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Separation haunts the affected long after the actual incident. It is a perpetual act of violation. You know that the missing are there, just a few hours away, but you cannot see them or write to them or call them. It could be your mother trapped on the other side of the border. It could be your lover whom you will long for the rest of your life. It could be your child whom you cannot get to, although he calls out your name and cries himself to sleep every night.
Sometimes the longer you are inside a prison, the harder it is to fathom what is possible beyond its walls.
Except that the letters on each tablet were in Chinese, as Koreans still relied on written Chinese for matters relating to death. Throughout history, China was always the big brother to neighboring Korea, this tiny kingdom unfortunately located adjacent to the massive empire, and in some ways, that tradition seemed to have held up. Anyone following North Korea would tell you that it is China that really holds the power.
There it is again, the mantra “if only.” I am always made aware of the alternative universe where things turned out differently, in which lives were saved. I am used to the mantra. For immigrants, regret can become a way of life.
I wished for a different ending. A different plot. It was a story then, sad and yet morbidly exciting because my mother was a part of it. But later I came to see it was also a sort of therapy, the way my mother kept on telling it over and over, as her mother had done for years. And the storytelling continues as I type these words here in New York, in a language alien to those who lived through the division, a language that shields me from the worst of my grief. For even now, decades after I first adopted it, English does not pierce my heart the same way that my mother tongue does. The word
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Awakening my students to what was not in the regime’s program could mean death for them and those they loved.
Awakening was a luxury available only to those in the free world.
It takes tremendous energy to censor yourself all the time, to have to, in a sense, continually lie.
Instead all I saw was their heartbreaking youth and energy, and I wished then that they could have the whole world, all of it, that which had been denied to them for twenty years of their lives, because none of them had any idea that as their bodies bounced, their minds stood so very still within that field in that campus locked away from time.
Another thing that baffled the students was the pronoun “my.” When referring to Pyongyang, they never said “my” city, but rather “our” city. The DPRK was never “my” country but “our” country. In fact, the words Pyongyang and DPRK were always modified with “our,” as in “our Pyongyang” or “our DPRK.” Even when we gave them a special lesson on “my” versus “our,” and made clear that they could drop “our” altogether with proper nouns, they seemed confused.
Kaesung had been an ancient Korean capital as well as a bargaining chip during the Korean War, when both sides stalled in signing the armistice in hopes of securing it. Because of its proximity to the 38th parallel, the city had served as an inter-Korean trade zone since 2002. It was possibly the second most important city in the nation,
The constant surveillance by the counterparts and the minders evoked fear in us. We knew that the consequences were unthinkable, so we did what we were told. We accepted our situation meekly. How quickly we became prisoners, how quickly we gave up our freedom, how quickly we tolerated the loss of that freedom, like a child being abused, in silence.
The notion of following your heart’s desire, of going wherever you chose, did not exist here, and I did not see any way to let them know what it felt like, especially since, after so little time in their system, I had lost my own sense of freedom.
These moments of doubt were like poison. I was not sure who they were, and I felt like a mother terrified of her own children, an extremely ugly feeling. But then one of them would say something adorable, and I would shake it off.
Our country is not for the president but the people. The president is just the face, the symbol, but the real power belongs to the people. The people make the decisions.”
If only!
One of the slogans posted everywhere at the school and on the buildings in the city was Kim Jong-il’s dictum “Let’s Live Our Way.” Juche meant exactly that: to live on your own without relying on anyone else. But “our way” did not seem to me much like living on your own; it seemed more like living off the blood of the rest of the country without having to see them.
Slaves. The word came back to me again. In that brief moment, I felt a paralyzing fear, and I wanted to get out of this country. I was afraid of getting stuck here. I was afraid of the minders who could order the old woman to go away, and the speed with which she listened. I recalled the way my students stiffened at the sight of Mr. Ri. The terror here was palpable.
songun (military first)
It was at moments like these that I could not help but think that they—my beloved students—were insane. Either they were so terrified that they felt compelled to lie and boast of the greatness of their Leader, or they sincerely believed everything they were telling me. I could not decide which was worse.
In front, I saw five or six women squatting and cutting the grass with scissors. This was a familiar sight by now, but still strange. At PUST, and even in Pyongyang’s parks, I had noticed workers doing the same. Lawnmowers were used in the rest of the world, but not here. Was it about control or was there simply a shortage of gas?
Kim Il-sung had confiscated all private property right after the war, and had relocated families all over the country, much the way Mao did during the Cultural Revolution. Families were separated not only between South and North but also within the country.
Instead, I learned, North Korea had an unofficial caste system called songbun in which citizens were divided into three main classes and some fifty subclasses, based on a person’s political, social, and economic background, and although they pretended that such hierarchies did not exist, this affected their social mobility.
the government itself reportedly maintained a group of beautiful young women known as gippumjo (Pleasure Brigade), whose sole responsibility was to pleasure and entertain Kim Jong-il and the party leaders.
I had begun to feel the same way. When a student from Class 1 said, openly and unashamedly, that the unfortunate thing about losing the trivia game was that they had been caught cheating and should have cheated better, I wondered if it was possible that they had never been taught that lying was a bad thing. Perhaps they felt free to continue doing it as long as they could get away with it. Was it possible that they just did not know right from wrong?
