When, finally, Mr. Choy had made enough money, he decided to move back to Korea and start over. As a “gift” to Uncle Lyong, he handed over his website and all its future profits. He believed he would not have been able to walk away, literally, if he had offered anything less in tribute. Korea was just enough behind in its Internet marketplace development, a trend that would not last for long, for Mr. Choy to once again find himself ahead of the curve, and he quickly established himself as the king of the Seoul Internet porn industry. It turned out that profitability was even higher, because his general overhead was much lower; not to mention that he no longer had to pay Blue Talon’s fees.
With his first taste of success, Mr. Choy hungered for more. It was not enough just to make money. He needed to make more of it, no matter how much of it he made. And making money was easy. Mr. Choy realized that the difference between building a business and building an empire is that a business spends much of its time and energy managing its supply line, while an empire focuses on dominating the whole market by owning its supply line. When it came down to it, his commodity was girls; and to become a major player in his market he needed to own all aspects of the girl industry: Internet porn, porn videos, dirty magazines, brothels, and strip clubs. But to truly own his supply line, he also needed to own the girls.
That is how Mr. Choy started dealing in refugees. When he first started out in Korea, he worked mostly with known prostitutes and drug addicts, or other women who were just plain desperate for cash. They entered into the business quite willingly, but they always demanded payment. This cut painfully into his profits. His business professor had said, “Always look for ways to cut the overhead.” And that is what he did.
One day, quite by chance, he happened upon two defectors from North Korea—a mother and teenage daughter. They had just arrived, telling an unlikely story of fleeing across the DMZ. They were filthy, frightened, and hungry and had no place to go. They had fled their home in a border village in the North because they were afraid that the daughter had been heard saying something disparaging about the regime. They said that their
songbun
was already bad, and they were scared of being sent to a forced labor camp. They were terrified of what would happen to them if they were caught, and they begged him for shelter. They would do anything, they said. Mr. Choy smelled opportunity.
He told the women that he would be willing to hide them and keep them safe from both Kim Jong-il and the American army, their two biggest fears, as long as they would work for him as prostitutes. Seeing no other option, they quickly complied. They never asked for money, not realizing how central money is in a capitalist society. In the communist North, except on the black market, money was a formality; the bulk of items were distributed with ration cards. The women were accustomed to austerity, so it was inexpensive to feed them, and they were content to live in a back corner of a warehouse, which cost him nothing. They were not the most attractive whores, but they worked hard and had plenty of customers. Once they were worn out, he was able to sell them off as wives to desperate farmers. From a business perspective, it was an exceptional return on his investment.
Mr. Choy’s business mind recognized an untapped resource, and he used his associates in the black market to set up trade across the DMZ. It was a crazy idea, and that is why it worked. “Be willing to try the untested idea,” his professor used to say. “Challenge the assumption.” It was assumed that the DMZ was a flawless barrier, and no one in his right mind would attempt to bridge it. Trading across the DMZ turned out to be surprisingly easy, once he found the right channels to go through. He had to bribe a colonel in the South Korean army, who was happy to divert patrols from specified locations for unlimited “companionship” in Mr. Choy’s sex gallery. Because of the political situation between the two countries, North Korea was suffering heavy trade embargoes, severely limiting the availability of luxury items. The people in power did not like being deprived—it undermined their authority—so it was easy to find high-level North Korean officials who were willing to pave the way for the black market on that side of the DMZ. He was put in touch with a wormy young man who, for some reason, liked to be called Gianni. Gianni was already doing a brisk trade in liquor, cigarettes, and dirty magazines using abandoned invasion tunnels that had been built by the North. Gianni readily agreed to bring attractive young women across the border to Mr. Choy, and they came to a price that was agreeable to both of them. Mr. Choy’s overall output and risk were low, but his profits were high. His professors at the university would have been proud.
A knock at the door startled Mr. Choy from his reminiscing. In walked the beautician, with the three Northerners in tow.
44
C
HO
HAD
NEVER
EXPECTED
to amount to much. She went to all the meetings, prostrated to photographs when it was appropriate, gave the rote adulations and self-criticisms, but she never really tried to advance herself. Why bother? Her
songbun
had been bad to begin with, and to even think about overcoming it she would need some exceptional, nearly superhuman skill
and
connections to someone important; she had neither. Her grandmother was Japanese, and though she had been considered loyal enough to avoid the purging of suspicious persons, her family continued to bear the mark of shame. As a girl, Cho had all the usual fantasies: She would marry an officer high in the ranks of the Dear Leader’s army, have a baby, or maybe two, and do something great for the glory of
Chosun
. Early enough, however, it became clear that that life was not meant for her. Her parents discouraged such hopes, believing it was better for their daughter to know the truth—that she would marry a factory or farm laborer, that she would always be under greater scrutiny because of her ancestry, and she would always be passed up by opportunity.
Food had been scarce for almost as long as she could remember. She and her mother often foraged for hours in the hills; and almost as often came back empty-handed, having found only enough to sustain the effort of looking. In the worst of times they ate unimaginable things, and suffered bellyache as a result. The outcomes of their desperate experimentations were nearly more lethal than the hunger that eroded them day after day.
Cho learned, at the dawning of her teenage years, that she did have a single asset, and that asset could provide at least something to abate the hunger. She was blessed with regular features and flawless skin. Her teeth came in straight and white, and her eyes were well set and proportioned for her face. She was not the prettiest of the pretty girls, but she knew how to be cute; and cuteness, she learned, could be leveraged for food. A disarming smile well timed could yield a dumpling, or a bite of kimchee, or a piece of fruit. It was not enough to put extra flesh on her skinny frame, but at least it kept her from eating grubs.
