Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (7 page)

Just like at the orphanage, the students were instructed to respect the Great Leader Kim Il-sung as our father. We started every day by cleaning his portrait—we would take it off the wall and dust it outside, even in midwinter when our hands were freezing. Whenever snow fell, we were taken to Kim Il-sung’s statues and swept the snow off the ground and stairs so that visitors could keep worshiping the Great Leader. In mild weather, we even wiped the stone ground near the statue with moistened cloths. Military-style education suited my taste because it put much emphasis on hierarchy and discipline. I did not at all miss the home I’d left. Sometimes my adoptive parents called my teachers to inquire how I was doing, but I did not have any desire to see them or talk to them. By the end of my second year in junior high school, I was already transforming into a little man. Just like in the military, students were grouped into regiments commanded by student leaders. Each new student had a senior mentor who would act as an adopted sibling to help them adjust and guide them through their stay in Revolutionary School. My mentor was a student named Z, who must have been around seventeen when she took me under her wing. She kindly took good care of me as if she were my real sister. She would change collars on my shirts, and whenever there were fights among students, she would always be on my side. One time Z bravely yanked at one of the older boys who pestered me. But for being my guardian protector, she got beaten by that boy. How dare the bully hurt the person who was so precious to me! Outraged by the incident, I made a resolution to become stronger so that nobody could beat my mentor again. I was a real tough guy inside, but I was a puny teenaged boy at first glance. Judging from my unimpressive looks, other boys thought they could pick on me. I detested their assumption and began to lift weights and practice judo every day, to the point that everyone, including big boys, started to pay respect and leave me alone. With close friends, I even bathed in ice water in winter to strengthen myself. Once I earned a decent place in the hierarchy of boys at the Revolutionary School, I started to enjoy a sense of vindication. Self-assured, I even won a silver medal in a nationwide judo competition for youth. I had a good time at the Revolutionary School until I reached the age to either go to college or find myself a vocation. Since I was an orphan raised by the gracious kindness of the state, my future seemed promising. Like it or not, to have that kind of good class background was what mattered the most in North Korea.

Living for the Great Leader   
2

To the Sea!

My first impressions of the vast sea in Cheongjin still make my heart churn with wild sensations. Its deep blue horizon and salty breeze enraptures me with raw excitement and portentous delight.

“To all the youth of this country, to the sea, the nation calls you forth!”

The slogan filled my heart with dizzy thrill and resounded throughout North Korea at the time I finished Revolutionary School in the late 1960s. Our Great Leader Kim Il-sung was encouraging young people to volunteer to go to the seaside in order to expand usable land and construct new ports to boost trade and the local economy. This massive port construction was rough work that everyone wanted to avoid, but without a second thought, I volunteered to join the league of youth from the Revolutionary School eager to relieve our Great Leader’s concern. At that time I did not consider going to college too seriously, so joining the army to serve the Great Leader seemed an alluring idea. Little did I know that nature could be a rough and cruel beast; I believed that there was nothing that men could not accomplish if they were to follow the guidance of the Great Leader.

We were young, fearless, and unconditionally loyal. There were nineteen of us from the Revolutionary School traveling together from Pyongyang to the port city of Cheongjin. It was a thrilling journey on a night train I still remember so well. All night long, we sang military songs we’d learned at the Revolutionary School and chatted about our future in the unknown place until our voices started to crack. We talked about how we would irrigate the virgin soil and make our Great Leader proud of our achievement. We also talked about the mysterious future comrades who would greet us in a strange city. It would be my first time living on my own, away from the watchful eyes of schoolteachers, surrounded by a group of loyal friends. How much better can it get for an eighteen-year-old boy?

We arrived at Cheongjin just before dawn. The night air was chilly but refreshing, stimulating our strong desire to live. As I stepped out of the train, I immediately sensed that I was opening a brand-new chapter in life. We all felt famished after the endless conversation and started to look for a place to eat. Not a trace of light was to be found nearby. But soon, not far from the train station, we saw a light flickering in the darkness, which looked like the kind of twenty-four-hour restaurant we were accustomed to. In Pyongyang it wasn’t unusual to find eateries serving decent food around the clock, and we spoiled Pyongyangites thought those twenty-four-hour places existed everywhere in North Korea.

“Forward, forward, forward!”

“Break through the enemy lines!”

