Dear Leader (9 page)

Queues are the same everywhere in North Korea. There are three signs showing the way to lines for Cadres, Military Personnel and Ordinary Residents; and at the head of each line, armed soldiers stand guard. Although only in my twenties, I confidently approached
the Cadres’ line with my Central Party identification documents enclosed in a tan leather wallet and embossed with the gold Party emblem. People in this queue were also offered a separate waiting room, so there was no tedious standing in line for several hours like the other passengers.

On any train, the carriage at the front of the train is reserved exclusively for the use of Party cadres. Whereas the platform had been teeming with people, because this was a restricted area, the carriage was empty save for a few people. Near the door, there were four people with dark faces who seemed nervous and kept looking round. It appeared that they had boarded the train illegally by bribing an officer. As if their goal was not Sariwon but the safe start of the journey, they were so relieved when the train began to move that they bent over and giggled among themselves.

In North Korea, there is no freedom of movement. You can only buy a train ticket by showing an official travel pass the size of an identity card, stating your reasons for travel. If you travel without such a pass and are discovered, the sentence is three months of hard labour. A security agent soon appeared in the carriage. He must have been offered a bribe too, because he did not ask to see the travel passes of the four joyriders. As if in gratitude to me for pretending not to have noticed this, once he had checked my travel pass, he stood to attention and saluted me very formally.

For a long time I couldn’t take my eyes off the constantly changing scenery outside the window. We had to wait for over two hours at Hwangju Station on the way, but even this did not bother me. I was in enough of a trance to be going back to my hometown, like a pilgrim returning to a pure and holy spring.

When the train finally arrived at Sariwon Station, after travelling for over half a day, I leapt excitedly from my seat but was surprised to see the crowded platform. Having travelled in leisure in an almost empty carriage, I was puzzled to see so many passengers
disembarking onto the same platform as me. I even saw dozens of people jumping down from the roof of my carriage. At first, I shook my head at the way they had put themselves at such risk just to get a free ride. But when I approached the commotion further ahead on the platform, I saw that money had not been the problem. Security agents were beating up several passengers and yelling questions: ‘Answer me! Do you bastards have a travel pass? Fucking answer the question!’

There are also security checkpoints on all roads that cross the borders of counties and provinces, even in the hills. Those people who were risking the law anyway by travelling without authorisation were forced to travel on the roof of carriages for convenience and ease of escape. This was probably why the people picked on by the security agents betrayed no sign of the strength it must have required to risk their lives by travelling on the roof of a carriage, and instead were pleading with tears and every kind of piteous explanation they could think of.

The atmosphere of my hometown was so different from that of Pyongyang. This unfamiliarity destroyed all the calm excitement of my pilgrimage. The yelling, screaming and coarse swearing all around me made the place feel dark and terrifying. For a while, I stood there feeling lost. I looked around at the screeching mob of people who had come to the station to meet the train. They were not here merely to greet family and friends, but to collect their cargo. Most of the passengers had been ferrying large sacks of corn or rice.

Until 1994, and the start of the Arduous March, all North Koreans relied for sustenance on the socialist Public Distribution System (PDS), which determined the allocation of every basic necessity of life. This included household items and items of food, whether rice or eggs. The ration size was determined by the state, and it also served as a marker of class in North Korea. The highest ration that was granted, the Daily Ration, conferred a generous amount of supplies
for a household. The Central Party’s Finance and Administration Department made sure that every morning, a refrigerated Nissan truck delivered fresh supplies to the honoured few. The Daily Ration was granted only to the households of Central Party Secretaries, Directors and Corps Commanders in the military.

Further down the hierarchy came Three-day Rations, Weekly Rations and Monthly Rations. Three-day Rations applied to the households of those who held a rank equivalent to Ministers, Party Secretaries at the city level, and Central Party cadres ranked Deputy Director. Departmental directors in the Central Party institutions and section chiefs received Weekly Rations. Those who were Admitted to Dear Leader’s circle, such as myself, received individual rations on a weekly basis, instead of household rations. This included 5 kilos of seafood and meat, 21 kilos of rice, thirty eggs, two bottles of cooking oil and fresh produce.

