As a young girl, I never could have imagined that my life would change so quickly and so drastically. I didn’t know it then, but after the winter of 1997, I would no longer have my childhood. For many years, up until I was nine years old, I was a very happy little girl. I had everything I could possibly want in life.
* * *
Eundeok, my hometown, was located on the northeastern tip of the mountainous country of North Korea, fewer than fifteen kilometers away from the Tumen River, which separated the country from China and Russia. On the other side of the river, it took less than one hour to get to the sea. During the winter it was bitterly cold, and the snow stayed for weeks on end under an immense blue sky. Sometimes, I had to go to school trudging through a thick fog of white. My birthday, on the other hand, was in the middle of summer and was always warm and humid. It was on the same date that we celebrated the day Korea was liberated from Japanese rule in 1945. My birthday was always a very happy time.
Although it was surrounded by factories, my hometown was not very large. In just one hour, you could tour the entire town. On the horizon, you could make out a few trees on the mountains far away, but the nearby hills were all stripped bare, because the forests had been razed for firewood. Before reaching the first few buildings in town, you would find several mines that had become famous; many former, now disgraced, leaders from Pyongyang had been sent to work in them as punishment. The army also had several bases nearby, just like they do everywhere else in the country. We lived in perpetual fear of an invasion from the United States or from their ally, South Korea. Whenever I climbed the mountains to collect mushrooms, I caught sight of some large cannons, more or less hidden in the landscape. A little farther up, there were some barracks that we tried to avoid, because the men in the army had a bad reputation. They often abused their power to take advantage of poor people or those less fortunate. If a group of soldiers ran into a man smoking a cigarette, for instance, they could ask him to hand over his pack of cigarettes. If the man said no, the soldiers would make sure he learned to never refuse them again.
In the middle of Eundeok flows a river, with a large bridge linking either side. I sometimes liked to wade in that river, from which I lived ten minutes away by foot. The biggest buildings in the city, all made of gray cement, with balconies painted white or pink, had at most five floors. There were no advertisements anywhere. All of the walls there were either bare or plastered with propaganda praising our “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il and the “socialist paradise” he had created for us in North Korea. The building in which I lived was only three floors, with heavily cracked walls.
“This building is bound to collapse,” all the neighbors used to say.
In spite of everything, for the first few years of the 1990s, I generally felt pretty content. Nothing made me happier than to have my father pick me up after school. Some days, he would take me to the movies, using tickets he had gotten ahold of as a result of his connections at work. He worked at a weapons factory called “January 20th,” named in commemoration of the day that Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, paid it a personal visit. In North Korea, the names of most buildings were dates, in honor of visits from North Korean leaders. This policy of naming things after dates was one of the practices meant to maintain the cult of propaganda surrounding our heads of state, but it was only much later that I understood this.
Every time we went to the movies, my dad would meet me in front of the theater during the afternoon. I walked to the theater all by myself, like I was a real adult. But it was not enough to simply have a ticket. The hardest part was finding a seat, because people always rushed to get into the theater. So my dad would mount me up high upon his shoulders as we made our way through the crowd. Going to the movies and sitting on my dad’s shoulders in the darkened theater were some of the happiest moments of my life. We watched films about brave heroes fighting against the imperialist Japanese colonizers. All around the screen, there were inscriptions that read, “Let us all unite behind the great general Kim Jong-il!”
Sometimes, my dad would also take me to street vendors to buy some naengmyeon, “cold noodles,” a North Korean specialty from Pyongyang. We would bring a bowl, and my dad would proudly present the young lady working there with food coupons given to him by the government. After receiving the noodles, we would take them home to eat. I had never tasted anything so delicious. Even if there wasn’t quite enough to satisfy our hunger, that couldn’t ruin the happiness I felt at being able to eat these noodles.
