A Thousand Miles to Freedom (5 page)

After my father passed away, our life became a veritable hell, with survival as our sole aim. Even the hospital had nothing left to feed its patients, and no one was receiving any provisions from the government anymore. As I said earlier, Keumsun and I had stopped going to school, because we were no longer presentable. Moreover, we didn't have much time to devote to studying; our days were dedicated entirely to finding something to eat.

The three of us—my mom, Keumsun, and I—lived secluded in the apartment, hidden from public view. Every night, we snuck out to the fields to steal rice and corn. We would sneak out armfuls of crops and then go farther up the mountains, away from the eyes of military or government officials, to separate the grains. We also looked for roots and mushrooms. Sometimes, we went to chop wood, which was getting harder and harder to find, to sell as firewood in order to buy sustenance.

Mom took care of chopping down the trees with an ax, while Keumsun and I kept ourselves occupied with thinner branches to make little bundles of sticks. It was extremely hard work, especially given the weak state of our bodies. Fortunately, we were never caught in the act.

*   *   *

That terrible night in December 1997, Mom, with her eyes closed, lay motionless on the makeshift sleeping bag. All of these memories were undoubtedly playing back and forth in her head.

The trip to Rajin-Sonbong had been our last hope. As she was leaving through the doors of our apartment, my mom had thought that she would be able to bring us back food, or at least a way to make money and save us all. But this last attempt had failed.

By morning, my mom still hadn't budged, but, strangely, I felt like she was silently devising a plan in her head. Outside, the sun was already shining brightly. Suddenly, she stood up, a determined look in her eyes. She had decided to take action. Her will to survive had just kicked in.

 

6

That morning, Mom crossed the point of no return. I saw her stand up, with a look of burning determination in her eyes that contrasted sharply with the despair she had displayed the day before. She was about to do what I would never have imagined possible. She walked straight toward the wall where the portraits of our leaders were hanging, stood up on the tips of her toes, reached out her arms, and removed the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il; those colored photos of our leaders protected by glass and encased in brown wooden frames. Our two leaders had watched us night and day since my early childhood, like they did in every household in North Korea. Their portraits were everywhere in the country, in every building and on every train in the subway system of Pyongyang. In the quasi-religion invented by Kim Il-sung, these portraits were considered holy objects.

My mom no longer cared. She carefully removed the two sacred portraits of our leaders from their cases, and then took the frames apart. The wooden frames were our last sellable items. In taking them apart, my mom had just committed a crime punishable by death. We had to make sure no one figured out where these sticks of wood had come from. If our neighbors found these pictures outside of their frames, they could denounce us to the regime for “insulting” the two leaders. To be safe, my mom burned the photos.

Mom sold the wooden posts from the frames at the market, and with the money she received in exchange, we were finally able to buy ourselves a meal. For the first time in three days, I had something edible to put in my mouth. My mom seemed to have gotten a little bit of energy back. She decided she would also sell our dresser, our last piece of furniture other than the coffee table on which I wrote my will. But at the
jangmadang
, the black market, the merchants said that the dresser was in too poor condition to sell. The only solution was to chop it up with the ax and turn it into firewood.

But beyond that meager plan, everything was still unknown. How would we survive? The rough winter gave my mother no chance to rest. She also became ill at this time. She could no longer provide for us, so she sent me away to stay with a friend. I left the house not knowing whether I would ever come back. Keumsun took the train and went to Chongjin to stay with an aunt. Mom needed some time to recover her strength. The neighbors worried about her deteriorating health, especially since it was less than five degrees Fahrenheit outside. They said that the ghost of my father would come back to try to take my mother with him. You always had to be wary of ghosts in North Korea. There were plenty of them, and I was always very afraid of them when I was little.

*   *   *

It was during these last few weeks of winter 1997–1998 that my life took a sharp turn. As we became more and more desperate for food, my mom started to think about the unthinkable: fleeing the country. She began planning to escape from North Korea and head toward unknown territory to save her two daughters. I returned home to see her again at the beginning of February when she started to feel better, and when I saw her, I knew immediately that she had already made the frightening decision: we were going to head to China.

*   *   *

Eundeok is located just one hour away from the Chinese–North Korean border, but we had never imagined taking such a risk. Illegally crossing this border, which was patrolled by guards armed with guns and instructed to shoot on sight, seemed insane. Some of our friends had been quietly advising us to take this risk and cross into China. They told us that there was no chance of survival for us here. They told us stories of several families who had escaped into China and were doing just fine. At first my mom didn't believe them because, when she was young, our country was in fact better off than China. In her younger days, it was the Chinese who dreamed of coming to North Korea to alleviate their hunger. How quickly things change! Furthermore, we in North Korea did not have any information about the rest of the world, other than what was fed to us through the state's propaganda, which always emphasized that it was far better to live here than in the chaos of the capitalist world. We grew up in one big lie, but I didn't know it then.

At long last, though, my mom was convinced. After all, we didn't have much left to lose. And once my mother has an idea in her head, it's impossible to change her mind. Without uttering another word, she started making the proper preparations. We were going to become defectors, traitors to our country. However, at this point, our concerns were far from political. We were guided by our instinct for survival, not by the idea of revolting against the regime. Our only goal was to find food and survive. I had no desire to criticize the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il; I just wanted to alleviate my hunger. It was only later, at the end of our long, perilous journey in search of freedom, that my eyes were opened to the subservience of our lives in North Korea and that I began to understand the horror of that inhumane regime. Today, I can openly denounce the regime's crimes, because I am safely in South Korea. And here, at long last, my stomach is full.

*   *   *

Eighteen years have passed, but I still vividly remember the day that our lives as fugitives began. Our journey would last nine years, but I could not have known it then.

