Nothing to Envy (5 page)

Kim Il-sung then turned his attention to ordinary people. In 1958, he ordered up an elaborate project to classify all North Koreans by their political reliability, ambitiously seeking to reorganize an entire human population. While the Chinese Red Guard also rooted out “capitalist roaders” during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, it resulted in a chaotic reign of terror in which neighbor denounced neighbor. The North Koreans were methodical to a fault. Each person was put through eight background checks. Your
song-bun
, as the rating was called, took into account the backgrounds of your parents, grandparents, and even second cousins. The loyalty surveys were carried out in various phases with inspiring names. “Intensive Guidance by the Central Party” was the first announced phase. The classifications became more refined in subsequent phases, such as the “Understanding People Project,” between 1972 and 1974.

Despite the twentieth-century lingo of social engineering, this process was akin to an updating of the feudal system that had stifled Koreans in prior centuries. In the past, Koreans were bound by a caste system nearly as rigid as that of India. Noblemen wore white shirts and high black horsehair hats, while slaves wore wooden tags around their necks. The old class structure drew heavily on the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who believed that humans fit strictly into a social pyramid. Kim Il-sung took the least
humane elements of Confucianism and combined them with Stalinism. At the top of the pyramid, instead of an emperor, resided Kim Il-sung and his family. From there began a downward progression of fifty-one categories that were lumped into three broad classes—the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class.

The hostile class included the
kisaeng
(female entertainers who, like the Japanese geisha, might provide a bit more for high-paying clients), fortune-tellers, and
mudang
(shamans, who were also in the lower classes during the dynastic period). Also included were the politically suspect, as defined by a white paper on human rights in North Korea based on testimony of defectors living in South Korea.

As a former South Korean soldier, Tae-woo’s ranking was toward the bottom of the heap—not the very bottom, because those people (about 200,000, or 1 percent of the population) were permanently banished to labor camps modeled after the Soviet gulag. North Koreans of the lower ranks were banned from living in the showcase capital of Pyongyang or the nicer patches of countryside toward the south where the soil was more fertile and the weather warmer. Tae-woo couldn’t dream of joining the Workers’ Party, which, like the Communist Party in China and the Soviet Union, controlled the plum jobs.

People of his rank would be closely watched by their neighbors. North Koreans are organized into what are called the
inminban—
literally, “people’s group”—cooperatives of twenty or so families whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood. The
inminban
have an elected leader, usually a middle-aged woman, who reports anything suspicious to higher-ranking authorities. It was almost impossible for a North Korean of low rank to improve his status. Personal files were locked away in local offices of
the Ministry for the Protection of State Security and, for extra safekeeping, just in case someone dared to think of tampering with the records, in the mountainous Yanggang province. The only mobility within the class system was downward. Even if you were in the core class—reserved for relatives of the ruling family and party cadres—you could get demoted for bad behavior. But once in the hostile class, you remained there for life. Whatever your original stain, it was permanent and immutable. And just like the caste system of old Korea, family status was hereditary. The sins of the father were the sins of the children and the grandchildren.

The North Koreans called these people
beidsun—
“tainted blood,” or impure.

Mi-ran and her four siblings would carry that taint in their blood. They had to expect that their horizons would be as limited as those of their father.

AS A CHILD
, Mi-ran was unaware of the catastrophe that had befallen her even before she was born. Her parents thought it best if they said nothing at all to the children about their father’s roots in South Korea. What was the point in burdening them with the knowledge that they would be barred from the best schools and the best jobs, that their lives would soon reach a dead end? Why would they bother to study hard, to practice their musical instruments or compete in sports?

North Koreans aren’t informed of their classification, so it wasn’t immediately obvious that there was something wrong with the family, but the children themselves suspected something peculiar about their father. He was an odd, solitary figure who seemed to carry a ponderous burden. He had no known relatives. It was not only that he wouldn’t speak of the past, he hardly spoke at all. He gave monosyllabic answers to questions; he kept his voice to a whisper. Tae-woo looked happiest when he was working with his hands, fixing something around the house, intent on a project that gave him an excuse not to speak.

There was no trace of the bossy little boy who strutted around playing general. His wife, from whom the daughters inherited their
height and athleticism, did all the talking for him. If the children needed to be disciplined, if there was a complaint to be made to a neighbor, it was his wife who did it. If he had any opinions, he kept them to himself. On the occasions that they could get a newspaper, a luxury in North Korea, he would read in silence by the light of their single lamp with its 40-watt bulb. What he thought of the latest great achievement of Kim Il-sung, as touted in
Rodong Sinmun
, the official Workers’ Party newspaper, or in
Hambuk Daily
, the local paper, he would not say. Had he come to believe in North Korea? Was he convinced?

Mi-ran often found her father’s passivity maddening. Only later did she understand this was a survival mechanism. It was as though he had hammered down his own personality to avoid drawing undue attention to himself. Among the thousands of former South Korean soldiers who tried to assimilate into North Korean society, many slipped up. Mi-ran’s mother later told her that four of her father’s buddies in the mines, fellow South Koreans, had been executed for minor infractions, their bodies dumped in mass graves. Being a member of the hostile class meant you would never get the benefit of the doubt. A sarcastic inflection when referring to Kim Il-sung or a nostalgic remark about South Korea could get you in serious trouble. It was especially taboo to talk about the Korean War and who started it. In the official histories (and there was nothing but official history in North Korea), it was the South Korean Army that invaded, acting on orders from the Americans, not the North Korean Army storming across the 38th parallel. “The U.S. imperialists gave the Syngman Rhee puppet clique an order to unleash a Korean War,” goes the account in
Rodong Sinmun
. Anybody who remembered what really happened on June 25, 1950 (and which Korean could forget?), knew it was wise to keep one’s mouth shut.

