How I Became a North Korean (13 page)

 • • • 

A few days later we had our first visitors, a couple wearing the brightest shades of spring between them. Their church meant something to me. When I was fourteen, Salvation Church had sponsored a trip for disadvantaged youth to South Korea—that was my family!—and brought me to Seoul, a city that was dotted with neon red crosses. My breath had stopped when I saw the church's vaulted ceiling, which seemed to rise higher than a canopy of redwood trees straight into the arms of God. But these representatives supporting the safe house were the last people I wanted to lay eyes on; the Christian leadership diaspora was tiny, and with my luck, they might know my mom.

We'd been scrubbed and polished before noon, our hair trimmed and nails cut. Our jerseys, shorts, and rolled-up jeans had been swapped for checkerboard button-down shirts and tan slacks. The other guys had their radar on the cake box cradled in Mrs. Bang's arms, but you could have cut through Yongju's tension with a knife. I hung back behind Missionary Lee, who
was hovering in the rear. I wished I knew what he thought of this exhibit A we'd been turned into.

Missionary Kwon handed his jacket to Yongju after taking out the three cell phones he routinely exchanged for others. “It's for your security,” he'd first explained in his ever-grave voice, impressing me with the serious nature of his mission. I got that the missionary needed those phones to juggle his humanitarian, religious, and gang contacts, which were required for everything from fake I.D.s to crossing the border, but I didn't feel comfortable when he began directing us like a CEO with his employees in front of the couple.

“We feel so blessed to finally be here.” Mrs. Bang's smile was as broad and plain as a garbanzo bean, and she wore her hair in a skullcap of curls. She set the curlicued lemon chiffon on the
saang
.

“I'd be thankful for a blessed kiss, one from each of you,” she added, and tapped her cheek.

Naturally we cooperated after Missionary Kwon nudged Yongju. Her husband, who'd been introduced as a church elder, looked apologetic as we stepped forward one at a time.

“We're so excited to be here with you.” He spoke without the self-importance that most elders wore like an emperor's robe. “We've been praying hard for this moment.”

His wife piped up, “God's kingdom is for the poor and the powerless—I promise, he has special plans for you.”

She turned to Missionary Kwon. “How do you keep so many shelters functioning? It's really fantastic, just incredible work. The Lord is truly working through you.”

“The Lord is working through all of us, all the time.”

His eyes took on a faraway look, as if he was in the presence of the Lord alone. I admired the grace that seemed to emerge from his faith; I had begun to question the nature of my own. He abruptly returned, frowning as he looked from us to Mr. and Mrs. Bang.

“Your honorable church made this venture possible by lending us the building—really the only safe place to keep boys their age. We're merely janitors doing the necessary work. And this young man you see here keeps them in line.” Missionary Kwon gave Yongju's shoulder a firm squeeze. “Otherwise these kinds of boys would be too dangerous to shelter.”

He nodded to Yongju, who led them down the dark corridor. “This is where we sleep.” He gestured to the neat stacks of
yo
and pillows in the corner and the plastic frame hanger heavy with our clothes. They continued down the hall past the room where Missionary Lee slept, then to the storage room stocked with rice, corn, and canned goods. Yongju retreated there whenever he needed privacy.

After prayers, Mrs. Bang hoisted slices of cake onto paper plates and passed them down like an assembly line. Gwangsu's tongue washed over his teeth like windshield wipers and Cheolmin rubbed his frostbitten foot, the way he always did when anticipating something. The cake slices were gone in three swallows. Only Yongju didn't disappoint me; he nibbled his one bite at a time, savoring it.

“
Trauma
's the only word for it.” Missionary Kwon set a hand on his heart, as if it was hurting. “Entire villages of women are
bought and sold. There's even a house church pastor who turned in the North Korean refugees in his congregation and collected the Chinese government's cash reward.”

The cake was the other boys' universe; only Yongju and I were really listening. The missionary gave a summary of each of our lives, with details that emphasized how pitiful it was to be North Korean. He even introduced me as a homeless
kkotjaebi
from Musan whose parents had been part of the underground church, though I'd told him that I was a Joseon-
jok
orphan. Namil spat out a chunk of cake at the flagrant lie. I was ashamed; I'd been made even more of an imposter than I already was.

“Outside of this one”—Missionary Kwon nodded my way—“none of them had known of the Lord's word before they met me.”

“You've devoted your life to these poor North Koreans.” Mrs. Bang's thin nose quivered. “They owe you their lives. I heard how you used to lead refugees out of China across the Gobi Desert. You could have died.”

