Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (21 page)

Long Shadow on the Icy River

L’s guide was a seasoned navigator of the border area who had some relatives on the Chinese side. He claimed that he constantly traveled between Rajin-Seonbong and Yanji,
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a Chinese town where many ethnic Koreans lived. He had relatives there and was on his way to see them. The three of us rode a truck from Unggi to Namyang. The ride took less than an hour, but there were many checkpoints, which could have presented a huge problem had I not traveled with the group. L, who knew all the post guards in the area, could easily obtain their trust. It looked as if she traveled this route quite frequently. Having escorted us to the very far end of Korea, unsuspecting L went back to her home. I was thankful to my old friends who’d given me some cash to pay for the ride. In 1998, many trucks transported hungry North Koreans who were in search of food, so it was easy to mingle with them. Had it been the 1970s, when North Korean society functioned according to strict rules, it would have been much more difficult to cross the border.

In Namyang, my guide and I hid in caves in the mountains for about ten days until the Duman River froze. It took longer than he had anticipated, and what little dried corn my friends had packed for me would run out very soon, so we allowed ourselves very strict portions to get by. Still, toward the end of our hiding period, the dried corn ran out and all we could eat was snow. I was still in terrible health, but was somewhat assured that my guide had much experience in this. However, I did not trust him completely, and we talked very little while hiding. He only kept mumbling in a low, disgruntled voice that he needed to see his relatives sooner rather than later and that this crossing has taken longer than he’d expected. It was early December. Unlike on the Russian border, the river here was narrow and therefore easier to cross. I did not want to look suspicious in case I encountered other people, so I found a piece of broken glass in the mountains and shaved the beard on my face, reflected on the river. Although I’d replenished some energy at my friends’ place, I was struggling. The severe conditions I had endured for six years in two camps had left many scars on my body, but they also trained me to withstand perpetual hunger. When a body experiences prolonged extreme hunger, the anus loses the ability to contract itself. When we were hiding in the mountains, I had been starved for so long that two fists could easily have been inserted into my anus. That’s how weak my body was, but my mind was focused on one thing—successful escape. Even though I felt delirious at times, I could not afford to let my mind ramble. I had made it this far against all odds, but it would have been impossible if my friends had not taken enormous risks. All their sacrifices for my sake could be for nothing if I lost concentration even for a second.

We did not stay in one cave too long for fear of being discovered. It was easier to be on guard during the daytime, but at night we could not sleep long. The guide and I took turns standing vigil. But one sunny day while the guide was sleeping, I could not resist sleep any longer, so I came out of the cave and took a nap in the sun. It was a comforting feeling. But soon I heard voices nearby and immediately got up. I heard children’s voices and discovered that a family was gathering wood chips for fuel. Luckily I had a bundle of tree branches with me, which I was going to burn in case it got too cold. As soon as I saw them, I got up, took the bundle, and walked away. The family did not pay too much attention, since there were many people who had to pile up fuel for harsh winter days. After that, I always carried the bundle, a useful prop for disguise.

The first snow fell around dusk in late December. As I looked at the pure snowflakes, my heart beat faster, as if the snow was some divine messenger signaling the portentous moment of my departure. But there were still guards along the riverbank. They weren’t many, but the guide and I studied their movements carefully. We wondered if extra guards were hiding somewhere to capture escapees, but could not move around freely to find out. I could only hope that the guards I saw were the only ones. I had to take a chance or nothing would come of it. The guide noticed that the guards went to their posts around 7:30 p.m. for a very short shift. The river must be frozen by now; I was hoping that the ice was thick enough to support my frail body. At that place, the width of the river dividing North Korea from China was only twenty yards. The guide suspected that it was safe to make a move that evening. So when the time for the guards to change shift approached, I tied my shoes around my waist, massaged my strained legs with frozen fingers, and came down the hill to the riverbank. My feet were scratched and torn from the rough surface of the hillside. I carried two long canes in case the ice broke. I planned to use them to climb out of the icy water just like I had learned in the revolutionary history class at school. Kim Hyoeg-gon, Kim Il-sung’s uncle, had also carried two canes when crossing the thin ice of the Duman River while fighting the Japanese colonialists. He was running away from the foreign aggressors to save his homeland; now I was running away from my own people to save myself. Ironic as it may be, the revolutionary history that we’d studied so diligently in school became a guiding light at a moment when I was looking for any assurance and assistance in escaping with my life.

