Jia: A Novel of North Korea

by Hyejin Kim

  Everything about this commanding woman was simple. Her bobbed hair, hanging like a curtain above her shoulders, was pitch-black and glossy. Her black skirt and jacket looked worn-out compared to her shiny hair. As she spoke, she flipped her hair behind her right ear. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were positioned appropriately on her face, and everything was the correct size. Her hands, however, were disproportionately large; they were too big and sturdy-looking.

  "Aunt Ann, take her to your room and instruct her as we just discussed," the woman said, turning to the older woman beside her, who appeared to be in her 50s. Aunt Ann looked up at us, nodding her head.

  The commanding woman glanced impetuously at her wristwatch and grabbed her hefty gray bag. The tendons on the back of her hand jumped out. "I'll come back tomorrow. Be back here at eight A.M. See you then."

  As she spun around to leave, she stumbled, and my hands reached toward her involuntarily to prevent her from falling. She straightened suddenly, turned back to me, and said, "Oh, call me Director Park. Make yourself at home. Teacher Song was also my teacher." She slipped through the door. Her exit was as sudden as her introduction.

  After she left, I had a chance to look around the auditorium. The stage was medium-sized, a little bigger than the one at the orphanage. But the auditorium was beautiful and clean, with about a hundred deep-red seats. They looked comfortable. A thick curtain of red velvet hung at the back of the stage.

  "This is the small stage. There's a much bigger one downstairs, but they don't open it very often; most of the time the dancers practice here." I turned and found Aunt Ann standing behind me, wearing a round khaki hat and a simple uniform. Covered in ivory cotton work gloves, her hands looked bigger than the rest of her body. Her halfmoon eyes disappeared when she smiled.

  "This building is huge," I said, glancing around the theater.

  She took off her gloves. "And you've only seen a tiny part of it. Let's go. I'll take you to our room. We will be roommates from today on." She looked down at my backpack, next to my feet, and grinned. "Compared to this place, our room is tiny. If that backpack is all you brought, that's just fine." She stuffed her gloves in the small pocket of her jacket.

  I followed Aunt Ann through the lobby, and at length into the hotel's cafeteria. Six shimmering chandeliers dangled from the ivory ceiling. A fragrant aroma pierced the air, and I wondered what food they were cooking; it was different from the aroma of regular food. I looked around, but there were no dishes on the tables.

  "What is this smell, Aunt Ann? It's incredibly good."

  "Yes, right. The smell is-it's not the food. It's the tea the foreigners drink every day, instead of water. You're right, the aroma is good, but the taste is so bad...so bitter. It's like tea from hell." She moved as close as possible to me and said under her breath, "I stole a taste once when I had to clean up the tables. I was nervous other people might see, so I poured the rest of a cup into my mouth. Blech-I rushed to the restroom and rinsed out my mouth over and over."

  I couldn't believe that such a sweet smell came with a bitter flavor.

  When we passed through the kitchen, people wearing white from top to bottom stopped their chores. "Hey, Ann, is she the new girl?" they asked. I bobbed my head toward them. They chuckled and said, "You're lucky to have such a nice old roommate."

  Aunt Ann put her hands on her waist and shouted at them, "Who says I'm old? I'm young enough to be her friend."

  People laughed. "Oh, well, if you say so..." They all seemed so pleasant.

  Continuing down a long hall, we reached our room. Aunt Ann opened the door. At first sight, the room looked about the same size as a toilet. I couldn't help comparing it to my previous room, which I had shared with nineteen girls.

  Aunt Ann had everything organized so well. "You can put your things on the right side," she said. "Fortunately, I don't own a lot, either."

  Two jackets, a skirt, a pair of pants, and several perfectly ironed shirts hung evenly on the wall. Her things looked simple. On the windowsill, there was an old radio, with a long antenna sticking up from the side. Through the window I could see the Taedong River in the distance; the room had a good view of Pyongyang. In one corner, two books and a little, transparent, chipped cup sat atop a miniature tea table.

  "Do you live here?" I asked, putting my backpack down where Aunt Ann indicated. I thought she must have a separate house in the city where she could go to see her family.

