by Joseph Kim
I watched more Stallone films. In them, the bad guy lost and the good guy won. Always. This was familiar to me from North Korean spy movies, and I liked that. Another thing that impressed me was that when the good guys shot their guns, the bullets went through walls. My old gun obsession flickered. Americans can shoot through bricks? Those must be very powerful guns. Everything in America seemed more. Of course, when I went to live in America, I found out the bricks were actually drywall, which explained everything.
One last thing impressed me about Stallone: I really liked his leather gloves.
I went to my underground church and spoke to the pastor. After the service, we went for a walk. He had his arm around my shoulder. I asked him if I should go to America.
“Yes, I think you should. There you can study.”
That didn’t move me. I’d never been interested in studying.
“And in America you can go to a store twenty-four hours a day, any time you want. There is always something happening, even at night.”
I thought about that. It wasn’t an abstract thing. Life goes on twenty-four hours a day there. At the moment he said it, I felt my desire for that kind of unlimited freedom grow inside me.
America was limitless, I decided. I wanted to see what that was like.
The missionary woman didn’t return the next week, or the week after. I thought, She’s forgotten about you, Joseph. You missed your chance.
I began to pray. “Jesus,” I said, “I’m not sure if I want to go or if it’s just curiosity. If it’s your will, I will respect that. But please guide me down the correct path.”
The thing that anchored me to China was Grandma. Going to America would take me away from her, and I knew that would hurt her terribly. I was the second refugee she’d taken care of, the ghost of the other North Korean she had lost. “If you weren’t here, Joseph,” she told me once, “I’m not sure how I would go on.” That weighed on me awfully. I felt I was losing one person after another: my father, Bong Sook, my mother, and now, possibly, Grandma. Was there something about me that made it impossible to stay with the people I loved?
As the weeks went by, the desire to leave burned hotter and hotter inside me. But there was no word from the missionary.
Finally she called Grandma and arranged a time to see me. We went out to eat. Over lunch, she said: “Joseph, I’m sorry I’ve left you alone for so long. There are so many refugees who need my help. I haven’t forgotten about you or my offer. But I have another possibility as well.”
“Yes?”
“You know Shenyang? It’s a city about a day’s train journey from here. They have a Christian school, for Chinese students only. If you don’t want to go to America, I will try to get you a Chinese ID so you can study there.”
I thought of the school behind the fence, the students on the lawn, studying. This appealed to me.
“I feel I will go,” I said.
She smiled. “Good, Joseph.”
“But only if I can take Grandma with me.”
The woman’s eyes were watchful.
“Very well. But in order to get into the school, you’ll have to practice your Chinese at a shelter I know of. You don’t speak it well enough yet.”
I said fine, so long as they took Grandma too. We were a unit.
I went back and told Grandma. It was a big step for her. She’d have to give up the lease on her house, leave Uncle, leave Mr. Lee and her loved ones, and move into a shelter with me one hour from home.
She hugged me and said she was ready to go.
Chapter
Fifty-Six
* * *
THE SHELTER, IN Yanji, was partially funded by an American nonprofit group called Liberty in North Korea (LiNK). While the shelter workers looked for a family we could live with, I studied and explored the city, and Grandma cooked and made new friends.
LiNK wasn’t a Christian group, but the people who ran this particular shelter were strong believers. Every day, I and the other refugees there read the Bible from four in the morning until nine thirty at night, with short breaks for meals. I had never studied so much in my life. But now I had a motivation. I believed that the people who studied hardest would be chosen to go to America. That was the system in North Korean schools—the ones with the highest grades were selected for university and for special treatment. So at nine thirty, when we were finally allowed to rest, I kept my desk light on and read for another hour and a half. Choose me, I was saying.
I memorized book after book of the Old Testament. One night, I was writing an essay on Genesis when my nose began to bleed. The workers at the shelter became concerned and told me I was studying too hard. “You need to rest,” one of them said. I only smiled. I wanted to be recognized as the best and hardest-working student, and the nosebleed proved I was.
Our existence was a difficult one, eating the same food every day and knowing nothing but study and sleep. We couldn’t go outside, because of the fear we’d be caught by Chinese police. I felt like I was in Noah’s Ark, trapped all those months after the flood, when the creatures in the ark couldn’t see sunlight or taste fresh air.
Sometimes American or Canadian activists came to meet me and the other refugees. They didn’t speak Korean and we didn’t speak English, so they stared at us and talked among themselves. They brought good cookies and lots and lots of Coca-Cola, but that’s really all we shared.
When the visitors came, I felt as though I was behind glass. We were an endangered species; their eyes got big when they saw us: “Here are the North Korean refugees you’ve heard so much about.” I knew these people were there to help us, but something inside me rebelled against their stares. Especially because some of them were Asian but spoke only English. This was shocking to me.
One day another group came through. One guy caught my eye. He was young, his hair was cut in a stylish way, and his clothes were American and very hip. Everything about him, in fact, was cool. He was visiting the shelter with another American activist, Carol Chang.
“How are you today?” he said in Korean.
“Fine,” I said.
