Stars Between the Sun and Moon (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Jungsoo's female relatives
now played cards and majong while I did all the work, sweeping, preparing the meals and looking after the pigs. For the first time, I understood the pain my mother lived with: marrying a man she liked but perhaps did not love, and then finding herself to be his downfall. Jungsoo reminded me of my own father, stoic and resolute in his conviction that I be cared for. But like my father, he was unable to stand up for me or to demand his family treat me like a daughter. Eunhee had stopped paying me wages for helping with the harvest, so I was now completely dependent on Jungsoo.

The man I paid to take food to my family brought me a gift one month that lifted my spirits: my brother Hyungchul. Hyungchul was now smuggling himself in and out of China regularly, trading goods and food to feed our other brother, our sister and our parents. The situation in Chosun had improved for a while, he told me, but it was worsening again. The Arduous March was moving into its fifth year. People from Chosun were streaming into Helong, taking whatever work they could find and selling whatever they had, including their bodies. Some of the men were getting into fights with their Chinese and ethnic Korean employers in the fields, where they were forced to work without pay. Migrants from Chosun were being sent back by Chinese police and were imprisoned in Chosun, often for years. At least, I thought to myself, Jungsoo's family had not turned me in. I wanted to believe it was because of my relationship with Moonjae. No one cared for him other than me. I unburdened the family of their guilt.

If only Moonjae was a girl, I heard Jungsoo's mother tell her youngest daughter. “Then we could marry her off.”

Jungsoo's friend Mandol had bought a “wife” from Chosun, a skittish woman whose son and father had died from hunger. The woman spoke in whispers when she and Mandol visited Jungsoo, telling me stories of the refugees. The last time I saw her, she confided that she was running away from Mandol to be with a man who was kinder to her. Mandol beat her with a stick, she revealed, rolling up the sleeves of her sweater to show me her wounds. He stuck bottles and sticks inside her and forced her to say things into his ear that made her feel like less than a worm.

“You must leave,” she urged me. “Everyone in the Yanbian prefecture is turning on us. You have no friends except the tired man who shares your bed and the boy who lacks confidence even to say his name. They will both turn on you one day. Go inland,” she advised, “where there are few people like us.”

I didn't listen though, and before long I paid the price.

On the evening
of the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth month, a little more than three years after I had left Chosun, I slipped under the blanket beside Jungsoo after stoking the fire.

My eyes had barely closed when I felt the ground shaking outside. Heavy boots approached, followed by loud knocking on the front and back doors. Moonjae cried out in fear. Jungsoo frantically waved for me to hide in the armoire. But there was no space between the books and the clothes that had been piled in there. I stood shivering in our room in my pyjama shirt and pants, watching through a crack in the door as Jungsoo greeted four policemen.

The largest policeman pushed Jungsoo aside and threw open the door to our room. When our eyes met, he yelled something at Jungsoo in Mandarin.

“Tell him to take his boots off,” I shouted to Jungsoo, pointing at the policeman's heavy black military boots. “What a sign of disrespect to enter a woman's house that way!”

I was thinking not of the fate that awaited me but of the disrespect I could not bear for one more minute, from anyone. I started screaming like a crazy woman. The Chinese policeman stepped out of his boots and raised his hands in an attempt to calm my hysteria.

“Get changed,” Jungsoo said to me.

“No.” I shook my head.

“Please obey. There is nothing I can do.”

The Chinese policeman stood watching as I slipped on a pair of cotton pants, two long-sleeved shirts and a man's jacket over my pyjamas. I pulled on a pair of socks, full of holes, and stepped into my one well-worn pair of shoes. The Chinese policeman never took his eyes off of me, preventing me from reaching into the armoire and pulling out my money.

In the other room, Moonjae stood facing the wall, frantically banging his head against the plaster. Jungsoo stepped toward me as the guards tied a rough rope around my hands. “In my socks in the armoire are a hundred yuan,” I whispered in his ear. “Use that for Moonjae and celebrate New Year's with him. Bring him some happiness.”

The Chinese policemen
pushed me into the back of a military jeep. Behind me sat another woman from Chosun, her head lowered. The inside of the cab had filled with the scent of her perfume. I had met a few women from Chosun who had married ethnic Koreans or Chinese men. Some were given good dresses to wear, liquid soap that came in a bottle for their hair, and perfumes from Beijing that smelled like flowers. What I would miss most back in Chosun, I thought to myself, was the cooking oil. At home, oil had always been so expensive that even on holidays we used only a teaspoon of corn oil to cook our vegetables. In China, people doused their food with oil of different kinds.

