by Suki Kim
11
SUNDAY, JULY 24, WAS ELECTION DAY IN PYONGYANG, BUT for us it was a day of prayer. My fellow teachers had been asking for permission to visit one of the two churches in Pyongyang, and our destination was Bongsu Church. President Kim was with us that day and explained that it was not a real church but that we were to respect their desire to show us they had religious freedom, which they did not. The DPRK regime is known for repressing unauthorized religious activities with arrests and even executions.
From the bus, we could see that the mood was celebratory, the streets filled with people, with many of the women in brightly colored, billowing hanbok (Korean traditional dress). I saw a new slogan on a building: LET US ALL PARTICIPATE IN THE ELECTION AND SUPPORT THE REVOLUTION! Young children in school uniforms—white shirts, navy skirts or pants, red kerchiefs—sang loudly and marched in groups, waving plastic Kimjongilias and Kimilsungias and holding up a sign that read LET’S BUILD OUR SOCIALIST NATION TO FOLLOW OUR GREAT GENERAL KIM JONG-IL! They were gathered in long lines every few blocks or so, in front of big red signs that said “Voting Booth.” We were told that the people were electing their city and county representatives, that the election happened every four years, and that anyone over the age of seventeen could vote.
There were even fewer cars on the street than usual, and President Kim told us that on Election Days, only the military was allowed to drive. Although we had been cleared for the trip, we were pulled over by a guard. Mr. Han seemed very upset and told him that the bus was full of foreigners, and that we were late for something important. Ten minutes later, we were permitted to drive. Usually the bus circled the same area, passing the Grand People’s Study House, Juche Tower, Potonggang Department Store, and the Koryo Hotel, which were all within a radius of a few blocks, but that day we took a different route. Along the way I saw women doing laundry in the murky waters of the Potonggang River, which ran through the heart of the city. Men fished from its banks. People were squatting and cutting grass or sweeping streets as usual. There was no litter whatsoever. I also noticed a few bony women stooping over pools of water on the ground with buckets. They would pour earth into the water, let it soak up the water, then shovel the wet earth back into the buckets and dump it into a pile. This seemed to be Pyongyang’s version of a storm drainage system. We drove past a big lily pond and saw someone fishing there as well. Perhaps those people were done voting.
The church was near a group of apartments that looked like a slum. The cement buildings were run-down and the first-floor windows had no glass, only metal guards. I glimpsed one man’s face through the dark hole that was a window, and whatever was inside looked even darker. But before I could even reflect on it, our bus had zipped past and pulled up before a big, modern, nondescript building topped with a cross, reportedly built with donations from South Korean Christians. A man in a pastor’s gown came down the front steps to welcome us. Although we were late because we had been stopped, the entire church had been expecting us and had waited to begin the service.
Inside, about a hundred parishioners and a choir sat in almost perfect silence on the pews. They were mostly women between the ages of thirty and fifty. As we entered they turned toward us and smiled in unison. They looked reasonably well off, although not as affluent as our students, and for a moment I wondered why those people were not at the voting booth. We were directed to front-row seats and given brand-new Bibles and hymn books in Korean and English. Each of us was also given a set of headphones and a device so that we could listen to the service with the aid of simultaneous translation. When you turned it on, a perky voice said, “Welcome to our church,” as though it were an English conversation lesson. Next to the pastor was a projector screen on which we could see ourselves. I looked around to see who was filming us, but it was impossible to tell. Soon a woman in a shiny hanbok went up to the altar to recite a prayer—really more of a beseeching soliloquy about unification, the sorrow of the Korean people, and the evils of those who had separated us. It sounded as though she had performed it many times before.
The sermon was much the same. The pastor talked about the evils of the South Korean regime, which, backed by the American imperialists, kept Korea divided. This crime would be punished, he insisted, quoting Romans 6:23—“For the wages of sin is death …”—to underscore his point. At some point we all had to go to the front and sing to our North Korean Christian brothers and sisters, who put on happy and excited expressions as if on cue. We were encouraged to take photos throughout.
I kept looking at the faces of the pastor and parishioners, which revealed nothing. It was all theater, and I was part of it. They were pretending to be Christians, and we were pretending to believe them. I remembered that we had been instructed to pray secretly, with our eyes open, while we were at PUST. Here the situation was reversed: our group prayed openly and North Koreans performed what seemed to be a charade. Perhaps when they spoke of God they privately substituted the words “Kim Jong-il.”
It was a relief to listen to the choir, which sang so fervently and beautifully that I wondered if they had been selected for their singing talent. This was not such a terrible duty, I thought. They could come here and daydream for an hour and sing. Their friends might even envy them such a cushy assignment.
Then they sang a tune that was oddly familiar to me. It had been my paternal grandmother’s favorite hymn. She hummed it often, though she wasn’t much of a Christian and only went to church when her panic attacks took a turn for the worse. Before the panic attacks, she had been an atheist, although, as with most Korean families, there were traces of Buddhism and Shamanism in our family’s past.
