2

March 2011

The automated doors slam shut. The train I’m taking rattles back and forth as it passes through the underground tunnels of Seoul’s subway system. As I lean against the glass window, a medley of bright colors from advertisements starts to appear on the dark walls of the tunnel, with slogans that I can’t seem to make out. Everything here in Seoul, South Korea, moves so quickly, including the metro.

My name is Eunsun Kim and today, as I write this, I am twenty-five years old.

If you were to look at me, you would probably assume I was just like any other college student. Because of my slight figure, you might not even realize that I am older than all of my friends. In about forty minutes, I will arrive at the entrance of Sogang University, one of the best universities in South Korea. My campus is not as impressive as those of the prestigious Korea University or Yonsei University, but regardless, I feel right at home there, with its familiar landmarks and the many friends I have made.

I have my day already planned out. Equipped with my black-and-orange Samsung laptop, I am planning to spend the day preparing for my exams in the library. With my iPhone in its purple case, I text my friends and arrange a quick meet-up at the Starbucks on campus. I like the caffe latte—the espresso is a bit bitter for my taste. After getting my coffee, I’ll go back to the library, where I will try not to fall asleep while reading my textbooks. At Sogang University, I study Chinese language and culture, and later you will understand what led me to these subjects.

In South Korea, the competition to get the best grades is fierce, but still, I try my best. Few of my classmates are even aware that I did not have the opportunity to go to school for many years, and for the most part, I try to maintain a low profile to avoid drawing attention to the delay in my education. I enjoy learning and studying, especially at the beginning of each semester when the professors are fresh and enthusiastic. Later tonight, around ten o’clock, I’ll return to our little apartment, situated right in the heart of Seoul, where I’ll see my older sister, Keumsun, and my mother.

*   *   *

Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, is a true metropolis, with over fifteen million residents, a skyline covered with tall skyscrapers, and an extensive highway system. The mighty Han River flows through the middle of the city, but in winter, when the river is frozen, you can just walk directly across the river without using any of the bridges. Behind the river stand several steep mountains, and at the summit of one of them sits an immense tower built for television broadcasts. The Namsan Tower is the symbol of Seoul, the city that took me in, the city that I now call home. Here, traffic jams sometimes last for hours on end, even during heavy July rains, and the rent for apartments is sky-high. But life here is also so exhilarating, so convenient, and everything moves so fast. High-speed Internet is available everywhere. There is something interesting and fun to do on every street corner, both day and night.

I often meet up with my friends in Sinchon, a student neighborhood, to drink maekju, a local beer, in the bars that never seem to close. In the bars we also eat dried octopus and grilled jjukkumi, a “baby” species with five arms each—a real treat. They are small enough that you can swallow them in just one bite. My friends refuse to believe me when I tell them seafood is fresher and tastier in North Korea. But it’s true! They don’t always understand me, because I come from a different world entirely. And most people could never even begin to imagine this other world where I was born and raised.

*   *   *

The high-speed train vibrates below my feet. All around me, ajumasthe Korean term used to address married or middle-age women—watch their favorite shows on their cell phones with antennas sticking out. Some students, perched atop their high heels and holding on to the train’s metal bars for balance, are listening to their iPods. Others, staring into their pocket mirrors, are applying mascara. They disdainfully ignore the street vendor trying to sell his Frank Sinatra CDs. Talking through speakers on wheels that he drags along behind him, the vendor tries to peddle his CD collection to the older gentlemen on the train. As the train travels from station to station, the platforms fill up and empty almost mechanically.

The silence of the South Korean metro allows me to ruminate for a moment. I begin reflecting on my memories of the train stations in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, that I visited with my dad such a long time ago. The stations were so magnificent and luxurious, with big beautiful purple chandeliers, like something you might expect to see in a major Hollywood film. The train stations in Seoul are much blander. I will remember the trip we made to Pyongyang for the rest of my life. I was nine years old, and we were by ourselves, Keumsun, my father, and me. Mom didn’t come with us; she preferred to stay back home and take care of things at the apartment. Even though the famine was already taking hold and we had nothing to eat, the trip to Pyongyang felt magical. There weren’t any skyscrapers in sight, but we saw a hotel under construction that reached a hundred and fifty meters in height. Workers and machines dangled from the top of the hotel. From such a distance, they appeared so tiny that they looked like little ants.