The blame really lay with those who perpetuated these stories to control the masses.
The DPRK regime is known for repressing unauthorized religious activities with arrests and even executions.
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.”
I was as speechless as my students. I could not say, as I shook hands with each of them, Leave this wretched place. Leave your wretched Great Leader. Leave it, or shake it all up. Please do something. Instead I cried and cried, and I smiled. And each student met my eyes and smiled in return. And that was our goodbye.
That was how we parted, our gazes locked, the students watching from behind glass as we were driven to freedom.
It was eerie to see how quickly imposed censorship led to self-censorship.
I knew I would eventually tell the world what I had seen there and that this would cause my colleagues much anguish, the thought of which was upsetting. I could only hope that they would forgive me by turning to the Bible and their Lord who, according to them, created everything, including me and my eventual, inevitable betrayal.
Of course, the DPRK purposely infantilized its citizens, making everyone helpless and powerless so that they depended on the state.
This was a system where hierarchy was everything. I learned that even the morning roll call was in order of their class rank. Many of the students came from their local Middle School Number 1, and some of their parents worked at Hospital Number 1 and lived in District Number 1. Each person’s value was clearly marked in numbers.
I was not much of a meat eater and was also suspicious that it might be dog meat, which had been served once during the summer.
This was a nation backed into a corner. They did not want to open up, and yet they had no choice but to move toward engagement if they wanted to survive. They had built the entire foundation of their country on isolationism and wanting to kill Americans and South Koreans, yet they needed to learn English and feed their children with foreign money.
Besides, they were raised to believe that they could be attacked at any moment and must be ready to defend themselves against invasion. There I was, a spy of sorts, hoping not to plant bombs but to plant ideas.
Despite her warnings, Mary herself had been buying small rice cakes and passing them out to homeless kids who roamed the market and picked pockets. She would walk fast and slip food into their hands and keep on walking so that no one would notice. I worried about her getting reported.
“So are you saying that it’s okay for North Koreans to rot in gulags because in your estimation it isn’t real?” Ruth seemed taken aback, but I continued. “I think this ‘temporary’ life of yours being a schoolteacher in a nice dormitory for a semester before you get back home to New Zealand is a different kind of ‘temporary’ life than the lives of these people, who are basically slaves to their regime. If the eternal life waiting for them in heaven is so amazing, should the millions who are suffering here just commit mass suicide? Why don’t you go check out a gulag and then dare to tell me that
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In both North and South Korea, in the late fall, most families make enough kimchi to last through the winter.
I was also surprised to learn of the connection between kimjang and auto accidents. According to the students, there were so many trucks transporting cabbages in November that their government considered it a dangerous month, with a much greater risk of traffic accidents. (May was also considered a dangerous month, with a greatly increased risk of drowning.) I found the idea of collisions with cabbage-bearing trucks unlikely considering how few cars there were, even in the streets of Pyongyang.
The nationalism that had been instilled in them for so many generations had produced a citizenry whose ego was so fragile that they refused to acknowledge the rest of the world.
To correct my students on each bit of misinformation was taxing and sometimes meant straying into dangerous territory. Martha said, “No way. Don’t touch that. If their book said it was true, you can’t tell them that it’s a lie.”
Nothing, it seemed, could break through their belligerent isolation; moreover, this attitude left no room for any argument, since all roads led to just one conclusion.
Their entire system was designed not to be questioned, and to squash critical thinking. So the form of an essay, in which a thesis had to be proven, was antithetical to their entire system. The writer of an essay acknowledges the arguments opposing his thesis and refutes them. Here, opposition was not an option.
Being in North Korea was profoundly depressing. There was no other way of putting it. The sealed border was not just at the 38th parallel, but everywhere, in each person’s heart, blocking the past and choking off the future.
He nodded, and after a long pause, said exactly what I had wanted him—and all of them—to say all along: “I guess for so long, it has become a habit to just believe everything I hear.” Then he told me that this was the first time in his life he had had a conflict with a teacher, and added, “I think perhaps I expressed my feelings to you because I felt that I could and that I cared. I believe that you and I will be closer through this conflict.” I agreed, offering peace: “Yes, that was just a small conflict that came out of our cultural differences.”
Then Dong-hyun, who had been quiet throughout, said, “But we never think of you as being different from us. Our circumstances are different. But you are the same as us. We want you to know that we truly think of you as being the same.”
My little soldiers were also little robots. In groups, they inevitably mouthed the right answer, which would then be reviewed in weekly Daily Life Unity critiques, but in private, their voices resonated. Every day is the same. Every day is about waiting. I am fed up.
My goal was to write a book that humanizes North Koreans. I wanted to go beyond the almost comical images of the Great Leader—of a crazy man with a funny hairdo and outfits, whose hobby is threatening nuclear war. The truth is so much more dire and frightening. I wanted to help outsiders see North Koreans as real people, as people we can relate to, so that we can begin to care about what happens to them. That was my goal and it seemed worth the risk.
In a country where the government invents its own truth, how could they be expected to do otherwise?