He said solemnly, “And the jungles of Southeast Asia, but I'm on their radar now. Too many of us have been caught; I can't put any more lives at risk. The trouble is, trustworthy smugglers are as rare as the Hope diamond.”

Missionary Lee's head bobbed up and down, his slice of cake long gone. He said shyly, “There's been too many lives at risk already.” It was the first complete sentence he'd ventured in front of the Bangs.

“You're thinking of Missionary Lim,” said Missionary Kwon. “I saw him the last time I was back.”

They continued to talk, and I got that this Missionary Lim had sold the only residence he owned in Seoul and spent that money to personally escort North Koreans to a safe third country.

Mrs. Bang said, “Is it true what I heard—that after they caught him, the Chinese tortured him until his heart stopped and he was declared dead?”

Missionary Kwon nodded. “He weighed forty-five kilos when he finally made it to Seoul. An eighty-kilo man, originally as large as Missionary Lee. He said when he came back to life, they started torturing him again.”

“It's been two years now since our diplomats got him out, but he'll never be the same man.”

“It's not just him, either,” said Missionary Lee. “His wife and children, think of their suffering.”

“China.” Mr. Bang's narrow shoulders jumped at each word. “No country's brave enough to challenge it.”

“But why?” Yongju interjected, looking baffled. “Why do people risk their lives this way?”

The smooth mask of Missionary Kwon's face softened. “Because we believe in God.”

The thought of so many risking their lives for other people moved me. I wanted to be like them, to have my DNA restructured and become someone capable of such faith. To conquer my own desires and live for something greater than the self. But my awe diminished when Missionary Kwon showed them the photos he'd taken in the cave, with our scabby faces and our dirt-caked clothes, then photos of a man and a woman sitting cross-legged with tiny Bibles spread open in their laps, talking to an elderly couple. Then
came photos of a squinting man at a guard post and others in front of North Korean statues, obviously across the river.

Missionary Kwon said, “I told you about them earlier, the ones we taught who returned to do the Lord's work in North Korea. One of my contacts went in posing as a Chinese tourist—which is dangerous!—to confirm it.”

While Mr. Bang talked about bringing the Lord's light to that dark world, I tried to stop the pounding in my head. I was so confused. I couldn't stop staring at the photos of the couple, apparently part of the underground church in North Korea. Was that Missionary Kwon's plan for my friends, too?

“The Lord guided them—it was their choice to return. I'd never force that on anyone.” Missionary Kwon took the closest hand—Yongju's—in his. “The Bible's your friend. And you'll know the entire book like a friend once you've completed your studies with us.”

Yongju pulled his hand away. “What does that mean?”

“It's standard practice.” Irritation crossed Missionary Kwon's face, then disappeared. “How could you leave without knowing the Lord's word?”

My pencil splintered in my hand. “You mean you're holding them hostage until they memorize the whole book?”

Namil snapped, “The whole book?”

Cheolmin's half-closed eyes popped open. “What do you mean, the whole book?”

Missionary Kwon gave me a look of warning. “You'll be blessed. A year, three years, however long it takes, the Lord's word can only change your life for the better.”

Cheolmin flipped through all six hundred and twenty-eight pages of the Bible, then shoved it away from him. The Bangs smiled, but they avoided meeting our eyes.

Yongju rubbed at the Roman numeral on the last page. “Most of them can barely read.

“You promised we'd be here a month, a few months at most, while you raised the funds, Missionary Kwon.” His voice shook as he clasped Missionary Kwon's hands. “Please. I promise to go to church and read the Bible in Seoul, anywhere you send me.”

“You'll be surrounded by the devil's many temptations, but here where you need the Lord the most, he will find you. I've witnessed the miraculous change in so many of you.”

“But my family. How will I find my family—”

Yongju's beautiful head bowed to the
saang
as he shook with silent sobs. All his hopes hinged on making his way to South Korea, a country that equaled information and resources. I felt his helplessness and the way his family must have seemed to be drifting further away from him. I wanted to do something, anything, to stop those tears.

Missionary Lee looked to the left and right at us. “Missionary Kwon?” His voice was a whisper.

Silence finally became impossible. I said, “We might not know God's will, but he just might not have brought them all this precious way only to leave them rotting in China!”

Missionary Lee pinched my foot under the
saang,
but I didn't want to stop; I didn't want to ever stay silent again.

“What's more, if that couple you sent back get caught and are
executed,” I said, slamming the table for effect, “you will become a murderer.”

Missionary Lee gasped. Missionary Kwon reached across the table, grabbed my hands, and stopped their thumping. He said, “That's enough!”

The Bangs were too shocked to notice that I'd slipped up and said “them” and not “us.” But something else—maybe recognition that what I said was true? or shame?—flashed like a bat's shadow across Mrs. Bang's face.

Missionary Kwon's words came at a furious clip. We had only been with him for a few weeks and were transitioning. Missionary Lee was new and though knowledgeable, he had a soft heart and was too indulgent. As Missionary Kwon regained his composure, he ruffled my hair, saying, “
Jaashik,
you'll come around.” But I didn't believe in him anymore.

He added, “You little rascals. Someday you'll understand that though the body may be safe in South Korea, we're keeping you here to save your soul.”

Yongju shuddered. That small hunched movement moved me. I wasn't the only one. Missionary Lee rose and gave him a clumsy hug. He said, “I'm so sorry, my son.”

Mrs. Bang folded her arms tightly across her chest.

“You should know that with all the border crackdowns, it's much harder for your people to cross than before.” She looked at us with reproach, as if a stranglehold border should have made them grateful to be locked up indefinitely. “Look, here you are, safe! God is more powerful than any government.”

Later I learned of other organizations, including some Christian groups, who moved people quickly out of China. Many anonymous good folks undertook the dangerous work while governments talked about North Korean human rights but were too trade-happy with China to act. But my friends were Missionary Kwon's charges. For them it would be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so on, until they were converted. Unless I did something about it.

A
week after I left the mountains I was betrayed by a Joseon-
jok
woman who promised to help me, then sold me to a local gang. In the crowded city that seemed large enough to hide in, the woman had given me a job with actual pay at her eatery. I was so grateful, but within a few days of working in the kitchen, men in a van seized me and forced me into a basement den.

When they stepped back, the first person I saw in the mildewed basement was a young girl with heavy bangs. She ran straight into the knot of my belly, this girl about Byeol's height. She reminded me of Seongsik and the life we had cobbled together. I held her to me as one of the men behind me coughed.

“Go back inside, Suhyeon!” said a woman with brassy dyed-red hair coiled up into a bird's nest.

Her voice crackled with displeasure, and she yanked the girl into a private room near the entrance. I never saw the girl again.

The
ajumma
the men had said would take care of me was a stern terror with a black fuzz above her upper lip. Her gauzy
skirt and a billowing jacket that increased her generous size made her appear even more formidable.

“What am I supposed to do with her?” She prodded my stomach.

“Trust me, there's a niche market for women like her,” said one of the men with a colorful serpent tattoo winding up his neck. He looked like one of the gang members that had terrified us at home.

“What about later? What will happen
later
? I don't want trouble.”

“Shut up with the questions and do what you're told,” he said. “That's what you're paid for.”

“All right, all right,” she muttered, dropping her gaze.

I wanted to scream; I wanted to claw away the walls as if they were paper. I wanted to reverse three generations of decisions so that my grandparents would die fighting against American imperialists and Nam Joseon lackeys, and give our family a hero's
seongbun,
so we could live differently. But looking back wasn't going to help my baby, so I calmed myself as some of the men left and others headed down the hall. I looked for any routes for future escape, but there was only the one locked door leading out.

“We'll want more vitamins in your diet.” The
ajumma
inspected me. “I don't want any sicknesses.”

A pitiful sound escaped me. I couldn't believe it was from me.

“Dear, it could be worse.” She patted my arm. “Plenty of your people service twenty men a day, real men. You're only servicing them online.”

She unlocked one of the cubicle rooms. A baby-faced girl with a turned-up nose, introduced as Miyeon, emerged in a robe of scarlet and vermilion, her legs bare. She crossed her arms over her thin chest.

“
Eoh-meonah,
Eonni!” This girl, who didn't look eighteen, caressed my stomach. “What will you do? What will you ever do?”

“The same thing you do, for some very special customers,” the
ajumma
said. “She's by the bathroom. You know the routine.”

After the
ajumma
left me in Miyeon's care, we sat on the bed, the only place to sit.

“I'm from Yanggang province,” she offered in a rapid, high-pitched voice.

“I'm from North Hamgyong province.”

“Me, I thought I would cross, earn good money for my family working at a Joseon-
jok
restaurant. That's what the broker told me. But they brought me here.”

“I was sold into marriage.” I was too ashamed to say that when I first crossed I'd agreed to being sold.

