The county hall contacted us the night before. They told us we needed to evacuate—we were all going to fall back and retreat towards Sariwŏn the next morning. We were supposed to gather at the county hall with our families. We packed our bags before we went to bed that night—who knew they would attack so soon, before sunrise? I was asleep. Then I felt something cold and metallic poking into my cheek. I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Yohan’s face. It just didn’t look . . . human. His eyes had a weird glimmer and the cold-blooded smile on his face made all my hairs stand straight up. They dragged us all out into the yard while we were still half-asleep. My babies were crying. One of the men, the one who had my little girl—he just picked her up and slammed her back down. I couldn’t tell if she was still alive. She just lay there on the ground, so quiet. My wife ran to her and something whizzed past me. I heard a thump. Right in front of me, my wife collapsed to the ground, blood seeping out of her cracked skull. I just gave up. It might sound strange, but I wasn’t that scared. I wasn’t even very angry. I was calm. The newborn kept howling, lying beside his mother on the ground.
Shiiit . . . I can’t stand this fucking noise.
One of Yohan’s men threw my baby, the same way he might kick a soccer ball—my child flew up into the air a little bit before falling back down to the ground a few steps away. Before I knew it I was up, grabbing for his throat. He shoved me off and I fell onto my back, but I was up again in an instant, trying to get to him. Everything suddenly went white. The whole thing was over in minutes. If only I’d died then, when I blacked out—then I wouldn’t have had to go through everything else. When I woke up and tried to rise, the way we all do when we first wake up, something struck me across the back.
Get up you stupid piece of shit!
It was Yohan, spitting the words out, standing over me, gripping a pick with both hands. I raised my head slowly and looked up at him. I’d known the children in that family since they were very young. I even knew their birthdays, their anniversaries. I hadn’t been to their house for some years, not since liberation, but whenever Yohan came to visit at the sarang I always roasted him a couple sweet potatoes or taught him how to weave straw mats. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I looked up at him with spiteful eyes. My eyes might have asked him how he could do these things to me—for one split second, he seemed to waver. He turned his face away, took out his revolver, and pressed it against my temple. I could see the firing pin of the gun, wide open like the teeth of a snake. I closed my eyes. He spoke.
You son of a bitch, you took our land—thought you’d be Party chairman for a thousand, ten thousand years, didn’t you?
I could hear the others trying to stay his hand.
This son of a bitch was the chairman—he tried to enforce the Land Reform Order. He doesn’t deserve such an easy death.
Listen, the others are going to want a turn with him, too—come on, let’s take him into town.
One of the animals pounced on me with the end of a wire in his hand. I was still pretty dazed, but when he pierced the wire through my nose and tugged it, my eyes and cheeks felt like they were being torn apart. Every time he pulled the wire my face felt like it was bursting. Yohan spoke again.
All this is punishment, rained down upon you by our God.
Swallowing the blood that kept rising up in my throat, I gurgled, Believe in the God of Chosŏn.
I could hear Yohan laughing behind me.
Goddamn bastard. Still have breath to spare, eh? An illiterate fool, but now that you’ve listened to a couple of lectures you talk ready and smooth, is that it?
Just then, a shout rang through the village.
We caught the Mole!
Yohan turned to his men.
All right. Haul this piece of shit Ichiro back into town.
And so I ended up living one more day, hanging on just long enough to experience that fiery hell.
It wasn’t me that saw them coming—it was my wife. She was in the yard hiding some of our food in a hole we dug the night before. Our house was pretty close to Illang’s, but we were a little bit higher up. I’d been away from home for a few days, but when I got the order to evacuate from the Department of Defense, I came home to pack the things we couldn’t do without and dig the hole so we could hide the more important stuff, like the sewing machine, our radio, and a bagful of rice. We didn’t actually get to bed until after midnight. Then suddenly my wife was opening the door of the bedroom, yelling up a storm.
Men! Lots of them! They’re coming into the village, and they’ve got guns!
I sprang to my feet, put on a shirt, and rushed out into the yard. I could hear crying and wailing coming from all over the place—it had already begun. My wife pushed me back inside.
Hurry, she hissed. You have to get out of here! It’s those Jesus freaks.
I raced around the house into the backyard, tore the rough hedge fence apart, and fled. I ran for my life, tearing up the hill behind our house. I meant to go all the way over it, but the trails were so steep that I was soon stumbling, panting horribly. I was leaning up against a rock, trying to catch my breath, when I heard them yelling from down below.
Sunnam, you son of a bitch! We know you’re up there!
Come down or we’ll kill your whole family!
How could I keep going? My wife, she wasn’t even from around there. She used to be a worker at a sock factory in Pyongyang. All her life, she’d known nothing but hardship—she started working when she was twelve, taking care of her parents and her younger brothers and sisters. I met her at one of the Party training sessions. We both belonged to the lowest class, so neither of us had anything to our names but our bare hands. We had two children, a three year old and a tiny new baby, just like Comrade Pak Illang’s little family. I trudged on back down. As soon as I got near my house, a couple of them rushed me, striking me on the back with the butts of their rifles. I fell to the ground.