Night was falling over Eundeok. Spring was well on its way but I was still shivering from the cold, because the temperature had dropped when darkness fell. Keumsun, Mom, and I slipped outside. My mother closed the door of our little apartment, this time forever. I brought with me a small backpack with my most precious memories in it: a few photos, particularly the one of my father in which he was wearing an
ushanka
, a fur hat with earflaps, taken in front of the Kim Il-sung statue in Pyongyang. It was one of my favorite pictures of him. On the street around us, the passersby whose paths we crossed were unaware that they would never see us again. Earlier that day, my mom had gone to see a friend to borrow an ax and a saw, under the pretense of needing them to chop some wood. She didn't dare tell her friend that we would be keeping them for good. These two tools would be our key to obtaining food during our journey into the unknown. All we had to do was to chop some wood and sell it whenever we needed food, my mom told us. My mother has always had a strong practical sense.

It was pitch-black out when we reached the village at the Chinese border, after an hour or so of travel on the back of a shaky truck. Cloaked in the darkness of the night, we distanced ourselves from the village and crossed the fields, hiding behind bushes and shrubs. Suddenly, after my eyes became used to the darkness, I saw a sign in the distance that read “Tumen River.” Beyond the river was China. Freedom—and what I was hoping for even more, rice—were waiting for us on the other side. Tonight, we would arrive in China.

This spot along the river was familiar because we had made the same trip a few weeks ago. We had made our first attempt to cross the border at the beginning of March. Heeding advice from experienced smugglers, we had intended to cross the frozen river. But we realized when we got there that by then, it was too late. Little chunks of ice were floating along the river. Since the ice was already starting to thaw, we knew we would have to wait until winter of the following year. It seemed like such a long time to wait. After that first attempt, we returned in the dead of night, disheartened, to Eundeok. However, Mom was never one to give up easily, and she decided that we would instead come back in spring to cross the Tumen. And this time, since we had heard that the river wasn't very deep, we would travel through water instead of over ice.

*   *   *

So here we were, on our second attempt. Quietly, we approached the edge of the river. A few meters away from the river, I lay down on the sand. From there, you could observe the border patrols coming and going as they passed through the hills. We stayed still and silent for several hours. Mom was quietly calculating how much time we had between each coming and going of the patrolmen.

Around midnight, after a patrolman had just passed, she gave us the signal and headed toward the sand, and then Keumsun and I followed one after the other. When we reached the river, my feet sank into the freezing water. We had never learned how to swim, but my mom held us tightly. First, the water reached my knees, and then shortly after, it reached right up to my neck. I felt like I was going to be submerged in water. I was so scared. Keumsun and I held on tightly to our still resolute mother. Mom realized that the river was too deep for the two of us, and so we headed back toward the banks of the river on the side we had come from. What a relief!

But my mom is stubborn. She told us to wait for her while she crossed the river herself and tried to find a path for us. Slowly, her silhouette became fainter and fainter in the distance. My teeth chattered as I watched her fade into the darkness. I was scared she was going to drown and that we'd never see her again. And if she did make it to the other side, what would happen to my sister and me? My heart started pounding as my mother disappeared into the darkness.

Suddenly, after minutes that felt more like hours, Mom reappeared, dripping wet. Her entire body was shivering and she could barely walk. I thought she might faint. She told us that at just two meters away from reaching the Chinese border, she had slipped in the water. I felt helpless. In the darkness of the night, two young girls were by themselves, trying to take care of their sick mother, drenched and chilled from the river.

“So be it. Let's go to the border guards,” my mom said in defeat.

 

7

The chief of police came to meet us in front of the small patrol station near the border. Mom explained that we had left our home to chop wood with the intention of selling it at Rajin-Sonbong, which is why we had to surreptitiously cross the river. I got the feeling that he didn't believe even for a second the lie that we were telling. After a moment of hesitation, he told us to go wait in a corner. We were exhausted and shivering. The officer brought us some pancakes made of cornmeal and some milk powder and let us sleep on the floor. I started warming up again as my body made contact with the
ondol
, the under-ground heating system used in Korea. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning, I realized how lucky we were. The border official let us leave without any further questions.

At various points throughout our entire journey, we sometimes came across people who were very generous to us, who sympathized with us. I don't even know their names, but without them, I might not be alive today. I want to take the opportunity here to truly thank them from the bottom of my heart.

*   *   *

But in spite of this unexpected generosity from the border guard, our situation was still quite dire. Going back to Eundeok was not an option, my mom decided. We couldn't risk going back when our neighbors knew about our attempted escape. And besides, there would still not be any food for us there. Going back to Eundeok would mean starvation for all of us. But then where were we to go from here? Mom decided that we should head to Rajin-Sonbong, thinking that we would be able to find a means of survival there. We sold the ax and the saw for a bit of pocket money, and then we took off.

I will always remember this day as one of the saddest days of my life. It was raining heavily, we didn't know where we were going to sleep, and we were full of gloom. Worst of all, that photo of my father had been ruined forever. It was my favorite and the last one I had of him. The photo hadn't survived our trip through the Tumen River. The ink had become smudged, and the image of his face, the last memory of his existence, was gone forever. Even to this day, I still miss that photo. In my new life, I have to fight hard to keep the fuzzy memories I have of him from fading away, so that I don't let myself forget about my father. I think again and again about the trip we took to Pyongyang when I was nine. We rode the subway, and then we went to see the statue of Kim Il-sung and his gigantic mausoleum. Dad had wanted to show me all the beautiful things that could be found in the capital city. During that trip, for the first time in my life, he bought me a little toy from a toy store: a small plastic star that I took with me everywhere. I was so proud to show it off in front of my friends at school. These are the memories that I never want to forget.