Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (87 page)

Even when food was distributed, sometimes there wasn’t enough for everyone in the village or neighborhood, so you would have to be on your guard to make sure your family would get its rations. They wouldn’t give advance notice of when the distribution would be held, so little kids were assigned to watch. If those children saw
someone getting food supplies they would run home and shout, “It’s time!” Previously, people had thought it was shameful for a man to line up for rice—that was women’s work. That changed. It had become like a war. Lots of people would sleep in front of the distribution center waiting for the time.

In our family there are four brothers. I’m the second. The brother who got caught stealing food is the third brother. All of us were in the military. No family has sacrificed more. My third brother entered the service in 1989. He was maltreated in the military and caught pneumonia, so he was mustered out in the spring of 1991 and sent home. When he got home there was nothing to eat in the house.

Earlier, this had been a problem that everyone shared, which made it somehow more tolerable. But some people had become wealthy—they might have relatives in Yanbian, China, or in Japan, who would help them out. My brother couldn’t stand it, so in May of 1992 he went to the storeroom of a wealthy family who had relatives in Yanbian, and he stole grain. South Koreans are horrified by the thought of a thief. But in North Korea, two out of three people have stolen. The fields are collectivized. At harvest time people sneak in and poach food. It’s the government’s property, so they figure who ever gets there first gets the food. There are military guards, and lots of people are shot dead when they try that. If you’re not shot, for stealing one handful of grain you can go to prison for maybe two or three years. Or you might go to a camp for unpaid labor in the fields for six months or so. North Koreans used to think field work was the lowest. A factory worker caught stealing food and sent to the fields thought he’d gotten the worst punishment. In 1991, Kim Jongil de creed that anyone stealing food would be sent to do farming. But the thing is, now people
want
to go.

I’ve stolen food many times. It would be hard to find a university student or soldier who had not stolen. Both men and women steal food. In the collective fields the managers would display posters saying, “This field is my field.” The poster was supposed to encourage the farmers to work harder. But I took it to mean that this collective field was
my
field. Even after four months in South Korea I have to be careful about what I eat because I’ve got stomach ulcers, like 80 to 90 percent of the North Korean population. The digestive juices flow, and there’s no food in your stomach, so the juices eat through the wall of your stomach. Ulcers aren’t even considered an illness, since everybody has them.

Even though I had to steal food, I didn’t question the ideology. The education system makes you think of politics and real life as two
separate matters. So I thought that, even though life was hard, our ideology was sound.

I was in Chongjin Medical School studying traditional herbal medicine. I had studied almost four years when, in July of 1992, my brother was caught and sent to prison. The family whose grain was stolen asked me to replace the stolen grain. I replied: “My brother is in prison. How can you ask me for the grain?” We had a brawl and they said, “How can such a person as this be a university student?” They tattled to the authorities and I was expelled from med school. That was the time when communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was collapsing. Universities were enforcing strict discipline. Kim Jong-il said, “Now’s the time for action. Punish the ones who should be punished.” When I was expelled in 1993, about twelve others were expelled at the same time.

In your later career, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il would judge you according to three qualifications: Had you been a party member? A university graduate? In bodyguard service? I was a party member. After bodyguard service I was on the way to earning my university degree. So I had figured my life would be great. But getting expelled from the university ended my dreams. That’s why I defected. At the time when I was joining the bodyguard service, Kim Il-sung had warned, “Trust is everything. Don’t betray us and we won’t betray you—but if you ever become a traitor then we want you out of our sight.”

I had kept my part of the bargain. I didn’t have big doubts while I was in the bodyguard service. And in university all they talk about is the continuance of socialism. I agreed that socialism was the only ideology for our country. My major doubts came only when I was expelled.

The authorities said I could come back and try to be readmitted the following year. But they knew I had no way of leading my life after my expulsion. Generally if you are expelled from university they send you to the mines. I didn’t do anything for two months, then went to a factory. A high official helped me avoid being sent to the mines. During those two months’ rest before going to the factory, I thought a lot and realized that ideology is irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. What’s important is the people’s lives. As long as life is good, any regime is all right. I turned my back on the regime in an instant.

Most people’s opinions of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il haven’t changed. Most ordinary people don’t know about the extravagant lives of those two, or about their faults. They blame high officials under the Kims for their problems. They believe Kim Il-sung and Kim
Jong-il are ?well-intentioned but that high officials working under them don’t carry out their policies properly. But those high officials do know all the faults of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. I’ve talked to some officials. While ordinary people blame them, high officials blame Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

But you have to be very careful about saying anything critical, even to someone you consider your close friend. No one can say anything about the Kim family dynasty for example. One word equals prison. Oh, people who knew each other well might remark that Kim Il-sung’s regime was more totalitarian than Hitler’s—but being more totalitarian than Hitler wouldn’t be considered necessarily a bad thing. People like one-party rule. Kim Il-sung explained that European socialist countries fell because of the multi-party system.

I had one friend with whom I was especially close. We had known each other for a very long time, and our families also knew each other well. Our fathers worked together. My friend was also expelled, from Pyongyang University in 1993 because of family background. He had come home in hopes of defecting to South Korea. We were able to open up to each other after getting drunk. In bantering fashion one of us said, “Let’s go to South Korea.” We realized we meant it. We didn’t tell our families or even our girlfriends.

At first we planned very secretly to go via China on September 15, 1993, but we didn’t have the money so we decided to wait. I sold some things—antique porcelains—to a Chinese trader who came to North Korea, and then we had the money. We crossed the border into China October 1. There are lots of military guards at the border, so it’s very difficult to get across. We bribed a guard, saying we would just go across and return the same day. For that we spent 4,000
won,
enough for one TV set on the black market. It’s about four years’ salary for a university graduate.