  "This building has been my home since I lost my whole family five years ago." She took off her hat, revealing a head of long, shocking white hair, tied neatly with a black string. Her unwrinkled skin didn't match her hair at all.

  "What happened?" The question came out unexpectedly, and I realized immediately I shouldn't have asked it. Feeling ill at ease, I studied her face.

  "There was a fire in a factory five years ago. My husband and son worked there together, but one day, they didn't come home for dinner. I waited and waited for them. After a while, I heard from my neighbors about the accident. So...that's the story," she said, folding her hat and gloves neatly and placing them on the tea table.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry." I was embarrassed to have drawn out such a sad story.

  "It's okay. It's history. My sadness has dried out, and I'm sure they must have better lives in the other world. They're always happy in my dreams. They never cry... Never say they miss me... I decided not to drive myself crazy thinking about them." She smiled widely at me. "I never expected such a young girl for a roommate. Are you twenty yet?"

  "I'm eighteen."

  "I can't even remember being that age. What was I like back then, I wonder. Was I pretty like you?" She seemed transported for the briefest moment, and then came back to me. "You're lucky to be here-everyone at the hotel is nice."

  I looked at her and said with a grin, "Yes, I think you're right."

  I thought about Teacher Song. How considerate she was! She must have toiled hard to send me to such a good place.

  From the next day forward, I was one of the busiest people in the hotel. In the early morning, before the dancers and singers came to the practice room, I had to clean it up. They were professional dancers and singers for guests at the hotel, and they practiced every day to stay on top of the game. They were carefully selected to work at the hotel and justifiably proud of their status. In addition to performing traditional drum and fan dances wearing hanbok and revolutionary dances wearing military uniforms, they could all play at least two musical instruments, and they were talented singers as well.

  Running errands for Director Park and helping with Aunt Ann's chores were also my duties. As soon as Director Park introduced me to the other dancers, I had to learn how to assist them and to find out where their things belonged, like cosmetics and costumes.

  There were 50 in the group, the most fashionable women I had ever seen. They even played the male roles in the dances and operas, so their vocal ranges were impressively wide. I was excited to meet real, professional dancers. Every morning, they practiced how to smile and gesture. I never thought a day could be so short.

  One day, Director Park beckoned me over as I was gazing enviously at the dancers practicing onstage. "Jia, come here."

  I rushed to her. "Yes, Director Park?" Although she looked frail and girlish, she was severe, make no mistake, and she didn't tolerate laziness in her dancers. Sometimes I couldn't help smiling, because her teaching style and hard facial expressions reminded me so much of Teacher Song.

  "Jia, this woman will teach you to dance from now on. Call her Teacher Son." A young woman was walking toward us-Sunyoung, one of the best dancers at the hotel. She always wore a bright smile.

  Sunyoung's high, sonorous voice echoed through the practice room. "See, Teacher, look at her long legs and arms, they'll help her make much prettier gestures than anyone else here." She stood next to me and said with a low voice, so Director Park couldn't hear, "If you don't mind, just call me Sister; I'm hardly old enough to be called a teacher."


  Sunyoung's face attracted attention. The first time I saw her among the dancing team members, I felt she must be from another country. She was the tallest of the group, and her nose started prominently from her forehead, while her thick, folded eyelids gave her features a clear-cut look. After that first meeting, we became best friends.

  The dancers who worked at the hotel thought I was an orphan from a good family who was only there for practical training. They were all from families with good backgrounds, and their lives were as splendid as their appearance; it seemed they could get anything they wanted. After the festival, having curly hair became popular in Pyongyang, and women bought colorful blouses and skirts from other countries at import markets. Only a chosen few, such as these dancers, could afford those fashions.

  Employees were chosen to work at the hotel only after passing an investigation into their family background. The stigma of belonging to the "reactionary class," or to the "commonly" or "extremely" bad, or having any other blemish on one's family record meant immediate disqualification. The dancers were proud of having made the cut, and they assumed I, too, came from a privileged background. When I started working in the souvenir section as a clerk, the dancers and other employees expressed sympathy at my having been assigned extra work. I had to practice dancing after my shift at the souvenir section, or at night with Sunyoung. Some dancers envied my job as a clerk and complained that they couldn't take on extra work because their families would lose face.

