Jia

Gun was thrown into a cell already overflowing with prisoners. He looked around the cell and realized he had been dragged into an underground prison. He had heard about these places, deep in the mountains: he had heard that people sent to them never returned. Runaways to China lived in fear of being caught by the Chinese police, handed over to the North Korean police, and sent to one of these prisons.

Most prisoners crouched and bowed their heads, just looking at the ground. The smell of urine filled the air, and nausea overcame Gun as he approached a woman whose chin was resting on her chest. She was slumped on the floor, and looked more like a corpse than a human being, her enormous belly dwarfing her tiny head. “That bitch pees more than five times a day on that spot. She can’t even wait until toilet time. I can’t stand it anymore,” one man complained, looking at Gun.

“What’s wrong with her?” Gun asked. No wonder there was space around her. An old woman stared at the grumbling man and said, “Don’t talk like that. Pregnant women have to go to the restroom more frequently because of the baby’s pressure.”

“Who wants a baby now!” the man sneered. “Besides, her baby’s butt has two different cheeks: one from China and the other from here. It must be deformed.” Some of the men around him smirked.

The pregnant woman didn’t seem to care how people talked about her; she didn’t raise her head or move at all. Gun couldn’t help but sit next to her, as finding another place to lie down in the cell was impossible.

He wondered what Sun was doing at that moment. She must blame me, he thought. Why didn’t I leave as soon as I delivered the medicine to my uncle? What about Jaeho? Was he afraid the police would raid his house and arrest everyone for harboring a traitor? If Jaeho hadn’t said anything, nobody would have known; Gun could have said farewell to his uncle and his family, safely crossed the river, and started looking for Sun. Jaeho’s betrayal seemed cold-hearted; if it was revenge for Gun’s leaving without telling him, it was too cruel.

A policeman opened the door of the prison cell abruptly. “Hey, new guy! Come out.” When Gun looked up toward the voice, three men were standing behind the policeman. Together they dragged Gun to another room, similar in size to the cell, though its emptiness made it feel much bigger and colder. A yellowish, umbrella-shaped light hung from the middle of the ceiling—the only decoration. Directly under it, in a chair, sat the square-faced soldier who had arrested him, with his legs crossed, smoking. Gun felt a chill that sank to the marrow of his bones; whether from the cold or from the man’s vicious smile, he didn’t know. He decided instantly that the fastest way out was to acquiesce. He stood at attention before his interrogator.

“We investigated you and your family’s history thoroughly. Up to now you’ve had no problems with the government, and yet you chose to destroy everything. How was China? Was crossing the border worth betraying your country?” Gun’s interrogator waved his cigarette back and forth.

Gun said nothing; there was nothing to say. He wondered how many times a day that man examined runaways, and how much information they must beat out of each one. It frightened him. The square-faced man seemed uninterested in any answers Gun might provide; he just kept smoking. Gun didn’t raise his eyes.

Back in the cell, Gun was lying on the floor when he felt warm water spread underneath him. It felt so good; he wanted to take off his clothes and soak his whole body in it. When he opened his eyes, he realized that it had come from between the pregnant woman’s legs. He met her eyes and she smiled, though her face was filled with shame. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but Gun didn’t complain. In fact, he didn’t care. The smell of urine didn’t bother him anymore.

Gun was dragged back to the room again the next day and beaten by the same men, the same way. They weren’t even trying to extract information from him, and after a while he didn’t feel pain anymore; his body had swelled to almost three times its normal size. All he heard, all day, was “national traitor.” When Gun was returned to the cell after a day of beatings, other prisoners consoled him, saying, “It’s just the first step. We all passed it, and it’ll be over soon. Just hang on a little longer.”

What had he done? Gun had been a good citizen in North Korea: never disobeyed the law, never went against the order of the government—in fact, he was the most enthusiastic member of the Propaganda Department in the factory where he worked. He hadn’t crossed the border to betray his country; he just wanted to make a living and not starve to death. More important than that, he didn’t want his parents to starve to death. He had waited for the government to help them, he had believed the government would do something, but nothing had happened. The situation only got worse, until crossing the river was the only way.

The pregnant woman fed Gun the rice-and-corn soup they were given, because he was bound and couldn’t hold a spoon himself. The soup was thin, but it helped restore energy to his injured body.

She fed him another spoonful, looking into his face. “When I got over to China with my father the first time, he sold me to a Chinese man. But it was for me—he did it for me.” She put the spoon in the bowl and went on, “I was actually happy over there. People blame my father, but I don’t care; my Chinese husband was really nice. We couldn’t communicate very well—sometimes we needed his Korean-Chinese friend or neighbor—but the language barrier didn’t cause too much trouble.” She spoke softly, so others couldn’t hear.

“He was fifteen years older than me, and very poor. To buy me, he spent almost all of the money he had saved, but I never missed a meal; he always tried to feed me well. When I got pregnant, we didn’t know what to do. We were so happy, but we were afraid because we knew we shouldn’t have children. His friends had warned us that a pregnancy would risk my safety, but we weren’t cautious enough. If the Chinese government found out I was from North Korea, I would be dragged back here. We knew we had to give up the baby, and walking to the hospital, we cried bitterly in the street, holding hands. Some policemen happened to pass us—two blubbering adults holding hands, who wouldn’t notice? We were so ignorant. They asked what had happened. I panicked and started to run, but they caught me. When they found out who I was, they sent me here. My husband tried to have me released, but the poor man has no power.”

Gun looked at her belly. He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Sun in her village. Sun could easily be in a similar situation, but he couldn’t bear to imagine it. He bit his lower lip hard. No! Asking such questions would only bring bad fortune.

