Dear Leader (14 page)

‘You want to know what I scribbled in the notebook?’

When his colleague responded, I noticed how he put a slight emphasis on the fact that he was referring to
my
notebook, and I realised what was happening. Young-min’s notebook contained Young-min’s handwriting, not mine. If I claimed the notebook was mine in order to reinforce that the briefcase was mine, they would have the contradiction they needed because of the contrast between my handwriting and Young-min’s, and the case would be sealed.

I made as if to recollect my thoughts, and the men scrutinised
my face for involuntary blinks or muscle movement. But I answered confidently.

‘I don’t remember what’s written in it,’ I said. ‘The notebook isn’t mine. I picked it up on the street and put it in my briefcase, because I didn’t want the paper to go to waste.’

Tapping the table with his pen, the older man said sarcastically, ‘So the briefcase belongs to you, but the notebook in the briefcase does not belong to you. Well, we seem to have a problem here. But the fingerprints on the briefcase will reveal all. I shall give you one last chance to come clean, before the results are confirmed tomorrow. The fact that you took a restricted publication outside these premises is a treacherous crime in itself. But if you tell us who you lent the book to and who else might have had access to it, you may be let off lightly. Confess before tomorrow morning to Comrade First Party Secretary. Understood?’

After the men left the room, the First Party Secretary pleaded with me as if his own life were at stake. ‘Those men can’t arrest you, comrade, although they’d like to. Why? Because you’re one of the Admitted. So you have to be
more
honest … more so than anyone else … with the Ministry. If you remember anything, anything at all, call me tonight. Or see me first thing when you come to work tomorrow. Okay?’

Three men with the licence to order an execution on the spot had left without taking further action, because I was one of Kim Jong-il’s Admitted. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have been arrested and dragged into the Ministry’s premises, if only to terrify me into a confession. My status had given me immunity, however temporary. Even the infamous Section 10 of the Ministry needed to put a formal request through to the Party’s OGD, which then had to be passed on to Kim Jong-il for his personal approval, before they could arrest one who was Admitted. To do so, they required conclusive evidence, because anything less would lead to their being charged with treason
themselves for attempting to attack Kim Jong-il by harming his associates. While I acknowledged that I owed my current safety to Dear Leader, I knew I couldn’t afford to stay in Pyongyang another day.

When I returned to my office, I began to count the seconds to the end of the longest day of my life. Whenever I heard the sound of a car outside, my blood turned cold in anticipation of the Ministry’s men returning with a warrant to arrest me.

At seven in the evening, it was time to go. I normally said goodbye to the guard at the main entrance as I left for home, but that day, the words didn’t come. The guard shouted and raised his gun as he stood to attention for me. The noise of the cocked rifle scraped at the marrow of my bones, and instinctively I glared at him. At that moment, I noticed two men outside the premises turn quickly towards me.

As I walked along the pavement beside the high wall of the UFD compound, I was very aware of the combined stares of the two men pinned on my back. When I crossed the road, I pretended to look both ways and glanced over my shoulder. They fell back a little, and I was now certain that they were following me.

I saw a foreigners’ taxi up ahead. They were supposed to be off-limits to North Koreans, but anyone who had foreign currency could use them. I checked that there was not another taxi nearby. There wasn’t – and I got in.

‘The Pyongyang Hotel. Quickly, please, I’m late,’ I said as I slammed the door.

As the taxi took a right turn at a crossroads, I turned to see the two men standing helplessly on the pavement. I felt very relieved. It took no more than five minutes to arrive at the Pyongyang Hotel, by the Daedong River. I paid the driver and entered the hotel. In the
hotel, there was a restaurant named Pyongyang Bulgogi, through which you could enter and leave the premises. I knew the area well, and left the hotel through the restaurant. Across the road stood a building in the traditional Korean style, with a terracotta roof built to resemble the shape of a crane’s wings, the Pyongyang Great Theatre. At its rear alleyway, I flagged another taxi, and finally headed towards Pyongyang Station.

