In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  The phone inside looked like a real smartphone. To her surprise, when she pressed the power button, it turned on, already charged. That was weird. The people who gave them the phone knew they couldn’t use it here. The screen lit, and there were the familiar icons in rows, over a photograph of a snow-covered mountain with a crater. This would definitely be something cool to show Jess and Alicia. Even the boys in her class, the ones who didn’t seem to know she existed, might take notice.

  She swished the screen with her fingers. Hey, it even came with some games — Angry Birds! Yes! It was a version she’d never played, with the title in han-gul.

  She catapulted cackling birds into towers of pigs until 6:48. Finally, she could go downstairs.

  Mia turned off the phone and reached for the boxes and wrapping paper. But wait. If she kept the phone with her, she could keep playing the game, as long as she was careful the guides didn’t see her. She knew all the games on her own phone inside out, but everything on this one was new. If she was going to accept a present from North Korean officials, she might as well enjoy it. If the worst happened and she got caught, she could just pretend she hadn’t understood Mr. Lee’s instructions. She slid the phone into an inside pocket and hoisted her backpack.

  As she started down the hall, the door of the next room opened and Simon stepped out.

  “Squeak! You won’t believe what I’ve got!” His face was open, excited, the first time she had seen him looking anything other than sullen since they left home. And he was even using her nickname, the one he’d given her because she’d been so easy to scare as a little child.

  “What?”

  Simon swiveled, showing his back. She looked him up and down, puzzled. “Your backpack?”

  “On the left side. Check it out.”

  Pinned to a side pocket was a small badge shaped like a waving flag, with a smiling image of Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader.

  “Simon!”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” He turned around to face her.

  “No! Not cool at all! Foreigners can’t wear those!” Mia glanced both ways down the corridor to make sure no one was near. “Don’t you remember? The tour people in Beijing said so! Where did you get it?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a fake. I went down to the bar last night, had to do something to get out of that room.” The bar? Her brother was sixteen. Where had Dad been? Probably sleeping, after his middle-of-the-night wanderings the night before. “There was this other tour group there, a bunch of young guys from Australia and New Zealand and Malaysia or somewhere. They even bought me a beer!”

  Mia started to shake her head.

  “Oh, stop. It was nothing. They just bought a whole tray of bottles and slipped me one. Nobody saw. First time anything decent has happened since we left. Anyway, this one guy, from New Zealand, he was passing around this plastic bag and everybody was taking one — it gets to me and I see it’s these pins! The guy is explaining to me how their tour came in by train from that Chinese city across the bridge —”

  “Dandong?”

  “Sure, maybe. Anyway, they were walking around the waterfront and there’s a guy with a cart selling the pins — well, counterfeit versions, but it looks pretty authentic, doesn’t it?”

  “But you can’t walk around with it pinned on your pack! Only North Koreans are allowed to wear them! You can’t just treat it like a souvenir. It could even be dangerous.”

  “Oh, Squeak, don’t be such a —”

  “Simon. Really. I’ve read the guidebook. It’s serious.” Mia tried to sound authoritative, but mostly she was just scared. She knew Simon wanted to break the rules, with a pin he wasn’t supposed to have displayed in an unsanctioned way. But this wasn’t like wearing a T-shirt with an upside-down Stars and Stripes, and North Korea wasn’t a democracy with protected speech for stupid Americans. He had to listen to her. “I know you’d be happy if we got kicked out or something, but something much worse could happen. To us. To the guides. To Dad. Remember that American college student who got sentenced to hard labor just for trying to steal a propaganda poster? You can’t do stuff like that here. Really. Take it off. Put it in your pocket.”

  Simon scowled at her, but to her surprise and relief, he slipped his backpack off, unclasped the badge, and put it into an inside pocket. As he stretched one arm through the pack strap, his sleeve slid up, revealing a braided black cord around his wrist. Randi had made that. And he was still wearing it.

  He stalked off toward the elevator before she could even thank him for listening. Mia blew out a sigh.

