Star of the North

by D. B. John

  “Since when did I have to meet you off planes?” Han said.

  This was the moment Jenna had fantasized about, the news she’d longed to give Han, but now she felt nervous, as if she were presenting a gift so fragile that it might break in her mother’s hands.

  “Soo-min is with me.”

  The line went silent. Jenna could feel the shock like a blast under water.

  Han tried to say something but her voice thickened when she spoke her daughter’s name, and then she and Jenna were crying in silence together, hot tears rolling down their cheeks, thousands of miles apart.

  “Let me speak to her,” Han said.

  “She’s not herself yet, Omma. Better to wait until you see her.”

  That evening, Jenna thought a lot, too, about Cho. If she was honest with herself, losing him in Yanji had been more than a professional failing. Each time she pictured him, in the room of that safe house, shyly watching her from behind the covers, the light of snow clouds reflected in his eyes, too dignified and ashamed for her to see his body, her heart stirred with feelings of … loss, affection, regret. No one she had ever met had been tested in the way he had. She’d read enough history to know that extreme conditions—as in battle, famine, concentration camps—brought out the worst in humanity; only in rare and special people did they bring out the good. The man she’d seen in that room had not become an animal, or a monster. He had shone with humanity. He had found himself.

  56

  Beijing Capital International Airport

  Beijing, China

  Monday, December 19, 2011

  The twins sat side by side, sipping coffee in the transfer lounge. They wore identical suede boots, skinny jeans, Benetton t-shirts, and puffer jackets. Years ago, as girls, they had never dressed identically. Why Jenna had bought the same clothes for them now she wasn’t entirely sure, but she had a vague awareness of wanting to reforge a shared identity with Soo-min, and the fact that this hadn’t felt spontaneous troubled her. Soo-min wasn’t used to the jeans and kept scratching her legs. In one of her few utterances at the airport, she admitted that she had only worn hanbok dresses for years.

  Jenna told herself that with help, Soo-min would slowly get back to her old self. If she had problems coping with the stresses of the free world, and with the loss of her son, then she, Jenna, would be her rock and her guide. She would do whatever it took to make her sister’s life normal and happy.

  They were about to leave for their gate when the TV screen on the wall caught their attention. A live broadcast on China Central Television News, subtitled in Mandarin, was from North Korea. Two days after the event, the news was finally being announced. The anchorwoman was dressed in a black hanbok. Her eyes were red from crying and her face deathly pale.

  Jenna watched impassively. “Here goes …”

  “Our great comrade … our Dear Leader … General Secretary of the Workers’ Party, Chairman of the Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army …”

  The woman’s voice was choking with emotion. Jenna said, “Our flight’s called. We should go.”

  “… KIM JONG-IL …”

  Soo-min was watching screen with an odd look on her face, a kind of rapture.

  “… Genius of Geniuses, Guiding Star of the Twenty-First Century, Father of the Nation, Leader of All Socialist Peoples, Bright Sun of the Juche Idea, Friend of Children …”

  She seemed unable to tear her eyes from the screen. Gently Jenna got her to her feet and led her in the direction of the gate.

  On the long moving walkway, she tried to divert Soo-min’s attention, telling her of Han’s disastrous “introductions” to some comically unsuitable men, but Soo-min seemed not to hear. The news was being relayed from every screen they passed.

  “… suffered a myocardial infarction on board his train, caused by the excessive mental and physical strain of his lifelong dedication to the people’s cause …”

  In the lounge next to the gate Soo-min remained transfixed by the screens. A strand of her hair had come loose and Jenna tucked it back behind her ear, but she did not notice. She was in a trance.

  “… all over the country, spontaneous demonstrations of inconsolable sorrow are erupting as workers run from factories and offices in disbelief. Their only thought is to unite with the mass public grieving …”

  The footage cut to crowds crying and wailing on the snowbound streets of Pyongyang. People falling to the ground and hitting their faces with their fists, people sobbing and appealing to the sky with their hands.