We caught the Mole!
The shout seemed to come from far, far away.
Uncle Sunnam’s face was already soaked in blood from being beaten by several different men. By the time I got there, everything had already been taken care of. His hands were tied behind his back with a telephone cord, and he was on his knees. I glanced at him, but he dropped his head when our eyes met. I looked over the hedge fence and saw his wife squatting down on the ground, looking as if she’d been frightened out of her senses, blood streaming down from her nose. The older kid was right next to her, and the younger one was sitting on the ground. I guess they knew somehow that they shouldn’t cry too loudly; they were just moaning quietly. Sunnam had played with us when we were all just kids, hanging around the neighborhood, and he’d never been directly involved in any village conflict—no one really had a personal grudge against him. Still, he’d been involved with the so-called peacekeeping troops in town from the very beginning, so everyone felt kind of intimidated by him. His wife was a member of the Women’s League, but she’d always gotten along pretty well with the other women in the village. We hesitated.
Should we take them to town?
The man in charge of searching the house was the first to ask the question. We all knew, though, what would happen to them if we took them in. The young ones on our side had their eyes peeled for opportunities like these—they were dying for a chance to get their hands on a real Red. It didn’t take me long to decide. All it took was two little words.
Shoot them.
A couple of men turned and ran back inside the fence. I heard them cock their guns. Then came the shots. I didn’t look back. When the men shoved Sunnam, he fell into step, leading the way down the village road. We got to the village entrance. Illang, with his newly pierced nose and his party were waiting for us. The whole lot of us formed a line and began marching towards town down the new road. Wet fog spread out over the stream like a blanket of smoke. The eulalias were in full bloom, white against the stream banks. I was walking in front of Uncle Sunnam when I heard his dee
p voice address me from behind.
Yohan, can I have a word with you?
I just turned and looked at him.
What’s the point of going all the way to town? Please. Kill me here.
I stopped walking. I wanted to put some distance between Illang’s party, who continued on their way, and our group. I turned to the young men from Kwangmyŏng Church who stopped with me.
Let’s finish him off here.
But he’s a key figure—do you think that’d be wise?
We’re going to be killing them all later on, anyway. Don’t worry. Tell the guys up front to go on ahead.
Sending a man to the front to let them know what was going on, I took out a cigarette. I lit it and held it to Sunnam’s lips.
Go ahead. Take a puff.
Greedily, Sunnam took the cigarette between his lips, inhaled deeply, and let the smoke come out his nose. I lit another for myself.
Well, you certainly are a sight to see—and to think how you used to go around with your nose stuck up in the air. You shouldn’t have played the Red game.
Sunnam stood there without saying a word, just smoking his cigarette. He spat it out when it was only half done. With a deep sigh, he looked up at the sky. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Without facing him directly, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and said, Why the tears?
It’s just the smoke.
My companions began to prod me.
Let’s just get this over with and move on.
I spotted a utility pole along the stream bank. I turned to the boys.
String him up over there.
Was I remembering that time with the dog, that day I followed him down to the stream during the Tano Festival?41 The guys unraveled one of the telephone cords they always had tied around their waists for easy access and shaped it into a noose. As one of the men pulled the noose down over his head from behind, Sunnam said, Yohan, can I ask you a favor?
What is it?
Please—bury me with my family.
I didn’t answer. I just gave the signal to my men. They tossed the other end of the telephone cord over one of the pins that stuck out of the utility pole and pulled with every ounce of strength they had. With a strange gurgle, Sunnam’s body was suddenly up in the air, his legs flailing. At first the men stood there and hung onto their end of the cord, but then they just tied it off on one of the pins farther down and left it. We all hung around for a while, waiting for Sunnam to die. Every time it looked like he might finally be gone, his limp body dangling silently for a moment, his legs would jerk again and the struggle would start all over again. Blood oozed from the cut under his chin where the wire cut into his flesh and trickled down the nape of his neck. I pulled my gun out from the waist of my trousers and aimed at his heart. I fired.
I did tell you, didn’t I, that I was assigned to work in the kitchen at the county hall with the womenfolk, right? And so I survived—just barely—all thanks to Sangho and Yohan, but so many unspeakable things happened during those three days that I can’t even recall much of it. Meals were cooked at two separate locations, the county hall and the police station. They were short-handed so almost a dozen men my age had been recruited to help out, and that was just for the kitchen I worked in. The women and I were in charge of feeding the young men who came together in the county hall meeting room. There were hundreds of people assembled in the front yard, too, but the new recruits were responsible for cooking their meals. The men in the meeting room were the leaders of the uprising, so their meals were a little better—they got rice and soup and slices of salted radish. The young men in the front yard were given plain rice balls. We all made do with rice balls during the war, out there in the streets; you probably already knew that, though. We’d just roll some cooked rice into little balls with our hands. We used to dream of finding some salty side dishes, or maybe just getting hold of some soy sauce. The cooks who made the rice balls used to dip their hands in salt water before kneading the rice to try and give them some flavor, but it wasn’t the same.