I arrived at the station ten minutes later than the agreed time – as I could see from the overhead clock. Under a lamppost on the edge of the station park, yet barely visible in the dim glow of the city’s weak electricity supply, Young-min stood waiting. He was carrying my backpack, which I had entrusted to him the night before. I was so glad to see him again. Each of us knew how the other was struggling to conceal the desperation he felt, and we embraced tightly.

I whispered first in his ear, ‘Let’s go.’

Young-min raised a clenched fist and replied, ‘Let’s go.’

These were our final words as we prepared to leave our homes, lives and families. In the necessity of departure, our two lives became one.

YOUNG-MIN AND I
arrived at the border town of Musan on 15 January 2004. We had travelled a distance of 465 kilometres. The journey by express train, which should have taken just one day according to the timetable, lasted four extra days. But despite this delay, every single person on board praised the marvel that was the arrival of any long-distance train at its destination. Someone yelled in a characteristically northern accent how, last month, the same trip had been delayed by more than ten days. Young-min and I glanced at each other and smirked.

They say that in January, up north in Hamgyong Province, icicles fall to the ground when you pee. When we city boys from Pyongyang stepped off the train, the sudden exposure to the brutal northern cold came as a shock. Young-min’s ears turned bright red with cold. Unlike the large covered station in Pyongyang, Musan Station was a small building about thirty metres from the tracks. The fencing around us, there to prevent those without travel passes from leaving the station premises, made more of an impression than the station building. The guards blew on their whistles and herded the passengers towards a booth where we were to show our train tickets and travel passes. Young-min and I remained silent, trying to appear inconspicuous, as we felt our true motives for travel would be obvious to anyone who looked closely at us. We communicated only with our eyes as we walked and, as we drew closer to the guards, we stopped even that.

With the authority granted to us by our Central Party identification papers, we stood at the back of the shortest queue, for Cadres, where
only three people waited ahead of us. The other queues, for Military Personnel and Ordinary Residents, stretched far behind. However, the guards seemed to be taking more care over scrutinising the cadres’ passes, perhaps because they had more time to spare on a short queue. In the time the guards conducted one drawn-out interview with a cadre, four people in the line for Ordinary Residents had their documents confiscated without even being given a chance to explain. One of them, even as he was taken away by security agents, struggled to return for his luggage. A guard shouted and cursed at him and, when the man still did not stop struggling, began to kick him with his military boots. If my pass were declared invalid, my fate would be no better.

Finally, it was our turn. I took my identification papers out of my leather briefcase, making sure that the crest of the Workers’ Party emblazoned on it in gold was visible. On seeing this, the guard, who had greying hair, tensed and saluted me. I was barely thirty.

‘Please show me your travel pass,’ he said meekly.

The special travel pass had already got us through several checkpoints. In North Korea, two types of guards check passengers’ travel passes and identification documents every time the train crosses provincial boundaries or city limits; and this applies to both civilian and military passengers. Although I had passed easily through these barriers, this final checkpoint was the only one that mattered now. As the guard glanced up from my documents towards me, I flinched. Even if my pass looked genuine, I feared that my guilt would show. When he handed back our documents without a single comment, Young-min and I walked as calmly as we could out of Musan Station.

We had chosen to cross the border from Musan, as the Tumen River – which forms part of the border separating North Korea from China – is at its narrowest there. The distance of this crossing determined our fate. If we climbed higher into the mountains, there
might be smaller streams that fed the river, which we could cross with less difficulty. But there was no transport that could take us that far. We had been able to find a direct train to Musan because it was home to a large mining industry, and this was the closest we could get to the border.

When cadres miss three days of work, they are registered missing and a search warrant is issued in case of desertion. Even when you are ill, you must notify the relevant authorities about your whereabouts, because someone will be sent to verify that you are where you say you are. This would be our fourth day away from work, longer than we’d planned because of the delay to our train. Pyongyang must have issued a search warrant by now. We were in a race against time, and we were already losing.