The jeep stopped next in front of a farmhouse outside of town. The vehicle's headlights beamed on a chicken coop in the front yard and a broken motorbike lying on its side. Three policemen hopped out of the car, leaving me with the woman, the driver, another policeman and a strange man who sat in the front seat. I couldn't see his face but after a moment I recognized his clothing: a large fur hat and coat that made him look like a bear. As I watched the lights come on in the house, I knew another woman would be caught. And I knew now who had informed on us. The man in the fur hat was Mandol.

Mandol was full of hatred, as his wife had told me. Now that she had fled, he no doubt wanted to hurt as many of us as he could for revenge. I watched as the police escorted an entire family—husband, wife, son and a shaking daughter—to the car.

The Chinese policeman
who had watched me change yanked me out of the jeep by my hands. The rope, tied so tightly, caused my wrists to bleed as he led me forward. When I screamed from the pain, the Chinese police guard let go of the rope and pushed me along by the shoulder.

My eyes stung from the bright lights in the border police centre. By the time they had adjusted to my new surroundings, I was in a square room, being ordered to stand up against a wall. A photographer snapped my picture. For a moment, I could see nothing but spots.

After that, I was taken to an interrogation room with six other women. We were ordered to line up against the wall. A line of male guards stood in front of us. One who spoke Korean ordered us to strip naked. The women and I looked at each other, uncertain what to do. One woman reached for her shoe and pulled out some Chinese yuan. She waved it at the guard who spoke Korean, saying she would do anything to get out of custody. The guard stepped forward and punched her in the face, sending her flying backwards. She fell to the floor, holding her bloodied mouth, and spat a tooth into her palm. The rest of us slowly took off our shoes, clothes and undergarments until we had nothing on.

The guards moved forward. They lifted our breasts, felt our vaginas, peered into our mouths and ears. I shivered from cold and embarrassment. A woman who was crying had urinated on herself. The guards laughed at her.

The woman who had been hit was forced to stand and undress as well. A guard ordered her to splay her hands on the wall. Then, after donning plastic gloves, he stuck his fist first up her vagina and then into her anus.

My body trembled. I tried to look away.

“Why afraid?” said the guard who spoke Korean. “You've spread your legs for the Chinese lots of times. We are not doing anything you have not done before.”

The guards tossed
us into a cell no larger than the room I had slept in with Jungsoo. There were so many bodies in there already, people sleeping in seated positions back to back, their heads hanging. Children had soiled themselves as they lay in fetal positions by their parents' sides.

Someone's hand reached for me. It was the first woman who had been in the jeep.

“There are things you need to know,” she whispered.

I shook my head, not understanding.

“I've been here in the past,” she continued.

I huddled in close and tilted my head.

“When they interrogate you on this side of the border and back in Chosun, you must tell them nothing about how you came to China. Don't say anyone helped you. If you do, you will end up spending more time in jail and be beaten more cruelly. Don't tell them someone arranged a marriage for you. If you must, say you left Chosun for food. They will be kinder to you then.”

“What else?” I probed.

“Some of the women have yuan or won hidden in their shoes. They will offer to buy information from you about how you got to China, the people who helped you, the names of your family. Don't tell them anything. They will try to exchange the information for special favours from the guards.”

“How long will we be in prison?” I asked nervously.

“A few years.”

“Years? How many?” I swallowed hard, hoping I had heard her incorrectly.

“Two or three. And they will be the worst years of your life. But at least there will be freedom at the end of it.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked hurriedly as a guard approached the door.

“Because this isn't the first time I have been caught and sent back.”

We remained in
the crowded cell for four days. I sat with my knees pulled up to my chest, sleeping in that position and talking to the woman I called Soohee. That was the name she gave me, though, whether it was her real name or not, I never learned. We stretched a few times a day by standing to do some of the exercises I had seen the Chinese in Beijing do, soothing out muscle cramps and trying to clear our heads of the constant pain and fear.

During my semi-sleepless nights, I had one recurring dream in which I was in a cave, the air so thick with humidity my clothes were soaked. I felt my way outside, following a sliver of light. But when I reached freedom, the sky was dark, full of rain clouds. I saw a faucet and crawled along the ground toward it. I turned the handle and positioned myself to drink. What came out was not water, however, but a jet-black liquid that stained my face and clothes. I would awaken at this point with a jolt and reach for Soohee's hand.

On the fifth day, the Chinese police guard who spoke Korean announced we were being sent back to Chosun.

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-three

As the bus
crossed the bridge over the frozen Tumen River into Chosun, all hope left me. People lined the curbs, jeering, “You bastards! Traitors!” as we passed.

As the bus came to a stop, the Chinese border police screamed at us to get off. Once we were on the icy ground, guards from Chosun took over. Their sharp, monotone Korean pierced my heart. They marched us through the main town as villagers followed pelting us with mud, rocks and snow. It was soon apparent, though, that some of the townsfolk weren't as angry as the others. These people searched our faces, whispering strange names. Had we seen their daughters, their sons, their mothers or husbands?

