Under the Same Sky (24 page)

In the market, we had not only the police on our side, but the sellers too. That’s because if a trader shouted at a victim that he was being pickpocketed, his business suffered. The other
Kkotjebi
would single him out for rough treatment. Out of nowhere, he might find a shower of stones raining down on him. Or he would become the target of all the thieves in the market, who were punishing him for betraying one of their own. We felt that stealing was all we had, our only way to survive, and if the traders were going to take it away, we would fight back. But unconsciously, we made moral decisions. We avoided stealing from pregnant women, for instance, or young mothers with toddlers. It was just understood.

Kook Cheol and I would watch out for each other. I would take his guard hours when he wanted to go pickpocketing in the market; he thanked me by bringing me snacks when he sneaked back into the detention center. One day, I asked him to return the favor by taking my shift so I could go check on my mom. He agreed.

After two months in the center, I went out in search of my mother.

Chapter

I
BELIEVED MY MOM
was still with my stepfather, so I walked toward the train station, where his apartment was. On my way, I saw women standing along the side of the road; they were selling their bodies to get food. One of the women recognized me and called out. She was an old friend of my mother’s, and she told me that my mom was no longer living with my stepfather. So I turned around and headed instead to the old Association apartment, thinking she might be there. I was still angry that she’d left me in the detention center, a place everyone knew to be full of depraved men, for so long. My blood was boiling.

When I opened the apartment door, a gust of musty air greeted me. I saw my mother and Hyo Sung’s mom lying on sleeping mats, their heads almost touching. Their eyes were closed and they were as still as figures carved from stone.

My mother could barely raise her head to look at me. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused. I knew the signs of starvation; neither of them had enough strength to get up. I looked around the apartment for food, but there was nothing, not a bit of cornmeal or noodles. I had arrived just in time.

With what money I had, I went and bought some cornmeal cakes and brought them back to the apartment. My mother and Hyo Sung ate them greedily. When my mother finished, she told me they hadn’t eaten anything in two days. Then she began to cry, her chest heaving with little sobs.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You just had your birthday, and I did nothing for you.”

I had forgotten about my birthday. It always seemed to arrive during a crisis. I smiled. Knowing that she’d remembered made my rage vanish. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m just happy to see you.”

Without the Association, I couldn’t earn enough to feed three people. I had saved some of the money I’d earned while working as the night guard, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t enough. I’d have to go back to the detention center to find work. I left my mother all the money I had and walked back to the center, my heart heavy, thinking that I would have to rejoin Kook Cheol, pickpocketing at the market.

Finally, after a few more weeks at the center, I had saved enough money to keep the three of us alive for a little while. I also hoped I could earn a decent living with my new pickpocketing skills. I ran away from the detention center again and returned to the Association apartment. But there was another family living there now. I asked around and eventually was told that my mother had remarried and moved in with her “new husband.”

I found their accordion house and met my new stepfather, a man named Sung Min, who was in his late forties, lean and jovial. “Oh, he’s taller than I expected!” was his first comment when I walked through the door. He was a nice guy; I could see that my mother was happier with him than she’d been with my first stepfather.

I ate a meal of cold corn noodles and cucumber kimchi, perfect for a hot day, then fell onto my sleeping mat. Sung Min knew I was exhausted and didn’t try to keep me awake or ask me when I was going to bring in money. I was grateful for that; my body was so worn out from the tension I’d felt at the center, the constant apprehension, that it simply gave out. I slept for three days, getting up only to eat and use the bathroom.

When I woke up, I found myself still haunted by the detention center. For months afterward, I would be walking through the neighborhoods of Hoeryong and spot one of the older boys whom I’d guarded there. They hated anyone associated with that place, with that humiliating time in their lives, especially guards. I knew the boys were angry because I’d been rude or smacked them if they didn’t obey orders. The fact that I was younger than many of the people I guarded also infuriated them. They’d shout, “Remember me?” and I’d immediately start running as the sound of pounding feet rose behind me. Occasionally, my pursuers caught up with me, and I took a beating.

Sung Min didn’t have enough money to support me. To save myself that summer, I had to get away from Hoeryong.

Chapter

I
WENT TO THE
mountains. Food had become so precious in North Korea that farmers hired men to guard their crops up there. These guards were guaranteed food and shelter until the crop was brought in. So I became a corn shepherd, a watcher over hot fields.

Who was my benefactor? you ask. Who took me from the streets and set me up in the clean, peak-washed air with plenty of (well, not plenty, but enough) fresh vegetables to eat? My small grandfather.

I was still angry with him for how he’d treated my mother and me, but those things are nothing when you’re hungry. The reason we met again was simple: he needed someone to watch over his crops; I needed to eat. By now, I’m sure he knew I was a thief—how else did I survive, dirty, hardly any taller, but alive? My guess is that Small Grandfather didn’t ask himself that question. Or perhaps he was still hoping my mother would go to China and send money back, and so wished to stay on good terms with me.

A famine can cause people to do odd things. Nothing is pure, and you must look at people’s motivations again and again if you hope to discover only a piece of what is happening within them. The most cunning thought can be mixed with a sudden desire to save a stranger. The person who takes you in from the streets and saves your life one day can watch you take a piece of chicken at the next night’s dinner and say to herself, “This boy is smothering my children.” Rage appears alongside charity. Generosity and pure selfishness are not so far apart.

And so my small grandfather, as clear-cut a villain as I could find in my life, became more mysterious to me during the summers I worked for him.