As the children approached adolescence, the obstacles presented by their father’s background began to loom larger. By age fifteen mandatory schooling is completed and students begin applying to high schools. Those not admitted are assigned to a work unit, a factory, a coal mine, or the like. But Mi-ran’s siblings were confident they would be among those chosen to further their education. They were smart, good-looking, athletic, well liked by teachers and peers.
Had they been less talented, rejection might have gone down more easily.

Her eldest sister, Mi-hee, had a lovely soprano voice. Whether she was belting out one of the syrupy folk songs so beloved by Koreans or a paean to Kim Il-sung, the neighbors would come to listen. She was often asked to perform at public events. Singing is a highly valued talent in North Korea since few people have stereos. Mi-hee was so pretty that an artist came to sketch her portrait. She had every expectation that she would be selected to attend a performing arts high school. She wailed for days when she was rejected. Their mother must have known the reason, but she nevertheless marched to the school to demand an explanation. The headmaster was sympathetic, but unhelpful. She explained that only students with better
songbun
could secure placement in performing arts schools.

Mi-ran didn’t have any particular artistic or athletic talent like her older sisters, but she was a good student and she was beautiful. When she was fifteen years old, her school was visited by a team of serious-looking men and women in somber suits. These were the
okwa
, members of the fifth division of the Central Workers’ Party, recruiters who scoured the country looking for young women to serve on the personal staff of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. If selected, the girls would be sent off to a military-style training camp, before being assigned to one of the leadership’s many residences around the country. Once accepted, they would not be permitted to visit their homes, but their families would be compensated with expensive gifts. It wasn’t exactly clear what jobs these girls did. Some were said to be secretaries, maids, and entertainers; others were rumored to be concubines. Mi-ran had heard all about this from a friend whose cousin had been one of those chosen.

“You know, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, they’re just men, like any others,” Mi-ran’s friend whispered to her. Mi-ran nodded knowingly, embarrassed to admit she was utterly mystified. North Korean girls her age didn’t know what a concubine was, only that whatever you might do to serve the leadership would be a tremendous honor. Only the smartest and prettiest girls would be selected.

When the recruiters walked into the classroom, the students sat upright at their desks and waited quietly. The girls sat two to a desk,
in long rows. Mi-ran wore her middle school uniform. On her feet were canvas exercise shoes. The recruiters wove in between the rows of desks, pausing from time to time to take a closer look. They slowed down when they came to Mi-ran’s desk.

“You, stand up,” one of the recruiters commanded. They beckoned her to follow them to the teachers’ lounge. When she got there, four other girls were waiting. They looked over her files, measured her. At five foot three, Mi-ran was one of the tallest girls in the class. They peppered her with questions: How were her grades? What was her favorite subject? Was she healthy? Did anything hurt? She answered their questions calmly and, she thought, correctly.

That was the last she heard of them. Not that she really wanted to be taken away from her family, but rejection always stung.

By then, the children had come to realize that their family background was the problem. They began to suspect that their father had come from the other side of the border, because he had no relatives in the North, but under what circumstances? They assumed he must have been a committed Communist who had heroically run away to enlist with Kim Il-sung’s troops. Mi-ran’s brother finally forced the truth to the surface. An intense young man with permanently furrowed brows, Sok-ju had spent months cramming for an exam to win admission to the teachers’ college. He knew every answer perfectly. When he was told he had failed, he angrily confronted the judges to demand an explanation.

The truth was devastating. The children had been thoroughly inculcated in the North Korean version of history. The Americans were the incarnation of evil and the South Koreans their pathetic lackeys. They’d studied photographs of their country after it had been pulverized by U.S. bombs. They’d read about how sneering American and South Korean soldiers drove their bayonets into the bodies of innocent civilians. Their textbooks at school were full of stories of people burned, crushed, stabbed, shot, and poisoned by the enemy. To learn that their own father was a South Korean who had fought with the Yankees was too much to bear. Sok-ju got drunk for the first time in his life. He ran away from home. He stayed at a friend’s house for two weeks until the friend convinced him he had to return.

“He’s still your father, you know,” the friend urged him. Sok-ju took the words to heart. He knew, like any other Korean boy, especially an only son, that he had to revere his father. He went home and fell to his knees, begging for forgiveness. It was the first time he saw his father cry.

WHILE THE CHILDREN
were slow to discover the truth about their father, they may have been the last to know. The gossips in the neighborhood had long spread the rumor that he was a South Korean soldier, and the
inminban
, the people’s group, had been told to keep a watchful eye on the family. Almost as quickly as Jun-sang discovered the name of the girl he spotted at the movie theater, he heard the gossip. Jun-sang was well aware that a liaison with a girl of Mi-ran’s status could hurt his prospects. He was not cowardly, but he was a dutiful son, as much a creature of the Confucian system as any other North Korean. He believed he was put on this earth to serve his father, and it was his father’s ambition that he attend university in Pyongyang. He would need not only top grades, but impeccable conduct. The smallest indiscretion could derail him because his own family background was problematic, too.

Jun-sang’s parents were both born in Japan, part of a population of ethnic Koreans that numbered about two million at the end of World War II. They were a cross section of Korean society—elites who had gone there to study, people who had been forcibly conscripted to help the Japanese war effort, and migrant workers. Some had gotten rich, but they were always a minority, often despised. They ached to return to the homeland, but which homeland? After the partition of Korea, the Koreans in Japan divided into two factions—those who supported South Korea and those who sympathized with North Koreans. The pro–North Koreans affiliated with a group called Chosen Soren, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan.