Dear Leader (33 page)

As she bent down, I glimpsed her pale cleavage and quickly looked away. I felt I had done something disrespectful to someone who had offered me help. I had been about to take a bite out of a bun, but I put it back down. I was reassured a little when I heard her press the
keypad of her mobile phone, but I still could not face making eye contact with her.

‘Eat your bun. It’ll go cold,’ she said, then added more playfully, ‘Can I ask you something? I heard that there is cannibalism in North Korea because of hunger. Is that true?’ ‘There were rumours of that kind of thing from time to time, but neither I nor any of my friends actually saw it happen. But I did once witness a mother trying to sell her daughter in the marketplace.’

‘Really? Her daughter? You saw that with your own eyes?’

It was 1999, on a day that had started out just like any other. I was walking past Dongdaewon Area on my way somewhere. Even though it was situated in Pyongyang, Dongdaewon was an impoverished district where the city’s poorest people were concentrated. The market was shabbier than most, and vendors who couldn’t afford the rent grasped in desperation at passers-by. One of them approached me and held out some bread.

‘Please buy a packet of bread for 100 won. Please, help me!’

Her wrinkled hand was swollen and split in many places as she held out a packet containing five little buns each the size of a baby’s fist. I just wanted to give her 100 won (worth around 10 US cents) and not take the packet, but I realised that I had left my wallet in my other coat at home.

‘I’m sorry, I left my wallet at home. Really.’

She might have pleaded with me one more time, but instead she shook her head from side to side with disdain as she looked me up and down, taking in my well-dressed appearance. It didn’t help that I was wearing a formal suit and tie.

I wanted to get away from the embarrassing situation as quickly as I could. But just then, several people ran past, one of them bumping into me. A throng of people was gathering up ahead, to
my annoyance. I had wanted to pass through quickly, because the distinctive smell of the marketplace revolted me. Meat and fish that had gone off in the scorching heat were still on display, with vendors trying to keep the flies away with their fly swats. The ground was unpaved, and food waste and sewage pooled on the muddy earth. The stench of body odour and human excrement added to the other smells, and I had to try hard to keep myself from throwing up.

‘Can I get through, please? I have to be on my way.’

I tried to make my way past but the crowd was becoming so tightly packed together that every step I took seemed to push the whole mob along. When I got to a spot where I could at least see the ground beneath my feet, my eyes settled on the sight in front of me before I could wipe the sweat off my forehead.

In the square where all the buyers and sellers usually gathered, there stood a woman and a young girl, like prisoners about to be shot at a public execution. I stiffened with disgust when I saw what was written on the piece of paper hanging from the girl’s neck. She looked to be about seven years old. The note read: ‘I sell my daughter for 100 won.’

The woman standing next to her, who seemed to be her mother, had her head hung low. I’d often heard of cases where a mother would abandon her child or give it away, but never had I come across someone who was selling her own child for as little as 100 won.

The other onlookers, thinking the same thought, were hurling curses at her.

‘That bitch is out of her head!’

‘You cunt! Even if you’re starving, how can you sell your own daughter?’

‘She looks as pretty as a whore, but her soul is rotten.’

‘What scum you see nowadays.’

An old man asked the girl in a loud voice, ‘Child, is that woman really your mother? You can tell the truth; we’re here to help. Is she really your mother?’

I watched the girl’s lips. As she hesitated, shouts rang out from here and there in the crowd. When someone shouted, ‘Everyone, be quiet! Let’s hear what the girl has to say!’ even the middle-aged man standing next to me, who kept scratching at different parts of his body, stopped what he was doing. The girl mumbled an answer while clutching at the woman’s clothes.

‘She
is
my mother.’

Her mother? And that mother was selling her daughter for 100 won? The circle of onlookers grew more agitated.

‘Tut-tut. Poor child!’

‘Hey bitch, if you’re going to sell your child, price her right!’

‘Even a dog goes for 3000 won! Is your daughter worth less than that?’

‘Who’s going to buy a girl when no one can even feed themselves?’

‘Absolutely, maybe if she begged someone to take her daughter away, she might get some sympathy.’

