Under the Same Sky

by Joseph Kim

  The deal was quickly done. If we ran out of money, my mother would take Bong Sook to China. They would earn money there, sending back a small portion of their earnings to pay for my keep in Hoeryong. When they had enough money to set up a household, they would return. I didn’t think of what my mother and sister would do to make all this cash. To me, China was a land where no one was ever hungry and where people had everything they needed. I wasn’t completely naïve; I didn’t believe the streets were paved with gold or that cash fell out of the sky. But I believed there was money there, more than we had ever seen in our lives.

  When the time came to leave, my mother and sister would make their way two hours north to Sambong, where they would hire a broker. The broker knew some of the soldiers who regularly patrolled the Tumen River and would bribe one to let them cross. Their journey would still be scary and dangerous. There were many other soldiers who might challenge them and even fire on them. But this was the safest option.

  In the meantime, to support us my mother got involved in fish smuggling. Many Chinese believed that fish from across the border tasted better. So North Korean fish were a popular commodity in Chinese towns. My mother began buying fish in the Hoeryong market, then smuggled them across the river. She even snuck into the border towns to arrange the transactions. “China isn’t like the government says,” she told us when she came back, and I felt hope rising in her. “The Chinese are much richer than North Koreans, and they’ll pay for delicacies.”

  My mother was making good money. We ate white rice every day, and she thought of buying me a bicycle—a Japanese bicycle!—so that I wouldn’t have to use Small Grandfather’s all the time. My mother was always happy to spend money, unlike my late father, who was very cautious.

  We were doing well, so the move to China was put off for the moment. Our fears receded. My frame filled out again and I put on weight. I hoped Mother had finally learned how to succeed, and that she wouldn’t have to take Bong Sook away. The longer it went without her leaving, the more hopeful I was.

  But always inside me there lingered the fear that the only real family left to me would be taken away.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  * * *

  IT WAS AROUND this time that I discovered three things in rapid succession: smoking, girls, and fashion. Smoking was easy to pick up in North Korea, where people rarely worry about living into old age and so light up every chance they get. My friends and I thought it was an adult thing to do. We bought cheap North Korean cigarettes one at a time, smoking them until the ash singed our fingers. When the smoke hit our lungs, we coughed as though we’d been doing this for years.

  Fashion and girls came next. Those discoveries were intimately related to each other. One day I announced to my mother that I wanted a new school coat, a black one that was of better quality than the one the school had provided. A black coat would disguise the mud that vehicles splashed on me as I walked the unpaved roads of Hoeryong. I would look cleaner, sharper, more like one of the boys from rich families who bought their clothes in China, even if they were knockoffs. I begged my mother incessantly. I desperately wanted new shoes, too—I’d always loved having a clean, new pair, so much so that when my father would buy me shoes as a boy, I’d tell him, “I don’t have to have dinner tonight, this is enough!”—but the coat was all-important.

  I needed to look good to impress the kids at school, like Hyang Mi, the smartest girl in my class, with a round face I found irresistible. When I looked at Hyang Mi, I felt a longing to be with her, to make her laugh. A decent outfit was, in my mind, the first requirement in getting her attention.

  My mother bought me the wool coat and I wore it to school proudly. I began to brush my one pair of trousers and clean my only pair of dress shoes before leaving for class every day. I was becoming a typical teenager, I suppose.

  A few weeks later, after my transformation, Hyang Mi whispered to me that she wanted to give me something. The next day she slipped a small object into my hand, cold and smooth. I looked down. It was a plastic figurine, brightly colored, a toy of some kind. She must have stolen it from her little brother. I didn’t need a new toy, but the figurine meant a great deal to me because it was from Hyang Mi. I gripped it tightly in my hand on the way home.

  From that day on, I felt proud getting ready for school, putting on my new black coat and the school uniform that my mother had bought in the market. Knowing that Hyang Mi was getting dressed too, and thinking of me, made my head feel light. The pain of my father’s death receded slightly.

  Of course, this being my mother, the good times couldn’t last. I suspect she overreached again and got stuck with goods she couldn’t sell. Within four months, my mother had no more money. This time my father wasn’t there to cover her debts. She wore the clay mask of false confidence again, and I grew depressed, knowing that bad times lay ahead.

  Small Grandfather? There was no chance of help there. My mother was too afraid to ask him for a loan. She went to him in his room and told him she would be taking Bong Sook to China. They set the departure date for the early fall. On September 12, the day when it is traditional to visit the graves of your loved ones, Mother, Bong Sook, and I went to my father’s. We were all feeling melancholy, and Bong Sook sobbed so much at the graveside that her body shook. I thought she was still grieving over my dad.

  Why didn’t my mood sensor, which I was so proud of, tell me the true reason for her tears? I felt nothing strange, but clearly Bong Sook was thinking about her future. She was in torment, and I knew nothing about it. This has always bothered me, these signs that I missed again and again.