The young man smiled. He told us his name was Adrian and began to ask me and the other refugees about our lives in North Korea. I felt comfortable with him and soon described my struggles and how I’d ended up in China.
After I finished, Adrian looked at me with a warm and friendly smile. “So,” he said, “do you want to go to America?”
I couldn’t believe it was that easy. This guy didn’t even know I was the top scholar at the shelter!
I thought about what Adrian had said. It had been two months since I’d come to this place. Nothing was happening. My existence seemed like a dead end.
“Yes,” I said. My heart leaped when I said the word. Finally I’d admitted my true desire.
Adrian asked two other boys, Danny—who turned out to be the nephew of Sung Min, my “stepfather” back in Hoeryong—and John, plus a young girl, if they wanted to go to America. Danny was tall and, at least to me, sophisticated for a North Korean refugee: he spoke very basic English, could name a number of South Korean pop stars, and seemed comfortable in his skin. He’d been living at the shelter with his mother, who wasn’t going to make the journey. His mom was kind to me, constantly worrying about my diet and asking me if I had enough food or why I was sad.
John, on the other hand, was more like me, still finding his way outside North Korea. He was a bit of a clown, always looking to make us laugh.
The girl was an urgent case. Female refugees, especially teenagers, are at high risk for being sold into sex slavery. But the girl’s neglectful mother, who lived ten hours away, refused at the last minute to let her go. Months later, I learned the girl had been sent to a North Korean prison camp.
Things happened fast. Adrian started preparing us for a long trip to an unnamed city, where we would begin our journey to America. He felt that even after months in China, we looked and behaved too much like North Koreans. So he took us to
the market and told us to act like spoiled Korean-American teenagers who were bored out of their minds.
“Mr. Adrian, how do we do that?” I asked.
“Push each other around. Act a little rowdy.”
The three of us looked at each other. We were so tentative because we barely knew one another. And besides, pushing someone in North Korea was a serious thing. You’d really have to fight afterward.
Passersby were staring at us, grouped awkwardly on the sidewalk.
Adrian sighed. “Joseph, put Danny in a headlock.”
I grinned. This I understood. I snapped Danny into a quick headlock, and he started yelling for me to let him go. But I had him tight.
John shoved me back and I lost my grip. I saw disapproving looks in the eyes of people going by. They believed we were spoiled brats!
We did this for a while, horsing around and being, well, jerks.
“Good,” Adrian said. “But you have to work on your voices. I want you all to say ‘Yeah,’ like you’re annoyed.”
It was such a foreign concept, the irritated sound that comes out of an American teenager’s mouth. “Yeaaaaahhh?” We practiced until we were laughing hysterically.
Adrian took us to a fast-food restaurant for lunch. As we waited for our meals, he looked closely at our clothes. I was wearing my favorite things: a suit jacket and a pair of cotton pants. Adrian’s face turned sour.
“You know how you look, Joseph?”
“Trendy,” I said.
“No, you look like a North Korean refugee.”
I was shocked. This was my coolest outfit!
“We’ll have to get you guys some clothes,” Adrian said.
Before we left the restaurant, he told us to stop trying to appear invisible in public. When you slump your shoulders, he said, it’s clear you’re trying to minimize your body, to disappear. We had to do the opposite: be loud, boisterous, and flashy. That’s the way American kids were.
Adrian took us to a hotel in a taxi. When we arrived, there was a line of employees in sharp uniforms bending their heads to welcome us. I was so impressed. No one had ever done anything like that for me. Behind the workers rose a building—it was probably twenty stories high, but in my mind it stretched through the clouds—where we’d be staying. I was super-excited.
Our hotel room was so big, so amazingly luxurious. Adrian left us there to take care of some business, and John and I began jumping from one bed to the other. It was such a beautiful place; the beds and pillows and duvets were so soft, I couldn’t believe I’d get to sleep on them.
Then we spotted the minibar, which had cans of soda and little bottles of whiskey and cognac. When Adrian got back, we asked him if we could try one each, and he said yes. (Later, it turned out he’d thought we were talking about the sodas, not the alcohol.) It was like a party. Adrian called down to the front desk to get extra blankets. One phone call, I thought, and they bring you blankets. This is another world.
Adrian turned on the TV, changing channels until he found an American football game. We sat on the edge of the beds and watched while Adrian tried to explain the rules. But we were too excited and our brains were going crazy. Eventually he gave up, and we played martial arts, doing scissor kicks and chopping each other to the carpet. The first time I was knocked down, I stayed there, thinking that the carpet was the softest thing I’d ever lie on.
Adrian insisted on sleeping on the floor that night. We couldn’t persuade him otherwise. As I slept on the soft duvet, I felt like my life was going to change drastically. I was being carried along on a wave, not knowing what was coming next. But I didn’t resist.
Adrian took us to a clothing store in a shopping mall. He wanted to make us look like trendy Korean-American teenagers. John turned into a surfer type, with clothes covered with the logos of American board makers. Danny became a hip-hop kid, with baggy pants and a shirt with a rapper’s face on it. I was the skater type: baseball cap turned to the side, bright graphic T-shirt, narrow pants. I studied myself in the store’s mirror. I didn’t really convince myself, but Adrian had done this before, so I trusted him. Danny laughed and shoved me toward the glass. I turned and chased him out into the mall. We felt like we’d been reborn.