In those years, my parents would never have been able to imagine that they would soon be dying of hunger, because they came from “good” families. That is to say, their families were part of the elite class; they had connections in the army and in the Workers’ Party, which ruled North Korea. When my parents were very young, they both lived in Pyongyang, a privileged city reserved only for the elite. My grandfather was a highly ranked officer who dreamed of one day sending my mother to Kim Il-sung University, the most prestigious university in our country and the school where Kim Jong-il himself had studied. To ensure my mom could get the good grades necessary for admission, her father bribed the teachers by renovating the playground. Unfortunately for him, my mom was a tomboy who didn’t really care much for school—she wanted to become a driver. What’s more, on the day of the big university-entrance exam, she arrived late. And just like that, my grandfather’s ambitious plans for my mother collapsed.
Since then, however, my mother has proven herself to be a person of remarkably strong character, a trait which, without a doubt, saved my life. She was essentially the head of our house. She’s not very imposing in size, but she is highly intelligent and very determined. Even when she falls ill, her face still looks healthy and strong and doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary. In this respect, I am a lot like my mother. When I was little, any time I was feeling sick, I could never get anyone to believe me because I still appeared healthy, and I was always sent off to school anyway. Maybe it was this ability that allowed me to survive while others did not.
In Eundeok, it was my mother who, thanks to her job working at the hospital, provided the household with food. Whatever food we needed she brought from the cafeteria at work, which kept us from going hungry for many years. She often complained about my father and his lack of common sense. She found him to be both too naïve and not physically strong enough. I remember looking at their wedding photo and thinking that he looked fairly robust, but then I would have to remind myself again that in reality, he had indeed become quite frail. Once, my mother sent him out to steal corn from the cornfields, so that we could have something to eat. Not only did he come back empty-handed, but he was also missing his coat. He must have given it to the farmers who caught him in the act and threatened to denounce him to the regime. Mom was furious. In Korea, if a man wants a woman to respect him, he needs to be strong. Their marriage was arranged by my maternal grandmother as my mom was leaving Pyongyang for Chongjin, the large port city on the eastern shore of North Korea.
My dad had no business sense, but there was one thing he was passionate about: writing. At the factory, it was always he who volunteered to write reports and propaganda. Above all, he had a heart of gold, and as his daughter, that was good enough for me.
I could also always count on my older sister, Keumsun, to protect me whenever I felt trouble coming my way. If boys ever came to bother me, she didn’t hesitate to confront them. Although we were once mistaken for twins, I don’t think Keumsun and I look very much alike. She is two years older than I am, but she is smaller, with darker skin, and large eyes that contrast with mine. On the other hand, we have the same nose, and you can definitely tell that we belong to the same family. More than anything, Keumsun has always had this dynamic personality; she is confident in herself, and can persuade just about anyone that she is right. In Eundeok, my parents’ friends nicknamed her the “Little Adult” because of how grown-up she seemed.
* * *
As a child, I enjoyed going to school and I was a good student. Every morning it was the same routine. While it was still dark out, Mom would wake us up. Then I washed my face with cold water, which in winter was often freezing. After cleaning myself up, I carefully ironed my school uniform, which consisted of a navy blue skirt, a white blouse, and a little red scarf that signified membership in the Children’s League. I was not yet allowed to wear the little pin with Kim Jong-il’s likeness on it that everyone pinned over his or her breast after joining the Youth League.
While it was still not yet light outside, I would rush out to find my friends in the big esplanade at the center of town. At seven o’clock sharp, we marched to school row by row, class by class, all while singing songs in praise of our country’s leaders:
“Even though we are small, our spirit is large! We are always ready to serve the great general Kim Jong-il!”
One of my favorite songs was called “A Thousand Miles of Learning.” The lyrics recounted the young Kim Il-sung’s odyssey across mountains in China while he was fighting the Japanese imperialists.
After ten minutes of military-style marching, my classmates and I would stop all at once and the teachers would come to inspect our uniforms. Finally, once we passed inspection, we were allowed in the classroom. We started every day with a silent reading, generally a page about Kim Jong-il’s youth, from which we had to draw lessons about how to behave ourselves. One time, we read a story about Kim Jong-suk, Kim Jong-il’s mother, who was gathering grains in front of the intrigued eyes of her son.
“Why are you doing that, Mommy? We have enough to eat already,” asked the future dictator of our country.