Anyway, the women and I would put all the rice in a large wooden bowl and pour the soup into a bucket and take it all up to the meeting room. The place was full of faces I’d never seen before. I gathered that these were the men who’d come up from the South. Looking a bit more closely, though, I spotted some familiar faces scattered among them. I saw one young man who used to be a member of the church youth group and another who’d joined the Korean Independence Party. Picking up bits and pieces of conversation here and there, I realized they were all discussing the arrival of the U.S. Army. Apparently the Americans had just arrived in Haeju—they and the South Koreans were headed north, marching towards Sŏhŭng and Sin’gye. The men I was feeding weren’t actual soldiers so they had no official rank, but they were all wearing American army uniforms and carrying brand new guns. It looked like they’d come in just before we brought them their dinner, so they’d probably arrived in town a little earlier that very evening—that would have been the sixteenth. They said that they were only the advance party. One of them recognized me.
Well, well! If it isn’t the deacon!
I was so panicked and frightened that I didn’t recognize him at first. He was wearing a military uniform, complete with field jacket, not to mention a cartridge belt and gun at his waist. It was one of those American guns that we used to call “Chickenheads.”
It’s me, Pongsu! Remember? I used to live here.
Finally, it clicked. This man with the pomaded hair combed all the way back—this man was the eldest son of the miller. He’d gotten into some deep trouble back home, after liberation. His father crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and went down South fairly early on, and all their land, including the mill and the brewery, had been confiscated. Until that day, I’d had no idea that he even knew Yohan. Just then, out of nowhere, Yohan stuck his face out from the sea of young men.
Uncle, you know Presbyter Choi Jang-no from the church in town, don’t you?
Sure . . . we’ve . . . held revival services together, I answered vaguely, wanting to get out of there.
Pongsu joined in, You’re still under forty, aren’t you?
Yes, that’s right.
Well, then you should join the Youth Corps. We need to form a branch of the Taeha Youth Corps here in our hometown.
Feigning inattention, I simply served the rice. The roar of conversation kept going strong as the men began to eat.
Hey, whatever happened to that guy who started the peacekeeping troops in your village?
You mean Ri Sunnam?
That’s the one—he used to work as a handyman in the orchards, right?
Yohan finished that bastard yesterday.
Aw, c’mon—you guys should have left me my share—that son of a bitch was red through and through.
That was how I found out that my nephew Yohan had killed Sunnam. It’s true that people killed each other out of spite during those hellish days to get even. But you know, it’s also true that they all felt a kind of pressure to be merciless—they wanted their peers to think highly of them. If you showed any sign of weakness, if you had a single moment of indecision, well, then your whole ideology could be called into question. No one was to be trusted. There was even a joke that went around back then: that one’s a watermelon—no, he’s an apple—no, a persimmon—why, he’s a green melon—ah well, it doesn’t matter if he’s blue, red, blue dyed red, or red dyed blue—anything that’s got any color at all has got to go. When I went to clear the dishes after dinner, the young men in the meeting room were smoking. Sitting on a desk, Pongsu asked Sangho, Hey, Sangho, remember that guy who used to work as a foreman in my father’s factory?
Sure I do. Isn’t he the one that put your father through all that hell?
Whatever happened to that asshole?
Sangho snickered, We got him.
What about that piece of shit who was in charge of all the land reform in the northeastern districts?
Oh, that son of
a bitch—you know, he’d actually made himself the chairman of the District Party Committee. We brought him in, too. Along with his whole family.
Pongsu hopped down from the desk. He kept touching the gun at his waist, grinning all the while, but I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. I wasn’t interested in being a spectator to such nonsense, so I hurried out of the room. Back in the kitchen I was washing dishes with the women when I heard someone crying out in pain in the backyard. Curiosity is strong enough to overcome fear, they say. Furtively, I wiped my hands on my pants and got up. One of the women looked at me.
Deacon, why bother? You don’t want to see what’s out there—whatever it is, you can be sure it’s no festival mask dance.
You just keep your eyes and your ears shut. I’m going to go sneak a peek.
We, at least, had simply been told to cook—we really had nothing to complain about. It was the men they recruited later on that had to do all the real dirty work. They were the ones who had to deal with the countless dead bodies of all the people being killed in the backyard of the police station and around the county hall. The air-raid shelter and the trench were packed with people by then, just waiting to die, with no food or water. For the first two days you could hear the kids crying, but after that everything fell silent—there wasn’t a single whimper. God only knows if they all dropped dead or what. Sometimes, when I walked by, I could see a couple of their heads poking up through the air shaft, which came up to about the height of my knees. Sir, please, give us some water, please, my child is dying of thirst. There were times I’d pass by, pretending I hadn’t heard a thing, but whenever I could I’d get a bucketful of water and pour it gently down the shaft.
The backyard of the county hall was just on the other side of a wooden fence. I stepped up on a rock to try and look over it, to see what was going on. Dusk was setting in and it was getting pretty dark. I could make out a group of people standing in a circle around two big, whitish objects. Looking more closely, I realized the pale things were two naked men. Pongsu had unbuckled the cartridge belt from his waist; he was whipping one of them with it.
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