  The tour bus halted in the middle of the street. Mia sat up and peered over the seats. Bright sun broke through thick clouds, spotlighting a blue uniform. A traffic lady, standing in a white circle in the center of the crossroads. There seemed to be one of them at every major intersection. Maybe in North Korea people were more available than electrical power.

  At her signal, the bus began to rumble forward. Mia watched out the window as they passed. Like all the other traffic ladies she had seen, this woman was very pretty, neatly dressed in a military-style cap, jacket, and skirt, with white ankle socks and black shoes. In each hand she held red-and-white-striped sticks to wave at the vehicles. Arms up, arms out, arms down. Pivoting to the left, pivoting to the right, like a robot. Though there wasn’t that much traffic, she performed her routine with total seriousness.

  Mia sat back against her seat. The traffic lady looked like a model citizen: Following the rules. Playing it safe. Doing the right thing. But to Mia it seemed that in North Korea it wasn’t possible to do all three. Not all at the same time. If she followed the rules, she might be safe, but it meant she was cooperating with a government that starved its people.

  Last night Daniel had talked about factions and defectors and resistance to the North Korean government. All people who were breaking the rules. People Daniel seemed to support. Simon was doing everything he could to not follow the rules — disrespectful behavior, underage drinking, counterfeit pins — without actually getting caught.

  She turned to look at Dad next to her, who was leaning forward, talking to the Blakes. When she’d seen him sneaking down the hallway two nights ago, it certainly didn’t look as if he had been following the rules. Was he doing the right thing? If so, what was that? She still didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t had a single moment alone with him, and even if she had, she still wasn’t sure she should let him know what she’d seen.

  She had the smartphone in her backpack. Against instructions, she’d opened it and used it. She shivered, not knowing if she was scared or excited. She scooted a little closer toward Dad’s comforting bulk and pulled out her guidebook.

  “This afternoon we will tour Mangyongdae, the birthplace of the Eternal Sun, President Kim Il-sung,” Miss Cho announced over the bus microphone. “There you may acquire a good knowledge of the glorious revolutionary history and ardent patriotism of the Great Leader, who was born into a revolutionary family and cultivated his great revolutionary will for the country and the people.” Miss Cho pronounced every word very carefully, but it didn’t sound as if she understood any of the phrases she’d memorized. “The endless stream of visitors worship the place as a sanctuary of the Sun.”

  In other words, Here’s where the Big Guy was born. Mia bit her lip to hide a smile and looked past Dad toward Simon across the aisle, but he was focused on the Sports Illustrated that he’d pulled out of his backpack. She glanced back at Daniel, in the aisle seat behind Simon, exchanging a look of amusement with him, just in the eyes. A tiny act of resistance.

  “Mangyongdae, or a place with ten thousand views, is situated a little over ten kilometers southwest of downtown Pyongyang,” Miss Cho was saying. Dad leaned back in his seat. Mia touched her finger to their destination on the map in her lap.

  “Oh, I get it,” she told Dad. “Man. Ten thousand. Like man-sei, ten thousand years.”

  “They should make you the guide,” Dad said. “So, ten kilometers, how many miles is tha
t?”

  Mia calculated. “A kilometer is five-eighths of a mile?” He nodded. “So eight kilometers is five miles…. Then ten kilometers is … a little over six miles.”

  He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “It was so named,” Miss Cho was saying, “because its verdant Mangyong Hill, overhanging the famous Taedong River, affords a breathtaking panorama of ten thousand views.”

  The bus pulled into a huge, nearly empty parking lot.

  “This traditional scenic wonder leaped to potentially foremost significance in the national consciousness on April fifteenth, 1912, the Day of the Sun, when the Eternal President Kim Il-sung was born at a plain thatched-roof cottage here, against a backdrop of Korea’s national disaster in the colonial thrall of Japan.” Miss Cho ducked her head at them in a bow as the bus shuddered to a stop.