We goofed as if we were still practicing military drills and dashed toward the flickering light. As hungry as we were, we all howled like famished wolves, dreaming of stuffing our empty bellies. But alas, the illusion of nocturnal light came not from a restaurant but from the rigs on the ship floating on the ocean. Even though with its size and population, Cheongjin deserved the legitimate title of a city—North Korea’s third largest urban area—it was not even close to Pyongyang in its living standards. Hearing the gurgling sound of our stomachs, we collapsed by the harbor and laughed. We laughed and we sat there the rest of the night. We had to deceive hunger with more talk until we finally could have our first breakfast in the strange port town at daybreak.

Local people in Cheongjin greeted us with kindness and respect. Compared to Pyongyangites I knew, they were plain, stoic, and taciturn. They had heard that we were from the prestigious Pyongyang Revolutionary School, and nobody dared to mess around with us. Out of nineteen graduates dispatched to Cheongjin, eight of us were put in the same room and formed an inseparable group. We spent practically every day together and did everything together. Everyone seemed to be in agreement that the graduates of the Revolutionary School were untouchable, which naturally put us on a pedestal. Except for one roommate who was given an internship at an automobile factory, the rest were given positions as intern engineers at the construction site to observe and learn how to construct ports and use excavators and floating cranes. Our job was to get up early in the morning, clean and fuel machines, observe how the engineers handled them, and once the daily work was over, to clean and prepare the machines for the next day. Sometimes we would spot octopi stuck in the machines. They were fresh from the sea, large and succulent looking. We would crowd over those marvelous sea creatures and wonder whether we could catch them for a special dinner. The kind of work we provided was by no means coveted by the average person, but everything we were supposed to master amused us. After all, we were so young, just liberated from the regimented environment of military school, and feeling completely happy about the new chapter in our lives. In retrospect, we would have felt the same if the work had been as tedious as wiping the floor or polishing cars, because it was enthusiasm, not the kind of work we did, that made us happy. We were fully embracing the new circumstances and imbibing the youth of our existence. I fell in love with the machines that saved us from backbreaking labor. There was nothing more attractive than technology and construction. What could be a greater way to flaunt budding masculinity than handling such machines? Life in the port of Cheongjin was quickly turning a quirky teenager into a man.

The most exciting event in Cheongjin is associated with a man named X, who was a rare guru of a variety of martial arts—taekwondo, karate, judo, you name it. Formerly he had been in a special squad sent to South Korea on a special mission. All of his comrades were killed, but he miraculously survived and came back to the north. X always carried that incredibly painful aura of a survivor and martyr, which impressed us greatly. Moreover, there were other stories that made us respect him even more. When X returned to the north as the lone survivor, instead of being given a hero’s welcome, he was suspected of being a double agent and demoted to a provincial post. On his way to a newly assigned workplace in exile on a train, a conductor started picking on him for a fight. X was already in a terrible state of mind, so he vented his anger and frustration at the conductor by beating him nearly to death. For his violent crime, X was sent to a penal labor camp (
gyo-hwa-so
); when he’d served his sentence, he was released into the harsh environment of Cheongjin. It was our sheer luck that he agreed to become our trainer in martial arts. The eight of us were exhausted as we trained our still supple bodies under X’s astringent guidance. He made us run for miles with sandbags attached to both legs and swing bats at a hefty sack filled with rocks. As we grew stronger day by day, nobody in the city dared to bother us. Cheongjin back then was crowded with 3,000 new employees from all over the country. The construction of the new port was under way, and the construction of a railroad and other infrastructure followed. All kinds of riffraff flocked to the city, which needed a large workforce. Kim Il-sung gave orders for each workplace in North Korea to draft a certain number of workers to be sent, and the managers took it as a golden opportunity to get rid of their worst people. With few exceptions, these newly arrived workers were neither intelligent nor strong, and my friends and I made sure that we gave the county bumpkins a good beating with our iron fists and legs tempered by master coach X. For the two years we stayed there, from 1968 to 1970, not a single day passed without a spectacular fight with other workers—small or big, fast or slow, compliant or rebellious … it did not matter. We simply had to fight somebody as part of the everyday routine. We even lost our appetite when we skipped fighting. In hindsight, we were nothing but typical incarnations of juvenile cockiness, but at that time we felt we were up to something magnificent, which made us the happiest kids on the entire planet.

