by Paul Fischer
* * *
During their most recent meetings, Kim had claimed repeatedly that “Director Shin is coming,” implying that Shin was about to defect. Once he was so specific as to say, in the middle of a conversation about movies, “Oh, by the way, I’ve heard from Director Shin. He’ll arrive here on April 15, the Great Leader’s birthday.” Choi was dubious. The man she knew would never have defected to North Korea.
Even so, Jong-Il’s assurances that Shin would be coming to join them, made so often and so confidently, distressed Choi. If he does come, she thought, then what will happen to our children? Has he been taking care of them during my absence? Anyhow, how could he be coming here? He wouldn’t be able to stand it here for even a day. But if he did come here, it might give me the will to go on living … She spent hours arguing with herself.
Director Shin absolutely should not come here.
It would be wonderful if he were coming just for my sake …
He should not come. He must not come.
“The more I thought about it,” Choi wrote later, “the more confused I became. Wherever I went, thoughts of Director Shin went with me. He often appeared even in my dreams.” In one of them, she says, she was filming on location but couldn’t find Director Shin; she wandered around and finally found him facedown in a ditch alongside a field, curled up in the fetal position. She did her best to get him to stand but failed. When she woke, she was convinced that something terrible had happened to her ex-husband.
April 14, 1982, the day before Kim Il-Sung’s birthday, came without further news of Shin. Before supper Mr. Kang and another of Choi’s tutors sat her downstairs to listen to a tape recording listing Kim Il-Sung’s achievements. Then they listened to another listing those of his late wife Kim Jong-Suk, then yet another praising his entire family—father, mother, brothers, uncles. No one was permitted to speak or close their eyes while the tapes played. It was state-imposed tradition on the eve of the Leader’s Day, Choi learned later, and every single person in the country was spending their evening in silence, listening to these stories, produced by the central news agency. “While the recorder ran for an hour and forty minutes,” Choi said, “I was lost in my thoughts of Director Shin.”
* * *
The next day—the Leader’s Day—Kang returned to the house with a bouquet of azaleas from the Dear Leader. The official North Korean story is that in 1945, when Kim Il-Sung and his guerrillas finally pushed the Japanese oppressor over the Sino-Korean border and set foot, after a long exile, back on their homeland, they found azaleas blossoming in the first village they entered and were overwhelmed with joy at being home. Since then the azalea had been the national flower of North Korea.
In keeping with Kim Il-Sung’s smiling, rosy-cheeked, Santa Claus–like representation in North Korean iconography, his birthday had been turned into a sort of Christmas feast for all citizens: it was a rare holiday for the workers and students, everyone got meat in their rations, and children received presents from the state, usually candy or fresh school uniforms, for which they had to thank the Great Leader by bowing to the official, legally required portrait of him that every household hung in the center of the main wall of the main room. The portraits were distributed to all citizens free of charge, along with a special white cloth to be used to clean them, and only them. Once a month inspectors from the Public Standards Department dropped in to check on the cleanliness of the portraits. A few specks of dust were enough to be reported, a couple of failed inspections enough to be imprisoned. The portraits, made to be hung high on the wall, had a wider edge at the top of the frame to cut out reflections and also to draw the eye and intensify the Great Leader’s gaze on the house’s inhabitants.
Along with the flowers Kang carried another box. A proud smile was pasted on his face. “The Dear Leader sends you this gift,” he told Choi. “Now I am going to perform the required ceremony.” He ordered Ho Hak-Sun and Miss Kim to follow him upstairs, cleared the first-floor living room, in which was suspended the house’s compulsory Kim Il-Sung portrait, and placed something that resembled an apple crate in front of it. He asked Choi to stand on the crate and stare up at the picture.
“In a formal ceremony, we should sing ‘The Song of General Kim Il-Sung,’ but let’s skip it today,” Kang said. “Just take the oath of loyalty.”
Choi had been asked to learn and rehearse the oath several times, but being told to do it for real caught her off guard. She hesitated. “Come on, quickly,” Kang pressed. She knew there was no avoiding it. She decided to get it over with.
