The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story (35 page)

The officials in immigration wanted Marlboro Reds, they had told me, the most expensive cigarettes. Once it was plain to them that I was agreeable, and opening a channel to them, their corruption became naked. At every one of my visits they’d ask how much money I had withdrawn from the ATM.

‘A hundred dollars,’ I’d say. Or: ‘Just fifty.’

With a flick of the hand they’d ask to see it. Then I’d hand over the wad of kip, the local currency, to show them; they’d take about half the notes, sometimes more, and give the rest back to me.

After a few days of this extortion, and the cost of my meals and my lodging, my money was almost gone. I had no choice but to make the call I was loath to make – to Kim in Seoul, who immediately transferred funds. I was immensely grateful, and told him this was strictly a loan. I would repay him, just as I had repaid my uncle in Shenyang.

After my morning visit to immigration, I had little to do in the afternoons, so I would sit and read in a place called the Coffee House, a Western-style café that served Thai and Western food. I could remember a little English but could not read the menu, so I asked a waiter what another customer near me was eating.

‘Noodles,’ he said, using the English word.

I ate noodles every day. After a week, I wanted a change and rang Kim to ask him the English word for
bab
.

‘Rice,’ he said.

‘Lice,’ I repeated.

‘Not lice, rice. They’re two different things. You must ask for rice.’

‘Got it. Lice.’

I had my lunch every day at the Coffee House and dinner at Yin’s Chinese restaurant. To cut down on spending, I started skipping breakfast. I didn’t care. It made me feel solidarity with my mother and brother. I didn’t dare imagine what they were eating, or how little. One afternoon at the Coffee House I saw the tall sandy-haired man again, who had gone very pink from the sun. His eyes met mine in greeting as he lumbered by, like a giant. I smiled.

After seven days, the immigration office chief, a big lazy man whose gut strained against his green uniform shirt, said that he would take me to where the two North Koreans were being held. I felt an enormous relief.

We got into his car. He said: ‘How much money are you bringing?’

I showed him what was in my wallet. Without counting, he helped himself to half. There was no pretence about a fee or expenses. This casual, shameless robbery by one of the town’s senior officials angers me now, but at the time it didn’t. I had a single-minded strategy to reach my family.
Whatever it takes,
I thought.
I’ll do whatever it takes. Humans are selfish and care only for themselves and their families. Am I any different?

To my surprise, we arrived at the main prison I had visited the first day, where the people drinking outside had told me indifferently that there were no North Koreans here. If I’d known that my omma and Min-ho were indeed in this place I would have visited every day, even if all I could do was send them good thoughts. I would have yelled over the wall: ‘
Omma-ya! Min-ho-ya!
Don’t worry. I’m here.’ I would have come from the immigration office every afternoon and sat here until dusk had fallen and the cicada sounds filled the night.

The prison wardens told me I could meet my mother in the women’s section of the prison, but would not be allowed into the men’s section to see Min-ho. They led me through a courtyard of mud walls to a large black gate. With a clanking of locks and a ferrous groan it opened sideways. Standing behind it, alone, was my mother.

She glared at me for a moment with an odd, distant expression. Her appearance devastated me. She was much thinner. Her hair was greasy and plastered to her head. For some reason she had one hand on her hip and was tilting oddly to one side.

Suddenly she ran toward me, threw her arms around me and began to sob. She had on the same clothes and rubber flip-flops as when I’d last seen her in Kunming.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ she wailed. ‘I thought I’d never see you again. A second ago I thought I was dreaming, so I pinched my side until it hurt.’

No wonder she’d looked at me strangely.

She ran her hands over my face, just as she had after she’d crossed the Yalu, making sure I was real.

Holding her in my arms, I too had begun to cry, but I forced myself to stop. I wiped my eyes with the palm of my hand and composed myself. I didn’t want to complicate matters by letting the guards know I was her daughter.