She confirmed that the dozen locked doors lining the hallway outside held more of our women, we who had grown up with our skirts hemmed below our knees and sleeves covering our shoulders. Most had been sold to Chinese men our grandfathers' age, tricked by brokers, or kidnapped. She pressed her bony knees to her chest when I asked, and confirmed that there was no way to escape. The best way to stay out of trouble here, she said, was to be invisible.

While she babbled, I took stock of her bed, the clock and the mirror, the computer stand, the computer. That was all there was in the tiny room.

“But why am I here? What do we have to do?” I asked.

She took my hands in hers. “You'll . . . you'll have to take your clothes off for men on camera. It's all done by computer. You been long in China?”

I shook my head. Tried to keep my breathing regular. If I opened my mouth a scream would come out.

“Do you know what a computer is?”

I nodded. “The man I was first sold to had one.”

“There are some real perverts out there, Eonni. I'm sorry.” She bit down on her lower lip, leaving a track of peony-tinted lipstick across her uneven front teeth. “It seems impossible, but you will get used to it.”

Her words became disordered fragments as the number grew in my head of the days, months, even years the women had been enslaved. I thought of the flower girls in our country, selling their bodies to men. But I was an overripe fruit; I couldn't believe that men descended to such measures.

Miyeon showed me to my room, with an identical frame bed and computer squeezed into it. This was where I would take the South Korean men's calls. Strip off my clothes and do what they wanted me to. I collapsed onto the bed, short shallow breaths escaping me.

“I can't do this,” I managed.

She squeezed my hand and said again, “Oh, Eonni.” She said
nothing more than that. “Older Sister.” As if recognizing me was all she could promise.

I was locked in like the rest of them. At first I pummeled the door to my room until my knuckles were raw. The door, the color of green of bleached tea leaves, was covered in long scratches. Nail marks. My voice withered, for our doors opened only when the
ajumma
decided to open them. There was little to distract me except for the clock ticking opposite the wall and two heart-shaped pillows tied to the lumpy bed. With my ear pressed to the thin partitions, I listened for the low murmur of other girls. In the monitor I saw myself looking at me and wondered who else was looking.

We were given a pill with every meal, every day. The
ajumma
said, “I want your skin to glow with health!” No matter how many pills we took, nothing changed our sallow, underground look. A tin tray came to my door loaded with rice, vegetables, a watery
dwenjang guk
. There was room inspection and cleaning duties. A black-suited man at the main door changed off with other men at the twelfth hour. Other black suits banged in and out through the front door, stinking of cigarette smoke, and headed to the back room stuffed with couches where they played cards and, occasionally, called for a favorite girl. They were the only people the
ajumma
listened to.

Every day the computer screen lit up blue, then white, and a man glowed into focus. My first client was a man with gray hair and the face of a twenty-year-old. He didn't waste time. As soon as he appeared on the screen, he said, “Why's your robe on? I didn't pay for a robe. I can go to the department store for that.”

All of them were from Nam Joseon. The Dear Leader was right about one thing: It was a nation of sick people. I kept my eyes fixed on the window to the man's right. I told myself that the sky was still there and real, waiting for me.

I thought I would go mad. I endured. The computer's camera followed me. I woke up to it and slept to it. Always, I felt someone watching me. I was caught inside the blank screen for all those eyes to touch. Nam Joseon men in navy suits, men in white undershirts beached in their chairs, naked men, hairy men, men with the high-pitched voices of women. Men who desired pregnant women.

Only my baby mattered. I stroked the tight drum of my stomach, the beautiful life of four months that knew nothing of this room. I pictured a curled fist of webbed fingers, a giant bean of a body, and carried love and fear inside me.

Within a few weeks I resorted to the only plan possible. I started with a man whittled down to a chopstick. My stomach had swelled and my breasts were heavier now and tender at their tips. The man shyly sneaked looks at me, this shell in which I was protecting two beating hearts, and said, “You could be a pregnant schoolgirl.”

He was old enough to have a daughter in school. I missed Eomma. I kept one leg up, one arm curved across my waist.

“Is that what you like, pregnant schoolgirls?”

I slipped off the robe.

He nodded and rambled on nervously. “Women are too skinny these days. It's all that dieting. If you eat tomatoes all day, it's a tomato diet. Watermelons, a watermelon diet.”

“What's a diet?”

He laughed and explained dieting to me. The concept was shocking. But Nam Joseon was also a country with more cars than bicycles, where people freely traveled without punishment. It wasn't real to me yet, but I knew it was a safe country where a future was possible. Though its people were sick, I wanted to go there.

