The Home for Orphan Girls had been a factory during more prosperous times, but was hastily transformed into an orphanage during the outset of the food shortage in the 1990s. It was a blocky, two-story concrete building with large rooms and few homey embellishments. In the foyer were the obligatory framed portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders. The upper floor was a large, open room where the girls kept their sleeping mats and their few personal possessions. The building was wired for electric light, but most of the time the electricity did not work and they had to use oil lamps and candles. Even those, they used sparingly. Similarly, the building had at one time been plumbed, but the water system had long been shut down. Water had to be hauled daily from a spigot two blocks away, which worked only intermittently. As part of her shared responsibilities, each girl was required to carry two buckets of water every day to a large storage tank on the second floor of the building. As an example to the girls, the mistress did not exclude herself from the duty.
Once the girls had all left for school or work, there was an endless pile of paperwork to attend to. The mistress had to run the orphanage completely on her own, and her superiors preferred to remain ignorant of its operations, lest they should ever have to fill in for her. They viewed it as a problem better left ignored, and complained loudly if they were ever asked to do anything more than sign the necessary requisition forms and ration requests.
Chosun,
they said, was founded on the
juche
ideal, the idea of self-sufficiency, and she should lead by example. She wanted to remind her superiors that
juche
was meant to be self-sufficiency for all of
Chosun,
a nation built on the foundation that all citizens work
together
for the common good, but she thought better of it. Besides, her autonomy had unforeseen benefits.
Midway through her pile of morning paperwork there was a loud knock on the kitchen door. The mistress’s heart missed a beat and her cheeks flushed red. She wondered at how biology took precedence over rationality: A knock at the front door would never excite her blood in such a way. Perspiring now, she checked her hair in the mirror, made her way to the kitchen door, hopeful in spite of herself, and opened it.
4
G
YONG-HO WAS EIGHT
YEARS
old. She had always looked forward to the private meetings with Comrade Uncle Kim. He came to school every few months with his kind eyes and his bottomless bag of sweets. He told funny stories and liked to ask questions.
“Good morning, Gyong-ho!” he said brightly.
“Good morning, Comrade Uncle Kim!” she responded.
“Would you like a sweetie?”
“Yes, please.”
“I hear you are almost old enough to join the Children’s Party. You must be very excited.”
“Oh, I am.”
“That will make the Dear Leader very happy.”
“Will you come to the ceremony, Comrade Uncle Kim?”
“I certainly will! Will your parents be there?”
“I think so.”
“You’re not sure? Wouldn’t your parents want to see such an important event?”
“They are so busy. They go to meetings all the time.”
“But don’t you think they would make an exception this time?”
“I hope so.”
“Me too.” Comrade Uncle Kim paused thoughtfully for a minute. “Gyong-ho is a boy’s name, isn’t it? Why did your parents give you a boy’s name?”
“My parents wanted to have a son, but they got me instead.”
“I see. I thought people stopped doing that a long time ago. Do you think your parents love you?”
Gyong-ho sat quietly. She had never wondered about that before, and suddenly she was worried. Her parents seemed to love her, but the way Comrade Uncle Kim asked the question put a shadow of doubt over her heart. “I think so,” she said timidly.
“Tell me, Gyong-ho, do you have a portrait of the Great Leader hanging in your apartment?”
“Yes, we do! I love it very much.” She was relieved to have something else to think about.
“I’m sure you do. You are a very good little girl. Tell me, where is the portrait now? Is it tucked away on a shelf somewhere?”
“No. It is on the wall.”
“I see. Well, is it on a wall with other pictures, or is it on its own wall?”
“It is on the wall next to the picture of the Dear Leader. They are the only pictures we have hanging in our apartment.”
“Well, that’s very good, indeed. So who takes care of the portraits of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader? Do your parents take care of them?”
“No.”
“No? Are the portraits all dusty, then? Is the glass spotted?”
“Oh no, definitely not! My grandmother cares very much for the portraits. She maintains them perfectly.”
“Your grandmother must be a very good citizen.”
“Yes, she is!”
“Do your parents ever bow to the portrait of the Great Leader?”
“Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes? Not every time they walk in the door?”
“Well, most of the times when they come in the door. Sometimes they are so tired that they just fall on their sleeping mats and go to sleep.”
“Oh, I see.” Comrade Uncle Kim scribbled something on his notepad.
5
A
T THE END OF
the day, a whistle blew and the seamstresses began to tidy their workstations. At each station there was a pile of trousers to be inspected and tallied, the resulting numbers to be graphed and recorded in a file. Each day’s number was added into the mysterious equation that determined the quality of a worker’s citizenship. The consequences for being deemed unworthy were dire—people disappeared and no questions were asked. Occasionally falling short of a quota was not the worst possible offense—they were often set unrealistically high; but consistently falling short of them could be seen as unpatriotic. That is why the whistle at the end of the day brought on a wave of tension for the seamstresses.
“Hey, Gi!” Il-sun whispered urgently.
Gi raised her eyebrows in Il-sun’s direction.
“Gi, I’m five short!” There was rising panic in her voice. Being short by five pairs of trousers would not go unnoticed. “How did you do?”