I sat with her in the prison courtyard. She was being held in a cell for foreign women. One Chinese woman had been there for ten years, she said. Pictures of her family hung on the walls. They had no clean water. They had to drink and wash from the same ration of dirty water each day. A couple of days earlier, they’d heard the guards beat a Thai male prisoner to death. His wife was in the same cell as my mother, and she wailed without cease.

‘It’s pure hell,’ she said. ‘We should never have left home.’

Images I’d blotted out until now – of fouled latrines, female violence, public sex and a murderous lack of hygiene – came flooding into my mind.

There was nothing I could say, but there was no going back now. The police had taken all the money I’d given her in Kunming. I slipped her some local currency when the guards weren’t looking so she could buy some food.

After I’d seen her I returned to town and at once called the South Korean embassy in Vientiane.

‘It’s dangerous for you to stay there by yourself,’ the consul said. ‘Leave Laos now, and let the embassy take care of matters.’

This sounded encouraging. ‘How long will it take to get them out?’

‘We have to go by the book, unfortunately. There are no shortcuts. We’ll submit a request for information and ask permission to visit, but of course that all takes time—’

‘How long?’

‘Five to six months.’

My head slumped into my hand. But I was not surprised. I’d seen for myself the sluggish apathy of this country’s bureaucracy.

I simply could not leave my mother and Min-ho in that place.

The prison interpreter turned to me. ‘Five thousand dollars,’ he said simply.

My mouth fell open. I looked from him back to the superintendent. His elbows were on his desk, his fingers tapping together. He did not blink. A slow-turning electric fan ruffled his hair, which he periodically smoothed back into place.

‘Impossible,’ I said.

The superintendent shrugged. ‘In US dollars,’ he said, and made an
up to you
gesture with his hands.

Over the following days, I went early to the prison, with gifts and bribes for the superintendent. Again I was creating a rapport. The interpreter told me that I was very lucky – until two years earlier, Laos had sent all defectors back. The policy had only changed after an international outcry.

‘Now, we just fine them,’ he said.

Slowly, I managed to bring the amount down. Negotiations finally stalled at $700 apiece. Every time I was allowed into the courtyard to see my mother, the superintendent took half of my cash, however little it was. I would sit with her in a shaded spot and update her on my progress. When I told her I was struggling to raise the funds, she handed me a small dirty plastic cylinder. Inside was the cash I’d given her earlier. She’d only used a little to buy drinking water.

I figured that $700 was probably close to the official fine, but it was still far out of my reach. By this time almost all the money Kim had sent had been used up. To add to my worries, during my next visit to my mother she had brought along three bedraggled people to meet me – North Korean defectors who had been caught a month earlier. They were an old woman, and an unrelated middle-aged mother and her daughter. My mother was overwhelmed with compassion for them. She wanted me to help them, too. I looked at them in dismay, yet I knew I would try to help. They handed me all the money they had hidden in their private parts. It came to $1,500 – far short of the total we’d need.

By now my fifteen-day visa was about to expire. The two female officials who ran the visa office in Luang Namtha told me they could go to the capital, Vientiane, with my passport to renew my visa, but as it was expiring in just one day, they would have to fly. I’d have to pay their airfare and expenses. It would come to several hundred dollars.

I walked back to the Coffee House in a trance. I felt as if I was being fleeced of everything I had, and my family held to ransom. I slumped into a chair in the window and tried to think, but every thought came to a dead end. There were no options. I had no idea what to do.

I closed my eyes. I was about to start beseeching aloud the spirits of my ancestors, not caring who heard me, when a very tall figure blocked my light and spoke to me in English. I looked up. Sunlight glinted through sandy hair.

‘Are you a traveller?’ he said.

The tall white man had said the word ‘traveller’. I vaguely knew it but I hadn’t understood his question. By now I had got to know the waiters at the Coffee House, and called over the one who could speak English and some Mandarin. He translated for us.

‘Most people only stay here a day or two,’ the tall man was saying. ‘You’ve been here weeks, like me. Are you on business? I’m just curious.’

This was the first time a white person had ever spoken to me. His eyes were a pale blue and he had a trim, sandy beard that was turning grey. He seemed more shy of me than I was of him. The English threw me. I couldn’t find the words. I gestured for him to join me, and opened an English–Korean translation function on my cellphone.