“I thank you, Great Leader, for your most kind treatment accorded to me and for allowing me to participate in the glorious revolution. I swear I will work hard to repay your kindness. I wish long life to our Great Leader.” She then bowed to the picture. “Though I acted in many films,” she said later, “this performance was by far the most embarrassing.” Kang, however, looked pleased. He untied the package he held in his hands. Inside it were Japanese fruit, a box of canned fish, several banana bunches, and a “name watch,” engraved with Kim Il-Sung’s name—the very type of watch that Ho Hak-Sun had longed for her whole life. Choi felt overcome with guilt to be the one to receive it, having done nothing to merit it and having no desire for it. Abruptly her thoughts were broken by a high-pitched, girlish voice.
“Wow! What’s this?” exclaimed Miss Kim. She grabbed one of the fruit bunches. She had never seen bananas before.
* * *
Just under a year later, in 1983, Choi stood under the same smiling portrait, in the same room, surrounded by the same people. After an identical ceremony, she was handed another gift box. Inside this box was a second name watch, a solid-gold Omega—Choi could feel Hak-Sun’s envious stare—and alongside it a ribbon in the colors of the national flag, a golden stripe running vertically down its center. Kang pinned the ribbon on Choi’s chest. “The Great Leader Kim Il-Sung and the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-Il have awarded you the Order of the National Flag, First Class.” It was the second-highest civilian order in the People’s Republic, after the Order of (who else) Kim Il-Sung. Choi didn’t know what she possibly could have done to merit the award, but she knew one thing: it came with a duty to serve the state. Kim Jong-Il, she felt sure, was about to finally put her to a purpose.
What purpose exactly she didn’t know—until one day, at a party, Kim turned to her and said, simply: “Director Shin is here.”
* * *
After his hunger strike, Shin languished in Prison Number 6 for another agonizing year and a half. Slowly his circumstances changed. The warden began summoning him regularly to ask about his films—questions so specific that Shin was reminded of that interrogation, years earlier after his arrest at the train station, in which the men from state security had kept running in and out of the room reporting his answers to Kim Jong-Il and returning with more questions. Only one person in North Korea could know officially banned South Korean films well enough to pose the questions he was being asked now.
A short time after the movie inquiries had begun, Shin was interviewed by the Minister of People’s Security. “If you could live with Choi Eun-Hee, would you stay in North Korea and stop trying to escape?” the Minister had asked.
“Of course,” Shin said. He laid it on thick—a little too thick, he worried later. “A common man like me would be happy to accept a situation with a pleasant home life. I will take part in the revolution. From now on I will solely rely upon the Party and act according to its wishes. I have finally understood the truth of our Korean Workers’ Party slogan: Absoluteness and Unconditionality. Before I couldn’t understand it because I had been coming at it from a capitalistic point of view.” Inside, Shin was cringing. This was some really bad dialogue the state wanted its people to read.
“Yes,” the Minister nodded. “Absoluteness and unconditionality can have no limits. You finally understand it.”
A few months later, in December 1982, another envoy was sent from Pyongyang to meet with Shin. The man asked S
hin to write down everything he knew about every South Korean film director he could think of, after which he interviewed Shin about how he saw his own future filmmaking career. Shin told him that in prison he had repented “a thousand times a day” for his past life, and that he had changed his beliefs and point of view. “I realize now that all my films made in South Korea clouded the people’s class consciousness, much as religion has served the capitalists. If I have a chance to make films, I will direct them with class consciousness.” This man, too, seemed pleased with Shin’s answers.
And then, right after breakfast on February 23, 1983, a guard opened Shin’s cell door and let him out. He was taken to have a bath, then handed the wrinkled brown suit he had been arrested in and told to change, after which the guards walked him to the building’s visiting room. Three men waited for him: an inspector Shin had met before, an official in a Mao tunic, and, as always, the trusty, Choi, in a corner. The inspector made small talk for a while, asking Shin about his health, and then the man in the Mao tunic cracked open his briefcase and took out a single sheet of paper. “Please stand at attention and listen to this carefully while I read it,” he asked. Holding it before him he read out, loudly and with authority: “Comrade, despite the fact that you have committed a serious crime, we will forgive you. Therefore you shall now devote yourself to the Great Leader and to contributing to the completion of the revolutionary task of the juche fatherland. Signed, Kim Jong-Il, February twenty-third, nineteen-eighty-three.”
