me by the hand and led me into my new room.
“I can help you brush your hair,” she offered. I had no voice, so I just nodded. I hadn’t brushed my hair in nine years.
“My name is Kim So-Young.” After So-Young helped me out of my prison clothes and into a faded nightgown, she sat on the bed behind me and worked the knots out of my hair.
“I am Song Chung-Cha,” I croaked through my parched throat. I was embarrassed to have this girl touch my hair, which was occasionally whacked off to keep its length manageable but otherwise hadn’t been kept up for almost a decade. I cringed at So-Young’s gentle touch, but the idea of being left alone in this large upholstered room was even more frightening than the thought of So-Young discovering or even contracting my lice.
“Where do you come from?” So-Young asked. For a moment I froze, thinking that I would have to invent a convincing lie. “I mean, where did you live before you were sent to camp?” she added, reminding me that my hosts would have noticed my prison uniform when I first took off Shin’s bloody coat.
“I lived in the North Hamyong province.” For the first time I realized how strange it was that even my childhood friend Mee-Kyong from the garment factory never knew the name of my hometown. When we were first incarcerated, we were taught that we no longer had a history or a heritage. We were prisoners. Camp 22 was the closest thing to home we would ever know. “That was a long time ago.”
“What town in North Hamyong did you use to live in?” So-Young questioned.
“Hasambong.”
So-Young held the brush above my head. “Song Chung-Cha?” she repeated. “From Hasambong?”
Her reaction startled me. So-Young jumped up. “Are you related to Song Hyun-Ki?” So-Young pressed, unable to maintain her whisper.
I froze when I heard my father’s name spoken in this Chinese home. I nodded in confusion. So-Young ran out of the room. “Our new guest is from Hasambong,” I heard her announce in a musical voice. “She is related to Song Hyun-Ki!”
Mr. Kim, So-Young’s father, came and stood at my doorway, his lips drooping down to the floor. To judge by his reaction alone, I would have thought being related to Song Hyun-Ki was a grave crime, yet So-Young was smiling brightly at me. The younger man stood outside my room, staring at the floor. I endured so much as a prisoner that I didn’t even think to be embarrassed to be seen by these men in nightclothes.
“You came from Hasambong?” Mr. Kim was bald and had a round face, and although he was not obese, he was the most ample man I had ever seen in person. The only portlier individual I knew of was the Dear Leader himself.
“Yes, I grew up in Hasambong.” I glanced from one figure to another. The younger man stood blushing, while So-Young clasped her hands and looked from me to her father. Mr. Kim stood with his arms crossed and eyebrows knit together.
“You know Song Hyun-Ki?” asked Mr. Kim. His authoritative voice echoed his disapproval against the four walls of the house.
“He was my father.” So-Young gasped aloud. Mr. Kim jerked his head to the side, indicating that we should follow him to the living room. We all sat around the fire.
�
��We haven’t heard any reports regarding Song Hyun-Ki in many years, ever since his arrest. How long ago was that?”
“Nine years.” I kept my eyes to the floor. I didn’t know how these individuals knew of my father, but I wouldn’t be the one to tell them of his fate.
“That long ago?” exclaimed the younger man. “You must have been nothing more than a child then!” He stared at me until Mr. Kim cleared his throat.
“I was twelve.”
“And your father?” pressed Mr. Kim. “What has happened to our donkey?”
I didn’t understand the phrase, but I knew that – regardless of who they thought he was – I couldn’t tell these people the truth about Father’s death. “He died in detainment about two weeks after his arrest.” Both men nodded their heads. So-Young’s smile vanished and she blinked her wide eyes.
I had so many questions. I wanted to ask how these people from across the border knew of my family, but Mr. Kim stood up without warning. “You have undoubtedly had a long journey. You will sleep now.” Mr. Kim cast an authoritative glance at his daughter. I caught the younger man’s eye, but he shook his head.
My limbs were exhausted, but my heart was weighed down with questions. I went into my room and stretched out on my soft bed. How I ached for the chance to lose myself in a warm and comforting sleep, to momentarily forget that everyone I had ever cared for – or who had ever cared for me – was dead. But my mind was racing. Who were these strangers, and how did they know about my father? How had they heard of his arrest so many years ago when we lived across such a tightly controlled border?
In the other room, I heard Mr. Kim and the other man talking late into the night. I couldn’t make out what they said, but there was no mistaking the intensity in their voices.