My grandmother had married my grandfather at sixteen, borne three children and raised them, lived through the Japanese colonization, and nearly died of malnutrition during the Korean War. But she rarely talked about any of that. Instead she talked about the women—my grandfather’s women, one of whom was a giseng (geisha) who moved in and took over the master bedroom. It was not clear whether this mistress was a real giseng or a common bar hostess, as these women inevitably came and went too quickly for my grandmother to learn their real identities, but this giseng, or fake giseng, would drink jungjong (sake) with my grandfather every night, and it was my grandmother’s duty to bring them trays of food. My grandmother always said that it was my grandfather’s roving eyes that caused her panic attacks.
It was after every doctor concluded that her illness was imaginary, including one who recommended that she try sucking on mint candies as a remedy, that she visited the local priest and turned toward Jesus. For her, Jesus was a way of dealing with my grandfather’s womanizing. When he was between women and feeling remorseful, he would reluctantly take her to church, always declaring that no one would see a Gwangsan Kim, a descendant of great Confucian scholars, carrying a Bible in public. And so he would carefully wrap his wife’s Bible in newspaper before tucking it under his arm, and he would leave her at the threshold of the church, never once crossing it himself.
It seemed unfathomable that life had led me to this unlikely place, this fake North Korean church where I sat listening to a fake choir with a group of real believers and stumbled on the memory of my grandmother and her halfhearted Christianity. But in that moment I realized that whether she had been a true believer or not, church had offered her some comfort in her tortured life, and I was grateful for that.
Soon we were ushered out and encouraged to take a Bible and a hymn book with us as souvenirs. The parishioners smiled and waved and sang, “Let’s meet again,” and the pastor stood outside and posed for pictures with all of us. And we got on the bus, all the parishioners still waving at us, and then we could see them walking away all at once, quickly disappearing into Pyongyang’s streets as though they had dispensed with their morning duty.
That afternoon, some teachers were shown an election booth. They were urged to take photos, and the standard pretty female guide explained how votes were cast. According to her, there were
two candidates’ names on the ballot, and Pyongyang citizens chose one of them, just as they might in any other free country. One of the teachers, however, who taught English to the counterparts said that those in her class had let slip that there was only one candidate, handpicked by the government, so Election Day really meant that you showed up and picked that candidate. Did this mean the government had set up a fake election just for us? Beyond the church and the election booth and the people lined up to vote, what else was there for our eyes only? Did the lights in the windows go dark as soon we drove past them?
At dinner that night, my students asked, as usual, what we had done that day. Since we were not supposed to talk about Jesus with them, I asked what they had done. They all answered that they had voted in downtown Pyongyang. This was the first election in which they had been able to vote, and they found it very exciting, they said. The school did not have enough vans to transport all 270 students into the city, and I knew they were never allowed out anyway, so I asked them how they had traveled to the voting station. They walked, they told me. I could not believe what I was hearing, but I pressed on. It was about ten minutes to Pyongyang by car, so I casually asked how long it had taken them to walk there. On this, their answers varied. Some said thirty minutes; others said one hour. What time had they left? Some said 8 a.m.; others said 9. However, we had left at 9 that morning, and we had seen no trace of them.
THE NEXT DAY, at the staff meeting, we were told we had to reimburse PUST for gas and for the meals for our minders and driver. It was a modest amount, five or ten dollars for each of our outings, but considering that we were teaching for free and had spent our own money, or that of a sponsoring church, to fly there, it seemed strange that we were expected to pay to be guarded.
Then we were told that the Arirang Mass Games, a major festival that celebrates the DPRK each August, would cost each of us as much as $400 if we wanted to go. The school recommended that we purchase the mid-range tickets for $225. I had seen the games during one of my previous visits and was taken aback by the price. Once you got over the novelty of seeing tens of thousands of children forming the petals of Kimjongilias or Kimilsungias or a hammer and sickle, you couldn’t help but imagine the countless hours they must have been forced to rehearse. A few other teachers seemed shocked at the price but agreed to buy tickets since they did not know when they would return. This was always the case with North Korea. It was like the bad boyfriend whose presence could never be depended on, so you always had to seize the opportunity to spend time with him when he made himself available.
The next piece of news was delivered by Dr. Joseph, who looked almost embarrassed as he asked everyone for donations to feed the students. According to him, “the others”—the counterparts, I assumed—kept urging him to make a personal donation of $500 or more for “a meal with plenty of meat in it.” I suspected that the meat was not for the students but to satisfy the greedy demands of the counterparts. One of these men often liked to repeat, “Oh, you’re Comrade Kim Suki. You caused us much trouble. You have no idea what a headache it was for me to get your visa. After all I went through for you, maybe you should thank me.” I felt quite awkward the first time he said this but laughed along with him, pretending that it was a joke.
This kind of extortionary behavior was typical in transactions with North Korea. During the New York Philharmonic’s visit, I had met a number of South Korean journalists who were rather jaded by North Korea and uniformly said that to understand the DPRK, you needed to follow the money. The funding for PUST came from individual donors around the world, as well as from the South Korean Ministry of Unification, with no contribution that I knew of from North Korea. Apparently, the rest of the world was feeding and educating the children of their leaders. On a micro level, there were the frequent requests for small sums of money that we had gotten used to. The counterparts wanted to be fed, and we were expected to accommodate them.
