Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (93 page)

A. “I graduated from political officers’ school and took engineering. I never had any real economic experience but learned on the job. Most of my subordinates, though, graduated from the People’s College of Economics in the international relations unit, and “were well-trained.”

Q. I had the impression that the society changed in the 1980s to become more corrupt and cynical.

A. “On your next trip I can show you women who ask for money. [He laughed.] Even in Pyongyang that kind of girl emerged. With North Korean currency they can’t buy foreign goods. Girls who would do anything for foreign currency emerged, behind officials’ backs, eager to buy clothing and other foreign goods.

“Before, when people had foreign currency they would ask people going abroad to buy things for them. Kim Jong-il heard of this and allowed people to buy foreign goods
inside
North Korea. That started around October of 1977, but people were wary at first. They feared it was a trick to get their foreign exchange. It was more effective starting in the 1980s. Starting in the 1980s you could buy food with foreign currency in shops. People had always been able to go to shops, just in Pyongyang, where they could buy food according to the numbers of their family members, but buying with foreign currency started in the ’80s.”

Q. In your day, how much meat was available to a member of the elite such as you?

A. “I was satisfied with the amount provided. I don’t have hunger for meat. I can’t be compared to other officials, though. I was dealing in foreign currency, so I could always go and buy meat. I can’t say the other officials were the same as I. But most officials in North Korea are very satisfied with their lives. The basic necessity is just three meals a day. They were guaranteed that. If they just worked hard for the government and stayed in their places, they could be sure of those three meals.

“As for the quality of housing, South Korean apartments are much larger. But in North Korea the question is how many rooms you have. I had $100,000 to $150,000 worth of furniture in my home. I had command of foreign currency. When I traded with other countries, I got gifts. So
I had access to expensive foreign things. The dollar currency is so powerful in North Korea. With $100 you can buy ten of the best-quality suits. The KCIA was very surprised when I defected. I had over $100,000 worth of currency with me when I defected. None of the other defectors had access to the lifestyle I experienced.”

Q. Why did you defect, really? You had a comfortable life within the system.

A. “Even though I had a very comfortable life, I felt uncertainty and apprehension. During the Cold War, my cousin came to South Korea. Then, under orders of the South Korean government or the U.S., he returned to North Korea. He was prosecuted and executed. When I was young I didn’t have problems on that account, but it became a problem as I became a prominent member of society. In North Korea circumstances like that are considered very important for the other members of a family. Having a defector or traitor in the family can be a big minus. This is the main reason why I defected to the South. I feared that because of that background if there arose a situation where I could not fulfill one of Kim Jong-il’s orders he might bring it up. I had trouble with Kim Jong-il’s orders. He wanted to do something like the Olympics in North Korea—the World Festival of Youth and Students. The company I was with was supposed to take care of the money problem for the festival. I had to be the money resource. I was president of the company, Daeyang Trading Co. I was supposed to come up with about $10 million—first $ 3 million, then another $ 3 million, and finally $ 4 million. I was going to import cobalt from Africa and re-export it for $15 million. But the buyer insisted on paying
after
delivery. The problem was that Kim Jong-il wanted the money quickly. A government official called me in Moscow and we had a big argument. There wasn’t time to get the money. That’s when I defected.

“At first I regretted defecting, very much. Everything was so alien to me. So I considered defecting again to a third country. I’m still here because if I go back to North Korea it will only mean death. Life has gotten better, but still there’s a lot of psychological stress in being a defector. South Koreans say they want reunification but they are distant toward me. I wonder how it would really work out.

“South Korean officials have hardly made any use of my information. I met U.S. military intelligence people three times, but they just asked general questions. [On the other hand] I was writing a book and I discovered that my typist was taking pages of the manuscript back to the KCIA. I got rid of her and have refused to publish the book. I can’t publish it because some of my high government-official friends might be hurt, people who are outwardly loyal but who have some doubts. Exposing them to reprisal could damage prospects for reunification. Kim Jong-il is very upset. I imagine my family was sent to a harsh place. If
Kim Jong-il had cause for even greater anger, I’m afraid he would get to my family in a worse way and even get to me. I thought Bill Clinton could bring reunification, since I believe the U.S. has power to influence the situation. But I have some fear that reunification would allow family members of defectors, and others in North Korea who have suffered on account of defectors, to come and kill the defectors.”

I met Kim Jong-min several times in informal circumstances. As I got to know him I realized he was truly unhappy with the way his life had turned out. He spoke more than once of how much he missed his family. One daughter—like his mother—-was very beautiful; if she came to the South she could enter the pageant and become Miss Korea, he boasted. Once, he failed to show up for a morning appointment with me in a coffee shop. Later he explained that he had stayed up drinking with a friend and slept too late. I learned that he had married in the South, but then had divorced and was left with alimony problems. I worried that he was not making and never would make the adjustment to living in Seoul. And, as he had done, I extrapolated from his situation, worrying how North and South Koreans would fare living together in any eventual reunification.

