Without You, There Is No Us (15 page)

PART TWO

The Sun of the 21st Century

14

R
EUNIONS
ARE
RARELY
WHAT
WE
IMAGINE
THEM
TO
be. When I got back to New York, the man in Brooklyn and I went through all the phases of lovers: anticipation, doubts, resistance. “Let me look at you,” he said when we met at a sushi place on Smith Street. He seemed lost for words, except to note with concern that I looked thinner. Perhaps it was a compliment, but having just come from North Korea, “thinner” no longer sounded flattering. He seemed like a stranger to me that first night, as I must have to him. He had no idea what I had been through, and I did not try to explain.

Instead, I retreated. He preferred texting to calling, but on those occasions when he did phone, I would inevitably let the call go to voice mail. I was not acting aloof, as lovers sometimes do. I just felt unable to face him after such a long absence. Separation had cost us. We were who we were despite the separation, and because of the separation. It was neither simple nor easy.

For that matter, neither was New York. The free world I had so longed for, with its intoxicating lights and abundance, overwhelmed me, the way the dawning of spring stops me each year. The sheer suddenness of the sun feels like an intrusion, and I spend most of those months indoors. I am wary of the outpouring of so much life all at once, and I become tentative, like a child learning to walk and see and feel. August passed that way, and I felt a bit more comfortable in my skin as September rolled around. Yet by then it was time to pack and return for the fall semester. I did not
have
to return, but I did. There was still too much I did not understand but this time, I would be there until the end of December. I did not know if I would be able to endure it.

LATE
SEPTEMBER
IN
Pyongyang was cold compared to New York. I was nervous, not sure whether the bond between my students and me had survived our nearly two months apart. During the summer, they had let their guards down somewhat, but now I was again a foreigner, bearing traces of the outside world. Perhaps we would have to test the waters all over again. But when the students came into the classroom on my first day and I saw the pure delight in their faces, my heart melted. Some of them could not even meet my eyes from shyness and excitement. I noticed small details—that some looked frailer, that one now had a slight limp, and I couldn’t wait to talk to them.

At lunch, I asked a few students what they had done over the summer vacation and was bombarded with tales of leisure time filled with activities with friends. Park Jun-ho said he had gone swimming for three to four hours at a time at the gymnasium at least three times a week. Han Jae-shik said that he had gone rollerblading at the gymnasium and seen the Arirang Games with friends a couple of times. Kim Tae-hyun said that he had thrown a birthday party in August at a restaurant in Chongryon Hotel.

“Seventy students came!” he said with smiling eyes. “Only twelve from my former university, and the rest from PUST. It was a good time!” I wondered who his parents were that they were able to throw him such a lavish party, and I also remembered how easily my students lied.

Jae-shik explained that parties outside PUST were different, that they could do more than just sing.

“At a birthday party, there would be food the birthday boy’s mother would make,” he said. “There would be some drinks.”

“Alcohol?” I asked.

His only answer was a smug smile.

Jun-ho chimed in: “There were these girls there, but Tae-hyun would not let me near them. He was so protective of his younger sisters that I only got to speak to a couple of them!” He gestured with his arms spread open, mimicking his friend furiously guarding the young women.

“I don’t know what he is talking about,” Jae-shik said, rolling his eyes. “Tae-hyun has only one sister!”

“Oh yes, but all the other cute girls were the friends of Tae-hyun’s sister!” Jun-ho countered.

Jae-shik exclaimed, “I only saw three girls there!”

“Because they were not interested in you!” Jun-ho said, chuckling, “but I saw seven. The girls were all saying about me, ‘What a charming guy!’ ”

Finally, one of the students from the adjacent table leaned over and said: “Change the topic please. This guy,” pointing at Jun-ho, “is too interested in the younger sisters of his classmates! Always going on and on about younger sister younger sister!!”

While they were sparring about girls, I remembered what Dr. Joseph had said: that some of the students would be sent to do manual labor in August. It seemed at least these students had avoided it. They looked unfazed, luminous, as though they had never lifted a finger in the sun.

At dinner that night, I found out that some others had not been so lucky. One student told me that he had been sent to work at a construction site for ten days, from six a.m. until six p.m. He said it matter-of-factly, explaining that they were building an extension for the Korean History Museum. He had felt alone there, he said, since most of his friends had been building an extension for Kim Hyuk Jin University. The other two at the table remained silent. When I asked whether they too had been sent to a construction site, they shook their heads and said that honor was only for those living in Pyongyang’s central district but they lived in a suburb, and to assist their Great General and their powerful and prosperous nation, it was imperative that university students contribute in “building buildings.”

The next day, I saw a student whom I had been very fond of, who was no longer in either of my two groups. For the fall semester, I was still assigned to Classes 1 and 4, but the students had been shuffled around according to their grades; some students had been moved to higher levels, others dropped to lower ones. I called the student over to join me for a meal. He broke into a shy smile but kept saying that he was embarrassed, and I realized that he meant he wanted others to come sit with us. Of course, I had forgotten that they could never be one on one with us, so when I saw another familiar face, I called the student over to join us, and my student relaxed visibly.

The talk was mostly about basketball, which he loved but could not play anymore because his new group preferred soccer. At first, I wondered why he could not just play with his old friends, but then I remembered that that was the way things went here. Each group was like an army platoon, and a student who changed groups did not just move his belongings to a new room; he did everything with the new group. They had lived this way all their lives and did not question it, but, sitting across from one of my loveliest students, I suddenly found it hard to swallow, and I put my spoon down. He looked at me innocently and asked, “Professor, are you not hungry?”