‘Stupid woman! What are you going to do with 100 won?’

The woman, strangely, did not react. With her eyes cast to the ground, she didn’t move an inch. This seemed to irk the crowd even more, until someone yelled, ‘Say something, you stupid whore! Hey, are you deaf and dumb or something?’

The insults soon turned into gossiping murmurs.

‘She’s deaf?’

‘Hey, she’s deaf!’

It seemed to me as well that there was something wrong with the woman. Another voice rang out from the mob asking the girl whether she had a father, as if resigned to the fact that it was no use cursing at a deaf and dumb woman.

‘No, I don’t have a father anymore. He didn’t have enough food …’
The girl mumbled her answer again, then suddenly looked up and screamed, ‘Stop saying bad things about my mother! They say she’s only got a few more days to live! She’s going to die!’

The child’s shriek pierced the air. Some began to tut, as if to acknowledge that waiting for a certain death was worse than death itself. Looking at the mother and daughter in that place, I felt sure that we were living in the end days of the world. An old woman near me began to cry. As she wiped her tears, she said that if the mother at least had a voice, she would be able to grieve and to share her pain with others.

The deaf woman had a waxy look about her, as if she had already become a corpse, and there seemed to be no blood in her skeletal hands. The sleeves of her shirt and her trouser bottoms were thickly padded, patched over many times. The immaculate stitching was pathetic evidence of one human being’s defiant struggle against poverty.

I was reminded of a saying that handicapped people were skilled with their hands. The child, taking after the mother, was pretty. Although her cheekbones stuck out, you could see that with a bit of flesh, she would be attractive. On her chin just beneath her lips, she had a beauty spot. My elders used to say that that if a girl had a mole where it was visible, it was bad luck. That was certainly the case here.

By this time, no more curses were being cast at the woman, only sympathetic murmurs.

‘So how will the girl carry on after the mother dies?’

‘If only there was a way for both to stay alive.’

‘Maybe there’s a relative who could take the girl in?’

A female market vendor, who looked as if she could not stand it any longer, took out 200 won and offered it to the mother. ‘Missus, we’re all struggling to make ends meet here,’ she said. ‘No one will take your daughter in. Here, take this.’

Others spoke out in agreement.

‘She’s right, take her money.’

‘Go on, if you stay on the streets, it will only quicken your death. You’ve got to stay alive for your daughter.’

Whether it was because she couldn’t understand, or because she felt patronised by this offer of charity, the mother kept her hands clenched and refused to take the money. The vendor tried to demonstrate to her that 200 won was worth more than 100 won, but the mother didn’t budge. When the vendor tried to put the money in the daughter’s hand instead, the mother angrily took it and stuffed the money back in the trader’s pocket.

She then took the paper sign from her daughter’s neck and hung it around her own.

‘Clear the way! Clear the way!’ Stern shouting and the blowing of a whistle began to draw nearer. It was a security agent in military uniform. Perhaps someone had notified him. He went straight to the mother and hit her on the shoulders with the palm of his hand. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you think this is one of those rotten Capitalist societies where you can buy and sell human beings like slaves? Get out of here! Take off your fucking sign!’ He snatched at the piece of paper and ripped it up. As the torn paper fell to the ground, the crowd became agitated again.

‘Hey you, she’s got a terminal disease. You should at least find out what’s going on!’ somebody shouted.

Encouraged by this, the anger of the others was stirred, and mocking voices began to call out.

‘You think you’re in charge just because you’re with fucking security? What’s the point of tearing up her sign?’

‘Look at that arsehole, he looks like a fucking rat.’

‘That son of a bitch is the kind of man who will sell off his own wife.’

The agent, absolutely furious, turned to identify the source of the insults.

Another voice rang out: ‘What? Can’t you see us? Open your fucking eyes!’

Spontaneously, the whole square rang with laughter. His face now red with fury, the agent began to take his anger out on the deaf woman. ‘You’re coming with me, you cunt!’ he bellowed. ‘How dare you sell your daughter and defy Socialism? You love money? Are you promoting Capitalism? Try eating bean rice, cunt.’