In July 2001, Kim left Seoul on a trip to China and promptly disappeared. By that time, it was not uncommon for defectors to travel to the China–North Korea border and mount rescue operations to try to bring out family members. Sometimes they employed Chinese who could travel freely in North Korea, but some of the defectors actually went in themselves— sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. At least one defector who went in himself-was captured and publicly executed. The Seoul newspaper
JoongAng Ilbo
in reporting Kim Jong-min’s disappearance the following February quoted colleagues as recalling his often expressed wish to bring his daughters to South Korea.
¹

Hong Song-il, also known by his Japanese name, Seichi Tokuyama, might have seemed an anomaly. Forty years old “when I interviewed him,
¹
the third-generation Korean resident of Japan owned a chain of eight
pachinko
— Japanese pinball—parlors in and near Tokyo, drove a Mercedes-Benz and was both objectively and in his own mind a rich capitalist. Nevertheless, he contributed substantial funds both directly and indirectly to communist North Korea. In our talk he explained “why he and many other capitalistic Koreans looked north to Pyongyang rather than south to Seoul for their Korean homeland.

Q: How do you and your family happen to be among the 700,000 Korean residents of Japan?

A: “My grandfather came first. Around 1929 my father at age seven came over to join him, and ended up working as a day laborer in Osaka. After Japan surrendered in 1945, my family could go back and forth often to our home town on Cheju Island. But my grandfather supported the 1948 mutiny by Cheju people opposed to Rhee’s rule in South Korea. After Rhee’s government put down that uprising, the whole family—all my father’s brothers and sisters—came to Japan.”

Q. Could they still go back and forth to South Korea?

A. “No. The South Korean government prohibited entry by anyone affiliated with Chongryon, the pro–North Korean residents’ association in Japan.
I think my father had joined that shortly after the single Korean group here split into pro-North and pro-South groups in 1945.”

Q. Why did he take the pro-North side?

A. “Before
1945,
he opposed Japanese imperialism, which dominated and colonized Koreans. He came to Japan for economic reasons, to earn bread for his family. He believed socialism or communism would provide a better life for Koreans. He also realized the bitterness of statelessness under Japanese domination.”

Q. It’s been many years since that time. Why do you and other second- and third-generation Korean residents support North Korea and Chongryon?

A. “Upbringing has something to do with it, at least in my case. Not only did my father support the North, but I attended a North Korean school in Japan and so did my wife. In fact the cultural role of Chongryon is one of the reasons many in the younger generations continue to support it. It functions as a rallying or unifying agent in maintaining the Korean community and keeping up traditional culture. It even conducts weddings and funerals.”

Q. Is that enough to persuade even a businessman such as yourself to support a pro-communist organization?

A. “To survive in capitalist Japan you need some political support. The economic policy of the Japanese government is very hostile to Koreans. My business, pinballs, requires a license. The more successful my business becomes, the worse the police and political harassment becomes. Chongryon champions our rights. That’s the reason we support it. Kim Il-sung is something like a father figure for us.”

Q. In Juzo Itami’s movie
A Taxing Woman
the female tax inspector goes after a
pachinko-parlor
operator. When you talk of official harassment, is tax one of the things you’re talking about?

A. “There is overt and covert harassment.”

Q. After all these years in Japan, have you thought of becoming naturalized?

A. “After graduating from the North Korean school here, I did waver and think of becoming naturalized. But one day two young drunks kicked my car, and when I spoke to them about it we got into an argument. At first witnesses and the policeman who came to the scene were very cordial to me, blaming the two drunks and sympathizing with me as the victim. But after the policeman asked for my driver’s license and saw that I was Korean, his attitude changed abruptly and he blamed me for the incident and incited the witnesses to blame me as well, telling them I was Korean. He threatened not to let me go home until I confessed I had started the whole thing. When my wife and newborn baby came to get me out, I looked at my baby’s sleeping face and realized I must remain Korean. Although Koreans speak Japanese and live Japanese-style, we remain Koreans.”

Q. Do you believe in the North’s communist system?

A. “Frankly I don’t have much faith in communism. I think there needs to be a sort of Korean-style
perestroika
to reform it.”

Q. Have you been to North Korea?

A. “Yes, in 1982 and again in 1987, to visit an uncle and an aunt who had moved there from Japan. The uncle and his family live in the mountains of North Pyongan Province. The aunt lives in Wonsan.”

Q. What did you think of what you saw?

A. “I felt some contradiction between what I saw in North Korea and what I had been told. They have a party-first system. The Workers’ Party is everything. The basic requirements of living are met, yes, but there is little luxury in food, housing or amenities. Pyongyang has developed impressively but once you get outside the capital there is much to be desired. However, on the plane back to Japan I reflected that contradictions couldn’t be helped. In view of the military situation facing North Korea, its confrontation with the United States and the fact that it’s almost surrounded by major countries, its survival is at stake.”