Monthly Rations, once allocated to the vast majority of ordinary North Koreans, disappeared with the collapse of the state’s PDS in 1994. Weekly Rations and the grades above still remain in force – enjoyed only by the loyal and fortunate. But the ration classes that applied to cadres were kept as a secret from the ordinary populace, because they had relied solely on rations and suddenly had to fend for themselves – while cadres were still supplied. At the time, a nationwide campaign of ‘self-sufficiency’ was promoted in order to urge people to make do on their own, following the example of the General. This meant that the suppression of information about the rations enjoyed by the higher classes was all the more strictly enforced.

During the Arduous March and these times of economic hardship, the trains diligently transported not only people but the cargo of self-sufficiency. Observing the weight of their cargo, everything else I saw at the station made me grimace. As I stood there, surprised and somewhat appalled at the chaotic sight before me, someone tapped
me on my shoulder. It was my friend Young-nam, who had promised to meet me at the station. His face was clearly marked by the effects of hunger, but his youthful smile was the same as ever. Seeing him was like a fog lifting from my eyes. ‘You’ve grown up!’ I said.

Just as I’d done when we were children, I pinched his earlobe instead of shaking hands. His chubby earlobe was larger than anyone else’s and had always reminded me of a mother’s swollen nipple. When we were very small, I even pinched it till it bled on a few occasions.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The strength he displayed when relieving me of my rucksack reminded me of our childhood playfulness. After leaving the ticket barrier, I looked round near the station entrance. The first thing I noticed was the Sariwon Post Office opposite, which was unchanged as if time had stood still since I had left. At the same time, although I had remembered it as a large building, it seemed to have grown smaller and tarnished with age. The concurrence of things being exactly as they had been but at the same time smaller and more shabby was the same with the grocery store and food store next to the Post Office. But the cement of the large station square, which in my memory was smooth, was now full of cracks and wounds.

A fresh breeze blew in my face, and I noticed the big elm tree still leaning to one side, as if about to collapse sidelong. Its continued survival cheered me a little. When I was of primary school age, my mother and I had often waited under that tree for my father on his return from a business trip. Vivid memories came rushing back. In one scene, I picked up a broken piece of blue glass from a bottle and used it to reflect the sunlight, which glittered through the branches and leaves in different directions.

When we set off to the right of the station square, I wondered if we had taken a wrong turn. This was not the park I remembered, covered with vibrant foliage; there was no sign of the deer or pheasants that
used to roam here. Instead of a single pavement running straight through the park, there were many dirt tracks leading in confusing directions. On either side of this tangled road, long lines of squatting hawkers in shabby worn clothes, old and young, male and female, tempted travellers with their trinkets.

Young-nam urged me on, but I did not want to miss anything. I deliberately paced myself in order to browse the hawkers’ wares spread out on either side of me. I grimaced as I took in every sort of poverty known to North Korea’s provinces gathered together and put on display here in this miserable plot. The stench of unwashed bodies in the air was rank. The wares optimistically placed on display by grimy hands were not the kind one would expect to pay for. I asked one woman why she was selling an empty insulated flask for 20 won. She replied by saying that if I filled it with hot water, I could hug it during the night to keep warm.

It also bewildered me to see tap water on sale. It cost 10 won to wash your face with soap and water and five to wash with water alone. Young-nam told me, as if it was an everyday occurrence, that face-washing was a service that had been introduced the previous year. Not only had there been famine here, but the water supply had also dried up. Although the women were shouting ‘Water for your face!’, their own faces were greasy and dirt-flecked. It was disheartening to see the state of these women reduced to selling tap water and women with no water of their own forced to sell off their most precious possessions.

