Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (107 page)

Q. Did you leave because of the noise?

A. (Becomes relatively heated.) “The work itself was OK. But the rules were too tight. It was a military quarry. There was a meeting every week
at which I was subjected to criticism. That was a total pain. So I wanted to move to a civilian job. I moved to a brick factory.”

Q. What can you tell me about the food situation over the years?

A. “From 1987 there were problems with the government-provided rice. They would skip one or two months’ rations. By 1993, it stopped for over six months. I spent seven months of 1996 in North Korea and received no rice ration. In between, in 1994 and ’95, they skipped seven or eight months a year.”

Q. What precisely was your job at the brick factory?

A. “Collecting coal from a state agency in Kaesong. To do that I had to bribe them. We needed the coal to fire the clay into bricks.”

Q. Was a lot of production stopped by that time?

A. “In Kaesong, 20 to 30 percent of factories were still working. In my factory, 20 to 30 percent of the departments were working.”

Q. Why didn’t you report the coal agency’s demands for bribes?

A. “There’s much more demand than supply. So everybody bribed the officials. You had to use special gifts, liquor or meat, to make them happy.”

Q. What did you have to sell to get those presents for them?

A. “I had some private assets: eight goats, one pig and two dogs for eating, plus my bicycle, which I sold. Every year I sold 50 percent of my remaining assets and from those sales used 40 percent as bribe money. I was getting low and I couldn’t see any hope for the future.”

Q. Why didn’t you use all your assets to live on and forget about the factory saving the bribery costs?

A. “The factory gave me free time, which I needed to raise the animals and build my assets. If I couldn’t get the coal I’d be dismissed from the factory and would have no place to go. Public Security would get me. Every day the police check the attendance and if someone’s not there they go to his home and catch him. If I had no job for six months the police would catch me and charge me with theft. The theory is: If you have no income for six months, how else, except by stealing, could you get by?”

Q. Were you raising your animals on brickyard property?

A. “No, on a mountain near my house. I moved my house so I could raise them. If you sell one goat you can get 20 kilos
(44
pounds) of rice—just a month’s worth.”

Q. Your animals weren’t breeding fast enough to keep you ahead?

A. “It takes one year for goats.”

Q. Did you think of switching to rabbits?

A. “One out of every three households raises rabbits. The value is too low. They only weigh a kilo or so. It was a relatively good job I had in the brick factory. But I’d sold all my goats by the time I decided to come
here. So I thought maybe that was my last chance: ‘Die here or be shot crossing the border.’”

Q. Did you have surviving family?

A. “Brothers and sisters but no wife or children. I came alone.”

Q. How did you cross?

A. “I used the tides. Because I’d been trained as a paratrooper I could have come by land, but I thought the sea route was easier. I first tried in June, one month before my successful attempt, but the water was too cold so I postponed it to July 8, 1996, the second anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s death. At midnight, like in
Papillon,
I got in at low tide. I swam three days and nights using a small bicycle tube for flotation. It would be only a one-day swim, but I had to hide during daylight beneath fences. I followed the coastline for three days, still in North Korea, before I crossed the border. That’s my military training: I was sure I could make it.”

Q. Tell me about your military life. Ten year hitch, no home leave, no girls?

A. “I had no choice. Just life or death. No visits. No dates. All I could do was follow orders.”

Q. Even in Pyongyang?

A. “It’s just a slight difference. In some ways soldiers in rural areas have a better situation—they can steal more rice. My base was on the outskirts of Pyongyang. We could go to the rice mill or the dog farm.”

Q. Did you have any rough confrontations?

A. “Although the guards were armed they couldn’t keep the military out. We were trained. Normally guards are beaten by military robbers. When theft occurs, 70 percent of the stock goes. Once the manager of a farm told the miliitary commander, ‘Please just hit one section of the farm. I’ll calculate the number of dogs stolen, report it to the commander and get compensation.’ Many guards were knifed to death.”

Q. Did you fight people?

A. “I used stones to frighten the guards. Normally they’d get frightened and back off. I didn’t kill anybody. One out of ten times there’d be a fight, but nobody ever fights with the military and wins.”

Q. Did you ever see donated food?

A. “Not international aid, but in 1995 South Korea donated food. I saw it. I got three or four kilograms. We were told the rice was from the Chongryon—that they had bought it from the South Koreans and sent it. That was the official North Korean story. After several months I found a leaflet from a South Korean balloon and heard South Korean radio reports so I realized the truth.”

Q. How long did you listen to radio and read leaflets?

A. “Leaflets I could see even when I was a kid. Radio I could receive when I was in the military. I could even watch KBS2 when I was in the military, but I had to be very careful.”

Q. Were you an early doubter?

A. When I was young I didn’t believe what the South Koreans said. And there was government-subsidized food in North Korea then. When I grew up, the economy was in worse shape and there was no more subsidized food. Kim Jong-il only visited military camps. He didn’t show interest in ordinary people. So I came to believe what the leaflets said. I decided in 1993, one year after I quit the army that I would defect eventually. My first idea was to escape to China, but I didn’t know the Chinese border area well so I decided to go to South Korea.”

