by Joseph Kim
I still thought like a street person. I said to myself, If one church gave me twenty yuan, I’ll hit every church I can find and clean up. Ten churches meant two hundred yuan. A fortune!
I took the bus to Yanji. When I came out of the station, the sight before me was overwhelming—tall skyscrapers, a torrent of honking cars, blinking lights in every imaginable color, people walking by in clothes so fashionable and well tailored that I felt dizzy. It was as if I’d landed on another planet, down to the traffic lights, which I’d never had to deal with before (there were so few cars in North Korea, you could walk right through a red light). To calm my nerves, I bought a pack of cigarettes from a street vendor; I handed over five yuan, hoping that would be enough. The vendor handed me my change and I shoved it in my pocket with great relief.
I walked all morning and finally found a church with a Korean sign out front. The sight of the words in the familiar script gave me a feeling of homecoming. Inside was a small lobby where a few parishioners were sitting around a card table. I approached them and blurted out my story. One man turned to me and said, “You need money? My son can’t even find a job!”
I was so shocked I was sure I heard the man wrong. But the looks on the faces of the others left no uncertainty. These were my people, and yet they were filled with contempt for me. I retreated to a couch, my emotions—resentment, anger, confusion—released in quiet tears. Eventually a church member brought me four steamed buns and begrudgingly handed me twenty yuan. I ate a bun and left, eager to get away.
I walked around the city for several more hours. As the sun sank in the sky, I grew tired. I found myself at the foot of an enormous bridge that seemed to arch into the sky. A river flowed to my right and passersby streamed by on my left. I envied them, people with actual destinations, whereas I was lost and alone in this huge, clashing place.
It began to rain. I needed to find shelter for the night. I ended up in the poor area of the city, where I spotted an apartment building with broken windows. Walking inside, I found a room with nothing but an old mattress on the floor. I collapsed on it and closed my eyes, my feet throbbing. Soon I heard a thin, rattling sound that terrified me—I was afraid someone was coming—and it kept me up for all but a few hours. In the morning light, I saw a Diet Coke can and realized that mice had been pushing it around, making the noise. The three remaining buns from the church were frozen solid; I wished I had eaten them the night before. I went back to Kai San, tired and homesick.
I returned to the half-wrecked building I’d been staying in for a week and came up with a new strategy. I asked a Korean-Chinese street vendor about churches in Tumen City, and she told me there was a big one across from the bus station. My plan was to take the bus there, memorizing the locations of all the churches on the way, then walk back, hitting every place I’d spotted on my return trip.
When I got to Tumen City, I looked across the street from the station, but the building there had no cross on it. I found out later that the church was being renovated and Mass was being held elsewhere. I thought I had ended up in the wrong place and fear immediately seized me. I wandered the streets of Tumen City looking for crosses. When I found one, I walked into the church. I saw a verse on the wall, Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” I felt it had been written especially for me. The words penetrated to my heart, and my hopes revived. A middle-aged woman walked by, nicely dressed, and I poured out my story to her. She listened kindly, then handed me fifty yuan, just like that. I was overjoyed. Outside, I bought some traditional Korean food before spotting an old man selling pineapple slices. Pineapple in North Korea was super-expensive, and I never dreamed I’d ever get to try it. I decided to buy a slice with my newfound riches. I popped it into my mouth, thinking it would taste like nothing I’d ever eaten before. But the pineapple slice was sour and watery; I nearly spit it out. Disenchanted, I walked to the train station, stole a bicycle, and rode back to Kai San.
I remembered there were eight or nine churches along the way, but my bad luck returned: they were all closed, apparently because it was a weekday. It wasn’t until the next morning that I found an open church, where three or four Korean-Chinese men were sitting around a big pot of meat; they dipped into it with chopsticks as they chatted. They eyed me suspiciously as I came through the door. I made up a new story on the spot, telling the men I was headed to Hoon Choon to find my long-lost sister. Could they help me with some money to get there? The men looked at one another, their expressions alternating between boredom and disgust. Finally one handed me fifteen yuan, and I pedaled off toward Hoon Choon before doubling back to continue my cash-gathering mission on the way to Kai San. Passing the church again, I saw the men were now standing outside, talking to another man, straddling a motorcycle. They shouted for me to stop.
