The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story (6 page)

That was the detail that unhinged my mother.

Without an ancestral grave for her descendants to honour, the woman’s spirit would find no rest. It would haunt the living.

That summer my father’s work had been taking him to military bases all over the country. Without his reassuring presence, my mother was having problems sleeping after the hangings. At breakfast she’d be hollow-eyed, saying she’d seen the ghosts of the victims in nightmares. She couldn’t concentrate on the simplest task. She was badly spooked and wanted to get out of Anju. I’m not sure whether it was after pressure from her, or simply an extraordinary coincidence, but she was immensely relieved when my father announced that we were relocating – to North Korea’s second-largest city, Hamhung.

We left Anju, but did not go immediately to Hamhung. My parents wanted the new baby to be born in our home city, Hyesan, so that his birth documentation would be registered there, the same as the rest of the family’s. So it was in Hyesan that my little brother was born. North Korean families have a tradition of naming children with the same first syllable, so although I was Min-young, my brother became Min-ho. I was seven years old, and feeling peevish at all the cooing and adoring the new arrival was receiving, and the stream of family visitors – Aunt Old, Aunt Pretty, Aunt Tall, Uncle Opium and Uncle Cinema – coming to see him, with congratulations and armfuls of gifts, but my mother was radiant, and overjoyed to be surrounded by family members and old neighbours once again.

There was one family matter, however, that she was not looking forward to. My father’s parents wanted to meet their new grandson. At this time I still had not learned the truth about my parentage. I thought my father’s parents were my blood grandparents, but for reasons obscure to me we had never got around to meeting them.

Their house had cold wooden floors. I didn’t like being there. Neither, I sensed, did my mother. My grandfather was a forbidding presence who did not invite conversation. At dinner, he sat on the floor away from us, at a separate table. My grandmother served him first. It was a mark of respect, but it seemed to put a distance between everyone. My father, who normally exuded calm and confidence, was decidedly tense and talking too much to fill the silences. There was none of the chatter that surrounded us when we visited my mother’s mother and my uncles and aunts.

I sensed the moment I arrived at their house that these grandparents liked Min-ho much more than me. The only time their faces lit up was when they held him, or when he gurgled and cried. With him they were affectionate. With my mother and me they were cool and civil. I told myself it was because Min-ho was a boy and these formal, old-fashioned people preferred grandsons to granddaughters. He was my parents’ only son, which gave him a position of supreme importance in the family. Over the coming years, each time we visited, they would have gifts for Min-ho, but not for me. I realize now that my mother must have known that this was how it would be. It was why she went out of her way to be generous and bighearted toward me, to give me pocket money and sweets when I asked for them, and nice clothes. It was also the reason she presented me, on my ninth birthday, with the most marvellous gift I ever received in North Korea.

I was very excited about the move to Hamhung, on the east coast. At that time Hamhung was a major industrial hub, famous as a centre for the production of Vinylon – a synthetic fibre, used in uniforms, that was invented in North Korea. It was an achievement we were so proud of that patriotic songs were sung about it. It held dye badly, shrank easily, was stiff and uncomfortable to wear, but it was marvellously flame-resistant. The city also boasted many restaurants and a grand new theatre – the largest in North Korea.

I couldn’t stop pointing at the numbers of vehicles everywhere; there were far more than in Anju, and more bicycles, too. The streets were broad, grand boulevards with trolley buses that trailed sparks from the overhead cables, and the buildings weren’t so shabby. The air was badly polluted, however. On some mornings the sky had a sulphurous yellow tint and stank of chemicals from the vast Hungnam ammonium fertilizer complex, which the Great Leader himself had visited several times and delivered on-the-spot guidance. His words were everywhere, on red-painted placards throughout the city, carved on stone plaques, and in letters six feet high on the side of Mount Tonghung. His image was omnipresent, in murals of coloured glass, in statues of marble and bronze, in portraits on the sides of buildings, which depicted him as soldier or scientist; as stern ideologue or jovial friend of children.