Once we were inside the detention centre, our photos were taken one by one. As in China, we were then subjected to body searches. Chosun guards probed every crevice. One guard's fingers lingered a little longer on my breasts. “Whore,” he said, leaning in close. “You are nothing but a whore to the Chinese.”

Another guard led me to a cell packed with men, women and children. I could feel through my socks that the floor was warm in a few spots but male prisoners had already occupied those. Other parts of the floor were chipped, revealing the bare earth underneath. I sat down cross-legged in the only space available and closed my eyes.

Days slipped into
nights in the detention centre. We woke each morning at five when the guards entered the cell in their heavy boots screaming at us to wake up. We had to line up to use the washrooms. Many, particularly the children, were unable to wait, so the floor was constantly covered in our urine and excrement. After that, we would spend an hour or so reciting the principles for the establishment of one ideological system. We sat in rows facing the wall where the Ten Commandments, as we called them, were written. We recited them, shouting at the top of our lungs.

1. We must give our all in the struggle to unify the entire society with the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung.
   
2. We must honour the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung with all our loyalty.
   
3. We must make absolute the authority of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung.
   
4. We must make the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung's revolutionary ideology our faith and make his instructions our creed.
   
5. We must adhere strictly to the principle of unconditional obedience in carrying out the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung's instructions.
   
6. We must strengthen the entire Party's ideology and willpower and revolutionary unity, centring on the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung.
   
7. We must learn from the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung and adopt the communist look, revolutionary work methods and people-oriented work style.
   
8. We must value the political life we were given by the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung, and loyally repay his great political trust and thoughtfulness with heightened political awareness and skill.
   
9. We must establish strong organizational regulations so that the entire Party, nation and military move as one under the one and only leadership of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung.
   
10. We must pass down the great achievement of the revolution by the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung from generation to generation, inheriting and completing it to the end.
    

Some prisoners, I discovered, had also been assigned roles as guards. Their job was to watch everyone's lips to make sure we were reciting the commandments properly. If an inmate was caught forgetting a word or falling asleep, he or she would be kicked in the back. Once, my head slumped and I fell briefly into sleep. For that, I was forced to sit on my calves in the corner, my head against the cement wall, my hands tied with shoelaces behind my back. I had to stay in this position for more than a day.

When the guards were not looking, Soohee and I played a game we called “Food for Words,” in which we described the big feasts we dreamed of, everything from tofu fried in salty sauces to rice cakes and plates full of boiled eggs. In my mind's eye, I even saw pork steaming atop the white ceramic bowls of corn rice, which made up my actual meals.

Onsung Jipgyulso was not only a detention centre but a labour camp, and my assigned job was to shovel snow. After the Ten Commandments, I would head outside wearing the same clothes in which I had been captured and begin shovelling, even during blizzards. It was cold enough in our cell. We had no blankets, no mats, nothing but each other to keep us warm. But outside was much worse. I had no mittens, no hat, no extra sweaters. Within two weeks, my right ear had turned red and itchy from frostbite. Soohee and I ripped off part of my shirt, and I tied it around my head to keep the infected ear as warm as I could.

We were allowed to wash every day. But none us were given soap, towels or toilet paper. We all used a piece of our clothing we had torn off for two purposes: to wipe ourselves and to clean our private parts in the icy water we were given. The cell filled with our heavy odours. Our skin was dark and our faces turned gaunt as malnourishment set in. Slowly, we became the skeletons we once were before we left Chosun.

Soohee had been right. There were women in our cell who boasted they had yuan hidden in their socks. Some of them would disappear with the local guards. When they returned hours later, they would sit motionless, staring at the walls, their eyelids blinking slowly. My heart would sink, for I knew what had happened without being told. These women believed if they had sex with the guards they would be set free. Some of them actually were. But most of those women who tempted fate were forced to have sex with as many as ten men in a row, only to resume their lives among the rest of us. A part of them disappeared in their shame and broken spirits.

The guards didn't need guns. Hope and denial were their weapons.

After a midday meal of more mushed corn, I headed back outside to shovel the snow until the sun began to creep over the forests toward China. Then we headed back inside for more recitations of the Ten Commandments. Dinner was corn soup, then more Ten Commandments, more Ten Commandments, more and more. If anyone fell asleep during the recitations, we would all have to stand up and sing a communist song from our school days.

When the candles that lit the inside of the cell were finally blown out, leaving only a blanket of darkness to cover us, my head would pound with the drumming of the Ten Commandments. I could not escape them. I could not forget them. But worst of all, I could feel no more value in them. We were suffering, all of Chosun. What good was it to learn these rules when we couldn't even feed our children? Even just thinking that, I felt I was a traitor, as the townspeople had jeered. I would shake my thoughts away but they would always return. Kim Il-sung had betrayed us.