The train journey was the next day: twenty hours, with Chinese security officials checking everyone’s tickets multiple times. That made us all nervous.
“If they ask you anything, just shake your head,” Adrian said, “like you can’t be bothered to deal with some minor official. Then point to me. Remember, you’re spoiled, sleepy American kids. Don’t act like you’re back in North Korea.”
Grandma was away visiting relatives. I had to make a decision. “You can start your journey now and see Grandma later,” one of Adrian’s coworkers said to me. I felt somehow that if I didn’t leave China this time, I would never go. I would never see America and experience its freedoms.
I called her on the phone.
“Grandma, it’s me.”
She was so relieved to hear from me. I told her the activists had let me know I’d be able to see her the next day, before I left for America. She was very emotional on the phone but managed to hold her tears back. After I hung up, I made sure I had memorized her cell phone number.
The next time I saw Grandma would be for the last time. I knew we’d both cry. But for once in my life they would be hopeful as well as sad tears.
This is the price you pay for seeing America, I told myself. I’m so close now, I can’t turn back.
Chapter
Fifty-Seven
* * *
THE NEXT DAY we went to the Yanji train station. It was nighttime, and the place was enormous. It had these tall glass walls that overlooked the city, and it was like standing at the foot of a bed of luminous plants, each bud a lit-up house or an apartment. It was magical. I was staring at it when Adrian came over to me and whispered, “Take a good look, Joseph. You may never see it again.”
That hit me hard. You may never see it again. It was true. But more than Yanji, I might never see Grandma again, or Bong Sook, or my mother. It was as if each light down there on the bed of darkness was a person, a place, a memory of mine, and I had to take them all in now, because I would never be so close to them again. I began to cry. I’m leaving the land that I share with Bong Sook.
Was I doing the right thing? Why did I want to leave everything I’d known and loved? I couldn’t answer.
Danny met us at the station. Soon it was time to get on the train. Adrian gave us our instructions again. “If anyone talks to you, don’t say anything. Just come see me and say, ‘Hey.’ That way I will know something is going on. Above all, don’t talk to anyone but me.”
He went off to pick up the tickets. John and Danny and I looked at each other.
“Hey,” I said to John.
He laughed. “Heee-eey.”
“Not like that,” I said in Korean. “Like Adrian. Hey.”
We kept practicing. Anyone walking by must have thought we were idiots, saying the same thing over and over again. But even this one word—so casual, so short, so American—made us uncomfortable. We couldn’t get it to sound right.
There was only one thing to do. We decided we’d pretend to be deaf-mutes.
We found our seats in the train compartment. A middle-aged couple sitting across from us said hello in Chinese. We nodded our heads. When they started talking to each other, we realized they were Korean. This was bad. Danny, John, and I knew that if they heard us talking, we would be in trouble. We gestured to our mouths and ears. I think the couple understood.
It was a long journey, and I fell asleep on one of the pull-down bunk beds across from the couple. Danny was below me. After an hour or two, I was deep in my dreams when the train came to a sudden stop. My head slid forward and slammed against the wall.
I woke up instantly. “What’s going on?” I cried out. I didn’t recognize anything around me. I looked down and saw Danny’s horrified face turned toward me and realized I�
��d spoken in Korean. I looked across at the couple. They were reading newspapers, which obscured their faces. I didn’t know if they’d heard me or not. Danny, John, and I stared at the papers worriedly. We were in a panic. Should we run, go find Adrian? But we were frozen in place. We didn’t dare move.
We stayed awake for another three hours, the train swaying and rattling over the rails. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I felt I’d endangered all of us. But the Korean couple never left their seats.
The train pulled in at 8 a.m. The terminal in the unnamed city—it was really Shenyang—was even bigger than the station we’d departed from. We stopped at a burger chain for a quick meal, and I ordered a burger with lettuce. For some reason, I’d gotten it into my head that Americans ate only beef and bread and butter, so I thought, Here’s my chance to have a last piece of green vegetable. The burger was horrible, so I munched on some French fries while studying the passersby with wide eyes. The people each seemed to have their own sense of fashion. Their suitcases were in all different colors. That just amazed me. I never imagined you could have an orange suitcase.
We rushed through the station and found taxis. Adrian wanted to travel in two. He, Danny, and I jumped in the first taxi, while Carol and John followed in the second. This made me nervous. I had no idea where we were headed, and our splitting up made things more ominous.
We arrived at a rundown hotel, a big disappointment compared to the one the day before. We stared at the dingy sheets on the thin bed and thought this was not a good sign.
I asked Adrian when I could see Grandma.
“What are you talking about?”
My heart sank. It turned out that Adrian didn’t know about Grandma, didn’t know I was desperate to see her for the last time. He’d been consumed with the details of getting us out of China safely. There was no chance now of seeing Grandma before we left.