  The guides herded them down broad walkways bordered by trees, stopping at a cluster of small farmhouses that reminded Mia of the wooden box. The “birthplace of the Eternal Sun, President Kim Il-sung” looked brand-new. Throughout the park, plaques and painted wooden billboards described significant events in the Great Leader’s life. It was the first spot on their tour that didn’t include some gargantuan monument, although there were some portraits of the leaders. Those guys were everywhere.

  The group followed the guides on a path through a wooded area, up to a rise where the ground opened, revealing a pavilion set on a cliff over the river. Far below, the calm water was a bright mirror under the afternoon sun. In the distance, the skyline of the southern section of Pyongyang shimmered against the sky. Here was the “breathtaking panorama of ten thousand views.”

  “You see, so beautiful.” Mr. Lee came up beside Mia, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. “Many artists, many poets, they receive inspiration from this place. It is very dear to Korean people from olden times.” He sounded like he was just talking, not reciting a rote speech learned for the tour.

  “Do you come here with your family? With your daughter?” she asked.

  His smile brightened. “Oh yes! This is favorite spot for picnic. My daughter likes to draw” — he pantomimed drawing on a paper — “beautiful landscape here. Also, I came here as young boy, with my father.” He looked happy, remembering.

  “I have a question for you,” he said, tipping his head toward her.

  “Okay.”

  “What did the little mountain say to the big mountain?” Mr. Lee asked.

  “Uh …” She just looked at him, baffled.

  “ ‘Hello, Cliff!’ ” He pronounced the f more like a p, but Mia caught his meaning. She giggled, mostly with surprise that Mr. Lee was telling her a joke. He grinned. “A British man told me this joke.”

  She nodded. North Korea just kept catching her off guard.

  Miss Cho was shepherding the group from the pavilion to a nearby boulder with a plaque. She told them it commemorated an incident when the young Kim Il-sung stood up to a bully.

  Mia heard chattering and turned to see a group of students strolling up the path, all in uniforms of navy skirts or pants, white shirts, and red scarves. They looked about her age. Their eyes were on the light-haired, round-eyed foreigners. As if the Americans, not the boulder, were the tourist attraction.

  “An-nyung … ha-ship-ni-ka?” Mrs. Blake tried out a greeting from her Korean phrasebook in her American accent, each syllable separate and clunky. The students dissolved in laughter, but Mrs. Blake just beamed.

  “We speak English,” one of the girls announced.

  “What is your name?” the students called out. “How old are you?” “I am glad to meet you!” Though each textbook phrase made them giggle, they all seemed eager to practice.

  “May we take photographs with them?” Mrs. Blake asked Mr. Kim.

  The students took charge, pointing out the most scenic backgrounds, directing the shots. Mia stood, wrapped in her invisibility cloak, scanning the faces of the kids. They looked healthy and exuberant, with glossy hair and bright eyes. These students were certainly getting enough to eat. She studied the different shapes of their eyes, their hairlines, the profiles of their noses and chins. She wondered if any of them had the same family name — Han — as her birth relatives. As her.

  All three guides seemed truly relaxed, joking with the students and the tour group members. Even stern Mr. Kim allowed them to wander about the pavilion, for once not hurrying them back to the bus. Dad was right where Mia could keep an eye on him. Simon was focused on taking pictures with his phone instead of on complaining. Mia let out a long breath. For the moment, they were all just a bunch of people, enjoying the scenery together.

  She decided to head back to the bus so she could take her time. As she started down the path, she found Daniel next to her.

  “So, Mia Andrews, do you have a Korean name?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Han Sung-mi,” she said, phrasing it the Korean way, with the family name before the given name.

  “So that’s where the Mia comes from?”

  “Yeah. And my parents kept Han for my middle name.” She focused on keeping up with Daniel’s long strides. “At Korean school they call me Sung-mi. It means ‘Success and Beauty,’ something like that.”

  Daniel smiled. “You could choose another meaning for Sung-mi.”

  “Another meaning?”

  “You know how traditional Korean names are based on Chinese characters?”

  She nodded.