THIS
SEMESTER
,
I
was asked to teach the counterparts—the people who read and approved all our teaching materials—as well as the students. I jumped at the opportunity. There were thirteen men, mostly in their forties and fifties, and two women in their thirties. One said that he had worked for the Department of Communication and Information. I had no idea what that was, but I knew not to ask further. Others were professors of computer science, agriculture, and engineering, and the two women said that they were secretaries. I recognized some from the cafeteria, but I had never seen most of them before.

Where had all the other teachers gone if every university in the country had been closed? With no students to teach, were they at construction sites too? Why were these men chosen to be sent to PUST? Though many of them read English well, they all wanted to improve their spoken English and said that they were very happy for this chance to converse with a fluent speaker. Some days I had the uneasy feeling that I might be teaching the very people who were monitoring our emails, that I was training them so that they could spy better.

Spying was not the only thing I worried about. I dreaded bumping into some of the minders or the counterparts because they could be unpleasant, but darkness fell so early at that time of year that I had no choice but to go running during the day, between classes. On one such afternoon I saw Mr. Hong getting out of the school van. He was one of the men I tried to avoid, since he had a habit of making spiteful comments with an oily smile. Today was no exception.

“Comrade Kim Suki does whatever she feels like, no matter where,” he said. My running must have struck him as either too American or too leisurely, or both. “The more I see Comrade Kim Suki, the more I’m certain that she’s not the right material for the DPRK. She doesn’t know how to control students to get them to excel and respect her as well as fear her, all at once. Please don’t feel offended by anything I say. I only want to help you.”

His style of criticism—indirect, using the third person—was not unfamiliar to me. I had interviewed many defectors in the past, and it was surprising how many of them readily bashed the people around them, often behind their backs. I wondered if their behavior stemmed from the lifelong indoctrination of weekly critiques, from the constant spying on their fellow citizens.

Mr. Hong shook his head and continued, clicking his tongue, “Really a long road ahead for Comrade Kim Suki. I taught at Kim Chaek University for ten years, and I am part of the National Education Committee that grants people Ph.Ds and Masters, all thanks to the solicitude of our Great Leader, and I could declare with certainty that she has no clue about teaching!”

I was now getting a bit worried that this might be a roundabout way of terminating my employment there, so I asked, “Did my students say something to you? Is the school unhappy with my teaching? Is my class not good?” We were speaking in Korean, and for “not good” I used the Korean word
byulro
, which could also be translated as “not all that.”

“
Byulro
? What kind of a word is that?” He looked away, feigning boredom. For a moment, I thought perhaps that particular word did not exist in the North.

“Do you not understand this word?” I asked him.

“
Byulro? Byulro?
I don’t understand, Comrade Kim Suki!
You
are
byulro!
”

I realized then that he knew exactly what the word meant and was just playing games.

He wasn’t done yet, “But students do like her very much. When I see Comrade Kim Suki casting her feminine glance over her students in the cafeteria, I wonder if her students are all captivated by her feminine charm. They must lose sleep at night thinking about their teacher. They are young virile boys after all.”

I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, though his behavior did not surprise me. The minders sometimes said things that bordered on sexual harassment. Luckily, Mr. Hong’s cell phone (counterparts and minders always carried them) rang, and I walked away.

Immediately I went to see Beth, who told me that as a “white face,” which was how she and Joan often referred to themselves, she never got such treatment. Mary, who was a Korean Chinese woman in her late thirties, told me that perhaps I should try to wear more conservative clothing, although I failed to see how much more dour I could look. In trying to pass for a missionary, I generally wore long skirts, high-necked blouses, and cardigans in lukewarm shades of beige and brown. I also spoke to Abigail, a Korean American teacher in her fifties with a long history of dealing with North Koreans.

“Oh, the minders and the counterparts do it all the time,” she said. “They are unbelievably repressed. They can’t do anything. So they get all worked up and harass women verbally to take out their frustration. Even ones in high positions you’d never expect to do such a thing will suddenly say things that back home would be considered harassment. Besides, these guys do it also to get bribes. That was a form of blackmail. They whine about everything. Every visa process, they will claim difficulties every step. What he was angling for was extra cash. You just have to be polite but firm. Smile and say: ‘In my country if you say such a thing, you could go to jail.’ That will shut them up!”

Abigail was more matronly and was there with her husband, though, and I was not sure the same approach would work for me. Suddenly the prospect of living in the same building and eating three meals a day with the very men who watched me and reported on me and harassed me felt insufferable.

Later that evening, I spoke to Ruth, who confirmed my feelings. She was a Korean New Zealander, thirty and single, and had taught at YUST for years. She had had similar encounters and now she knew better. She always teamed up with another teacher, even at meals, and she took care to always walk back to the dormitory with another teacher so that she was not alone in public. Although her Korean was excellent (her mother had made her memorize a page from the Bible in Korean each day), when the counterparts spoke to her in Korean, she pretended her Korean was not good enough. She also made sure the counterparts knew that she had no spare money so that they would not pressure her for bribes. As for my running, she did not understand why that should be a problem.

“Just run during nap time,” she said, shrugging.

“What nap time? You mean like
siesta
?”

She burst out laughing and said, “You didn’t know about it? It’s between twelve and two! Have you ever seen anyone walking around then? They all nap because You-Know-Who told them to!”

The campus was extremely quiet during those hours, but I had always assumed that the students were preparing for afternoon classes or attending extra Juche lessons. According to Ruth, some of the Korean Chinese workers—the cleaners and some administrative staff—had complained about not being able to get work done during the “damned nap time,” which applied to every North Korean on campus, both the students and the counterparts. The nap time was confirmed by my students. They all went back to the dormitory and slept, it turned out. Some told me the naps were specific to PUST, and that they had never heard of a nap time before they arrived there.