When I discovered that the cotton comforters on sale had been stuffed with filters collected from old cigarette butts, I could not suppress a snort of disgust. A woman sat by her wares, concentrating on the task. How many old cigarette butts did it take to fill a comforter? Was this the best they could do? People should not have to live like this: they weren’t living a life, but living in order to stay alive, themselves discarded like used cigarette butts. But, as if anticipating
my condescension, the old woman swore at me, shouting that those who did not collect old cigarette butts deserved to die.

‘Don’t you think of looking down on me,’ she added, with a strange air of dignity.

Turning towards the far corners of the park, I could see a swarm of homeless people who looked to be either dead or dying. There was nothing between these men and women and a cold grave but their own shadows, and even those who were still alive were clearly waiting for death. There were also men hovering over the bodies like flies, at times poking at the inert figures with a stick. I asked Young-nam what they were doing. My Jappo friend explained, scratching too audibly at his skin through his clothes.

‘They’re from the Corpse Division,’ he said. ‘Dispatched by the city’s Party Committee.’

‘Corpse Division? What do you mean?’

‘Why, they get rid of the corpses! Maybe you don’t have this in Pyongyang, but the committees in all the other provinces dispatch them to their main park near the station. All sorts of people move through the station, so they come here to beg, until they die.’

Young-nam’s expression, so unmoved even in the face of death, was distant and unfamiliar. A Corpse Division? Such a thing could never exist in Pyongyang, which was a holy centre of revolution and the capital of Chosun. Although North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Chosun, in reality, it was and remains a Republic of Pyongyang Residents. When there was famine all over the country and rations stopped, supplies were rerouted to Pyongyang residents as the first priority. The issuing of travel passes was severely restricted, and security at the Pyongyang border controls was heightened, so that supplies routed to the capital could not seep into other provinces. From 1996, when even Pyongyang rations broke down, the Party finally resorted to an opening of trade with the Chinese so that flour and corn could be brought in. Even
when Pyongyang residents did starve or freeze to death, they couldn’t be left on the streets as in the provinces: Pyongyang was the showcase of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s North Korea for foreign visitors, and its appearance had to be kept up at all costs.

Young-nam continued, ‘Apparently, the Party Secretary for Hamheung thought of the idea, and received a state medal for it. Good for him! The dead are beyond gratitude, but the living are appreciative. How else would we get rid of all the corpses? You get a full day’s ration if you sign up for the work; that’s quite generous, you know.’

As my friend chattered on, he seemed to be speaking in a different language from the one used in Pyongyang. Nothing here seemed familiar to me any longer. I stood watching the Corpse Division at work, ignoring Young-nam’s wave of the hand urging me to move on. The Corpse Division had a loaded rickshaw, on top of which some empty sacks were laid. Six bare and skeletal feet poked out from beneath these in oddly assorted directions. For the first split second, I did not understand what I was seeing, but as soon as I realised these empty sacks were human bodies, I grew nauseous and retched. I trembled with angry regret for having looked too closely. I had heard rumours that when the Public Distribution System collapsed, corpses could be seen on the streets in some provinces. But I had never thought to see it happen in my own hometown. The place I’d cherished in my memory had been like a beautiful landscape painting; now that was sullied forever, and torn into shreds. At this betrayal of my memories, I felt rage tempered by confusion rising up from deep within me.

As I met the townspeople and my old neighbours, I became ever more despondent. After I’d finished unpacking at Young-nam’s house and had changed my clothes, neighbours swarmed into the house. Young-nam’s mother had knocked on everyone’s door to say that the Doctor’s son had come back to visit. They put everything on hold to
come and marvel at me – one of the Admitted. Without exception, everyone I saw looked old and exhausted.

‘We heard you had dinner with the General! What kind of porridge does he like to eat?’ It was Mr ‘Tall-Man’ Park, who used to live down the street from us. He had eaten nothing but porridge since the last state holiday. His face was jaundiced.