  “Chinese is tonal,” Daniel said, “but Korean isn’t. Several different Chinese characters can have the same sound in Korean, but each one has a different meaning. Sung, like they told you, can be ‘success’ or ‘achievement,’ but it can also mean ‘holy.’ ”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s worse than ‘success.’ ”

  “Well, there’s a third character that’s pronounced sung. That one means ‘star.’ ”

  “So … my name could be, like … ‘Star and Beauty’?”

  Daniel nodded. “Star of Beauty, Beautiful Star.”

  “Beautiful Star. I like that.” Her cheeks got warm. Weird to be calling herself beautiful to Daniel.

  “Got a piece of paper? I’ll write the characters for you.”

  She pulled out her journal and handed it to Daniel. He wrote the Chinese characters. Then the Korean letters. Then English: Beautiful Star.

  “Here’s what I do with two names,” he said, extracting a white business card from his wallet and flipping it to one side, then the other. “Daniel Moon on one side. Moon Dong-won, in Korean and Chinese, on the other.”

  Mia examined the card. Name, contact e-mail, phone numbers. But no job title. He was Korean American, he spoke Korean, he had information from North Korean defectors. Daniel was a mystery. She slipped the card into her jeans pocket as they started down the path again.

  She thought about the conversation they’d just had. She vaguely remembered the lesson in Korean school about the same Korean sounds having different Chinese sounds and meanings. But the problem with Korean school was that although she’d attended for six years, she’d never gotten very far. The hour she spent there was like visiting a foreign country, completely set apart from the rest of her life. All the other kids could practice all week with their parents, but there was no one at home who could help Mia absorb what she learned. Much of the time in class she just felt lost. And as soon as she got into the car for the long drive back, everything she’d been taught seemed to fly out of her head.

  “Do you … do you ever feel … like you don’t really fit either one of your names?” Mia asked. “Like ‘Mia Andrews.’ That’s some all-American girl. Not really me. But I’m certainly not a Korean girl named Han Sung-mi. So … it’s sort of like I’m not … either.” She fixed her eyes on the ground as her cheeks got warm again.

  “Yeah, I know that feeling.” His voice had that turned-inside sound. “A sense of not really belonging in either group, being caught between. But you know, ‘in between’ — that’s a place to belong too.
” She snuck a glance at him. He was also looking down at the ground, thoughtful. “You can look at both sides and choose the parts you want. Claim your own name: Daniel Moon, American and Korean. Or choose your name’s own meaning: Sung-mi. Beautiful Star.”

  Mia felt suddenly exposed, as if the warmth of Daniel’s attention had softened a hard scab, revealing something tender beneath. They were at the bottom of the hill, far ahead of the rest of the tour group. She couldn’t think of anything to say to keep the conversation going.

  She gestured across the parking lot. “Uh, I’m gonna use the facilities.”

  When she came out, Daniel wasn’t in sight. Only a few members of the group had gathered in the parking lot. The guides would still have to round everyone up, herd them to the restrooms, then back to the bus. She headed for a shady bench tucked under a group of low trees. The guides would be able to see that she hadn’t wandered off, but not that she was playing video games on a forbidden phone.

  Sound off. Birds went flying through the air. Pigs tumbled. Mia glanced up to make sure nobody was watching. Some of the tour group members were just starting across the parking lot toward the restrooms.

  When she looked down, the screen had changed. The colorful cartoon characters were gone.

  A photograph, in black-and-white. A man, blindfolded. Tied to a post.

  Mia sucked in her breath. Where had this come from? She zipped her finger across the screen. Another photo. The same man, still tied to the post, head slumped forward. Dark stains dotted his chest.

  The two photos formed a terrible Before and After.

  She wiped the screen, trying to erase the image. But it just brought up more photos. Other people.

  A scrawny young boy, pushing a wagon heaped with coal. Barefoot.

  A man digging with a shovel, his arms and legs nothing but skin-covered bones, his shirt open to reveal a skeletal chest.

  A woman whose legs ended at her knees, leaning over a pile of corncobs, a tiny child tied to to her back.