Despite my father’s high rank in the air force the accommodation was barely adequate. This time our home was on another military base in a six-storey concrete apartment block with no elevator. We had three rooms and cold running water. It was decorated with yellowed wallpaper, which my mother immediately had changed for a better-quality washable type. She had the bathroom walls tiled blue. In winter the pipes froze; in summer mould would turn the outside walls black.

I was very lucky, however, although I still did not fully understand quite how lucky. My father’s rank not only gave him access to goods many people didn’t have, but he received a lot of food and household items as gifts and bribes.

In theory the government provided for everyone’s needs – food, fuel, housing and clothing – through the Public Distribution System. The quality and the amount you received depended on the importance of your work. Twice a month your workplace provided you with ration coupons to exchange for the goods. Until a few years previously, the Party had still seriously been thinking of abolishing money. When the system actually worked, money was only needed as pocket money, or for the beauty parlour. But most of the time, the communist central planning system was so inefficient that it frequently broke down, rations dwindled or disappeared through theft, and people relied more and more on bribery or on unofficial markets for their essentials – for which cash, and often hard foreign currency, not the Korean won, was required.

We ate out quite often at restaurants that served
naengmyeon
, for which Hamhung is famous. These are noodles served in an ice-cold beef broth with a tangy sauce, although there are many variations. My mother would eat
naengmyeon
with her eyes closed in pure pleasure. She loved it to the point of addiction.

On Sundays, I played with neighbourhood girl friends outside on the concrete forecourt of our apartment block. We would skip or play a type of hopscotch called
sabanchigi
.

For the other six days of the week I was either at school or busy with school-related activities. It wasn’t just the children’s time that got filled up. Everyone – factory workers, cadres, soldiers, dock workers, farmers, teachers, housewives, pensioners, and my parents included – was kept constantly busy with some kind of after-hours organizational meeting or mind-numbing activity, such as ideological ‘study groups’ or ‘discussions’, which often involved memorizing the speeches of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, or attending lectures that could last for hours after work, on everything from the revolutionary history of the early Party and new techniques for pig rearing, to hydroelectric power and the poetry of Kim Jong-il. This was part of the communist way – to ensure that no one could ever deviate into a selfish, individualistic or private life – but it was also a system of surveillance. Perpetual communal participation meant that the hours in each day when we were not being watched, by someone, were few.

I had begun elementary school in Anju, but now I had to join a new one in Hamhung, which filled me with apprehension. My mother had real trouble getting me to enter the building on my first day. The children seemed rough, and had a different accent; there was no ‘village’ feel as there had been at the school in Anju. Banners in the school corridors made our priorities clear: ‘Let us study for our country!’ and ‘Always be on the alert for Marshal Kim Il-sung!’

But I was outgoing, and curious about my new classmates. I soon made some good friends among the girls. That came from the confidence a loving family gave me.

It was at school in Hamhung that I received my initiation into ‘life purification time’, or self-criticism sessions. These have been a basic feature of life in North Korea since they were introduced by Kim Jong-il in 1974, and are the occasions almost everyone dreads. They start in elementary school and continue throughout a person’s life. Ours were held every Saturday, and involved my entire class of forty students. Our teacher presided. Everyone took turns to stand up, accuse someone, and confess something. No one was excused for shyness. No one was allowed to be blameless.

It must have been humiliating and painful for the adults, standing up to criticize a colleague for some work-related or personal failing in front of the whole workforce. But there was only so much for which young children could be held guilty. The atmosphere in class was deadly serious. The teacher would not tolerate the mildest levity, even though the accusations were often ludicrous. The formula was to open the session with a commandment from Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il and then stand up and accuse the child who had violated it. When the accusations started to fly and fingers started to point, this was the only time, ironically, that we called each other ‘comrade’.