  The scene seemed to electrify Soo-min. Suddenly she covered her mouth with her hand to suppress a sharp cry. Passengers in the lounge turned to stare. Before Jenna could say a word Soo-min had shot out of the seat.

  Jenna went after her. For one surreal moment she thought her twin was escaping her, but then she saw her enter the restroom.

  The flight for Washington began to board. Jenna started toward the restroom, then stopped, realizing that Soo-min wanted a few minutes to herself. Boarding had almost finished when she finally emerged. Her eyes were puffy and sore, but whatever turmoil she had experienced had been contained and extinguished. The mask was back on. She had recomposed her face. She was cool, remote, placid. She even managed a smile at Jenna as she approached.

  Jenna took her hand. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  The airplane rose through gray drizzle, up into the sunlit plains above. Soo-min’s face remained pressed to the window, gazing out at the bales of white cotton cloud. Jenna was beginning to realize that her sister’s mind was in a far stranger place than she could imagine, and there may be no easy way of reaching her there. The plane angled its way eastward toward the Pacific, flooding the cabin with morning light. She looked at Soo-min’s profile, and reminded herself that she, Jenna, had also been through hell by losing her twin. Time had healed her and made her stronger. Time would do the same for Soo-min.

  “Home in thirteen hours,” she said, and clasped Soo-min’s hand.

  This made Soo-min jump, and she looked at Jenna. For the briefest of moments—the merest fraction of a second—the mask slipped, and Jenna again saw anxiety, bewilderment … and something else, something steely and purposeful.

  With sudden insight Jenna asked: “Why did you jump with me from that train?”

  Finally, Soo-min turned in her seat toward Jenna and took both her hands in hers. For the first time, she spoke in English.

  “Because my son is in America.”

  57

  Camp 22

  North Hamgyong Province, North Korea

  Thursday, February 16, 2012

  The cell was a concrete square, barely large enough to lie down in. Two thin blankets and a bucket for bodily needs were its only contents. Mrs. Moon had been held in the camp’s internal prison for about two months, she reckoned, but it was hard to be sure. She had no window. Each day was identical to the next, and the normal measures of time seemed to have changed their values. Minutes could drag like hours, but the weeks flew. She was let out for the morning and evening roll calls, which were held in the huge assembly ground next to the camp’s main administration building, so she knew when it was day and when it was night, and had a vague sense of the month passing. She’d even spotted signs—a fresher smell of earth in the air, a formation of gray-winged loons flying north—that told her spring was not far off. These tiny details stood between her and insanity.

  The morning roll call had passed without incident. But she had been back in her cell only for a minute when the door unlocked again and a guard ordered her out. There was a time when this would have filled her with foreboding—to be singled out under guard always meant something bad—but now she was merely curious. She had long lost interest in living. She inhabited a stateless zone, which wasn’t actually life, and, strictly speaking, wasn’t quite death. To her surprise the guard led her into the main administration building, to a reception area she had not been in before. It wa
s gleaming and smelled of floor polish. On the wall behind the main desk was a portrait photograph of a plump young man she did not recognize.

  A group of about twenty prisoners was assembled there, men and women, ragged and dirty. They were surrounded on three sides by about a dozen guards, standing along the walls of the reception as if this were some sort of ceremony. About six or seven of the prisoners looked even older than her. White-haired skeletons and bent-over cripples.

  So, they weren’t going to be beaten to death. They wouldn’t have been brought here for that.

  An officer in high polished boots emerged from the office door. The guards snapped to attention. The prisoners bent over in a full ninety-degree bow.

  “Prisoners …” The man in boots paused, waiting for them to stand upright. His voice was quiet and clear. He was reading from a text. “Today, on this sixteenth day of February, the Day of the Bright Star, when our nation remembers the selfless and miraculous life of our Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, whose death will forever be raw in our hearts, and whose spirit endures eternally, I am authorized by the Central Committee of our great Party to tell you the following.”

