The young man guided the truck down a dirt track. He had hoped to make this approach under the cover of darkness, but there was nothing he could do about that now. His contacts in this region were high ranking and well lubricated with bribes, so anyone seeing him was likely to turn a blind eye; but one could never be too careful. It had been a close call at the last checkpoint. He aimed the truck down a steep gully and was glad for the truck’s high clearance and stout, knobby tires as he straddled rocks and rolled over large exposed roots. He would have been happier if the truck had had better leaf springs to absorb impact, but he was in no position to complain: He was lucky to have a truck at all. He almost felt sorry for the people riding on the rigid wooden planks in the back, who were most certainly bruised and miserable.
The landscape was stark and dusty, dotted with scrub and clumps of dry grasses. The rising sun painted the surroundings in pinks, reds, and gold, and cast long, blue shadows. It was going to be a warm spring day. A lone jet cut a long vapor trail across the otherwise cloudless sky.
The truck came to a stop at a small natural rock amphitheater where the dirt track dead-ended. The men got out and began clearing piles of deadfall away from the rock wall. In a few moments they had uncovered a cleverly concealed cave with a mouth large enough to fit two trucks side by side. It looked to Il-sun like an empty eye socket in a parched human skull. The young man came back to the truck and emptied the two duffels into the bed, spilling their civilian clothes on the dirty wood.
Gyong-ho raised her head and looked around, confused. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Gi!” Il-sun threw her arms around her. “I was so afraid for you! We are at the DMZ!”
“The DMZ? How did we get to the DMZ? Why?”
“I have to leave the country, Gi. I’m in trouble.”
“What happened? You can’t leave the country! That’s absurd!”
“I have to, Gi. I’ve been implicated in antirevolutionary activity. If I stay, I’ll end up in a prison camp for sure.”
“How did this happen? Why am
I
here?”
“I’m not sure. Foreman Hwang brought you when he delivered the truck. He was drunk and angry. I think you need to come too, Gi.”
“She has no choice,” interjected the young man. “This is a one-way trip.”
Gyong-ho’s brow furrowed deeply in an attempt to remember how she had gotten there. She remembered the foreman grabbing her arm—she was still sore there—but everything else was a muddle. She was too confused to feel scared. “But how will we get across the DMZ? Nobody can get across it. And besides, the Americans—”
“Everybody, listen up,” the young man interrupted. “Change back into your old clothes now. This tunnel will take us past the fence into the DMZ. Once we are there, you have to do exactly as I say. Step exactly where I step. If you stray off my path, you will probably step on a land mine and blow your legs off. I won’t stop to pick up the pieces. If we’re seen by either side, we will be shot on sight; so be quiet and don’t make any big, fast movements, is that clear?” He looked around and everyone nodded. “I have made this trip dozens of times and this route is secure. The natural features of the landscape will keep us mostly hidden. When we get close to the fence on the other side, there is another tunnel that will take us safely into South Korea. I have friends who will be waiting for us over there.”
“What about papers when we get to the other side?” asked Cho.
“My friends have taken care of all of that.”
“What about Gyong-ho? They aren’t prepared for her,” asked Il-sun.
“We will take care of that later. It won’t be a problem. The
Hanguk
are not as bothered with identification as the
Chosun.”
They changed back into their clothes, except for Gyong-ho who was still in her factory uniform. The young man put the fatigues into the duffels and handed flashlights to the men of the group. He then passed the water jug around, and they all drank from it until it was empty. “Okay, follow me,” he commanded, lighting a cigarette. They made a line and filed into the tunnel. Gi grabbed Il-sun by the arm and stopped her.
“I have a very bad feeling about this. I’m scared,” Gi whispered.
“Our lives are going to be different. We just have to get used to that.”
“I don’t want to go. I didn’t agree to this!” As the reality of the journey they were about to embark upon dawned on her, she began to feel panicked.
“What’s holding you girls up, let’s go!” shouted the young man.
“I’m glad you’re here with me, Gi. It’s going to be okay,” said Il-sun.
“What are we going to do over there? The
Hanguk
are starving. We won’t know anybody; how will we eat? Who will look after us?”
“He will look after us, Gi,” Il-sun said, pointing at the young man. “Don’t worry. His friends will take us in and we can get jobs. He will probably work as a driver, and maybe we can work in another garment factory. He said it’s not as bad as we think over there. And besides, you heard him: There really isn’t a choice at this point. If you stay, where will you go? You’ll be stuck in the middle of nowhere without food or water. You have no travel papers. You will probably end up back at the prison camp.”
Gi shuddered. The prison camp. She remembered it clearly now. She found that she could sift through the memory, like going through ashes from a recently extinguished fire. She didn’t want to disturb the ashes too much, but for the first time she could look plainly into the memories. The demon was no longer pressing at her. She took a deep breath and clenched the hem of her blouse.
“Okay,” she said finally, seeing no other choice.
They walked into the cave, the light from the mouth of the tunnel getting smaller behind them. The smell of dry brush was replaced by the smell of damp earth.
“Why is the tunnel so big around?” Il-sun asked the young man.
“The Great Leader Kim Il-sung started digging this tunnel many years ago,” he replied. “He wanted tanks to be able to get through to the other side for when we reclaim the South. They got about a third of the way through the DMZ. I’m not sure why they stopped.”
“How did you learn about it?” asked Cho.
“I found it when I was in the military, when I was stationed near here.”
The four flashlights diluted the darkness. The ground was flat and smooth, having been made for vehicles, and easy to walk on. The tunnel was quite straight, though they could not see the end of it from the mouth. It was supported at regular intervals with large wooden beams; clearly great care had gone into the engineering and construction of it. Along the way there were inscriptions carved into the earthen walls commemorating workers who had died during construction, as well as proclamations of devotion to the Great Leader.