The young girl had begun to cry, but the man dragged at the woman’s arm as if to break it. She stumbled and strained to hold her ground. The anger of the onlookers was at a climax, yet no one dared to take a step towards a man in military uniform. Then someone approached him and seized his arm. It was an officer, with a first lieutenant’s stripes.

‘I’ll take the girl. That will solve it, right?’

‘What?’ The security agent turned towards the voice, about to strike its owner, but stopped as soon as he registered the officer’s rank.

The lieutenant pulled the security agent away from the woman. He looked very strong. ‘I receive military rations from the state,’ he explained. ‘I’m confident I can take responsibility for the girl. So here, take 100 won for her.’ The officer’s words revealed that he was not buying the daughter for 100 won, but taking on the role of motherhood. In order to make his point clear to the woman, he picked the girl up in his arms.

The mother reacted in the most unexpected way. After she had accepted the 100-won note from the lieutenant, she hesitated for a moment. Then she broke through the crowd and disappeared. The officer, confused, stood there with the girl still in his arms. Had the mother run off for fear that he might change his mind? If so, that was certainly stupid. But perhaps she was mentally ill, which would explain why she had tried to sell her daughter.

The onlookers made wild guesses. Suddenly, someone from the back shouted out, ‘She’s back! Make way! The mother’s here!’ The crowd made a narrow corridor for the returning woman, who was
stumbling and out of breath. She was carrying bread, of the very kind that I had been offered just outside the marketplace.

Had she resolved to commit such a wretched act for that miserable packet of bread? Had she not even 100 won to give her daughter for a last meal, as a last act of motherhood?

To my astonishment the mother opened her mouth and began to wail, ‘Forgive me! Forgive your mother! What a wretched woman I am! This is all I can give you before I go.’ She knelt in front of her daughter, sobbing violently and putting pieces of bread into her daughter’s mouth.

‘She’s not deaf and dumb!’

‘She could hear us all along!’

‘How much pain she must feel inside.’

Several in the crowd began to sob. Standing among them, I could not but cry with them.

I HAD FINISHED
speaking but Cho-rin’s shoulders were still shaking. She wiped her wet hands on her robe and raised them up to her eyes again, wiping away more tears.

‘How can Kim Jong-il call himself a great leader? He’s a bad man.’ She sipped some water and blew her nose.

‘You did well to leave that country,’ Cho-rin said. ‘Why would you stay there?’ She turned round to face me, patting her cheeks in embarrassment. ‘I never cry. Really, I never do.’

Composing herself, she continued, ‘How will you get to South Korea? Even North Korean refugees who make it as far as the Embassy in Beijing get arrested at the gate. You hear it on the news quite often. You’ll have to find a safer route.’

She flicked her hair behind her ears, determined that we should work on the problem together. She would take care of Young-min’s whereabouts by contacting Mr Shin, she said, but the immediate problem was my safety. I couldn’t stay in the sauna-motel for ever, and each meal presented a problem in itself. She was not a single woman; she was engaged, and she could not be with me all the time. Whether in finding shelter, or travelling to South Korea, the problem was money. She suddenly looked up and asked, ‘Is there something you can do to earn money?’

I said wryly that since I’d crossed the Tumen River, the only thing I was practised in was looking out for police and keeping under the radar. I added that I could play the piano, not that it would be of any use. But Cho-rin clapped her hands in delight.

‘Really? You can play? You know, like, with both hands?’

Watching Cho-rin flail her arms like a drowning woman, I broke into a grin.

‘Well, yes. Not well enough to play professionally, but I’ve played for friends.’

Cho-rin clapped her hands again and then looked at me in surprise as an idea occurred to her. Her uncle lived in the nearby Xita District, she explained, where there were many Korean-Chinese. In fact, he had been looking for a piano tutor for his son. He was quite wealthy and if I taught his son piano, I would have a place to stay and be able to earn some money on the side. The suggestion made sense to me. As well as being able to earn some money, the time I spent in Xita, also known as the ‘Korea Town’ of Shenyang, would surely help me find a way to get to South Korea.