*   *   *

Only three stations now separate me from the Sogang University campus, and my heart starts beating faster and faster as the train accelerates. The speed of the train makes me feel a certain melancholy in my heart: it reminds me that I am from a completely different world. Where I’m from, it took two long days to get from Eundeok, the little town where we lived, to Chongjin, just ninety-five kilometers away, where my grandparents lived. The trip to Chongjin was always an exhausting one. We would pass through frigid temperatures, and we were always crammed together in the train like farm animals. We relieved ourselves of bodily waste using little tins we carried with us. If we moved, we would lose our spot to someone else. In South Korea, I can travel the same distance in under twenty minutes on a high-speed train. Back in North Korea, only the capital had modern amenities, like the metro stations that I found so dazzling.

I now find myself thinking of everyone I left behind, all of the people from whom I have heard nothing at all since I left my country. Then I was eleven years old, hungry, and without a home. My aunts, my uncles, my friends at school … have they survived the famine? On the train, another rider stares at me out of the corner of his eye, as if I am some outsider who doesn’t belong here. Still, I have tried my hardest to blend in, with my high heels, short skirt, and tight jacket. Whether or not I have succeeded in looking like I’m from South Korea, the reality is that I was born in Eundeok, a small industrial village in North Hamgyong Province, on August 15, 1986, in North Korea. In my quest for liberty and freedom, I have finally reached South Korea, after a nine-year journey across China and Mongolia. Here in Seoul, I have a passport. I no longer have to live in hiding, and I have built a new life for myself.

However, my memories of the north regularly come back to me, and one question in particular still haunts me: Why must the people of my home country continue to live in such suffering? Since arriving in Seoul, I have learned, through reading various books and newspapers, that the misery in North Korea is the fault of an absurd totalitarian regime. The country is a complete economic disaster. The Kim family dynasty, the world’s only communist dynasty, ruthlessly crushes any dissent.

These answers do not satisfy me and do little to assuage the unease in my heart. On the contrary, in fact, these answers make me feel totally powerless. I live barely forty kilometers from the barbed-wire border that separates me from my homeland, and yet there is nothing that I can do for my people, who are drained of energy by the famine and by the repression of an unrelenting totalitarian regime. For the twenty-five million people who live there, North Korea has become a true hell on earth, forgotten by the rest of the world. Even South Koreans, who share the same blood heritage, seem to have forgotten about the plight of their northern counterparts. At times, I feel overwhelmed by this sense of helplessness, by the feeling that there is nothing I can do to help my brothers and sisters to the north.

*   *   *

“Sinchon Station.”

The robotic voice coming from the loudspeakers breaks the silence of the train and pulls me away from my thoughts. I get off the train and start walking up the stairs in my usual automaton-like manner. This time, however, as soon as I step back aboveground, I decide that I will no longer sit back and do nothing. I have to tell my story to the world. I have to tell my story to give a voice to the millions of North Koreans who are dying slowly and in silence. And I have to tell the world about the hundreds of thousands among them who have tried to escape from that hellhole, who are presently in hiding in China, fearing for their lives. Here I am, twenty-two miles deep into the promised land of South Korea. And yet here, refugees from the north are still treated as second-class citizens, when the only sin we are guilty of is refusing to die from starvation.

Because my North Korean brothers and sisters do not have the ability to speak out for themselves, I am writing on their behalf. One day, I am sure, the two Koreas will reunite. It will be a long, complicated process, but it will happen. For the Korean peninsula to reunite, we are going to need the help of the entire world. But in order to find the solution, we first must understand the roots of the problem.

Since that fateful day in December when I was eleven years old, the day I wrote my will, I have, along with my mother and my sister, found some of these roots.

This is my story.