The Aquariums of Pyongyang (25 page)

Living in Pyungsung, I was much closer to my mother and able to visit her regularly, sometimes with my sister, but most often alone. We were always happy to see each other. She cooked up little meals
for me and bought me clothes. Yet there were a number of things worrying me. Since authorizations for visiting Pyongyang were hard to come by, I often traveled without them, in blatant violation of the law. The community police chief, who was a woman, usually turned a blind eye as long as I came up with a bribe, but how long would she continue before blowing the whistle? I was putting not only myself at risk, but my mother, too. Eventually, I decided to cut back on my visits.

I also had to think about my future. My uncle was pressuring me to enter the university, something my father had always wished. By making the choice now, I would finally obey him. I took the entrance exam, distributed gifts among members of the placement committee, and was accepted to the university for light industry at Hamhung. I would have preferred Pyongyang University, but as a former political prisoner my chances of getting in were close to nil. I attended classes at Hamhung for several months but never found my niche. One problem was that I lived as a boarder in a home to which I had absolutely no connection. The second problem, which eventually proved more debilitating, was the xenophobic atmosphere of that provincial town where “strangers” from other regions were neither liked nor welcomed. To make things worse, the town was full of hoodlums, and I had had quite enough of fighting in the streets. I considered transfering to the university in Pyungsung, but that would have been no easier than getting into Pyongyang. So in the autumn of 1991, I decided to abandon my studies and moved back to our apartment in Pyungsung.

I had to choose a calling outside the university. While I weighed my options, the aid that poured in from my relatives in Japan saved me from poverty. People in the West are familiar with the situation
in Cuba, where part of the population subsists on packages sent from family members in the United States and Europe. In North Korea, the manna comes from Japan. The further the North Korean distribution system declines, the more necessary this influx of currency becomes. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there were times when even ration tickets—forget about the rations themselves—stopped being distributed. The only way to get anything was by distributing gifts. Fortunately for us, my family was rich enough to earn the friendship both of the county's Party secretary and its manager. The packages and letters from Japan came by mail, via a ship that still makes the fifteen-hour voyage between Niigata and Wonsan once a month. Every package is checked, of course, but only products made in the South are forbidden. Even money is let through. What we needed most, though, was medicine and secondhand clothes.

As far as allowing in visitors, the authorities are of two minds. On the one hand, they are delighted to welcome visitors bearing hard currency. On the other hand, there is always the danger these visitors will disseminate news of the country's troubled political and economic situation. Thus, when a Japanese family comes for a visit, the entire canton is ordered to clean up and look smart. Every village and home that is likely to be seen is swept and improved. Sometimes the authorities go a step further: in advance of our family's arrival, we were moved into a large two-room house, with a shed in the back, so that we might play better hosts. Just before my relatives arrived, Security Force agents dropped by with our orders. We were neither to mention the camp nor complain about anything whatsoever. We could chat, but it was forbidden to mention anything implying criticism of the government. To make sure we obeyed, agents listened in on our conversations around the clock.
By the mid-1980s, after some ten years of protest—much of it from the Chosen Soren—the authorities decided to limit their surveillance to the daytime. Not that it really mattered. If we wanted to have a frank discussion, we only needed to give the agent a little money to go for a walk. . . . The authorities, in any case, really have nothing to fear from visiting relatives—who know the danger they would be putting their family members in if they talked.

A
round this time, I reestablished contact with my friend Yi Yongmo—the boy who once became delirious in the middle of class. His family had been released from Yodok four years before we had, but it now looked like they might be on the verge of being sent back. The Security Force had begun calling in his father for interrogations and occasionally summoning my friend as well. We were very close and saw each other often. He told me about his fears and vented his anger against the regime. As a former prisoner, I also was under surveillance, and his friendship could bring me trouble. In the spring of 1991, Yong-mo's father was accused of criticizing Kim Jong-il, and the whole family was sent back to the camp. I haven't heard from my friend since. Is he still alive? He was always a little scrawny, and I fear the worst. . . . He often had fainting spells, during which he broke into a cold sweat. I loved his mind. He was my best and most faithful friend. Apart from my family, there is no one
I miss more. For a time I worried that he would be tortured and made to confess about our counterrevolutionary conversations. In North Korea, every political criminal is tortured: Yong-mo had criticized Kim Jong-il and sung South Korean songs, and for this he was surely beaten and deprived of food and sleep.

I could have continued to live in Pyungsung in relative peace had I not been accused of illegally tuning into South Korean radio. These transmissions I picked up featured songs, covert messages aimed at Party cadres, and analyses of the situation in the North. One program featured interviews with renegades. Another surveyed news from around the world. This was how I learned of the fall and execution of the Ceausescus and of the establishment of diplomatic ties between South Korea and Russia; but it was Nicolae Ceausescu's demise that most impressed me. He was an intimate of Kim Il-sung and had come to visit him many times. I was dying to tell people the news. Was I indiscreet? Perhaps, but I think my real mistake was listening to those programs too often and with too many people. I felt the surveillance of the Security Force gradually tighten around me. The agent who usually took care of my bureaucratic needs in exchange for gifts and loans was avoiding me; worse yet, he wouldn't accept my gifts. Was it now compromising to receive something from my hand? One day, I managed to corner him and get the scoop. “You're under surveillance,” he admitted. “A buddy of yours ratted on you for listening to South Korean radio.” After making me promise never to reveal my source, he fingered my accuser. I was flabbergasted—it was someone I considered a friend! I never had a clue.