“Help me,” I said finally to him, as I would to each of my men, and waited for his response.

One of the girls slit her slender wrist with a shard of mirror. The
ajumma
took our mirrors away. One moved like a broken ox. One girl wrapped herself in a padded coat that hid her body of fish bones whenever the
ajumma
allowed us to pace the halls. My memory comes in fragments. Nothing is chronological. In my sleep I walked through the paint-peeled walls of our underground fortress, out into the white sunlight and back across the frozen river toward home. When the girl used the mirror on herself, I thought it could have been me. Maybe it was the end of my second month—or the third?—when the man I had waited for arrived.

I glimpsed a faint gold cross hanging on the wall behind him, took the risk, and told him where I was from. He viewed me calmly from his leather chair, as if he had already known before he called. The man I would later call Missionary Kwon fixed his gaze on me until I—even I!—had to look away.

Finally he said, “I'm a powerful man. I can do anything. I could buy your freedom for you.”

I looked behind me, but of course there was only a wall.

“Why would you do that for me? You don't know me.”

I didn't really believe this. A man would do many things for a stranger if she was young and beautiful enough.

“You're not the first group of girls I've found this way. I've raised enough money this time to get many of you out.”

He settled back into the chair that rose with imperial gravity behind him. His frozen face looked incapable of expression.

I tried to hide my excitement. “What do you want from me?”

“What could you possibly give me that I would want?” He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Take off your clothes, in case there's trouble.”

I jerked the cord loose and let the robe fall, surrounding me in a sea of scarlet. His gaze remained steady despite my ripe shape. He didn't seem particularly interested, at least not in the way I was used to. I felt desperate for his attention—to use my little power not to become a pregnant woman sent back across the river with a baby believed to be Chinese-born, of impure blood.

He said, “Why did you cross?”

His question cornered me. “Who are you, really?”

He wagged a finger at me. “I'm here to help you. Are you always so suspicious?”

I crossed my legs. “I have no reason to trust you.”

His image wavered on the screen, then steadied again. “Do you have a choice?”

Of course I didn't.

“How long have they held you?”

“Someone could be listening.”

“The server's routed through South Korea—what your people call Nam Joseon.”

“How do you know?”

“It's my job to know these things. So? Your crossing? There are people who need to know these things before I can do anything for you.”

It didn't matter which side of the river I was on. Men asked the questions and women answered. Maybe that is all power is: the right to demand and expect answers. But before I learned what he could do for me, I heard someone at the door and the man ended the video call.

Sometime after the third meal that divided our day, the man called again.

I spoke rapidly this time, mostly telling the truth. The person I exaggerated for him was pathetic and needy, though my real situation was desperate enough without my flourishes. Wasn't he allured, moved by pity? Convinced I was worth saving? He rubbed his chin with his bony fingers, listening patiently but wearily. Nothing I said seemed to shock or interest him. I kept talking, my underarms dampened with sweat.

“That's enough.” He aimed his gold-tipped pen at the screen. “I understand the situation.”

“Help me, please. I don't have much time.”

His distant, sympathetic gaze traveled down my body, then back up. “I know.”

“I'll pray every night for your help.” I said this too hurriedly; it made me sound insincere.

“You shouldn't be ashamed,” he said when I wrapped the
robe tightly around me. “You're a beautiful woman. A woman's body is one of God's most beautiful creations.”

I watched his interest lift and fall. Lift, fall. I didn't know how to read him.

 • • • 

One day we were lined up in the corridor, arms raised above our heads and legs fanned out, toes touching the toes of the next person. Our bodies merged into one as the
ajumma
's hand traveled up our robes. It moved vigilantly across every part of our bodies, looking for a weapon. How different my life had become: so specific, so small.

“A set of chopsticks has disappeared,” said the madam. “Before you hurt yourself and create a mess for others, you may as well turn it in.” She marched up and down past the dozen of us.

Utensils disappeared, so we began eating rice and kimchi with our hands and drank our soup straight from plastic bowls. Sometimes a piece of kimchi or a spoonful of savory
dwenjang
helped me escape. One bite, and I was back at home, in my village, past the checkpoint and through the concrete walls surrounding our grid of houses. It was winter, and the walls were heavy with drifts of glittering snow. My nose burned from the cold, but there was a fire going in Eomma's kitchen. I was finally safe, near the warming flames. As Eomma stirred a pot over the burning
agungi,
making bean curd to sell at the market, I touched her broad back.