As soon as we left the station, we set off towards the Tumen River. Along the way, we got lost and had to ask a local for directions. We had no idea what lay one step ahead. Our plan was to reach the riverbank, then look for a suitable place to cross. Hiding ourselves in foliage, we would then wait for the path to clear, and sprint over the frozen surface of the river.

When we neared the Tumen River, I felt a surge of exhilaration. The river was frozen solid, and could not be more than sixty metres wide. Crossing the border would present no problem at all! But I panicked when I realised there was not a trace of surrounding vegetation. Where would we hide? There were ranges of hills all around us, just as I had seen on a map. But even the skeletal remnants of trees had been stripped of their bark, I presumed, by those who were starving to death. Even twigs had been gathered for fuel, and the hills were naked.

We had no choice but to continue along the riverbank, on an unpaved track, with nothing but our papers to rely on for protection. If we kept going, a forest might appear to screen our escape – or so we believed out of sheer desperation – and we walked for miles. We
passed watchtower after watchtower, set one kilometre apart in the bare landscape along the riverbank.

Sometimes we saw soldiers’ helmets bobbing about inside. Where there was no one in camouflage moving, signs fixed to the ground like abandoned rifles read:
No entry! Border area!
Or:
Stop! We will shoot you!
Wherever the width of the river was narrower, there was a garrison with a red flag and a checkpoint. Any vehicle or person wishing to pass through had to be questioned about their reason for travel, have their bags searched and pockets examined. But as soon as we showed our papers, the guards stopped thundering their orders and saluted us. Some even lowered their voices and pleaded for a cigarette.

On the road, in addition to border patrols, we encountered several militia guards who did not wear military uniform or badges of rank but were dressed in camouflage. Whenever we were stopped, we shoved our papers in their faces; and if we thought the confrontation might escalate, we offered cigarettes too.

By sunset, we had travelled almost thirty kilometres along the border. Around 10 p.m., when the darkness became absolute and we could no longer see ahead of us, we knew we had to cross. Young-min and I edged closer towards the frozen river.

‘Hands up!’

A soldier’s voice rang out of nowhere. Young-min gripped my arm so hard he made me jump. I considered punching the soldier rushing towards us and bunched my fists by my side, ready to strike. But he blew a whistle; completely to our surprise, countless lights lit up, their beams converging on us.

Given no chance to explain ourselves, we were brought to Guard Post No. 6, prodded in the back all the way by cold gun barrels. As we entered the small building, I saw the open door of a cell. Handcuffs hung from its bars.

A soldier addressed us. ‘This is a border area. Why are you here
at this time of night? Show me your identification documents and travel passes.’ As he spoke, he signalled with a jerk of his head, and the heavy door thudded shut, trapping us inside the building. Young-min trembled visibly, suggesting that we had been caught in the act of defection.

‘My friend here is feeling cold. Let us get warm first,’ I said, struggling to keep my composure.

As I reached into the breast pocket of my shirt for our identification papers, I could feel my heart beating. My hand shook as it brushed against my jacket pocket, which held incriminating evidence of treason. I was carrying on my person the poems I had written in secret, having taken them out of my rucksack earlier.

When the first lieutenant reached for my identification papers and saw that they did not belong to an ordinary citizen, he stiffened and sprang out of his chair. Although he was an experienced soldier, he seemed never before to have seen identification papers displaying the gold insignia of a Central Party cadre, nor the blue stamp bearing the authority of the secretive United Front Department.

‘Why have you come to the border area?’ the first lieutenant asked again. Perhaps my youth seemed incongruous with the gravitas of the emblems, and he looked me up and down. His eyes seemed to ask, ‘What do you have there in your other pocket?’

I took a deep breath. ‘We were sent by the Party Committee. Our mission is to retrieve some documents from Musan KPA headquarters. But the night’s turned cold. We came here in search of a guard post where we could stay the night.’