  "The souvenir section's the best place to see foreigners up close and have private conversations with them," they would say.

  As a matter of fact, I didn't mind doing the extra work, if only as a token of gratitude to the hotel for accepting me. I wanted also to make up for 15 years of isolation from the real world.

  Three years after my arrival, the hotel provided me with a flat nearby. It had been allocated for an employee of the hotel, but nobody else had wanted to move into such a small space. Finally, I would be on own in the city.

  My determination to move was sparked, in time, by Sunyoung's tragedy.

  A year and a half after we became friends, gossip about Sunyoung started brewing among the dancers.

  "She's a slut."

  I'll never forget the shock of hearing that word spat out by the other dancers. They avoided talking about it with me because they knew Sunyoung and I were always together. I began to notice, however, that whenever we showed up in the practice room, the usual babble of voices would halt. I worried about whether Sunyoung had heard the rumors, but she was the same woman: full of vitality, gay, constantly joking; she got along with others very well. I felt the other dancers were secretly jealous of her, and I could only hope the rumor would die out.

  After a month of continual performances, the dancers had their first break in a long while.

  That morning, no one was in the practice hall. I rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning the mirrors of a dressing room, when Sister Min and Sister Oh came in. Min exclaimed, "Sure, no smoke without fire! She did it. It's obvious. Otherwise, those kinds of dirty stories wouldn't follow Sunyoung around. How could she do that? So gross.... Such a wanton woman!"

  When they discovered me, they were startled and shut their mouths right away.

  I pretended I'd heard nothing. "Good morning, sisters."

  "Hi, Jia."

  They sat at the dressing table, looking at their faces in the mirror. "My skin is getting drier. I hate winter," Sister Oh said, feigning innocence. I organized the scattered cosmetics.

  "Have you heard the gossip?" I asked, not looking at them.

  Sister Oh, who always enjoyed a good rumor, turned to me. "About what?" she asked.

  The mention of a story got them excited. I kept my head down and continued, "About Sister Sunyoung... Can you believe it?" I pretended to know.

  "See? Even she's heard!" Sister Oh shouted with joy, and the two women dragged their chairs over to me.

  Sister Min grabbed my right arm. "What did you hear? Is there more recent news?"

  "No, not really... You know... I wonder if Sister Sunyoung has heard; she wouldn't do those things anymore if she had ears."

  "Exactly! How dare she give her body away? Isn't she scared? I heard that foreign men are different from ours. Look at them: so big and tall. Actually she's big and tall compared to us, so maybe it's possible for her." They giggled, covering their mouths with their hands.

  I felt flushed. "But do you think it's true? It might just be gossip. I can't imagine..."

  Sister Oh stood up and leaned against the dressing table, forcing me to stop cleaning. Her face was red with excitement, her nostrils flaring. "No, Jia. I thought like that when I first heard, but Guard Kim confirmed it yesterday. He knows all the gossip here, and everything he says turns out to be true. He told me that Sunyoung and Guard Lee have worked out their dirty strategy. While she and their foreign target are doing it in the room, Guard Lee sneaks in, takes pictures, and threatens to notify the target's country and the hotel of what he saw, unless he's paid in US dollars. After that, Sunyoung and Guard Lee share the money."

  She waved her hand in front of her mouth. "Ugh, I'm making my mouth dirty. But it seems like it's true. Guard Kim said that while guards were drinking together, Guard Lee boasted about how he made money. Isn't it weird?"

  Sister Oh sat down in front of the dressing table again and took a good look at her face. "I really need some good cream.... Jia, I understand how you're feeling now. You follow her like a real sister. You must be so shocked. To be honest, I thought you already knew. We even suspected you were part of her scheme. Anyway ...I'm glad you're not. I really respected her when I first came here. She was my ideal. But now I feel ashamed for having looked up to such a dust rag."