Gi knew that the question was really a plea for help. She felt tempted to ignore her and let her suffer the consequences of her own irresponsibility. She also knew that she could never be so heartless.
“I’m three over.”
“Could you . . . ?”
“Here,” said Gyong-ho, scowling as she handed four pairs of trousers to her while the foreman was looking the other way. “Now we’re both only short by one.”
“Thank you, Gi. I owe you one.”
“Actually, you owe me thirty-two.”
“Why do you have to be so damned precise?”
The foreman shuffled painfully over and tallied Gi’s and Il-sun’s trousers. Exactly five of the lines on his disapproving face were angry-looking scars. One scar began above his left eye and continued below it, though leaving his eyeball intact—a fortunate near miss. Did he feel lucky to still have his eye, or just embittered to have the scar? Gi guessed that it was probably the latter.
“You are both under the quota by one.” His raspy voice sounded painful, and Gi unconsciously touched her own throat in sympathy. “I am very disappointed in you, especially, Comrade Song.” Gi flinched at her name. “I would think that you of everyone would want to make a good impression. Do better tomorrow.”
“Yes, comrade foreman. I will do better tomorrow, sir.”
The foreman walked on to the next station, but his powerful body odor weighed the air down like a damp blanket around them. With heads down and breath held, the girls made their way to the workroom door.
After work, the seamstresses attended “voluntary” continuing education classes. The meetings were not considered strictly mandatory, but it was well known that not going would invite inquiry, which would lead to trouble. Classes were held in the cafeteria and, as with most events, began with a patriotic song. Il-sun and Gi took seats near the back of the room. At the front stood a smartly dressed woman in her early thirties, in a white blouse and ankle-length beige skirt with matching dress shoes and nude stockings. She was considered a loyal expert seamstress and she taught at the White Butterfly garment factory once every week. She always spoke through a forced smile, and Il-sun admitted to Gi that she would have been happy to slap it off with a large, dead fish.
The evening’s lecture began with a parable about the Dear Leader’s honorable mother, Kim Jong-suk. Kim Jong-suk was an inspirational revolutionary woman whose self-sacrifice and purity of spirit any good
Chosun
woman should do her best to emulate. As a guerrilla fighter, Kim Jong-suk supported her husband, the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, tirelessly, even in the frigid mountain winters of their remote revolutionary camp. She raised their son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, while they were cold and hungry, with the
juche
ideal as her guiding light.
Juche
was the cornerstone on which the great
Chosun
nation was founded. It was a philosophy of self-sufficiency and cultural superiority—the ideal socialism.
During the anti-imperialist war that divided the Korean peninsula in half, depriving their southern neighbors of the utopia that was developing in the north, the honorable guerrillas, fighting under the flawless leadership of Kim Il-sung, captured an imperialist Yankee soldier. At the last moment, as he was about to be executed, the great mother of the country stopped the firing squad because she could see in the Yankee’s eyes that he could yet be educated in the ways of
juche.
She took the prisoner in and, with a minimum of language between them, was able to convey the absolute superiority of the
juche
ideal over any other way of life. The soldier begged forgiveness for his imperialist ways, which Kim Il-sung saw fit to grant. The soldier was later allowed to serve in the war against the Americans, who had been his own people, in which he fought savagely and passionately. The soldier was killed in battle, and his last words were, “Long live
juche
! Long live the Great Leader Kim Il-sung!”
They had heard the story before. The girls were bored.
“The way she always smiles like that drives me crazy,” Il-sun whispered into Gi’s ear.
“I have a theory about that,” replied Gyong-ho.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I think that she pulls her pantyhose on so high that they force the corners of her mouth to rise.”
Il-sun chortled loudly at the image this created, and heads turned toward the commotion. She loved Gi’s unusual sense of humor. The presenter continued with her oratory unfazed, as if nothing had happened.
Embarrassed by her outburst and surprised that the teacher kept talking in spite of it, Il-sun was struck with an uncontrollable urge to giggle. For some reason, though she did not know why, it was all unbearably funny: the lecturing seamstress, her story, the factory, all the women in their silly uniforms. The strain of trying to hold in a giant wave of laughter was causing her belly to hurt, which made her want to laugh all the more. Unable to control herself, she snickered through her nose, louder with every effort she made to quiet it.
The presenter suddenly stopped speaking, and the whole room turned toward the two girls.
“Is something funny?” asked the presenter, still holding her frozen smile.
Gi was horrified. It was bad enough to disrespect the presenter’s authority, but to disrespect the important and honorable history of the Dear Leader could have serious consequences. The blood drained from her face and she shifted away from Il-sun in an effort to escape the fallout of guilt by association.
“I’m sorry . . . It’s just . . . I can’t explain . . . ,” Il-sun said, trying to pull herself together; but looking again at the presenter’s smile and remembering Gi’s comment, the wave broke through and she began laughing in earnest.
A nervous tension filled the room. No one knew how the presenter would respond to such an insolent outburst. There was no punishment that was beyond her reach. It could be as light as a mild rebuke; or, if she were wanting to make an example, could be as heavy as—
It was better not to think about that.
To Gi’s relief—she was becoming increasingly afraid of the outcome—the forced smile on the presenter’s face softened and her eyes relaxed. She even began to chuckle.