It must have taken less than three minutes to cross the river, but it felt more like three hours. For fear of losing any split second, I never looked back while on the ice and steadily focused my gaze at the dark bank of the Chinese side. My entire body was charged with unbearable tension. I can still hear and sense my rough heartbeat. I wasn’t paying any attention to the guide who accompanied me. Instead of walking, I was sliding carefully across. The guards were still at their posts and did not see us. Only after I’d reached the Chinese side did I notice that the guide had also managed to cross without trouble. A sensation overcame me that I was in a relatively safe place for the first time since the escape. But that feeling of relief did not last too long, because there were Chinese border guards on this side. If they caught me, they could easily send me back to North Korea. I looked around and saw only ten households, a road, and a mountain beyond. It was the first time I’d set foot in China, and I had no idea where I was. The guide whispered that it was better to split up than to hang around together, since it was easier for one person to find a hiding spot than for two. He had already given me the phone number of his relatives in Yanji, so he urged me to call if something happened. I entrusted him with L’s celadon pieces and asked him to sell them for me, since I was not planning to return to Unggi. He took the little treasures and promptly disappeared. I was at a loss. Soon after, dogs started barking frantically. I heard a car approaching and immediately hid myself in the bushes. It was Chinese police. My heart sank. I waited in silence until they passed by. As soon as the car disappeared from sight, I went out on the road again. Then I saw the car turn and come back in my direction. I climbed up the foothills of the mountain and decided to hide and observe the situation. The police patrol went back and forth along the same road and finally left.

When I came down from the hills, it was freezing. I was wearing shabby clothes that were not appropriate for harsh winter days. I looked around and spotted a red brick building with a cross on the roof at the edge of the village. I had no choice but to go there; wandering around on the street would be asking for arrest. I hurriedly moved toward the red brick building and snuck into a boiler room where I could warm myself. Having hidden in the cold mountain hills for ten days, I felt overwhelming warmth when I closed the door. The warmth of this indoor space was so embracing that I felt like it could melt me. For a short moment, I could almost forget that I was still in great danger. But before I could get completely lost in reverie, I was discovered by an elderly worker. He was a kind-looking man who seemed to have guessed what my circumstances were. He spoke to me in Korean with a strange accent.

“No safe here. No safe. The police find soon. They come. Can’t stay”.

He spoke in broken Korean, but there was no problem following what he meant. I must be in a town of Korean-Chinese people. This was good news, because I could at least communicate with them. Later I learned that the village where I arrived in China was called Tumen.
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The kind-looking man with the thick accent led me to another building nearby. He took me to the back storage room in a restaurant kitchen, where I hid for five days. There I could at least avoid frostbite and eat garbage from the kitchen. I had practically starved in the mountains for many days and was extremely weak. In a large metal bin, there were half-eaten apples, fried rice, bits of vegetables, all floating in gooey and scummy liquid. I dug into the garbage and ate anything I could find. At night I ventured out to the courtyard and looked for cigarette butts on the ground. I could find some half-smoked ones and lit them with matches given me by my friends in North Korea. They tasted heavenly. As I was inhaling the tobacco smoke to my last breath, I thought of my friends. I must go farther away so that I could be safer. If I were caught and sent back to North Korea, it would also mean great danger for them. I should not let them down. Being in Tumen was so much better than hiding in the mountains, but I was afraid that the Chinese police might find me at any time.

The kind man had a wife who was a churchgoer. She came to see me in the hiding place on the fourth day. She also brought me a lunch box and clothes to wear.

