Dear Leader (15 page)

‘No! I saw them trying to set foot on the ice!’ one of the soldiers interrupted.

Well versed in the Party’s ladder of petty seniorities, I instinctively adopted the demeanour of a cadre who had been provoked by an underling. ‘You shit! How dare you point a gun at me? Do you know who I am? I want to punch your insolent face …’

Before I could finish, the first lieutenant cut in: ‘Connect the phone to Musan KPA headquarters and find out if they’re expecting two visitors from Pyongyang.’

I felt faint. Young-min, who had been warming his hands near the stove, shot me a look of despair. A soldier picked up the receiver and dialled. He waited, and then replaced the phone in its cradle. ‘Comrade First Lieutenant, there’s a power cut down the line. I can’t get through.’

On hearing those words, my stubborn will to live was rekindled. I addressed the first lieutenant. ‘Enough of this pissing about. You can have him try again in the morning. Give us some bedding, and do it now! Hurry up!’

I was desperate and blustering, but it seemed to work. Begging them to let us go would have been an admission of guilt, so instead I asked them to let us stay the night. The first lieutenant faltered and glanced down at my papers once more. He even offered me a chair.

As I sat down, the heavy door creaked open and a group of soldiers shuffled in. They were returning from patrol. Gathering round the first lieutenant, they peered alternately at me, at Young-min and at the identification papers.

A second lieutenant of the patrol came up to me and asked, ‘Do you know Seo Jung-hwan?’ I had never heard the name and felt like I was failing a test. But Young-min jumped up from his chair.

‘Seo Jung-hwan from Kimchaek City? The boy whose father is the Party Secretary for Kimchaek?’

The second lieutenant became noticeably excited. ‘Yes, that’s him! Comrade First Lieutenant, he knows my old classmate Jung-hwan!’

I remained seated in a daze. The first lieutenant’s face displayed an expression of contempt as he looked at the second lieutenant and Young-min, who had begun to chatter away like old friends. I mustered my courage once more and shouted, ‘Hey! You really know Jung-hwan?’

‘Yes, sir! We go back a long way.’

‘How wonderful! An old friend of a dear friend, and so far from home. We’ve been looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Will you put us up?’ Before anyone could protest, I took out a bottle of expensive Western cognac and six packets of Marlboro cigarettes. There is nothing more precious to a North Korean soldier than alcohol and cigarettes. While cash served well as a bribe, cigarettes were a more prestigious commodity, especially if they were a foreign brand. Besides personal items, I had packed my rucksack with three boxes of Marlboro cigarettes and two bottles of cognac, in preparation for just this kind of occasion. As the first lieutenant saw the alcohol and cigarettes, his eyes lit up.

Even the most basic rations for soldiers were intermittent, and not only that, foreign goods exuded an intoxicating aura: tokens of the Other World that exists beyond the borders. One of the soldiers exclaimed that this was the first time in his life that he would get to try Western liquor, and the first lieutenant proceeded to distribute the cigarettes to his men as if they were his own gifts.

Provided with prickly military blankets for the night, we lay awake listening to the snoring of soldiers, as well as to the change of patrols with each passing hour. As each group of soldiers set off, they took over the weapons of the previous shift and armed themselves with spare cartridges and hand grenades. The metallic noises screeched,
Death to the traitor!
I prodded Young-min lightly, and saw that he too was unable to sleep. Time crept by as we lay awake in the cold.

The next morning, we left the guard post with a letter from the second lieutenant addressed to Seo Jung-hwan. A group of soldiers waved goodbye and we reciprocated awkwardly. As soon as we were out of their sight, we high-fived each other and excitedly recounted moments from the night before, albeit in a low voice. But our
footsteps soon turned heavy. The border area was much more tightly controlled and tense than the tranquil countryside we had imagined from Pyongyang.

Young-min spoke first. ‘Should we go home?’

Facing each other, we slumped down onto a disused section of railway track that stretched along the Tumen River.

‘It’s too late for that now,’ I reasoned. ‘We’ve missed too many days of work already and they’ve probably put out a search warrant for us. You know the Party. We can’t go back.’