My reprieve was sleep. But when it came, I dreamt of the faucet. I would open my eyes to see that the hell of my imagination was the hell I was actually living.

I did not
deny my interrogators information, but I did not tell them the whole truth, either. I had originally entered China for food and had not planned to stay, I said. I knew from other prisoners that my family would not be harmed as long as I had not been trafficked or trafficked others into China, so I offered up my true identity and my word that I would not leave Chosun again if I was released. “My mother was sick,” I sobbed. “She needed food, or else she would have died. I had to leave.”

My interrogator had a mother, too. Perhaps that is why he was moved enough not to torture me the way I had heard he had others. They would arrive back at the cell with bruises around their eyes and bloodied lips.

Being so busy and exhausted during the day, I didn't think about Sungmin. But at night, when the faucet dream woke me, I would spend the hours until morning remembering Sungmin's smiles, his wobbly first steps, his arms stretched out for me. Sometimes I could even sense him close to me, breathing. Part of me even hoped that he had died in a way that was quick and painless, or that he had escaped with his new family and now lived a good life in China or South Korea. Life was not life in Chosun. Not anymore. Moonjae sometimes popped into my mind and I missed him too.

One morning after our recitation of the Ten Commandments, all of the adult prisoners were ordered to shovel snow. As we neared the exit in a single line, a guard informed us that a hundred of us would be leaving the camp. I was one of them, I soon learned. Soohee was another.

Some local guards tied the transferred prisoners together, three by three, and then ordered us to march. We went back through the town the way we had come, shivering in the snow. This time, the townspeople turned their backs on us.

Once we reached the train station, a guard told us what was happening. Some of us would head directly to prisons located near our hometowns or cities. Others were being sent to Kyohwaso, a terrible prison I had heard about from others. Many described being sent there as a death sentence. Soohee, who stood near me, looked over with glazed eyes. “If we get separated,” she mouthed, “I will see you back in China.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

I fixed my eyes on the back of Soohee's head, on her knotted hair, as the train rocked on its journey through the mountains, past boulders the size of houses, gushing rivers, grassy plains that swayed like the ocean. We were given no food. Whenever I had to go to the washroom, the two others tied to me had to come into the stall as well, a guard positioned at the door to make sure we didn't try to escape. My body and head itched with lice. In the warmth of the train compartment, the bugs that had nested in me came alive. But I could only slip my jacket off as far as my shoulders to cool down.

At a stop several hours into the journey, Soohee and the two prisoners tied to her were escorted to the door. She turned, and our eyes met. “I promise,” she mouthed the words.

“China. I promise too,” I mouthed. And I meant it.

Eighty of us
made our way from the train station, our wrists still tied together, through the ice-encrusted streets of Chongjin.Our skin had turned black, our body mass was half what it normally was and our hair was falling out. But the villagers lining the road looked worse than even the worst-looking prisoners in our group. They had no oil left in their skin, and their faces were paper-white, like the origami puppets we had made in school as children. The people of Chongjin moved slowly. They had no energy to look closely to see if one of their own was among us. They were the walking dead. The famine must have hit here hardest.

Chongjin had a large metal manufacturing factory. The sky was black with dark fumes that formed clouds. Soot had settled on the freshly painted white houses with their blue wooden doors and red brick roofs. One thing the government insisted on, no matter how poor the rations: twice a year people had to paint their houses. The soot was like acid, stinging my throat. As we marched, my anger grew. In such troubled times, why wouldn't the Party let people buy food instead of paint?

We were ordered to a halt in front of a building with two newly painted metal doors. Once inside the prison, more body searches. This time, bugs fell off of us as the guards probed our bodies. Our cell looked much like the previous one, except the floor was not chipped. At least the floor was warm from the heated stones beneath the tiling. The kitchen was close by. Our evening meal was broth with a small leaf of cabbage floating on top. We spent the evening reciting the Ten Commandments.

That night as I drifted off to sleep, I expected the dream of the faucet to return as always. But it didn't. On my first night in Chongjin Jipgyulso, a road came to me in my dream, a road lined with poplar trees. The leaves stretched into a canopy, tempting me to walk as if through a tunnel. I inched forward, feeling the damp yellow soil between my bare toes.

Something at the end of the corridor of trees was beckoning me, though I could not see it. I could only feel it, as a soft, sweet breath that touched my cheek and rustled my hair. The feeling was familiar, like the light of a candle in the window on a frosty winter night. I knew I must keep going. Whatever awaited me at the end of the row of poplar trees was beautiful.

That night, I did not wake panting. I did not wake churning over my memories of Sungmin. This time, I listened to the deep breathing of the other inmates, their coughs and scratching. To survive, I had to stay strong. I had to keep my mind focused. I had to keep my promise to Soohee to see her again in China. I had to stay alive to see Sungmin again.