Sporting for the Military and Kim Chaek Technological Institute

As 1970 arrived, the North Korean military started to organize its own sports teams. Head coaches toured the country, recruiting gifted athletes. One day, my former judo coach from the Revolutionary School showed up in Cheongjin. He claimed to have spent six months looking for me and wanted to recruit me for his military judo team. The coach pleaded that I join the team, which would fulfill my official military obligation. Like every North Korean man, I had to serve in the army anyway, so I gladly accepted his offer. However, it was difficult to let go of the ideal community I’d found in Cheongjin. My dear friends and the martial arts master were my precious family members, and we pledged that we should stay like brothers till death parted us. As I sat on a train waving at my friends, who stood on the platform watching me depart, my heart ached with sorrow while tears welled up in my eyes. “So long, dear comrades”—I wasn’t murmuring “Good-bye” then, but instead, “See you again.” Those dear comrades, my fellow travelers whose faces still warm my heart, where are they today? We live under the same sky, but there is no way of knowing. As long as I live, I shall never forsake the hope of meeting them again someday.

Thus I returned to where I came from, my dear Pyongyang, the city of our Great Leader’s glory. The heart of revolution, the red capital of our socialist fatherland! I began my military service with aplomb, in the special guard sector where my main priority was to compete on the judo team. The most memorable thing that happened to me in the military took place in 1972, when I was drafted to join the final stage of the construction of the presidential residence that North Koreans call Mansu Hill Memorial Palace (
Mansudae ginyeom gungjeon
). An effort to build underground bunkers was under way when I joined the project. By then the monumental building had been under construction for almost ten years on a site where a large orchard used to stand; from this location one could have a good panoramic view of the entire city, and especially Heungbu Pavilion (
Heungbugak
) across the Daedong River, a special quarter where foreign dignitaries, such as Sihanouk of Cambodia, stayed on state visits. The ground-level construction of the building commenced in 1970 and was supposed to be completed in 1972 as the sixtieth birthday present for Kim Il-sung. The project gained speed as the birth date approached. At the same time, Kim’s gigantic statue was under construction on Mansu Hill, for which labor forces were drafted from all over North Korea. However, since the presidential residence was a sensitive project concerning the security of the Great Leader, only military forces who could pledge absolute confidentiality and loyalty were allowed to participate. The chief of the guard team was supposed to reside in a separate unit outside the palace, but for better security, his quarters were inside instead. The residence, where Kim Il-sung lived until his death in 1994, was supposed to serve the dual purpose of a peacetime residence and a wartime bunker. For this reason, it was not a tall structure. However, behind the palace was a taller building of ten stories that contained a large water tank. I still do not know the exact purpose of this building, but I suppose it supplied water exclusively for the palace. There were also large ventilation pipes, large enough that people could walk through, connecting the basement of the palace to the building behind. I still vividly remember that there was a thick layer of lead on the roof to protect the palace from nuclear attacks. Every wall was waterproof. As I participated in the construction myself, I still remember enough details to draw a floor plan of this building. Incredible human effort had been poured into it, and no expense was spared. Silk blankets wrapped pipelines that were supposed to go underneath Kim Il-sung’s living quarters. All kinds of expensive trees, Chinese junipers, laurels, and many others, came from different provinces to be used as construction materials and garden decorations. White cement, ground marble, and limestone were mixed to create the best kind of wall finish for the exterior of the building. Thousands and thousands of workers dangling on ropes tied to the rooftop hammered the exterior walls of the Memorial Palace as they descended to the ground. It was a remarkable sight; they looked like zillions of ants against the blinding white wall finish. As the hammering went on incessantly, the ground marble became exposed and shone in dazzling sunlight. The soldiers worked with neither sleep nor breaks for meals, as if they were on a battlefield. Once concrete was mixed, everyone dismissed the thought of taking a break and went on working until the concrete ran out. The soldiers’ loyalty to the Great Leader Kim Il-sung was such that everyone voluntarily worked around the clock. The belief that the collective purpose was higher and greater than individual well-being was strong enough to eclipse any other thoughts. A high-ranking military general named Jeon Mu-seok was in charge. Jeon was a man with natural charisma and remarkable leadership—despite his high status in the army, he would joke with foot soldiers and cheer them up with unexpected surprises. One time, in the thick of midday construction, he brought loads of apples and had everyone take a break for a snack. This made already highly motivated soldiers want to work even harder. We worked so hard that even the commanders were worried and urged us to rest, but voluntary manpower was a formidable thing. Nobody could stop us, and the presidential residence came out so solid that even a nuclear bomb would have had difficulty damaging it. The building stood there, a bright, shimmering white, as testimony to the remarkable love all the construction workers had for the Great Leader. When the heroic construction efforts ended, I was rewarded with the rank of a second lieutenant.