‘Then how do we cross?’

It was as if he wanted me to admit defeat on our behalf. Wearily, I looked at our surroundings. In the silence it seemed that we were the only people left on earth. The hills and river were white, covered with snow. Somewhere far away, a whistle blew three times – perhaps another arrest. Just over the river, on the other side of the border, we could hear the lowing of an ox. The sky seemed exceedingly blue and a bird flitted across that borderless space. We could see over the river, but we were helpless to cross it.

Young-min spoke again. ‘We’ve come all the way here from Pyongyang. Just across this river – just there – is China. It’s right in front of us. How on earth do we cross?’

As he’d pointed out, nothing much lay between us and China, and each side of the border looked alike. Our lands were covered with snow, and so were theirs; except that their mountains were covered with trees like balls of cotton, and ours were sheer and bare. In the summer, our hills would be hellish red and theirs green with foliage. To me, this confirmed that we had every reason to cross the river.

‘Let’s cross, now!’ I was surprised by my own words. Until this moment, I had been focused on moving under cover of night. ‘Now’s the time – the soldiers keep watch at night, but now, it’s bright as day, and we can see them before they see us. Let’s cross!’

As if we had planned it, I glanced round on the North Korean side and Young-min checked the Chinese side. ‘No one’s around,’ he said. ‘Should we stand up?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes! Now!’

Although we spoke with confidence, neither of us stood up. What frightened us more than anything was that neither of us had the courage to act. We breathed deeply, and as our humiliating weakness of mind was laid bare, it was also cathartic. The silence recharged our resolve, and we reached for each other’s hand to feel the heat of our bodies. We had walked to the edge of this cliff together, and would jump together.

We counted in unison.

‘One …’

‘Two …’

‘Three!’

We leaped up and started sprinting across the frozen Tumen River. My heart pounded with every step, and the ice bellowed under our feet. Over ten metres, twenty metres? Someone started yelling.

‘Hey! Get those bastards!’

I turned to look towards the noise. A group of soldiers stood with their rifles aimed. I saw the barrel, and heard the rifle cock. The roof of my skull seared with pain, where I knew the bullet would enter. I screamed but could not hear my own voice.

‘
DON’T LOOK BACK
. Keep your eyes ahead,’ I panted again and again as we sprinted across the ice.

The frozen surface of the river beneath our feet turned at last into land. We had stepped into China, and had committed an unredeemable act of treason. On the North Korean side, a soldier yelled, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’

The shout sounded as if it was coming from very near. I heard no shots, but imagined a bullet grazing past me, lodging itself in a tree up ahead. I couldn’t look back, because there was no way back.

Gritting our teeth, we kept going, heading for the nameless mountain ahead of us. Although my legs were moving, the mountain seemed to be getting further away. With almost every step I fell to the ground like jelly. The snow was ankle-deep, and my limbs were too weak to support my body. When one of us fell, the other pulled him back up. Fear pushed us on and kept us moving; fear prevented us from looking back to see who or what was behind us.

‘Just a little further. We’re almost there,’ I gasped. Strangely, I found a rage surging from within, drowning out the terror that had been gripping me. Had this narrow stretch of frozen river been all that had condemned us? Still, we were not yet free. Terror lay not only in the guns behind us. Soldiers might appear somewhere ahead too.

I said to Young-min, ‘Check around for patrols; you look right, I’ll look left.’

Snow, fields, mountains. There were no soldiers in this landscape. We were relieved to hear each other’s voice say the same words: ‘No one on this side.’ Even the urgent shouts of the North Korean soldiers had faded into silence. But this exposed us to the terrifying vacuum of China’s vast emptiness, waiting to swallow us whole. China’s soldiers might be waiting for their approaching prey, hiding in a future we could not see.