  I ran all over the hotel looking for Sunyoung. What was going on? I didn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it until I heard it from Sunyoung directly. But she was nowhere to be found.

  My last stop was the restaurant, where I found her chatting gaily with Cook Kim. I could hear her high-pitched laughter from across the room. How happy she was! How elegant she looked! I felt determined to stop the dirty gossip about her at once.

  I approached her and tugged on her hand. She looked at my sweaty face with startled eyes, and asked in alarm, "What's wrong? What's wrong with you, Jia? Has something happened?"

  I dragged her from the kitchen, forgetting to excuse myself to Cook Kim. We went to a restroom, and I checked under the door of each stall for shoes. Finding nobody, I turned to her and hissed, "Sister Sunyoung, do you know you're the topic of the most horrible gossip right now? Have you heard the thumping lies being told about you? I want to hear from you directly that it's not true. Tell them it's not true. Stop their tongues!" I looked into her eyes, pleading, but could read nothing in her face. "Sister Sunyoung, please say something."

  Sunyoung's face had darkened. "I have no choice but to do it, Jia," she groaned.

  "Jia. The gossip is right. Of course, it is more complicated and they exaggerate. But mostly, it's right."

  I stepped back and tried to still my reeling head.

  "Jia... I don't know how to begin telling this story. I wanted to tell you about it, but I didn't know where to start. I'm not the slut people say I am." She looked at my neck, not at my eyes.

  "Several years ago, I fell in love with a foreigner. I knew it was forbidden. I never thought it would happen to me. He lived here as a student and officer in the consulate of his country, and would often attend my performances. When I went home every night, he would be waiting at the gate of the hotel with a smile and a flower. At first, he couldn't speak Korean very well. Of course, I was scared of him, but also curious; I didn't shun him. After a month of flowers, I got used to seeing him and was able to meet his eyes with confidence. He was beautiful. I liked his gray eyes and dark-blond hair. Gradually he began speaking to me in broken Korean. You can't imagine how cute that was. I had never heard the beating of my heart inside me before, but it happened whenev
er I saw him. We secretly started going out. Jia, try to understand, the rules didn't matter anymore. I danced for him.... I laughed, thinking of him."

  Her smile was darkening into a frown.

  "We did what we shouldn't do. I wanted to express my feelings and accept him, not just in my heart. Who cared about finding a man with stable status and power for the future? I didn't want to control my feelings. That was the happiest time of my life, but one day screwed up everything." Sunyoung studied my face for a second, but my eyes never left hers.

  "When we were in bed in his room, Guard Lee sneaked inside and took pictures of us. He had suspected our relationship and threatened to notify the hotel and the embassy. We were freaked out-I begged Guard Lee, but, what was worse, he recorded our conversation, and demanded a lot of money. Above all, I was worried about my lover; he was more scared than me. He called his parents instantly to send the money, and as soon as he got it, he gave it to Guard Lee and went back to his country, telling the embassy he was ill and homesick. He left without a word to me. I couldn't believe it. After he'd gone, I was out of my mind. I knocked on his door so many times, but his room was empty. I even thought about killing myself. I cried while holding a razor blade to cut my wrist in the restroom. His leaving didn't make things simpler; Guard Lee kept the tape recorder and the pictures and said he would give the evidence to the hotel unless I took other foreigners to bed. He directed me to entice foreigners and play out the same scenario. He didn't let me lock the door while I did the job. He would come into the room and threaten the target. He took money from those pathetic victims."

  Sunyoung paused, and I watched her face. I had never seen her so tired. Her long lashes made shadows under her eyes.

  "You don't know how humiliating it was, but there was no way I could avoid him or run away. Sometimes he brought the foreigners to me. After a while, I stopped caring; my heart had melted." Sunyoung rubbed her face with her hands. "I want out of this nightmare. I haven't followed his orders very well recently. He is angry with me and criticizes my laziness. I thought he would make enough money and leave me alone. I implored him so many times, and he seemed to feel pity for me. I thought if I persuaded him, I never imagined he would tell other people." Sunyoung broke into tears and covered her whole face with both hands, as though she was trying to hide the painful life she had led.