  After the visit to the grave, we went to Sambong, a two-hour train trip north of Hoeryong, where the broker lived. We stayed at her house while my mother prepared for her crossing into China. There is a hill in Sambong that is the highest point for miles around. When you climb to the top and look southwest across the Tumen River, you can see another hill on the Chinese side. Just beyond it, visible only from this one spot, you can see a small Chinese city, Kai San. The day before she and Bong Sook were scheduled to leave, my mother took my sister and me for a walk to the top of the hill.

  My mother scanned the horizon, shading her eyes. Finally she found what she was looking for and pointed. “Look, do you see that house?”

  The air was clear in Sambong. There was no industry to pollute it. You could pick out individual streets, the shapes of the bigger houses, even the kind of tile used on the roofs.

  “Where?” I said.

  “That one, two stories, light stone, dark orange tile.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Who lives there? Do you know them?”

  “In this house live two men,” my mother said. “One is eighty years old, the other only fifty. I know them well; I’ve stayed at their house. If anything happens to me, they will know where I am.”

  I looked at it in wonder. I had no idea that my mother had made friends across the river. (I later learned that the fifty-year-old was the partner of the North Korean broker, and sold everything she brought to him from our side of the border.) To have a Chinese friend is a big deal—both a big risk and a big opportunity. I had a new respect for my mother: she had waded across the cold river that flowed at our feet and made contacts in a foreign city. It was impressive.

  “And behind this house lives a very good woman,” my mother said. “Her name is Cho Hee. To me, she’s like a second mother. I even call her that.” She had cleaned Cho Hee’s house and listened to her stories. The old woman’s daughter was working in a faraway city, so Cho Hee had practically adopted my mother.

  Like my father with his stories of the sangju, my mother had a reason for taking me to the top of that hill, but it wouldn’t be clear until later. Then I would understand the motive behind that leisurely afternoon walk.

  My mother and Bong Sook got ready to leave the next evening. I watched them pack, thinking this was just another trip, one of many my family had made to survive. When it c
ame time to say goodbye, we stood in the foyer of the broker’s house. Bong Sook was wearing a dark red sweater, and her hair was tied up in a ponytail. I can’t recall what my mother was wearing.

  “Goodbye, Kwang Jin,” Bong Sook said.

  I thought I would be seeing her again in a few weeks, two months at the most. She would go to China and earn lots of money and come back. I was calm and unemotional.

  “Bye,” I said.

  I remember the moment before she turned and walked away. In my mind, her face is dark and the air around her head is dark, too, as if someone smudged the space behind her with a thick pencil. I can’t make out her features; everything except the shape of her head is obscured. I can’t tell you what her face looked like, if there were tears in her eyes. Did she know the truth of what was happening?

  My memory is infused with a feeling of foreboding and sadness, but at the time, my mood sensor was turned off. I had said goodbye to my family members many times, and this was no different.

  I wished my mother a safe journey and turned away.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Four

  * * *

  I STAYED IN SAMBONG for two weeks, until my mom sent her first batch of money. It was six hundred yuan; after the broker took her fee, I set off for Hoeryong with four hundred in my pocket. I’d never held so much money at once; it was enough to buy basic supplies for four months. When I got to Small Grandfather’s house, I gave him the notes. He was satisfied.

  Small Grandfather left me alone for the most part. I went back to school and played with my friends. I brushed my dark coat every time mud splashed on it and did the best I could with my old shoes. I had crushes on girls and resumed my love affair with movies.

  I was twelve now, almost a teenager. My life was my friends. I tried not to think too much about my mother or Bong Sook, dreading the unhappiness that would cloud my heart. I’m doing better than most, I told myself. I mustn’t complain. One day, I stopped by one of the two rivers that run past Hoeryong (not the Tumen, which bordered China and was off-limits to civilians), sat on the rocks, and dangled my feet in the water. I stared at a distant hill on the Chinese side and thought of my family. On the top of the hill was a Japanese-style pagoda, a familiar landmark to me since I was small. Somewhere over there are Bong Sook and Mom, I thought. I wonder what they’re doing right now.

  My youthful innocence came to an abrupt end when my mother was arrested by the Chinese authorities and sent back to Hoeryong. I found this out when a friend ran up to me as I was walking near the market: she’d seen a group of defectors being marched through the streets, their hands tied together. (The police did this not so much to humiliate the escapees; they simply had no cars to transport them.)

  “Your mother has been caught!” the friend told me.

  Conflicting emotions surged through me—shame at my mother’s embarrassment, eagerness to see her, hope that she had earned enough money to buy us all some nice things in the market. But most of all, I was desperate to ask about Bong Sook.

  We had to wait twenty days for my mother to be released from custody. Since she hadn’t gone to the interior of China, she was regarded as a trader. The North Korean government had let her off with a warning. But if it happened again, she would go to prison for many years.

  I returned home from school one day and found my mother at Small Grandfather’s. She was sitting on the floor eating a bowl of steaming soup when I arrived. I was shocked at her appearance. Her hair was matted and her cheekbones protruded from her flesh. Her clothes were stained and smelled of sweat. My mother had been tortured in jail, forced to sit cross-legged for hours, and beaten if she moved so much as an inch. When I sat down next to her, she didn’t even notice I was there. She continued hungrily slurping the soup out of the bowl.