My heart froze. I instantly weighed my options: obey their order, make a run for it up the mountain, or take my chances on the bicycle. I knew the motorcycle would be too fast for me, so I hopped off the bike a few feet away from the men. They began to question me roughly and made me turn out my pockets. When the folded notes of different denominations spilled out, one of them yelled, “I knew this guy was lying!” Two of the men started beating me, bloodying my lip and nose. When they’d had enough, the man holding my money returned it and told me to get lost. “You’re lucky we’re Christians,” he said.
My face was throbbing painfully. I pedaled up and down the nearby hills, wondering what to do next, and then made my way back to Kai San, where I found the abandoned house and tried to fall asleep. When I took off my shoes and socks, I was shocked at the sight of my feet. It had been weeks since I’d slept somewhere without my shoes on. My feet were swollen, clammy, and pale white, like a drowning victim’s. I knew if I didn’t find a warm, dry place to stay, they were going to get worse.
The next day, I went back to the church in Tumen City, the only one where I’d found real kindness and understanding. The members welcomed me and offered me a room in the church where I could sleep. They returned with a plate of white rice and thick, sweet Chinese sausage, which I quickly devoured. I hadn’t expected such treatment; I thought they might give me another fifty yuan and send me on my way.
Though I’d found a place to stay, I was terrified of seeing the generous woman again. By now, word must have reached her that I was telling the same story all over the area and milking Christians for everything they were worth. I was under the impression that all Christians were rich, and felt no guilt about taking their money. When I saw the woman, however, she only smiled at me, her eyes all warmth with no trace of suspicion. I found out that she was, in fact, the pastor’s wife.
One evening a few days after I’d arrived, I was half asleep in the church lobby when I heard some of the parishioners talking. They were gathered around passing the time before Mass began. “Pastor’s teeth are terrible,” I heard one say. “They give him so much pain he can’t sleep at night. But with three children, who can afford a dentist?”
I felt as if something—a sharp sword—had cut through me. The pastor’s family was poor! And he was suffering from health problems. Yet his wife had given me fifty yuan as if it were nothing. I became curious about who these people were and what made them so different from the men and women who turned me away.
I memorized the Apostolic Creed and read the Bible every chance I got. The pastor’s wife and the parishioners were overjoyed at this, so much so that I would turn the pages whenever I saw a church member coming, without comprehending the stories told on them. My interest in Scripture was the only way I could pay back these kind people for their love and concern. But the biblical world bewildered me completely.
I couldn’t stay at the Tumen City church indefinitely. A local pastor who led the congregation began to look around for someone to sponsor me. Eventually she found a Korean-Chinese grandmother, about seventy-five, a strong Christian, very young in spirit, who had been looking for a North Korean teenage
r to help her with the dishes and household cleaning.
“I’m not looking for a boy,” the old woman told the pastor. “They’re too dangerous. Please find me a girl.”
But he persisted. Everyone in that area of China was hoping to find a female North Korean defector to help around the house, because they were vulnerable and easy to exploit. Their popularity made them quite scarce. The pastor hammered home this point, but the woman was adamant.
At last she relented. “I’ll tell you what,” the grandmother said. “If it is God’s will, I will take the boy.”
“And just how will you know if it’s God’s will?” the pastor asked.
“When I meet him I will ask him if his name is Joseph. If he says yes, then I will know.”
The old woman and the pastor made a secret deal. If my name turned out to be Joseph, I would have a sponsor and a permanent place to stay, which very few North Korean boys ever found. The pastor came to me and, despite his word to the woman, told me what had happened.
