Krys Lee - How I Became a North Korean

One of the large men turned to Red Leather Jacket. He pointed at a girl with heavy bangs, at the woman collapsed on the dirt, then at my eomeoni and my dongsaeng . His associates broke easily through my grip, through the barricade of our men’s bodies. Some of us protested as the women were herded to one side, but more quietly now, their minds on the gun.

Nothing was as real as the gun the short squat man pointed at us. Nothing I did could make a difference, but to do nothing was to admit that nothing could be done, and to be alone in the world was to be less than nothing.

All I needed was the gun.

I rushed ahead until my hand brushed against the dull steel. A shoe bore into my spine. Though there was always fighting at school, I had managed to stay beneath the attention of violence, but this time I forced myself up. We struggled, arms confused and tangled with each other. The leaden gun gleamed each time the moon struck it; the man’s finger stayed locked into the barrel. How much power was in that hand. It was so close, it was almost mine. But there were too many of them.

Eomeoni screamed as they pinned my arms behind me. The red leather sleeve arced slowly, then it was over. The black butt crunched down on my nose and the burning spread across my face. Coppery blood perfumed the air; I tasted it on my tongue. It will swell, I thought, it will be hard for me to sleep without rolling over, though none of this mattered anymore. Laughter seeped from me at the absurdity and the horror, and I wondered who I would have to become to survive this, until the gun struck down on my nose again.

“You Joseon people,” Red Leather Jacket said. “You’re too emotional.”

The sobbing women were herded past us to a van.

So this was the enemy. The finger curled around the trigger. And this was the enemy: the clouds breaking up, the moon above looming too brightly and exposing us. The blank face of China that made us the hunted. I gazed at the men who were destroying our lives; they looked the same. A swift blur of red leather passed me.

The man opened the back door to the van and invited the women to step up. He looked tired but satisfied that his day was nearly over. Abeoji, Eomeoni, and my dongsaeng … my mind went silent, into a cool, dark place.

“The women will be taken care of,” the man continued. “You do what you’re told, then it’s not so bad. Some women even like it.”

“May I… please say good-bye to my son?” Eomeoni spoke quietly, as if not to startle anyone.

“I’m a reasonable person,” Red Leather Jacket said, “and you ask like a reasonable woman. Keep it short.”

She released my sister’s hand. Her loose white pant legs swished as she approached me. I tried to reassure her and tell her, I’ll find you, I promise, if it takes my entire life, but my lips wouldn’t move. When she took my clammy hands into hers, tears dimmed my sight, turning her features so vague and delicate that I feared I would forget what she looked like.

But I remember so much: her dancer’s body leaning into me and her smell of wet pine needles and the promise of spring weather, her gaze that lingered on my face, memorizing. Her bright, fearful eyes as she squeezed my hands and said, “My love, you must be brave.”

In new clothes with a new man and a new name, I thought I could finally leave my country behind and become someone else. I made Seongsik happy. I worked hard to make him happy; I was determined to maintain my devotion until my baby was old enough for us to leave safely. Or maybe we would stay forever with this man, but there was the constant danger of being discovered, and my baby would live as a shadow child who couldn’t be registered and officially exist. All through our second week together I made sure that when Seongsik woke up, my soap-scented face was pressed close to his. He craned up to touch me, seeking the son he must have wanted. He would have a baby soon enough. I waited for a safe number of days to pass until I could make my announcement.

Meanwhile, Seongsik followed me to the common room, which was always a remarkable late-spring temperature due to the heated floors, then to the bathroom. When I reemerged, he was waiting by the door to follow me to the kitchen, his movements shy but eager as he walked at my heels. I tried new hairstyles to charm him, laughed helplessly to make him feel more capable. I strived to be a beloved, pleasing wife.

It could have worked. I knew that many women had crossed and married Joseon men for relative safety and given birth to children, and some of them must have escaped capture. Worked, in the only ways that a refugee’s life could work. Like those women before me, I was becoming familiar with many things. The camouflage Seongsik’s presence gave me in the nearby city’s shopping mall, as if I were unafraid of each person who passed us, the smell of pork and beef seeping from everyone’s skin. The towers of glistening pastries and watermelons bigger than babies, the soaring plates of food that people in restaurants left half-eaten. Kitchen gadgets that squeezed, ground, separated. So many bewildering freedoms, if you had the money for them.

Memories came back to me, images of my abba feeding me what he could find while he starved, my eomma ’s freckled arms rising up to the sun while she hung the laundry. These thoughts weakened my knees and once forced me to sink to the tile floor, fruit knife still in my hand. My body ached with phantom pain. This, I thought, is what it must be like to lose an arm or a leg.

Still, I felt the eyes on me everywhere. The women on the stairwell when I went to throw out the trash. The building security guard who did nothing but sleep and keep watch, not so different from the guards posted across the river who monitored our villages. In the car on the way to church, Seongsik said, “Stop checking in the mirror. There’s no one back there.”

But of course there was the security camera at the building’s front entrance watching me, a stranger’s casual glance. Then there was his daughter.

In those first few weeks in China, Byeol and I had learned that I couldn’t eat fish. Or bean sprouts. Or spicy fried tofu. So she demanded that I make these for her every day and made me ache with tension. In front of Seongsik, I feigned having a delicate stomach and counted the days until it was safe to let him know that he had become an abba. Would I say it was a premature birth? I decided to worry about that later. The days went by slowly, and as he was often not there, I was left with Byeol and her relentless questions.

“Why can’t you eat fish?” or “Why can’t you eat bean sprouts?”

“I told you, my stomach is sensitive.”

“What is ‘sensitive’?” “Why do you like my abba ?” “Why don’t you know how to draw?” “Why can’t you speak Chinese?” Then she would look suspiciously at me. One wrong word from a child could get me sent back.

She brightened up each time the doorbell made a rusty ring, which made me freeze, until she remembered that since my arrival she was no longer allowed to answer the door. If her abba wasn’t home, she would flop in front of the television and prop her chin on her fists and watch cartoons for hours, smiling again.

“Why does the moon change color?” she asked me. “Why do the planets look still when they’re supposed to be moving? Why do we have last names? Where is my eomma ? When is she coming back? Why do boys look so different from girls? Why can’t I see God?” Why, why, why? And on and on.

I admired and feared her questions. I wondered if all children were like this.