But as we continued towards the mountain, we saw no guns and heard no soldiers’ whistles. As we neared its base, we saw no other living thing. Coming face to face with the base of the mountain was like coming to seek refuge in the arms of divinity. The countryside was covered with trees, so unlike the barren hills of North Korea. These trees would welcome and hide us. Only a few minutes before, we had looked on this place as if it were a distant planet, but now we were standing within that other world. Only now did we catch our breath, turning to look back towards North Korea. There were no soldiers on our trail.

We were seized by ecstasy. As we stood there, gawking at each other like fools, tears ran down Young-min’s cheeks. When he wiped my face with the back of his hand, I realised that I was crying too. But it didn’t matter, because crying at times like these was the mark of a true man. Instead of saying this out loud, I made a fist and punched Young-min’s chest. He did the same to me. After two or three more punches, the punches became tickles, and we fell about laughing. We had experienced a miracle, and we were proud of our courage. I posed to aim an imaginary rifle at Young-min. He spread his arms wide and puffed out his chest, daring me to shoot. We fell into laughter once again, clutching our bellies and marvelling at how we could indulge in such play.

Young-min found a pebble on the ground and hurled it in the direction of North Korea. I felt the vanishing speck dislodge the anger knotted in my stomach and dissipate it. We had not merely
freed ourselves from the grip of the regime, but hurled it away like the pebble Young-min had thrown. Nevertheless, the silence of the border was oppressive, and I cowered when I registered that ours were the only voices to be heard. But Young-min seemed to derive security from our isolation in this deep woodland, because he spread his arms again and fell backwards onto the snow.

‘Let’s rest here for a few days,’ he said. ‘If I freeze to death on this mountain, that won’t be so bad.’

As he spoke, a bird flew across us from nowhere and, flapping its wings loudly, passed low over our heads. It felt like an omen, a warning that other living beings were near. Young-min didn’t seem to notice. He was making snoring noises and giggling to himself. I wanted to roll about in the snow with him, but didn’t have the heart and stood nervously fiddling with my rucksack. We had passed through so many obstacles to get here and, merely moments ago, had stared death in the face. I could think of nothing more wretched than being caught after managing to cross that border.

I said, ‘We don’t have time. North Korea will be alerting China. If we stay here, they’ll find us. Let’s go just a bit further, find a town.’

‘How? We don’t know where to go,’ Young-min replied.

I stopped fiddling with my rucksack. As Young-min said, we had no way of knowing where to go under this new and foreign sky. Perhaps we should follow the Tumen River south.

Peering into the woods and hills deeper into China, I spotted what appeared to be a small village in the distance. I could even make out a woman wearing red. What if she had seen us? Would she have alerted the authorities? The colour red sent a shiver through me. Still, I saw no choice but to head towards the village.

‘I’m going to check out the village. You stay here. I’ll shout if I run into trouble,’ I said.

I was high on the confidence of having outrun the North Korean
border guards in broad daylight. My announcement woke Young-min from his trance and he seized my arm.

‘Where on earth are you going? How do you know there won’t be patrols there?’

I replied, ‘You know how they say there are lots of South Korean tourists in China. I can pretend I’m one of them who’s lost his way. Do you have a better idea?’

Young-min didn’t approve and decided to stay where he was, but I made my way towards the village all the same. I walked quickly without looking round too much, as I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. As I neared the woman in red, I saw that she appeared to be in her forties. She looked like an ordinary countrywoman, the sort that would be wary of strangers.

I approached her. ‘I’m a South Korean tourist. Can I ask you for directions?’

Without saying a word, she hurried ahead of me and gestured towards a house. She spoke no Korean, but I assumed that she must be pointing to the house of an ethnic Korean.

Many ethnic Koreans live in the three north-eastern regions of China, near the border with North Korea. Korean settlers had moved north in large numbers at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. The population of Koreans in this region of Manchuria quickly rose from about 700,000 in 1870 to 1.7 million by the end of Japan’s colonial rule. Though Japan was defeated in the Second World War and its occupation had ended, chaos returned to Korea within five years in the form of the Korean War. According to the Chinese Communist Party’s policy on minority groups, the Koreans were acknowledged as a Chinese ethnic minority and allowed to settle in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in north-eastern China.