These sessions could create an atmosphere of great fear and bitterness, even among children. But often, through a humanity we all possess, adults and children alike would find ways of taking the poison out of them. If I couldn’t face accusing someone I’d sometimes accuse myself, which was permitted. Or a friend and I would strike a deal where she would criticize me one week, and I would criticize her the following week with some prearranged made-up charge. And so my friend would stand and say: ‘Our Respected Father Leader said that children must focus on their studies with dedication in their hearts and a clear mind.’ Then she’d point at me. ‘In the last week I have noticed that Comrade Park is not listening in class.’ I would hang my head and try to look chastened. The next week would be my turn. That way we stayed friends. My mother would make a similar pact with colleagues at her workplace; so did Min-ho when he got to elementary school. The sessions taught me a survival lesson. I had to be discreet, be cautious about what I said and did, and be very wary of others. Already I was acquiring the mask that the adults wore from long practice.

Often, students would find themselves criticized unexpectedly. When this happened, they took revenge. In rare cases, it could be lethal. On one occasion, in my final year of secondary school, a boy in my class pointed at another boy and said: ‘When I went to your house, I saw that you had many things you didn’t have before. Where did you get the money to pay for them?’ The teacher reported the criticism to the headmaster, who reported it to the
Bowibu
. They investigated and found that the family had a son who had escaped the country and was sending them money from South Korea. Three generations of the family were arrested as traitors.

Like the ever-present danger of informers, I took the self-criticism sessions to be part of normal life. But I also had the sense there was nothing positive about them; they were entirely negative.

The biggest milestone of my youth came at the age of nine, in Hamhung. With all other children my age, I entered the Young Pioneer Corps, North Korea’s communist youth movement. Ceremonies were held at schools all over the country on the same day, with parents and teachers assembling at large public places for the occasion. This is considered one of the proudest days in a North Korean’s life.

Joining the Pioneers is compulsory between the ages of nine and fourteen, but not everyone is accepted at the same time. First, there is a formidable test of memorizing: I had to show that I’d learned the Young Pioneer’s rights and duties by heart. From now on, I followed the orders of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, no matter where, no matter what. I must think and act in accordance with their teachings. I must reject and denounce anyone who directed me to do anything against their will. I was good at memorizing, and passed the test easily. And as I’d done well in the most important subjects on the school curriculum – the revolutionary history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il – I was selected for the first induction ceremony of the year, on Kim Jong-il’s birthday, 16 February, in 1989.

A few days before the ceremony my mother bought me a pair of new shoes especially for the occasion. They were foreign-made and from a dollar store – a special shop for people who had access to foreign currency and wanted to spend it. I was so excited about these shoes that, in order to calm me down, she let me take a peek at them. They were patent-leather Mary Janes, fastened with a buckle, and were a luscious deep red – nothing like the cheap state-issue shoes we all wore, and which only came in black. My mother wouldn’t let me take them out of the box until the night before the ceremony.

At the ceremony we were to receive a red cotton scarf and a small silver Pioneer badge to pin on our blouses. To me the scarf was the mark of a grown-up and meant that I was no longer a kid. But this excitement was displaced unexpectedly by my anticipation of the red shoes. The wait was agonizing. The night before the ceremony I slept with them next to me on the bed – I woke a few times to check they were still there.

When the morning came at last I was ecstatic. The event was held in my school hall. The walls were adorned for the occasion with paintings and collages that the children had made – of the secret guerrilla base in the forests of Mount Paektu where the Dear Leader was born, and of the new star that had appeared in the heavens on the night of his birth. Amplified speeches boomed from the headmaster and the teachers on the stage, whose centrepiece was an enormous bouquet of kimjongilia, a fleshy red begonia that is the flower of Kim Jong-il. Everyone then stood to sing the ‘Song of General Kim Jong-il’, and finally the Pioneers stepped up to the stage to receive, with great solemnity, their scarves and badges. The parents in the audience applauded each one.