The Aquariums of Pyongyang (17 page)

We slaughtered the rabbits in the fall, stripping and preparing the furs in their most luxuriant season. As for the meat, its dispensation was the exclusive prerogative of the agents and their families, who each received their own rabbit. When they came to fetch their animals, we waited on them like regular butchers, asking if they wanted their animals eviscerated; whole or cut into pieces; with or without the head, liver, or kidneys. What joy we felt when they turned up their noses at the lungs or the heart and bade us, “Keep it!”

Yet it wasn't just disgust that compelled the guards to refuse the offal; in Korean culture there is the idea—born partly of generosity and partly of disdain—that one should always leave a portion of what one eats to an inferior. It's a way of establishing one's superiority, of saying, “I don't need it” and “it's good enough for you but not for me.” To break with this custom is to lose face, even in a camp, and this was very much to our benefit. At the end of the slaughter day, we divvied up the innards and cooked them in the simplest and fastest way possible, by boiling them in water. It seemed like the most exquisite meal ever, though the kids were sometimes so hungry they couldn't wait for the meat to cook and just ate it raw.

Such charmed days were painfully rare, however, and pinching a rabbit on the sly was no easy feat. The animals were continually being counted and recounted, so that even a single disappearance would be immediately noticed. A short while after the departure of my favorite teacher, I was nevertheless able to pull off the trick a couple of times. Though I had been relieved of my post as rabbit guard some time before, I still knew the system by heart: the layout of the rabbit area, the duration of the rounds, the habits of the various personnel. My chance came on a night when my work team was being punished for missing a lumber quota and kept late to finish the job. The shortfall hadn't been our fault. The work site was a long way from the village, making it impossible for us to go home for lunch and get the energy we needed to complete the job. When night fell, we sneaked into a nearby field and stole some corn, but rather than satisfy our hunger it only whet it. Then someone suggested we steal a rabbit, which everyone thought was a great idea. I swear I could see my cohorts' eyes glistening in anticipation. I was chosen for the mission, along with two friends—Hwang Yong-soo and Bae Jong-chol—who kept the lookout while I slipped into the
warren. Within a few minutes, a rabbit had been pulled from its cage, killed, skinned, eviscerated, and its intestines buried. Our only fear now was that the smell of cooking might give us away. So while the rest of us went back to work, one member of our gang cooked the rabbit at a safe distance. It was one of the most delicious dinners I ever had. It had been six months since I had so much as tasted meat. I still think about that night sometimes, wishing I could see those kids again. The last time I saw them was when they left the camp. Hwang was the first to go, then me, then Bae. And that was it, silence. . . . They probably remember that night, too, and shake their heads thinking about the huge risk we had taken. With North Korea ravaged by famine, they may even regret not being back in Yodok, within reach of the rabbit cage.

If I were to improve my nutritional intake and realize my dream of becoming the family's provider of meat, the better option was rat. One of my coworkers—a camp veteran—was the first to introduce me to the dish, going so far as to demonstrate its proper preparation. Despite my revulsion, I couldn't resist the odor of grilled meat—which was not deceptive, because the rat was truly delicious. Though the rodents were everywhere, trapping them was difficult, especially because most were quite small. The other challenge was figuring out how to reuse the traps, since the first captured rat left behind a smell that warded off the others. After much experimentation, I discovered that the smell could be eliminated by passing the contraption over a fire. By this time, however, I was already perfecting my newest trap design, which used wires strung across the entrance of the rats' nest to snare and strangle the animals as they tried to exit. My clever little invention was completed in 1982, and thanks to its
increased catch, I was able to supplement the family's small food ration.

Mi-ho made less fuss about eating her first grilled rat than I did. True, I initially lied to her about the nature of the meat, but when I later told her the truth she wasn't the least bit disgusted. The poor girl was so hungry. She was suffering from pellagra, and that dish may have been her last shot at survival. At my urging, the entire family eventually took to eating rat. My uncle was the hardest to convince, but after a few months of demurring, the day came when his hunger pains were just too sharp and he, too, relented. That was the last time I saw him turn down a piece of grilled rat meat. The Yodok rats, it should be said, were fine specimens—much finer than any rat I ever caught in Seoul—and since they reproduced quickly, they were the only food product in the camp that was never in short supply.

I was not the only prisoner in Yodok to hunt rats. There were many devotees of the sport, and each had his or her own technique for trapping and preserving the game. I discovered that a friend of mine had turned his hut into a full-blown breeding ground. The other kids and I had noticed that he was always in good shape, while we, despite our little supplements, remained hungry and thin. Was he stealing food? Was someone giving it to him? Fearing that we had begun to suspect him of collaborating with the guards, the boy called us over to his hut one day for an explanation. His family was allotted two rooms, just like we were, but instead of using all their living space, they all squeezed into one room and left the second space entirely for the rats. To attract them, my friend had stolen corn from the fields and spread it on the floor. The plan worked perfectly, and the number of nests multiplied. The only maintenance required was sprinkling a little corn on the floor every few days. Whenever he got hungry, all my
friend had to do was grab a wire trap and fish out a rat. It was a veritable pantry, the secret to his robust health.

Another of the camp's rat hunters prospered by taking advantage of his job as the watchman of the corn depot. The vast corn storage area, which was surrounded by barbed wire, contained about a hundred small wire-mesh silos, into which the prisoners emptied their harvest at the end of each day. Prisoners were allowed to enter the area freely, but the guard always patted them down on their way out. Everyone envied the guard's job, especially because the man who held the position was chubby—indeed almost fat—which only helped fuel speculation about his diet. People said that he always had meat in his mess tin. While most prisoners were sure he was doubling as a snitch, they also suspected him of stealing corn. Security eventually got wind of the rumor and sent guards to search the man's hovel. What they discovered was a large receptacle packed tight with salt-cured rat meat. The guards couldn't be more pleased with the man's ingenuity and fervor in controlling the population of the corn-thieving rats. The complaints of his libelers only helped shore up his position.