“Because not a single one of our country’s precious resources should go to waste,” responded his mother wisely.
I didn’t always understand the hidden message in each of these anecdotes, but I tried to commit them to memory anyway, because the teachers asked us to do so.
In class, I often looked around furtively. There were forty of us, sitting at tables aligned neatly along the floor.
The teacher’s large wooden desk sat atop the platform at the front of the classroom. On the wall behind it hung a blackboard and, above that, there was a portrait of Kim Jong-il, carefully watching us at all times. At the back of the room, there was a stove, which we used in winter to heat up our lunches.
Every morning when the teacher entered the room, she selected one of us to read the page about Kim Jong-il out loud. Studying the lives of our country’s leaders was one of the most important subjects we had at school, along with mathematics, Korean language arts, and the communist ethic.
We were expected to sit in class silently. Even the tiniest bit of disturbance was met with public humiliation: in front of the whole class, the teacher would beat us with her pointer stick. At the time, I thought it was only fair that these troublemakers should be punished in this way. However, I should add that I never received this kind of treatment myself, because I was considered a good student.
Nevertheless, my status as a good student did not excuse me from the self-criticism sessions that were mandatory for everyone in the country, whether you were a factory worker or a student. In my classroom, at the end of each day, each person had to confess his or her misdeeds in front of the entire class. I remember one day I made a critical remark while toiling in the teacher’s garden, a task assigned to the “good students.”
“What’s the point of gathering all this corn if we won’t be able to eat it?” I grumbled to myself.
“That individualistic attitude is unacceptable in the socialist society of North Korea!” my teacher sharply rebuked me, when she called me over after a classmate denounced me.
The next day, I reluctantly had to do my self-criticism. As soon as I finished, as payback I denounced the behavior of the classmate who had sold me out. To be honest, I felt a sense of sadistic pleasure in getting revenge because I was jealous of this girl. Her dad worked in the same factory as mine, but since he was ranked one level higher than my father, her family received better provisions than mine did.
At school, you needed to respect the class hierarchy. At the beginning of each year, we “elected” a class president and other people responsible for other important tasks. Even though officially these were free elections, there was only ever one candidate for each position. It’s only now, as I reflect back on my childhood, that I realize the elections were just for show.
Here’s an example of how the elections went: Once, the day before the election, the teacher called me over privately, probably because I was a good student. The next day, she asked the class:
“Do any of you have a candidate in mind?”
The room was silent. After a few moments had passed, I nervously lifted my finger and pointed at one of the students:
“Kim Song-ku,” I said, following the orders I had been given the night beforehand.
“Do we all agree?” the teacher asked the class.
Without hesitating, the class unanimously approved, and this is how my friend Kim Song-ku was elected. His father was a carpenter, and we suspected that his father was supplying the teacher with firewood. In North Korea, the best way to ensure the success of one’s children in school was to offer gifts to the teachers. This was something that my parents never seemed to understand.
One time during the elections, however, I received quite the surprise. The teacher asked the students to elect someone to be responsible for cleaning up the classroom after class each day. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but it conferred a certain status of prestige in the school. A boy stood up and announced my name. My cheeks turned bright red as soon as he said my name. At that age, I was still very shy around boys and didn’t really talk to any. I’d never really noticed this boy before, but after that day, I developed a secret crush on him. His badge had two stripes and three stars, which was considered a very high honor. I had only two stars. These emblems designated the hierarchy of the class, the best of whom had three stripes and three stars. The teacher awarded these stripes and stars to reward the best students, the ones who were smartest, or those who volunteered for a class duty. She also often rewarded those children whose parents were generous toward her or toward the school. For example, once when a window broke, a boy’s parents offered to pay for its repair. Just like that, their son was promoted in the class hierarchy. This was how things happened in North Korea. Unfortunately for Keumsun and me, my parents never fully understood how this system worked.
For a long time after I was nominated to clean the classroom, I wondered if the boy who had nominated me had done so because he liked me or because he had been told to do so by the teacher. To this day, I still do not know.
I don’t know what’s become of him, and I will probably never find out.