“You must say that you are Joseph,” he said. “It’s the only way.”
I was offended and hurt. My name was all I had left of my father, all I had left of my childhood. Everything else had been sold off or taken from me. To give away my name for some hot food and a roof over my head was too much.
“I won’t do it,” I said emphatically.
But the pastor, who was a very determined person, didn’t relent. “You must,” she said. She wouldn’t let the subject rest, no matter how many tears I shed. I couldn’t stay at the church any longer, and the old woman was my only remaining hope of staying safe in China.
Eventually I agreed to at least meet the old woman. She came to the church and found me in my room. She sat down and greeted me. I nodded to her.
“Are you Joseph?” the old woman said in her no-nonsense way.
I looked at her wrinkled, kind face, which was tense with expectation. “Yes,” I said.
The old woman’s eyes went wide and she clasped my hand in hers. I could feel them trembling. Old woman, I thought, let me tell you what is going to happen. I am going to let you call me Joseph, and I am going to your home and I will steal all your money and all your valuables. I will take them and go back to North Korea and live under my real name. I will buy my mother’s freedom and live happily with her and never see you or China again.
That was my plan. I was filled with a lingering bitterness.
The grandmother lived in an apartment building in Yanji, which was in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture, about thirty miles from Tumen City. We took a bus to her neighborhood. I went along willingly but didn’t trust the old woman. After we arrived at her home, I started calling her Grandma but felt no emotion in my heart.
North Korea—and my mother—seemed to recede farther and farther away each hour I spent in China. I stayed in my room in Grandma’s apartment, out of sight of the police. I watched the people on the street and exercised and cleaned the place. I was in limbo, but the possibility of a new life seemed right around the corner.
Grandma wasn’t the usual seventy-five-year-old Chinese woman. She lived with her son—a kindly man of few words whom I called Uncle—but was very independent. Grandma even had a boyfriend. His name was Mr. Lee, and he was at least six feet tall and handsome, with white hair; he was about eight years younger than Grandma. Mr. Lee spoke some English and Russian. It was this elderly gentleman who, on first meeting me, saw my ragged clothes and went out and bought me a red jacket and a couple of pairs of jeans and sneakers, clothes that any Chinese teenager with a little money would wear.
I was so moved by his gesture, I sat on my bed with the jeans in my hands, their creases sharp and fresh, and tried to hold back my tears. It was another stage in my becoming human again. All teenagers want to look cool; somehow Mr. Lee knew that. I quickly shed my old outfit and tried on my new clothes, turning this way and that as I studied myself in the mirror. After a few minutes, my happiness faded. I realized I couldn’t wear my new jeans outside, trapped as I was in Grandma’s spare room. This depressed me. I undressed and put my old clothes on again.
I was still far from being able to function in normal society. I wasn’t free, I had no real home, and my confidence was gone. When Grandma’s granddaughter visited, she was cute and very sweet. She brought bananas, which I’d told Grandma I’d never eaten. It was obviously a gift for me. “Hi, Joseph, how are you?” she said. Grandma smiled and left the room.
I shook my head. To talk to this dazzling creature—it was unthinkable. She’d never seen the degradation I’d seen; she’d never been a scavenging animal as I had been. I felt that I was another species almost. I couldn’t make small talk or tease her.
“Hi,” I said shyly, then turned and retreated to my room. It wasn’t just the difference in our backgrounds, but also my secret, that I’d left North Korea in part to help my mother and still hadn’t returned. The guilt was something that accumulated every day, growing heavier.
For the first week, I never left the apartment. Grandma insisted on this. She’d kept a North Korean refugee before and the experience had broken her heart. All she would say about him was that he was in his thirties, very religious, a heavy smoker, and a good and gentle man. (I, too, was a smoker, though I tried to hide this from her, knowing she disapproved.) The mystery refugee had been snatched off the streets by Chinese police and she’d never seen him again. Grandma was afraid the same thing would happen to me.