Cuteness in a girl gives way to something else as her body matures, and there came a time when a smile was no longer enough for the dumpling man to give up one of his precious morsels.
A feel. Just a feel. You’ll like it, too.
And then just a feel, too, became not enough. The day Cho lost her virginity to the dumpling man, he gave her three whole dumplings—one for each member of her family. In that moment she felt the remaining ember of the girlhood fantasy of the soldier, the baby, and the glory of
Chosun
smolder and go cold inside her. This path of survival, and that path of happiness, did not cross.
Cho was able to provide a little bit for her family this way. They never asked, and she never told. She brought home scraps of food and everyone lived—not happily, but with hearts that beat and lungs that drew in air. She did what she did gladly, because it meant beating death. But one day, a friend of her father’s happened upon her in an alley when she was working for a small bag of flour. She begged him not to tell, but he went with the news to her father anyway. To save face, her father threw her out. She was only seventeen.
Cho hardened like steel around the deep ache of her excommunication. She had nowhere to go, but shamed and outcast, she could no longer stay in her parents’ village. She risked going into the city without having the proper papers, and when a soldier threatened to arrest her for it, she bought her freedom with the only “currency” she had. The man was a dealer of identities, his position as a railway guard granting him access to the pockets of the hundreds of unclaimed corpses that collected in train stations, and he set her up with papers he had taken off a dead girl of the same age. Cho Soo-yun was an orphan who eventually succumbed to hunger on the street. Her family had all perished as well, so there would be no one who would know the difference. It felt wrong to use the girl’s personal name, Soo-yun, Perfect Lotus Blossom, as if she might come back from the dead to reclaim it; and besides, she could not live up to such a name. She decided to go only by the family name instead.
Cho was able to slip seamlessly into the girl’s “official” life, joining her Party Youth organization and taking over her ration cards. No one had seen the girl for several years, and the story she gave of having survived a prolonged sickness was plausible. There was never any plan for the future, only a plan to live until the end of the day. She worked in the alleys and slept wherever. She ate. Never much, but enough to stay alive.
She met Gianni through the usual channels. Spending time with his crowd always led to extra scraps and crumbs. He had an endless supply of cigarettes, and he sometimes brought her exotic makeup and clothing. He was good looking, more because of his confidence and abundance than because of his features. Sometimes she fantasized that one day she and he would—
But she always knew that that was what it was. Pure fantasy. Still, she had never expected this kind of betrayal from him. She thought she had become immune to this kind of hurt. The street had hardened her, but maybe not enough.
Living is to go forward
.
Shed the past as easily as you would shed a coat
.
These were her mottos. She knew she could withstand anything.
45
M
R
.
C
HOY
SAT
BEHIND
his desk appraising the new girls from the North. They had cleaned up very well, even the skinny, twisted one—she was almost pretty. Having them professionally made over was a tactic to distract them from their fears and misgivings about their new living and working arrangement. It gave them a sense of luxury and abundance that they most certainly never felt before, which would soften their resistance to their new life. It also enabled Mr. Choy to assess their maximum earning potential. He had to come up with a value for each woman, and that value was based mostly on how she looked.
The beautician had done well in choosing outfits for them. The pretty one with the heart-shaped face was stunning, with her hair clipped up in the back and several well-placed rogue strands framing the sides of her face. The makeup erased the childish softness that was still in evidence on her teenage face, giving her a maturity that was not really there. Her lips were painted in a seductive, dark red kiss. She was dressed in a black, ankle-length gown held delicately on her shoulders by thin satin straps. Her full bosom filled in the top of her dress, the inner slopes of her breasts rising out of the garment, as tempting as low-hanging fruit. The dress tapered at the waist, and then flared with the natural curves of her hips. It was slit up both sides all the way to the upper thigh, and exposed, in moments, the tantalizing shape of her legs as she walked. It was a view that promised much but revealed little. She was adorned with black high-heeled shoes made of straps that crisscrossed elegantly over her feet and around her ankles. She teetered a little as she walked, obviously needing more practice walking in them. Her toenails were painted a dark red to match her lips and gave Mr. Choy the sense that she might be edible from floor to ceiling. She would be a good earner.
The one with the long fingernails was wearing a royal blue velvet dress that came down just above her midthighs. It fit loosely, but suggested the shape of her body well when she moved. The beautician had outfitted her with a padded bra to augment her shape, to great effect. As she moved about the dress lifted up, revealing the tops of her black thigh-high stockings, clipped to an unseen garter belt above. It was the perfect touch of provocateur to an otherwise classy look. Her shoes were closed at the toe and squared off, with tall, blocky heels and square buckles attached to straps in the front. Her face was clean and pretty, the sides of her hair pulled back and braided.
The smaller girl with the crooked body was the most transformed of the three. Her hair was styled with flourish, countering the length of her face, which was too long. The makeup did wonders for her color and brought attention to her eyes, which sparkled. One would not call her pretty, but she had an interesting face that grew in appeal the more he looked at it.
She might do well on the Internet, from selective angles,
he thought.
She will probably look better in two dimensions
. The beautician had cleverly concealed the girl’s stick-like proportions by outfitting her in a peach colored, floor-length Chinese dress with a high collar and half-length sleeves, and a subtle pattern woven into it with silver threads that glinted in the light. The dress was slit up one side to the knee, showing just enough skin to make a person curious. It did a pretty good job of hiding the girl’s asymmetries. On her feet she was wearing simple flat-soled black slippers.
On second thought, she might do better entertaining drunk sailors and college kids at the club,
he thought.
Where it’s dark
.