Slowly, and with many embarrassed laughs and pauses, we communicated. I told him that I was a South Korean volunteer trying to help five North Korean defectors who were now in prison for illegal entry into Laos. The man looked very surprised, and I saw pain in his eyes. I searched for more words and told him that the Laotian government was demanding a huge fine.

‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Each person, $700. American money.’

He scratched his beard and stared into the road for a while. Then he made a gesture that said,
Wait here a moment.
And another to indicate that he had to make a phone call. He walked to the other end of the café, made a call, and returned after a few minutes. I would never in my life have imagined what happened next. He tapped the words into my cellphone.

In Korean it said,
I just made a phone call to a friend in Australia. After talking it over, I’ve decided to help you
.

My defences shot up.
Why?
Why would a white, fifty-something male all of a sudden care about the problems of some Koreans he’d never met?

I searched his face for a clue. I dismissed the thought that his motives were sexual – I think I would have detected that in his eyes. I decided that he was probably making some feel-good gesture that he would end up not honouring. I told myself not to get any hopes up.

‘Thank you,’ I said, in English. He seemed to sense my doubt.

He again tapped into my phone. It said
I met two North Korean women while I was travelling in Thailand. Their story moved me very much
.

He again made the
Wait here
gesture.

I watched him walk across the street to the ATM. He returned holding a thick wad of green bills.

To my astonishment he was putting hundreds of US dollars into my hand. ‘This is some of the money for the fines. I’ll withdraw the rest tomorrow.’

Was I dreaming?
I was struggling to comprehend what had just happened and express gratitude at the same time.

With the help of the cellphone dictionary and our translator waiter, the tall man explained that he was on a two-year journey around Southeast Asia. He’d intended to leave for Thailand tomorrow, but was willing to stay and help if I wanted him to, and visit the prison with me.

‘Of course,’ I said, when I finally understood.

This kindness and willingness to become involved completely floored me. My next thought was that if this impressive man came to the prison with me, I would not have to face that superintendent alone.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you move to my guesthouse? It’s easier to talk there. We’ll go to the prison together in the morning.’ He said this very carefully, and in a way so that I would not misunderstand his good intentions.

I nodded dumbly.

‘We’ll have dinner later if you like,’ he said. ‘Bring your bag.’

‘Sure,’ I said blankly.

He held out his hand. ‘My name’s Dick Stolp. From Perth, in Australia.’

I shook his hand. I had not even asked his name
.
He turned to walk away but I held on to him. In halting English I said: ‘Why are you helping me?’

‘I’m not helping you.’ He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m helping the North Korean people.’

I watched him go.

Something marvellous happened as I walked outside. All that locked-up beauty I’d seen in this country, and felt I was being denied, suddenly opened. I could smell the scent of jasmine in the trees; the sun and the stately white clouds were celebrating my mood. The whole world had just changed.

Dick’s guesthouse was far nicer than mine. I had not expected him to pay for my room, on top of what he’d already done, but he did. When you’ve lived your whole adult life as I had, calculating the cost of even the smallest decision, such generosity wasn’t easy to accept. It involved a loss of control. All I could do was say thank you. Not once did he ask for anything in return. I had never before experienced such detached generosity without some connection or debt attached. If we had been two lone Koreans from Hyesan meeting in Laos, or two young people in a crowd of old people, I might have understood the impulse. But Dick’s simple kindness took no notice of age, race or language. It crossed my mind that perhaps he was so rich that money meant little to him, but I learned later that he was not a rich man.

At dinner I joined Dick at a table with five others: a German couple in their fifties, a middle-aged Chinese woman who made documentary films, and a young Thai woman with her German boyfriend. Everyone spoke in English. I had a very hard time following, but I didn’t care. I was so relieved not be alone. I realized I would have to learn English. It was the world’s common language. It was a relaxed and enjoyable evening. I laughed and smiled for the first time since leaving Seoul.