  The air in the room tensed. The prisoners were holding their breath.

  “To honor the memory of his late father, our new leader, the Great Successor Kim Jong-un”—the officer drew out the vowels with sonority—“has, in his boundless mercy, granted clemency to ten prisoners whose petitions have moved him, and to all prisoners in the camp older than the age of sixty years.”

  Mrs. Moon’s eyes popped wide open. A few of those on either side of her cried out and started weeping. Mrs. Moon stared about her. The guards looked as amazed as the prisoners. Before she could begin to take in what this meant, one by one the prisoners began falling to their knees.

  With a struggle she got painfully down on her knees. One of the older prisoners lost his balance and toppled over. No one helped him.

  The man in the polished boots shouted, “Long live the Great Successor!”

  They shouted, “Long live the Great Successor!”

  Goatshit and chickenshit! I’m surviving this place?

  “Long live the Great Successor!”

  I have no right to live.

  A random set of oversized factory overalls was given to her in a folded bundle. Since no one was released from Camp 22, the administration office did not store prisoners’ original belongings. She was handed a form.

  “Read it carefully and sign it,” the guard said. It stated that she could not reveal anything about Camp 22 to anyone in any form of writing or speech. “Open your mouth and you’ll be marched back here faster than you shit corn.”

  They were a motley group that walked toward the camp’s main gate. Like shipwreck survivors, she thought. A few of them, she could see, were too old and broken to enjoy their liberty for long. Their bodies would not recover, and the horrors would revisit them in dreams. She hobbled behind them in the flapping overalls, under the gaze of dozens of the guards who’d come to watch the spectacle, their faces a mix of puzzlement and suspicion. What they were seeing went against all their instincts, all their impulses and training.

  It was midmorning. The sky was a chill cornflower blue, and sparrows flocked and chirped in the yellow grass. Mrs. Moon felt no lightness in her heart. What was she being released to? Nothing but a larger, country-size prison. Why hadn’t she died here, at a moment of her choosing, and been forgotten, a corpse fertilizing a fruit tree?

  On the other side of the gates a small crowd waited. Some of them waved and wept as they spotted faces in the group. A child ran into the arms of a father. A son embraced his mother and wept. The camp must have informed the families beforehand to make sure they were all picked up and did not become vagrants.

  Mrs. Moon saw one thin, stooped man standing apart from the others, and something inside her melted. His face lit up like a boy’s when he saw her. Tae-hyon’s clothes were threadbare and patched. His coat hung from his skinny shoulders like drapes, and he’d lost so much hair he was as bald as a rivet. He looked pathetic! How had he managed? That any husband could cope without his wife was a miracle in her book.

  “You survived, then,” she said.

  He was holding out a green apple for her. And he had something else for her, too, which he slipped from his jacket and pressed into her palm once they were out of sight of the gates.

  She opened her hand, and her face wrinkled into a smile. It was the first time she’d smiled in a long time.

  Bless my ancestors. A Choco Pie.

  “From a balloon,” he whispered. “In the forest yesterday morning.”

  They set off hand in hand along the dirt road. It had not rained all week and the sparrows were fluttering and bathing in the dust along the road edge. The farther they walked from the camp gates, the sweeter and cleaner the air became. Mrs. Moon tilted her face toward the faint warmth of the sun and breathed in. Spring was not far off.

  Epilogue

  The morning air, fresh with mist, dampened the boy’s hair as he climbed the trail. Pine needles formed a carpet beneath his bare feet. The dawn’s light was piercing the forest in slanting rays, slowly dissolving the small white clouds that clung to the valley’s upper slopes. In the distance to the west the mountains’ limestone crags were brightening from amber to gold.