Q. What are you doing now?

A. “I work with the farmers’ cooperative.”

Yoo Song-il, a supply colonel until he retired to civilian life in 1992, noted when I met him in 1998 that military service was not mandatory in North Korea. “But we’re taught all our lives that joining the military is the greatest honor. You can’t be a party member or hold a high position without military experience. So every young man’s dream is to join the military. I reached the rank of colonel in logistics and supply. I was based in the same place in Kangwon province, right across from the DMZ, for twenty-four years, supplying eastern DMZ posts.”

Q. What was the military supplies situation as of 1992?

A. “Until 1992 we did have the basic rations needed, and supplies for war. In the military everybody had enough food for three days in reserve, plus two days’ worth of other necessities. Also, in a warehouse, we had some more. In total, we had nine days of food in reserve. There are set amounts of daily food and other necessities for soldiers: 560 grams of rice, 240 grams of other grain, 100 grams of meat, 1 kilogram of vegetables, 20 grams of soy sauce and 10 grams of cigarettes. They’re supposed to get that even if they’re not fighting. But while we got rice, cigarettes and salt, Kim Jong-il said to produce our own meat and vegetables. As a practical matter, soldiers didn’t get what they were supposed to get.”

Q. Had the soldiers missed rations by 1992?

A. “No. One reason they didn’t get all they were supposed to get was that whenever such and such quantity of meat was supposed to come to my base officials on the way down would take some. By the time it arrived, there wasn’t enough. In reality, some soldiers were malnourished. We put malnourished people together and fed them separately. If they improved, they were sent back to their units. Otherwise they were hospitalized or discharged.”

Q. What proportion were malnourished?

A. “About 2 percent.”

Q. Did the army reduce war reserve stores?

A. “Yes, there were times when that happened, because of the economic crisis. The nine-day supply included food, fuel, ammunition, explosives and uniforms, kept in a war-staging area on each base.”

Q. Did you examine those stores?

A. “Yes, once a week we checked and replaced old rice with new.”

Q. How would you compare the army-with your civilian life in Chongjin, regarding food supply?

A. “It’s like the difference between heaven and earth. When I was in the military I never had to worry about food or clothing. When I got out, rations were scarce. We were supposed to get them every fifteen days but it didn’t always happen, so we had to worry about food. Officials always took what they needed, but most people relied on their rations.”

Q. What if-war comes?

A. “There’s always a possibility of war. The soldiers have been raised all their lives to think if Kim Jong-il is in charge they’ll win. The civilians are starving. They’ve been taught that the only way to live well is through reunification. Now they’re starving. What can they lose? They all think once there’s a war they’ll win.”

Q. What do you think?

A. “War is possible if Kim Jong-il is threatened enough. North Korea is a place where people can’t protest. The country for fifty years has been preparing for war. But the people are starving. If the situation gets worse and Kim Jong-il’s power structure is threatened, he might start a war as a last resort. Although I don’t think it would happen easily, it’s definitely a possibility.

“After the July 14, 1973, statement for unification, in the military-we had hope, we started thinking about unification. But the party used that to reinforce the military and put everything into defense. The party used this propaganda to say, ‘When unification comes, we’ll have to liberate the South. We must reinforce and invest in the military’”

Q. I calculate that you would have joined the army around the time of the
Pueblo’s
capture, 1968.

A. “Yes. Lots of people joined the military then, because we thought there’d be a-war.”

Q. How did you become an officer?

A. “Through effort. Kim Jong-il was backing the military. It was the most popular occupation. I didn’t go to the academy. Rather I was picked for three months of officer candidate school and promoted.”

Q. What did your fellow field grade and senior officers think of the chances of victory?

A. “When they think of war they think offighting the United States and Japan, rather than South Korea. They used to say, ‘China and the Soviet
Union shouldn’t be involved. This is our own war, against the U.S. and Japan.’ They think we’ll win. They’re brain-washed to think so.”

Q. You thought so?

A. “Yes.”

Q. Now what do you think?

A. “In terms of will, indoctrination, the South is at a disadvantage. North Koreans are single-minded. In the South they’re talking of peaceful unification. That’s not how the North thinks. In the North, everyone is ready mentally for war. But in the South most citizens don’t think of it, and they don’t have that resolve to win. Technically, North Korea lags behind. But they say a fight goes to the single-minded. That’s what North Korea has. Unless South Koreans prepare themselves mentally for the possiblity, who knows what will happen?”

Q. Some say North Korean soldiers’ morale will crumble when they see the riches of the South—they’ll just start looting instead of fighting.

A. “I don’t think so. Yes, they’ll be shocked, but they’re disciplined.”

Q. What are you doing now?

A. “It hasn’t been a year since I got here. I was in an education camp, started living as a civilian last July. Now I’m checking job possibilities, lecturing on the North Korean situation. I want to get my South Korean driver’s license, so I’ll be taking classes for that.”