Nothing pleased security agents more than identifying recidivists and sending them back to the camps. Gifts were the only way to keep the agents at bay, and by this point the gifts had to be both lavish and plentiful. How I hated these men. Once I made it to South
Korea, I had no scruples about trying to make their lives as miserable as possible. Whenever I gave interviews, I mentioned how surprised I had been after my denunciation to find myself interrogated by two agents who were my longtime friends and radio-listening companions. I wanted revenge! Those slimeballs probably wound up in the same place they usually sent others. I imagine they've expiated their sins by now, and as far as I'm concerned, they can go free.

In the early 1990s, few North Koreans dared tune in to radio transmissions from the South. Many more do now. I got my two radio receivers from a Pyongyang store where you could get just about anything: cigarettes, beer, clothing, shoes. The only things they didn't have were products made in South Korea—and, of course, they only accepted hard currency. Even foreigners shopped there. Since the sale of radio receivers wasn't as closely monitored as might be expected, I was able to get away with registering one and paying hush money on the second. Listening to South Korean radio had to be done with extreme caution. The poor soundproofing of most North Korean dwellings could easily give us away. To avoid being overheard, my fellow listeners and I took the radio and buried ourselves three or four at a time under a mound of blankets. Only the antenna remained visible.

The other challenge was avoiding static. The signal was always clearest between 11:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. We liked listening to the Christian programs on the Korean Broadcasting System. The message of love and respect for one's fellow man was sweet as honey to us. It was so different from what we were used to hearing. In North Korea, the state-run radio and television, newspapers, teachers, and even comic strips only tried to fill us with hate—for the imperialists, the class enemies, the traitors, and who knows what else! We could also tune in to the Voice of America and catch up on the
international news from which we had been severed for so long. We hungered for a discourse to break the monopoly of lies. In North Korea, all reality is filtered through a single mind-set. Listening to the radio gave us the words we needed to express our dissatisfaction. Every program, each new discovery, helped us tear a little freer from the enveloping web of deception. Knowledge that there was a counterpoint to official reality was already a kind of escape, one that could exhilarate as well as confuse. It is difficult to explain, for example, the emotions we felt on hearing it demonstrated, proof positive, that the North had actually started the Korean War, not the American imperialists, as we had always been told.

Radio programs from the South made it possible for us to sharpen our criticisms of Kim Il-sung's regime. We had long been aware of all its shortcomings, from corruption to repression, from the camps to food shortages, from its ravishment of the population's work ethic to its obscene wastefulness, most apparent in its sumptuous birthday celebrations in honor of our two idols, father and son. We had plenty of evidence by which to judge the regime—and judge it harshly. What we lacked—what the radio provided us—were the connective elements we needed to tie it all together. The programs furnished us with an overview of the system as a whole: its origins, the reasons behind its current difficulties, the absurdity of its official boasting of self-sufficiency in light of its pleading for international aid. I think my friends and I were proud to be in the know. I wanted very much to tell my uncle about what I had discovered, but I didn't dare; while I knew he would love the South Korean songs, I feared he would forbid me to listen.

There was still a chance my activities might place him at risk, in spite of his ignorance. For everyone's sake, my main objective would have to be parrying as much of the danger as possible. My friend
An-hyuk, who lived in a neighboring county, had also gotten wind of the investigation the Security Force was conducting on me. According to him the agents were proceeding slowly, hoping to throw a dragnet around the entire subculture of illicit auditors. An-hyuk, who also listened to South Korean radio, was facing the same danger I was. Our backs were to the wall: we could either wait for the Security Force to pick us up, or we could try to escape. The options were equally dangerous, but the second presented a glimmer of hope. An-hyuk had sneaked into China once before. On his way back, however, he was arrested for illegal border crossing and sent to Yodok, where he spent the next year and a half. That's how we first met. Later, after we were both released, we kept in touch by mail. It was in one of his carefully coded letters that he revealed that we were in trouble and needed to talk. Our code was simple but effective: we wrote the exact opposite of what we truly meant to say.

In the critical letter, An-hyuk kept repeating that “everything was going really well,” that “things were looking up,” and so on. He also announced the forthcoming “wedding ceremony of our friends.” The reference was oblique, but I understood. We got together and, assessing the situation, agreed we had to escape. But where to? Reaching the South wasn't our primary goal. We simply wanted to avoid the camps any way we could. I had, however, entertained the thought of moving abroad before and had put some money aside for that purpose. The time for action had come; it was almost a question of life and death. If they got us this time, we would be going to a hard-labor camp.

If our plan were to succeed, it would have to remain secret. Even our families would have to be kept in the dark, and telling friends was entirely out of the question. Fortunately, because I was working in the distribution of beans and corn, people were used to seeing me leave town for several days at a time. Our departure thus would not
be a cause for immediate suspicion or concern. Questions would eventually arise, of course, but by that time we hoped to be long gone.

It was difficult for me to go this way. I was leaving behind my family and a young girl with whom I was in love. I had met her in Yodok. Her family, who was released when we were, benefited from the aid of a grandmother in Japan. Out of the camp, she had blossomed into a beautiful girl, and I was always thinking about her; yet my shyness and constant moving about made a relationship difficult, and I never declared myself. In the North it's difficult to go steady with a woman, because that sort of intimacy is viewed poorly. So I couldn't even tell her of our plan. What if she turned out to be against it? What if she started telling people?