No sooner had the briefcase snapped shut than Shin found himself outside, faced with the ubiquitous Mercedes, this one blue and brand-new. Shin got in. As the car pulled away, he kept his eyes on the prison building, the car’s back window framing it like a wide-screen moving picture, until it disappeared from sight.
Taken to a People’s Security safe house, Shin was made to take the oath of loyalty and then gradually restored to health by large meals and material comfort. He was given new clothes, a medical checkup, and a haircut. On March 6, a mere ten days after arriving at the safe house, he was told to prepare to meet the Dear Leader.
He was going to his first Kim Jong-Il party.
* * *
Choi had already arrived at the Fish House. The gala was like every other that she had attended in her five years in Pyongyang, only bigger, filling the whole of the large banquet hall, with twice the usual number of guests in attendance. There was trepidation in the air, too. Kim Jong-Il looked especially pleased with himself. Earlier in the evening someone had come up to Choi, taken her elbow, and said, “Today will be the happiest day of your life!” Choi shrugged it off. By now she was used to the North Korean propensity for elation and exaggeration.
* * *
Shin was tense and anxious as the car drove up to the concrete building, outside of which were parked a long row of identical Mercedes-Benzes. He stepped out of the car and walked up to the entrance. Two attendants bowed their heads and opened the door for him. As soon as he entered, the packed banquet hall broke into applause.
He looked around in bewilderment. Ten days before he had been sitting in the torture position inside a prison camp, starved of food, the screams of prisoners being tortured and executed waking him up at night; now he was in a room that felt like “a luxurious nightclub in Seoul,” filled with men in uniforms or in identical Western suits with identical red flag pins bolted to their chests, drunk on the most expensive liquors in the world, gorging on the most luxurious variety of dishes. Teenage girls danced, flirted, and giggled their way from table to table.
Standing at the center of it all was Kim Jong-Il, the man who had imprisoned him for years and who had now, inexplicably, brought him here. “I had seen pictures and paintings of Kim Jong-Il numerous times,” Shin later wrote, “but this was the first time I had ever seen him in person. He was small and had big, bright eyes. His skin was flushed, as if he was beginning to show the effects of alcohol.” He wore a tunic consisting of comfortable trousers and a loose button-up shirt, an ensemble almost resembling pajamas. He smiled in greeting.
Shin began to make his way toward him.
* * *
Choi missed the arrival of the evening’s special guest. When the music stopped abruptly and the crowd erupted into applause, she didn’t think to take notice until a woman approached her and pointed toward the door. “Look who’s here!” she said. Choi turned to the entrance. A very gaunt man stood there. She didn’t recognize Shin at first, then she froze. It felt like her heart had stopped. “Why are you just standing there?” the woman asked, dragging her forward.
* * *
Shin was approaching Kim Jong-Il, his pulse racing, when he suddenly caught sight of Choi. She was wearing a traditional white hanbok dress and huge smokily tinted sunglasses. Until tonight, he hadn’t seen her in over five years, and he had never been sure that she was actually in the country or even still alive. He stared in blank disbelief as she was pulled toward him. They both just stood there, not knowing what to say or do, agonizingly aware of the dozens of eyes glued to them. Silence, and a stifling stillness, had replaced the applause.
“What happened to you?” Choi finally managed. Shin smiled weakly.
Jong-Il lingered nearby, an enormous grin on his face, looking like a kid who had just pulled off the most improbable prank. “Well, go ahead and hug each other!” he said. “Why are you just standing there?” Shin and Choi hugged, awkwardly at first, and then sank into the comfort of each other’s arms. Cheers and applause broke out again. Flashbulbs popped.