All the meals and extra rations provided me by the rats gradually changed my view of these animals. I began to see them as useful, even precious, on a par with chickens and rabbits. I was truly grateful for their existence, and still am. Absurd though it may seem to those who have never known hunger, I actually felt a connection with them. I remember an encounter I had with a rat in our hut one night. Raising my head from my mattress I saw him staring at me from between two floorboards. We were locked in each other's gaze, staring into each other's eyes for what seemed a long time, until the spell broke and he scurried away. Before entering the camp, I had thought of rats as scary and disgusting. Today I think of them as touchingly kind animals.

Sentiments aside, the following winter was a hard one, and the occasional rats I trapped afforded considerable succor. The snowfalls were so heavy that only the sharpest crags of the surrounding mountains broke through the thick blanket of white. It seemed as though nature were telling us that to get out of Yodok we would have to be the world's greatest mountain climbers—a title none of us could claim.

As long as the temperature remained above–13˚F, work went on as usual. Imagine us kids, dressed all in rags, trying to chop down a tree whose essential oils were needed for the latest “Let's Earn Some Dollars for Kim Il-sung” campaign. With our bodies waistdeep in snow, we had to dig evacuation paths in case a tree didn't fall as planned. Many adults were killed and maimed that way. Once a tree was down, we chopped off its branches and hauled the trunk to the foot of the mountain on our shoulders. At the end of the day, we returned to our huts—my, I almost said homes!—with our hands and feet frozen stiff and our whole bodies utterly exhausted.

On one particularly cold winter's day, I got home with a strange, painful stinging sensation in my feet. I tried soaking them in lukewarm water, but this only made them feel worse. Cold water was the only thing that brought relief. The next morning when I woke up, my toenails were solid black and I was unable to walk. The guards let me work inside that day, weaving wicker baskets as I had been taught in school. My toenails eventually fell off, but I miraculously escaped necrosis and the amputation it would have necessitated.

New shoes were given to us every two years, but the quality was so poor, and our work so demanding, that the pair never lasted more
than a year. To avoid frostbite, we wrapped our extremities in layers of rags and dried rat skins. In the bitterest cold, we swathed our heads and faces in tattered castoffs, leaving only our eyes uncovered. Such measures could never contend with the bitter–10˚F temperatures that descended on the mountain. The only way to keep from freezing was to keep moving; but this wasn't something everyone could do, and every year, several old people died from the cold.

These memories come back to me whenever I go skiing and see high, snow-covered mountains with sheer black crags. I try to explain my feelings to South Korean friends, but have little success. Where they see an ideal landscape, I see the natural barriers of Yodok, a place conceived for human misery, whose gloom still has the power to overwhelm me.

I
n the summer of 1982, my situation improved further. I finally made a friend. The camp had received two new prisoners, space aliens practically, whose extraordinary clothes and looks reminded us of our lost world. They were an elegant woman with dark glasses and her handsomely attired son, whose delicate white skin contrasted invidiously with our own, which the sun, wind, and snow had tanned into leather. Our jaws dropped when we saw them.

Within a few months their finely cut clothes would lose all their charm. The woman stopped wearing her glasses; she and her son looked just like everybody else in the camp. Less than a year after their incarceration, the boy, whose name was Yi Sae-bong, fell seriously ill and couldn't move his legs. Fortunately his paralysis didn't last. At first we had a hard time communicating, because having grown up in Japan, he only knew a few words of Korean; but he learned the language quickly and was soon able to tell me how he
arrived in Yodok. He was a little older than I was and his family had lived in Kyoto, the city with the most powerful Chosen Soren cell outside the homeland. When the Party leadership in Pyongyang chose Han Duk-su to head the Japanese wing, the Kyoto cell protested. Han Duk-su, they said, was being parachuted in; he had never done anything for the struggle in Japan. The opponents backed down when they learned Kim Il-sung himself was backing the controversial nomination, but by this time the Great Leader's embittered candidate was determined to exact revenge. Many members of the Kyoto cell wound up in the camps. They had opposed the will of Han Duk-su and, by extension, that of Kim Il-sung, and this was a crime that could not be easily forgiven.

Like so many who hadn't understood the danger, Yi Sae-bong's father decided to move his family back to North Korea. He planned to come first, then send for his wife, three sons, and daughter. Shortly after arriving, however, he was arrested for espionage and sent to a hard-labor camp. When weeks passed without a word, Yi Sae-bong and his mother came to North Korea to try to find out what had become of him. Instead of receiving information, they were arrested and sent to Yodok.

I loved to hear Yi Sae-bong's stories about Japan. I was amazed by all its brands of beer—imported from all over the world—and by the huge black American soldiers that walked the streets. My imagination soared at the mention of France, England, Germany, and Czechoslovakia—the latter inspiring particular wonder. What most sparked my interest were the thick, juicy steaks people ate with a knife and fork. I wanted to know how they were cooked, what they were garnished with, the side dishes that accompanied them. I was sad I couldn't imagine the taste of catsup and offended by the rampant
wastefulness, which included the lighthearted dumping of half-eaten meals. More shocking was my friend's contention that grocers sold fruits the whole year round. I was almost ready to suspect him of lying. It was either that or believe that Japan really was a paradise—a possibility that, despite my father and uncle's warm recollections, I still found difficult to admit.