As they went deeper into the tunnel, the air became cooler and moister, and the darkness seemed to hang thicker around them. The air was stale and moldy, causing Gyong-ho to sneeze. Il-sun began to feel claustrophobic. About fifteen minutes into the journey they came across a red line painted around the circumference of the tunnel, and a sign that read Demilitarized Zone. “We’re crossing the northern border of the DMZ now,” the young man said. “We will be out of the tunnel soon.” Several minutes later they could see a faint light in the distance. Il-sun was impressed by the undertaking of making such a long underground road, even if it was never fully completed. Surely the Americans and their puppet regime in Seoul could never construct anything so sophisticated. In another twenty minutes the grand tunnel tapered into a gradual earthen ramp heading toward a narrow opening into the light.
The young man halted the group before exiting the tunnel. “From this point forward, do exactly as I do and stay on my trail. There are land mines everywhere in the DMZ. Don’t speak unless you absolutely need to, and be as quiet as possible. If we do run into trouble, then run to the south fence. Your chances of survival are greater over there. If anyone gets shot, don’t stay behind with them. Just run.”
The group tensed. It dawned on them that soon they were going to be fully exposed on some of the most dangerous ground on earth. They followed the young man into the sunlight.
The sun had climbed and it was now late morning. The sky was still clear and the air was warm. The tunnel ended in a secluded depression in the earth that was hidden from either side of the DMZ. The air was alive with bird sounds and thick with the smell of foliage. The men cleared away a pile of dead brush from the side of the tunnel to reveal several wheelbarrows. Without a word, each of the accompanying men took a wheelbarrow and filed in line behind the young man, who was beginning to walk along a discernable path.
“What are those for?” Cho asked rather loudly, pointing to the wheelbarrows.
“Shut up, woman, we are in the DMZ!” came the harsh reply of the young man, looking back with a stern face.
As promised, the path was concealed by the folds of the landscape. The southern fence was visible only for brief moments, and at those places the path was well hidden by trees. The narrow trail was well worn. Obviously it had been used often. This part of the journey seemed so easy and the day was so lovely that the walk was actually enjoyable. Sooner than Il-sun had expected, the young man stopped the group in front of another tunnel entrance. This tunnel was much narrower than the last, and so low that it looked as though they were all going to have to crouch to walk inside.
The young man spoke in a loud whisper, “We are at the second tunnel now. This one is fairly short. Since we are about to enter
Hanguk
territory, we need to take some precautions. I need you to hand over all of your identification and any
Chosun
currency that you are carrying. If you are caught with it, you will be tortured and executed by the imperialists.”
He looked around expectantly. No one moved immediately: to be parted from one’s identification was a huge offense in the North. It was almost like being asked to strip naked—a very personal thing to do.
“You can’t go over there with it. It won’t do you any good anyway. Like it or not, we can’t go back to the North. So please, hand over your identification and your money. It is better for you if you do.” The young man spoke authoritatively.
Il-sun reached into a pocket in her blouse and proffered her identification and a small stack of folded
won
. Gyong-ho followed suit; then, reluctantly, so did Cho. The young man put the materials in a shirt pocket and turned around, saying, “Follow me.”
“But what about them?” asked Cho, pointing to the men of the group.
“We gave it to him earlier,” responded one of the men.
“Alright, let’s go. It’s not safe to linger here,” said the young man, disappearing into the tunnel.
Il-sun and Gi followed him inside. Cho delayed, her forehead furrowed in uncertainty. The man who was missing his front tooth, the one called Wart, stepped forward, bowed, and opened his hand in the direction of the tunnel as if to be a gentleman holding a door open for a lady. Cho went in reluctantly. The men followed, their wheelbarrows barely able to fit inside the tunnel.
The tunnel was distressingly low and narrow for Il-sun. Insects crawled along the close walls, and spiderwebs crisscrossed everywhere, sticking to her face and hands and getting caught in her hair. There did not seem to be enough air in the tunnel and she had to fight down waves of panic. In her imagination the integrity of the walls gave way and she was buried alive, suffocated and squeezed to death. The light of the flashlights strobed through the spaces between moving limbs, creating undulating shadows all around, making her feel dizzy and a little nauseous. To distract herself she made conversation with the young man.
“Is this another invasion tunnel?”
“No. Some of the laborers who were working on the other tunnel may have defected to the South by making this one. We had to widen it quite a bit after we found it. It was only big enough to crawl in before.”
Il-sun shuddered at the thought of the tunnel being any smaller.
“But why would anyone defect to the South?”
Il-sun’s question went unanswered.
Within a few minutes the tunnel dead-ended and a wooden barrier barred their way. The young man leaned hard against it and pushed. The barrier fell forward and landed with a heavy thud in a cloud of dust. Fresh air and blinding sunlight rushed into the seeming vacuum of the tunnel. Il-sun was relieved. One by one, the group emerged under the South Korean sky.
34
O
N REFLECTION, CROSSING THE
DMZ was a rather anticlimactic affair to Gyong-ho. It was almost too simple, being more of a pleasure hike than a flight from certain imprisonment, and she wondered if all barriers were ultimately like that: more substantial in the mind. Even the looming threat of land mines took on an abstract impotence under the clear, blue sky and on the well-worn path. She had half expected to be met on the
Hanguk
side of the border by a squadron of ferocious American imperialists brandishing guns, standing at the ready to run her through with their gleaming bayonets; she was surprised to instead step out into a peaceful, beautiful day. She had imagined the soil of South Korea to be dry and barren, life burned out of it by the hostile ravages of war and impoverishment. But the landscape she stepped into was much like the landscape she had left at the northern border: low scrub and grasses with occasional trees in a setting of dusty hills.