“All right, all right—stop hugging and come over here,” Jong-Il ordered. Shin and Choi did as they were told, keenly aware of being on show. Shin gave a polite bow to Kim and shook the younger man’s hand. Jong-Il heartily squeezed Shin’s. Placing Shin on his left and Choi on his right, Jong-Il made them pose for a picture—“Relax,” he joked, “this won’t end up in the South Korean papers”—and then turned to the crowd. “Comrades,” he announced, “from now on Mr. Shin is my film adviser.” Deafening applause. “And Madame Choi is now a representative for our Korean women!” More applause. Jong-Il looked from Shin to Choi. “Let’s have a wedding ceremony for you—on April 15, the Great Leader’s birthday.”
Shin stared, stupefied, as the riotous applause continued. It was March 6, 1983. Had he and Choi never divorced, today would have been the eve of their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary.
The Dear Leader had directed his little scene to perfection.
INTERMISSION
The People’s Actress Woo In-Hee
Woo In-Hee was said to be the most beautiful woman in North Korea. Like the ideal women on propaganda posters and postcards, she had the soft, oval-shaped face so traditionally prized, and a delicate but curvy figure. Audiences had thronged to see her in The Story of a Detachment Commander and The Town Where We Live, and had formed lines around the block to watch her play a woman’s entire life, from youth to old age, in The Girl from Diamond Mountain.
Even her life story warmed people’s hearts with pride and affection. She had been born in Kaesong, right on the border between North and South, in an area that became a permanent battleground during the war—taken by the North in the summer of 1950, lost again that October, and finally regained, with the help of the Chinese army, in December 1950. The young Woo In-Hee kept working throughout the fighting, an example to every child in the Workers’ Paradise. The very pretty little girl became a skilled dancer, and soon she was discovered by a famous actor of the time, who brought her to Pyongyang to study acting. Within a year she had been selected as the lead in Tale of Chunhyang, playing a chaste and noble girl of low rank who braves the disdain of the aristocracy to marry the district magistrate she loves. She stays loyal to him when corrupt rivals try to blackmail her into being their concubine—even when she is condemned to death on false charges. In the end she is rescued by her husband, and their devotion conquers all. The role made Woo In-Hee an immediate star. She starred in dozens more films after that, each more s
uccessful than the last. She won countless government awards and was ranked a People’s Actress, the highest honor in her field. She was favored by Kim Jong-Il and treated like royalty. She was even allowed to go to Czechoslovakia to study Western acting techniques. Upon her return, she married Yoo Hosun, North Korea’s most gifted director, and they had three children. Her life seemed charmed. The people who had met her in person confided that she did not disappoint: the People’s Actress was a gentle, kindhearted young woman.
But beautiful, desirable Woo had a flaw. She was a romantic and always falling in love. Her heart was always yearning for something that her marriage, fame, and success were not giving her.
* * *
The first man had been a member of a film crew. The others, too, were involved in the world of film—creatives, officials in the film department, other crew members. There were probably not that many men, but reputations grow fast and out of proportion to the truth. Quickly Pyongyang’s film sets throbbed with rumors that Woo In-Hee, the People’s Actress, was at best a party girl who didn’t hesitate to enjoy the men her looks and status made available to her, and at worst a loose woman, a hussy who happily and easily let herself be seduced by any and all. There was something vulgar, malicious, and misogynistic to the stories, a silent snigger and a raised eyebrow in the way they were told.
Woo In-Hee was no temptress. Maybe she was lonely, maybe she simply longed for something she was still missing, or maybe, like most romantics, she was always falling in love with the next person. Whatever the reason, it made her easy to seduce, her hopes and cravings like a question only needing a man to volunteer himself as their answer. Every time she was seduced she would fall in love, and every time—after the man’s conquest had been accomplished, and the sexual novelty exhausted—she was the one discarded. But this was North Korea in the 1970s, a country where a husband kept all property and rights over children in every divorce, even if his physical abuse or faithlessness was the cause of it—where indeed it was socially accepted, and not uncommon, for some men to have several wives. As for women, their behavior was scrutinized and judged. It was illegal to wear short sleeves or skirts cut higher than the knee. Marriages were arranged by families or by the Party. Premarital sex was forbidden, and even something as innocent as holding hands in public was sternly frowned upon. Perversely, these very rules made women like Woo In-Hee—who longed for a true connection, to be valued—more vulnerable. They starved and suffocated her longings so much that she was desperate to make them come true, no matter the risk.