  Bong Sook was nowhere to be seen.

  She’s starving, I thought. I’d always looked on my mother as a kind of god—all children do, I think. She was bigger than me and stronger, and I always feared her moods. It never occurred to me that the world could hurt her. But here she was, so famished that she couldn’t speak.

  I took some soup from Small Grandmother—my great-aunt—but I could hardly eat. I felt my sorrow deepen with every passing moment. My mother didn’t acknowledge me, let alone turn to hug me. She looked unnerved, wizened, and poor. The food in North Korean prisons was known to be rancid.

  As I watched her eat, my small grandfather arrived, having heard the news. He was furious, as angry as I had ever seen him. He knew the dream of surviving on Mother’s wages was over. He slammed his hand on the table.

  “I don’t know this person!” he shouted. “Who are you? I know no widow of my nephew!”

  I looked at him in shock. He was disowning my mother, freeing himself of all claims to help her.

  “Small Grandfather, how can you say this?” I wanted to yell. But I was frightened of him and said nothing. I had so many questions for my mother—What had happened? Where was Bong Sook?—but before I had a chance to ask them, Small Grandfather had thrown everything into confusion.

  “You’ve dishonored this family!” he continued shouting. “You must leave this house. And take your good-for-nothing son with you.”

  I stood up, shifting from foot to foot. Small Grandfather was so commanding, but I felt my fists clench with rage. “But you told her to go to China in the first place,” I wanted to scream. “You lived off the money she sent you!”

  Small Grandfather stormed away, tossing angry words back over his shoulder.

  It was then I realized why Small Grandfather had sent my mother and sister to China: he didn’t want to work. That was all. He had retired from the government many years before but his savings had run out. He didn’t want to go out and do something else, like work in the fields. Small Grandfather needed to eat, of course, and he wanted to stay in his big house. Many people in Hoeryong did the same, living off relatives who had gone to China and sent back money.

  Small Grandfather may have cared for us, but for him, my father’s death was primarily a business opportunity. And now our business with him was over.

  After that outburst, my great-aunt came in carrying something. Her face was filled with pain and sympathy. She was very different from Small Grandfather, a kind and quiet person.

  “Here,” she told us. “Take this.”

  It was a small plastic bag with two looping handles. Inside was food: some cooked rice, green vegetables, corn. My great-aunt looked from my mother to me. Her eyes said, I wish I could do more. But they didn’t say, Forgive him. Or Let me fix this. We had to leave their house.

  This was the way things were in North Korea. Kinship melted away in the face of hunger. Why didn’t I see that after so many times? Why did I expect each new episode to end differently?

  My mother and I left Small Grandfather’s house, our heads bowed, our minds swimming. What would become of us?

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  * * *

  WE WALKED TOWARD the center of town, trying to formulate a plan for our lives. I finally had a chance to ask my mother where Bong Sook was.

  “She’s still in China,” she said. “She’s living with a man.”

  I nodded, not comprehending. Had she found a husband?

  Later I would realize that my mother hadn’t taken my sister to China to find work. She had taken her to China to sell her.

  The Chinese towns and villages near the North Korean border have lost many of their young women to the factories in Shanghai and other industrial cities, and many farmers and small businessmen are looking for wives. Not wives in the Western sense—these are not romantic relationships. The woman is there to cook and clean and have sex. These are the “bride slaves” of North Korea, sold for about 1,500 yuan (around $240). Seven out of ten refugees who leave for China are females; eighty percent of them become bride slaves.

  It’s a sad fate, but not uncommon. My mother, who had no money to feed Bong Sook, must have felt she had no
other choice. Perhaps she was trying to save me by letting go of my sister. And being a bride slave is not the worst thing that can happen to North Korean girls. Others cross the border, led by Chinese or North Korean guides, and become sex slaves.

  The guides tell the girls they’re going to earn good wages in a factory in the interior, where there will be plenty of food and money to spend. Instead, they’re sold to brothels and forced to become prostitutes. Often their introduction to China is to be beaten for days and left in a room with no toilet, until they’re broken. Then they are raped repeatedly and violently. When they go out into town, a minder watches over them at all times.

  I didn’t know—and I still don’t know—which of these lives Bong Sook was living. I asked my mother, but all she would tell me was “We will talk about it later.” With my small grandfather forcing us out on the street, and my mother so ashamed and depressed, it wasn’t a good time to delve deeper. But it was also that North Korean attitude: the world is going to hurt you eventually. There’s no one to blame but life itself.

  I always thought we would sit down one day and she would tell me everything I wanted to know about my sister. But that time never came. The truth is, my mother didn’t know where Bong Sook was. She’d had to turn her over to the broker, the fifty-year-old Chinese man in Kai San who had paid her way across the border. She didn’t know where her daughter had ended up.