  The boy stood still for a moment and listened. He could distinguish between the songs of a jay and a sparrow. In fact he could identify the five types of local pine, knew the name of the tributary flowing through the valley toward the Yalu River, and could tell the geological periods in the layers of the rocks strewn along the path. He knew there were more species of beetle than of any other animal on earth. At night he could pick out the brightest stars of the constellations, remember their distance in light years, and calculate his own weight in each of the planets’ gravities. All this he kept to himself. The villagers had taunted him for his accent, stolen his shoes, called him names he didn’t understand, and beaten him with sticks. But in no time at all, it seemed, he’d become as dirty and ragged as they were, his speech as coarse, and he was so hungry he’d swallow live caterpillars and bite the heads off dragonflies.

  He put down his sack of firewood and kneeled to inspect his deadfall trap—a simple flat rock propped up with a stick. If he was lucky he caught a rabbit or a squirrel, but all his traps had been empty this morning.

  Suddenly a large brown hare, freshly killed, landed softly on the ground next to him. He leapt to his feet, reaching for his foraging knife. Sitting on the rock carved with the ancient Chinese script was an old woman, watching him.

  “Seems I get up earlier than you,” she said.

  Her silver hair was tied back in the old Korean style, with a needle through the bun, and she wore a faded, Chinese-style padded jacket. Her eyes were twinkling and narrow and her face had the boniness of one who’d endured a lifetime of hardship.

  “Are you the young man known as Woo-jin?”

  The boy stared at her and said nothing.

  “They said I’d find you on this trail.” She took a large bundle off her back and untied it. From inside she produced a small bamboo basket and gave it to him. He took it from her without bowing, and threw off the lid to find four vegetable dumplings, which he stuffed ravenously into his mouth.

  “I’ve been wandering this province for months,” she said, watching him eat. “Looking for you.”

  The boy ate without taking his eyes off her, his face expressionless.

  “That dumb look doesn’t fool me, young man. I know you can read the script on this rock. And I see your father’s face in yours.”

  The boy stopped chewing. His eyes opened wide in surprise.

  “You knew my father?”

  “Hoh, he speaks!” The old woman’s face creased into wrinkles as she smiled. “How long is it since anyone called you Books?”

  The forest was still except for the song of the sparrows, and the distant splashing of a mountain stream.


  “Who are you?” he said.

  “My name is Moon. I am your grandmother.”

  Author’s Note

  The idea for this story came to me during a visit to North Korea in 2012, when my small tour group was suborned into some of the daily rituals of the cult of Kim. On each day of the tour we were asked to pay our respects by lining up and bowing before one of the innumerable statues of Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder and self-styled Great Leader. To refuse would have risked getting our two guides, a friendly man and a woman with whom we had formed a real bond, into trouble.

  To outsiders like me, the sheer strangeness of life in North Korea could imbue even everyday occurrences with an epic quality. I left the country determined to learn more. My research revealed that the experience of my visit had barely scratched the surface, and that the truth about North Korea was even stranger than I could have imagined. What follows is factual information relevant to events in the novel.

  The Abductions Program

  In the 1970s and early 1980s the North Korean state actively abducted civilians from beaches in Japan and South Korea. These were not important military or political targets, but random people—teenage couples watching a sunset, a divorced man walking a dog, a local hairdresser, and so on. The motive behind this bizarre criminal enterprise has never been fully explained. Some of the victims were put to work teaching local slang and customs to spies and assassins being trained to infiltrate Japan and South Korea; others had their identities stolen; a tiny number were brainwashed and sent back home as spies, but the majority of them had no obvious use to North Korea. They were housed in isolated compounds for decades and permitted only limited contact with the North Korean population, or they died in mysterious circumstances. For years these abductions were the stuff of urban myth and conspiracy theories in Japan, until 2002, when, during a visit to Pyongyang, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was stunned to receive an apology from Kim Jong-il for the abduction of thirteen Japanese citizens (the true number almost certainly runs to several hundred). It was the only public apology Kim had ever made. He hoped it would trigger the release of billions of yen in war reparations from Japan, but it backfired on him spectacularly when the Japanese public reacted with outrage and demanded the abductees’ release.