The last bit of news was slightly alarming. Dr. Joseph told us that, according to the counterparts, some of our students would not be going home for the summer break. Only some students would go home, Dr. Joseph said. Some of the richest ones, most likely. I could already guess who among my students would be chosen. The differences among them were obvious. A few used smooth white sheets of paper, the kind we were used to back home, for their homework, but most used the rough, brownish paper that was the norm. The white-paper users were often the same boys who owned electronic dictionaries, had glowing complexions, and spoke better English.
It turned out that the students’ entire year was meticulously mapped out. During breaks, they either stayed on campus doing extra work or worked at some sort of collective farm. None of it was their choice. Dr. Joseph clarified that there was no such thing as a vacation in the DPRK. Sarah confirmed this. The theme of the reading she had to teach that week happened to be “vacation,” and she had realized that the vacation here was different from our idea of vacation. There was time set aside for recreation, such as playing sports, but there was no such thing as a prolonged holiday. All students had six days of school per week, and on Sundays many had duties to perform. This schedule did not change much during their vacation, since they either attended schools for Juche meetings or Daily Life Unity critiques, and the rest of the time, they were ordered to work at collective farms. This was a country where no one was allowed free time.
Every one of my students had told me he was going home for the month of August. Unless they were pretending, it seemed they knew as little as we did.
12
THE DAYS LEADING UP TO THE END OF THE SUMMER SEMESTER were a jumble. There was much picture taking and sporting competition, as though the incessant activities would distract us from our approaching goodbye. I was torn between sadness and the desire to escape this place. I had been invited back to teach during the fall semester, and I had said yes, but I was honestly not sure if I could go through with it again.
After lunch on July 26, Ruth and I were called to President Kim’s office and told that we would be attending the ceremony for the 58th Anniversary of the Great Victory at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium. This was a state event, hosted by the Workers’ Party and the Pyongyang People’s Committee, on the eve of Victory Day. Among the invitees were a small group of the PUST senior staff; we would be the only teachers. Joan later told me that she had been working with President Kim for nearly a decade, since the idea of PUST was first conceived, but had never been invited since she was a “white face.” We were chosen, she said, because we were both returning in the fall and because we were of Korean heritage.
When we arrived, it was dead quiet inside the stadium, even though all twenty thousand seats were occupied. Half the attendees were army personnel, the other half citizens in gray summer suits, a sort of civilian uniform for Party members. I saw no non-Korean faces. The stage was decorated with the words ONE HUNDRED WAR, ONE HUNDRED WIN! 58TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY 727, and on either side of it were similar slogans. On stage, three rows of chairs faced the audience.
Soon about a hundred men came out wearing army uniforms, the same ones my students wore to guard the Kimilsungism Study Hall, and everyone in the audience rose and clapped as the men took their seats on the stage. Many of them were porky, with rotund bellies and generous jowls, and their jackets were covered with shiny gold medals. There were two women among them, one wearing a white pantsuit, the other a hanbok. It seems likely that one of them was Kim Kyung-hui, sister of Kim Jong-il and wife of Jang Sung-taek, then the second most powerful man in North Korea.*1
One of the men walked to the podium and began reading an address that was at times unintelligible because of the terrible speakers.*2 It was mainly about the glorious achievements of Kim Il-sung, and the heroic way he had fended off the attacks of the American imperialists and won the war. Curse words directed at the United States and South Korea were scattered throughout the speech. The speaker said that Lee Myung-bak, then the president of South Korea, was driving the entire
peninsula into the greedy hands of America, and that if this continued, Seoul would turn into a “sea of blood” filled with “death and corpses.” The event was being taped and televised, and we were periodically told by our minders to applaud. The man ended his speech with the words “Long live our Great Leader Kim Il-sung! Long live our Great General Kim Jong-il! Long live our Workers’ Party!” Then we all rose to our feet and shouted the words together.
When we returned to school, around 5:30, I sat alone in my office and was puzzled to hear what sounded like bits and pieces of the very same speech. Although the sound was garbled, I was able to trace it to the open window of one of the bigger classrooms around the corner. I pretended to use the bathroom and tiptoed over to that corner. Through the window I could see the students watching the taped speech on TV as a part of their special afternoon meeting.
At about 6:45, I sat in the cafeteria and watched my class walk in. They wore dark expressions and avoided our eyes. Some of them literally cringed at the sight of us. I should have felt hurt, but I understood. I had seen and heard the speech. It could only have been deeply confusing to be exhorted to prepare for a war against the American imperialists and then have to turn around and face us. They were like soldiers during wartime, preparing for death and destruction, while we bounced around, asking “What’s your plan for the summer break?” or “Do you have a girlfriend?” Tonight, when they saw us, I knew that I had become the enemy, South Korean and American, the very target they had been taught to shoot and kill.
So I sat there and waited, and as I expected, no one wanted to take a seat at my table, until finally one of the class monitors joined me. He took on the burden of eating with me for the sake of his classmates, who did not want to. From his face, it was impossible to detect anything. When I asked why they were late for dinner and what they had done in their afternoon meeting, he simply shrugged.