Gun was plagued by nightmares. In one he saw Sun, her naked body in chains, suspended from a big brick wall. She struggled to cut the chains, but if she cut one, another came out of the brick and bound her more tightly. She was crying out and bleeding, but as she wriggled, the chains pulled her into the wall. She called for Gun over and over; it felt so real. He could feel his breath quicken, watching her desperately, unable to reach her as she was gradually sucked into the brick. In the end, her whole body was engulfed; the brick wall turned so peaceful and shiny, with no scars on its brown face.

Sometimes, the dreams were happier. Sun would smile, wearing her bright, pretty hanbok, as she walked arm in arm with a man in Chinese clothes. They looked so intimate and were always walking away. Whenever he had those dreams, Gun woke up in a cold sweat. He didn’t like either one.

On the eighth day of Gun’s incarceration, he was given two meals of corn, along with salty water and cabbage, and sent to another prison cell. There, he found four men seated, one in each corner. They all seemed to be around his age, but they looked like half-wits. They were eerily quiet; he could hardly hear them breathe. Gun wandered around the room for a while and finally sat in the center of the room. No one spoke. Since they all had the same stories of torture to tell, there was no point in sharing them.

It was a new setting, but the investigators asked the same questions, and Gun gave the same answers. They beat him for yet another week. He had to kneel down on the ground, and his hands were tied behind his back so that he couldn’t move. That was the daily routine. Beginning early in the morning, they kicked his face and his body, and sent him back to the cell at night. They gave him a spoon without a handle, so he wouldn’t commit suicide or make a weapon. He was never allowed to wash, and soon enough he was giving off the same smell as the prisoners he first met. He wondered about the pregnant girl, but there was no way to find out what happened to her.

Gun’s stomach spouted a lump of acid. “They’re dead. Please, believe me: that’s why I came back here—I was lonely and missed my relatives. I won’t run away anymore, and I really regret doing it the first time. Please, please forgive me.” Gun thought the square-faced man was his last hope.

Two men made Gun lie down and forced his mouth open. Holding his lower jaw down, they poured water into his mouth from the yellowish metal kettle, and though he tried not to swallow it, the pressure of the water made it rush fiercely down his throat. When his stomach was full, they stamped on his torso until water came out of his mouth and anus—every orifice in his body—and he vomited white liquid. Gun felt his eyes would shoot out; his legs kicked in every direction, and his wrists wriggled in the grip of the men holding him down. They repeated this procedure several times.

The square-faced man finally came and crouched down next to Gun, watching him from above, so that his face appeared to be upside down. “So, did I see ghosts in China? I had dinner with your parents four days ago. Your mother cooked bean paste stew for me. Bean paste stew, with green onions and tofu. Isn’t that her best dish? I don’t understand why you left such nice parents so readily—they looked so sad not to be able to see you, but I said you were fine with me. They were so happy and relieved to hear those words!”

Gun realized why they had stopped asking about his parents. He grabbed the square-faced man’s arm. He couldn’t help stuttering, “Please—spare their lives. They are too old to handle this. They just followed me. I planned everything by myself.”

The man grinned. “I can treat them as my real parents,” he sneered. “I’m sure they’ll take to me, but what can you do for me? Taking care of old people, as you know, isn’t easy, especially in the case of your limping father…”

Gun kept his grip on the man’s arm, white liquid still running from his mouth. They looked at each other for a while, and Gun felt he would never forget that steel block of a face. Then the man stood up, took his cigarette from the chair, and said, “Send him back to his cell.”

For a week after that, Gun was left alone. As soon as his body recovered, however, the beatings resumed, lasting for ten more days. Whenever he asked about his parents, the blows came even harder, and Gun begged over and over to be taken to the square-faced man. He shuddered with fear at the thought of his parents coming to harm, but no solution presented itself. Gun was sure they wanted something from him, or he would have been executed immediately.

Gun’s body was no longer his own. Even his voice sounded foreign when they demanded he sing the revolutionary hymns he learned in kindergarten and recite the Great Leader’s instructions. After several weeks, he was on the brink of total collapse. And then the harassment stopped.

The policemen took him and the four other men into the shower room and they were given their first shower in months. Then, a regular meal—meat soup and rice. Gun couldn’t swallow the food at first and was wary of being poisoned, but they threatened him and the others until they cleaned their plates. Their stomachs didn’t trust the food—all five rushed to the toilets after finishing. Within a few days, they were able to digest solid food, and the torturers even brought roasted chicken and sausages. The smell was irresistible, though every time Gun was offered a meal, he felt it could be his last. This treatment lasted for two weeks.

The square-faced man wore a dark-green army uniform and sat behind a desk, resting his feet on the gray desktop. “Come in, my comrades, make yourselves comfortable,” he bellowed, dusting off his round army hat, which looked much older than his tidy uniform. He blew on the hat roughly and pulled it onto his head; it emphasized the squareness of his face. He locked his fingers together, rested his forearms on the edge of his desk, and stretched his neck out toward them.

“There is good news. You should appreciate the kindness of the government. You were supposed to pay the penalty for the crime you committed, but the government has decided to forgive you—only you five. You’re chosen people; you might have been prisoners forever, finishing your lives in that filthy jail, but the government has shown mercy. We’ll let you slip, under certain conditions, which means we will give you a mission to strengthen the government.”

“You’ll be special agents, assigned to catch national traitors in China. From now on, you will be heroes for North Korea—not traitors anymore, but heroes—for your country and your families.”