Even after we crossed the border to Yanbian in China it still wasn’t easy. We visited friends and relatives but couldn’t tell them our real plan. We told them we would be going back to North Korea. A relative gave us some money and we went to Tianjin port in China, where we stowed away on a ship that people said was going to Inchon in South Korea. A crewman found us but sympathized and hid us again. We showed ourselves when the ship was in sight of Inchon.

There was a lot to surprise me about South Korea. In North Korea I had read about South Korea’s world-record accident rate and had felt critical of the South Koreans, considering them disorderly and violent. At the time I couldn’t imagine a place with so many cars,
or I would have understood. I was shocked to see such huge numbers of South Korean–made cars on the streets. And I was actually impressed with the traffic order compared with the chaos of China, where cars drive wherever the drivers want.

I like Seoul. I had not imagined it would have all these high-rise buildings. I’m surprised there is a place like this in the world. I’m very fortunate to realize before I die that there is a place like this. I’m sorry for North Koreans who will die without learning about such a life.

I first looked at people’s shoes, because in North Korea shoes are often stolen. South Koreans are much taller than North Koreans. And I noticed that compared with North Koreans, South Koreans are heavy. They have more meat on them, look like they have drunk a lot of milk. If there’s a war between North and South, the North Koreans don’t have a chance, physically. South Koreans have nice complexions. In North Korea it’s very hard to find a beer belly, but here everybody’s stomach is bulging out.

I was shocked, also, at the reaction of South Koreans to foreigners. In North Korea everybody looks up to foreigners. In Seoul they don’t pay that much attention.

I saw a sign after I arrived in South Korea that said, “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.” I was astonished to think that South Koreans had the concept of love.

When foreigners visit, North Koreans have to pretend that their stomachs are full and that they lead wonderful lives. Pamphlets instruct people how to behave in front of foreigners. In fact, even during 1976–79, despite the food shortages, I believed that North Korea was better off than the South. But as the years went by, South Korea became a very prominent country while North Korea declined. Now, except for really uneducated people, most people know that South Korea is a much more powerful country in world politics. They’re very distressed by the knowledge.

I was in Kim Il-sung’s bodyguard service from May 1982 to August 1989. To be a bodyguard, you don’t volunteer. You have to be selected. Fortunately my family background was very stable. At the time, I felt delighted. It was a great honor.

One forbidden thing I was able to get away with as a bodyguard was listening to radio stations other than the official one. Starting in the 1990s lots of radios got into North Korea from China. You could buy them in the dollar stores. Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung also give radios as presents. When you bought one, the government person would fix it so that only one frequency could be listened to. But high officials, national security and military people, can get radios without
such blockage, both short-wave and regular AM-FM radios. As for a radio stuck on one frequency, of course you can reverse that. However, they check it periodically. If they find you’ve altered it, they’ll take it away. A lot of people alter their radios, listen, then change them back before the next inspection.

Listening to KBS from Seoul, it struck me that while North Korea’s broadcasts would often criticize South Korean President Kim Young-sam, the South Korean broadcasts didn’t say much at all about Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Nothing bad was said. Once, though, I did hear some criticism. A broadcast quoted a French reporter as saying Kim Il-sung had put a lot of political offenders into prison. I was very surprised. Of course, I knew about that. But how did people in France know so much about North Korea?

Real change started-with the 1989 youth festival. During 1989 a lot of foreigners came into North Korea. We heard about that. And lots of music cassette tapes were brought in [from the ethnic Korean region of] Yanbian in China. Foreigners brought their culture. That aroused curiosity. The regime loosened up a little. When Kim Il-sung realized that people were getting a bit free, he put the lid back on. That aroused more curiosity: Why were we being suppressed?

I’ll tell you about an incident at Kim Il-sung University. Some sons of high officials were having parties, playing
jupae,
a Korean card game. They also danced the disco style they had learned from watching the foreigners during the youth festival. Besides dancing and drinking, they got naked with women and
played jupae
on their naked stomachs. When Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il heard of it, they kicked them out of the university.

In the old days people used to shout “Long live Kim Il-sung!” But after hearing this disco music, people would shake their hips. Not only in Pyongyang but in other places as well, people were getting wild. In the late 1980s, a song called “Huiparam,” meaning “Whistle,” came out. It was the kind of song that made people want to move their bodies. But the government suppressed the original song and changed the rhythm before re-releasing it.

You wonder how news and pop culture got all the way out to North Hamgyong Province? Most North Koreans don’t rely on broadcasts. Instead, news spreads very quickly via the grapevine. Whenever officials weren’t around, everyone danced, and even sang South Korean songs. I did, too.

The slogan about university life was the same as in the 1960s: If you’re cold and hungry, you study more because your mind is clear. Meals were rice and soy sauce or beancurd. The soup was saltless, tasteless. There was no heating. Actually there wasn’t enough time
for study. We had to do our labor, in the fields and elsewhere. Most students study their major subject plus Kim Il-sung ideology. You would be expelled if you didn’t do well in ideology. I used to give speeches in the university about how great the Great Leader was. I was a member of the Propaganda Club. But I used to read novels and study English surreptitiously during the Kim Il-sung ideology class. If I got caught, they would accuse me, saying: “Your ideology is wrong.” There are special spies—I don’t know how many. Party secretaries act as their controllers. We don’t know which people are spies, so we can’t really trust each other.