“You will stand out if you keep wearing those clothes. Anyone will know you are a North Korean escapee. Better change into these.” She recommended that I go to a church where I could meet missionaries who would help me escape.

Next day she brought a South Korean couple along and told me that they were Christian missionaries. I was taken aback by falling into South Koreans’ hands. I felt anxious, as my plan—although I did not know how to realize it—was to go to Japan eventually, where I could ask for help from the business partners I had befriended while working at the NSA. But my situation was too precarious and I was not able to get any farther from North Korea on my own. So I had no choice but to tell the couple that I was an escapee who could not return to the north and ask for their help. The couple did not inquire further, but even if they had, I was not going to tell them anything else about myself. Once again, my life depended on complete strangers’ mercy.

Across the Continent  
6

Still on the Border

The missionary couple led me to a Korean-Chinese worker couple’s household in Yanji and gave me US$230 as an emergency fund. My hosts worked all day in town, so they had me hide in a room and gave me both food and a bucket that I could use as a toilet. By the time they returned home from work, the entire room reeked. I felt embarrassed handing the bucket over to them to take out and empty. In an effort not to embarrass me further, they said nothing at those moments. They seemed to be close to the South Korean missionary couple and silently took it as their duty to host me, which must have presented some risk to them. But I could not relax by any means. I couldn’t afford to trust anybody too much. Why were the South Koreans so generous with their help? What could they get out of it? I wondered if they had any hidden motivations. Could they be South Korean agents posing as missionaries, trying to capture me off guard? Or even worse, could they be working for Chinese police who wanted to collaborate with North Korean authorities searching for escapees? There was no way to find out, as this couple was my only connection to the world. At the same time, I also felt extremely grateful to them for doing their best to keep me safe. While I was hiding there, I had nothing to do but think. All sorts of plans and thoughts came and went fleetingly, but after a while, my mind fluctuated between two extremes: feelings of gratitude would quickly be replaced by suspicion, which then would be clouded over by feelings of gratitude. The process would repeat itself until one of the couple came into the room to interrupt my thoughts.

While hiding in that house, I saw my mother in a dream. I was on a platform at a train station, waiting for her to show up. She did not come and I became nervous. The next moment, I was on a train and she was sitting next to me. She was wearing snow-white traditional dress and shoes. She looked so relaxed. The train was crammed and I felt stifled, but she kept saying, “My goodness, it is so comfortable here, it is like heaven.” A conductor entered our train and started to check tickets. I got nervous and started looking everywhere in my pockets without finding a ticket, but my mother, still very relaxed, handed a clean white paper to the conductor. When he unfolded it, her name was written vertically in Chinese characters. He looked at it and said, “Very good, have a good trip.” When I woke up, my face was covered with warm tears. I hoped that Mother had had a good trip to the netherworld, just like I had seen in my dream. I wished that she would rest peacefully there without any further suffering. But as for me, I still had a long way to go. The nervous feelings I had in the dream carried over into real life, as I was traveling without a ticket and the train was taking me to an unknown destination.

Yanji

My stay with the Korean-Chinese couple reached its limit, and the South Korean missionaries, whom I now thought of as Mr. and Mrs. M, led me to a clean, empty apartment. It was a small two-bedroom on the fifth floor in a residential area on the outskirts of Yanji. By this time, I’d come to trust the couple a bit more, so before they left me in the new shelter, which was filled with food and Christian books, I asked them if they could deliver a note to the border guide who had accompanied me. They gladly agreed. I asked them to call the guide, who was staying with his relatives in the same town, and also handed over the money they’d given me, for him to deliver to L. I wrote another letter saying that, due to my health, I thought it would take some time to sell the celadon pieces, so instead of keeping them, I’d entrusted them to the guide. I concluded the letter by urging L to come to China herself to expedite the process. As I was not sure if the guide could fulfill the couple’s expectations of selling their celadon, I felt quite uneasy and wanted to show them that I had not vanished with their treasures. Mr. and Mrs. M quietly observed me handing over all the emergency money I had, so when they received it together with the letter and note, they left more emergency money.