Grandma worked with a South Korean church, which paid some of her rent and reimbursed her for any North Koreans she took in. But still, had she been caught, she would have had to pay a five-thousand-yuan penalty. That was big money for her. She was taking a risk by even allowing me to visit her.
I was safe and had plenty of food to eat; in North Korean terms, I was a great success. But my state of mind was very unsettled. I kept seeing my mother in my daydreams. I wondered if she was expecting me to visit her with enough money to buy her freedom. Did she say to herself, “My son will come tomorrow”? That thought kept sleep away many nights.
I also thought of Bong Sook. Now that I was in China, I was closer to my sister. But I had no idea how to find her. I didn’t know if she had a new name or what prefecture she was living in. I didn’t have the power yet to search for her. To ask about a missing North Korean girl would be reckless in the extreme.
To find Bong Sook, I first had to free myself.
Chapter
Fifty-Two
* * *
ONE EVENING, GRANDMA called to me that she was going out. I heard the click of the front door and waited a few minutes, listening in case she returned for a forgotten purse or something. When I was sure she was gone, I got up from my bed, walked down the hallway, and turned into her room. Days before, I’d watched her from the hallway as she stuffed something beneath her mattress. I knew what it was: money. Like so many older Chinese people, Grandma didn’t trust the banks and kept a good amount of cash at home.
Her room was neat and plain, with a cross on the wall and an electric blanket on the bed, covered by a pink duvet with little flowers on it. I lifted the mattress and saw three or four hundred yuan (about fifty U.S. dollars). I didn’t want to pick up the money and count it, thinking Grandma might have a system, piling the bills a certain way so she could tell if they had been moved. I was suspicious of everyone, and assumed Grandma was too.
So I stood there staring at the stack of wrinkled cash. Should I take it and go back to Hoeryong? Was there enough to redeem Mother? I had no idea. Three hundred yuan was a small fortune in North Korea, but I didn’t know how much it took to bribe a guard. (Later, I realized it wasn’t nearly enough money for what I wanted to do.)
My arm began to ache from holding up the mattress, but I barely felt it. My mind was a buzzing cloud of thoughts. Mother and North Korea, a country I still loved, were competing with this other world I’d found, a world represented by the rich variety of food I saw every day, food that I could eat anytime I p
leased. That meant a lot to me.
If I took the money and disappeared, Grandma would be heartsick. I didn’t want to hurt her. She’d been good to me. She had even thrown a small party for my birthday. Mr. Lee and Uncle had come, and we’d eaten kimchi and chicken and fried pork, and I’d had three glasses of wine. Though that amount of alcohol barely got me tipsy, I’d pretended to be half drunk, to Grandma’s delight. At the end of the meal, she’d emerged from the kitchen with a vanilla cake topped with pineapple and orange slices, candles blazing. It was the first real cake I’d ever tasted in my life.
How could I betray her trust?
A voice inside my head said, You can’t go back. You won’t make it, you’ll be caught, and it will be another miserable chapter in your life.
But I knew I was making excuses. I couldn’t admit the truth: I wanted to stay. I had plenty of food here. I had a few people who took care of me. I had encountered new things—unconditional love, ethics, Christianity—that I wanted to experience.
I set the mattress back down on the money without touching it. Let’s wait and see what happens, I thought.
Did every day I resisted stealing the money mean another day closer to death for my mother? I didn’t want to think about it. I became an expert in not thinking about such things.
Slowly, I saw that Grandma really cared for me from the bottom of her heart. She treated me as her blood, as her own grandson. Eventually the name Joseph would lose its bitterness for me. I would accept the name as my own, in tribute to the new life I’d found and to Grandma’s true heart. Joseph Kim. That was me.
One day Grandma came to me and said, “Put your new clothes on, Joseph. We’re going to the market.”
“Yes, Grandma,” I replied calmly. But I was very, very excited. It would be my first time out of the apartment.