By the time he was ready for me, Small Grandfather had already gone to the nearby mountains and built a tent on the small plot of land he owned. My aunt made up a package for me with enough food to last two days, until I could get up to the fields and live off the vegetables that grew alongside the corn. In the heaviness of the package I could feel my aunt’s love. She was sorry about what had happened in the past, I knew. The package was filled with goodies I hadn’t tasted in many months.

I went up there alone that first summer, though I was lonely and sad. I didn’t know this part of North Korea, Beock Sung Lee, which was one hour southwest of Hoeryong. I was used to the noise and bustle of the city, and the mountains were silent and dark. Very few people lived up there year-round, and there’s nothing to distract you from your memories. Even the need to find food had disappeared: there were rows and rows of vegetables behind me, and I could eat my fill. My mind, which had been so preoccupied by survival, now had time to roam.

It rained the first night. I closed up the tent as best I could and lay down on the thin plastic mat my small grandfather had provided. I wondered for the hundred thousandth time where my sister was, what she was doing at that very moment. Had she found a good Chinese man to marry, perhaps an old man in a rural village where all the young girls had gone to work in the factories? Was he kind and grateful for this lovely girl? I knew that she would be an excellent wife in such circumstances. She would simply transfer her sense of duty from me to this Chinese man. I had seen my sister in this way for so long I hardly knew how to imagine her otherwise.

Wondering soon became hoping, which led again to fantasizing. I imagined the impossible: becoming a millionaire. But could I ever achieve wealth in a land of dismal poverty?

The fastest way to become a millionaire in North Korea without being part of the government was to become a trader. Cross over into China, buy things there, come back and sell them. But how many trips would it take to get rich off North Koreans? Innumerable, countless ones. It was absurd, the whole thing, but it didn’t stop me from populating my dreams with crazy feats.

I didn’t think of the
how,
of course, I thought only of the
what if.
What if I woke up one morning and smelled the food my mother was making and heard her chatting happily with Bong Sook? What if I opened my eyes and saw my sister folding up her sleeping mat and had that delicious sensation of knowing my stomach was soon to be filled with corn pancakes, as many as I wanted? What if I could see my freshly laundered school uniform folded on top of our chest and know that my friends would be waiting for me at school, where I would share my unlimited supply of store-bought snacks? Everything came back to food. Food had the power to bring my mother and sister back to me. It could reunite me with my friends and keep us safe. I lay in the tent, the raindrops pocking off the dried wheat plants that covered the plastic, and lost myself in these thoughts.

Soon, though, I realized my food was running out. If it kept raining, that meant the wood would be wet, and wet wood meant no fire to cook things on. I began to ration out my aunt’s supply of goodies. My thoughts turned mournful and lonely. When I looked out the flap of the tent, there were no human figures to be seen. I missed my friends back at the market, not friends that you could trust to save your life, but friends to gossip with and laugh at the bumpkins from the countryside.

The fourth day, I woke to sunshine. I heard crickets in the field and the sun was blazing down on the corn stalks, turning their husks a shiny, almost plastic-looking green. I went to work. There was a lot to do: weeding the rows, patrolling the fields for intruders (every so often, I scared away kids doing the same things I did on my father’s farm), going down the mountain and hauling up water from the small pump that served the village. This was the worst part. I rationed my water, not even washing my clothes, to avoid the long walk with the plastic five-liter container. When full, it was so heavy that by the time I got back to the tent, I felt my arms had stretched three inches. I’d hoped that a villager would be at the well filling his own jug and that I could talk to a human being for the first time in days. But there was nobody in sight and I returned to my tent, homesick.

I made one friend that summer, an ex-convict who was watching his brother’s farm—just surviving, like me. He’d been in prison for three years for escaping to China. He regaled me with stories of his time there—how he had so much money he would wander the streets drunk, going into restaurants and ordering enormous mounds of lobster and beef and washing them down with pints of beer. He danced with Chinese girls and went to movie theaters and saw three films in a row, from all over the world. His descriptions of Bruce Lee flicks kept me enthralled for hours.

One day, the ex-convict told me, “Kwang Jin, if you ever go to China, the churches will give you money.”

“What’s a church?” I asked.

He looked dumbstruck.

“Um, it’s a place where they worship God.”

I didn’t understand either of those ideas—worship or God—so I got straight to the part that most interested me.

“Why would these church people just give you money?”

I’d startled him again. I don’t think he’d ever considered it. His mouth was slightly ajar.

“Why
would
they just give me money?” he said softly. “Oh! Because they’re Christians.”

“What are Christians?”

“The people in the churches.”

“Yes, I know. But why do Christians give money to strangers?”

He was getting a little peeved. “It’s just what Christians do. They give things away. They’re not like normal people.”

I sighed. “That makes no sense.”

The ex-convict tried to explain, but I could see even he didn’t understand what he was saying. In North Korea, there was no concept of doing things for other people out of kindness. Unconditional love was not something I was familiar with. You did things because of family obligation, or because of hunger or greed, or because there was no other choice. But what he was describing—people freely giving their hard-earned cash to complete strangers—was plain crazy.

We changed the subject. But the ex-convict’s stories stayed in my mind. I thought of Christians as bizarre people, almost another species. I wanted to meet them, touch them, to confirm that such creatures existed.

I would soon get my chance.

Chapter

H
AULING THE UNSHUCKED
corn down to the city would have been very expensive for Small Grandfather, so my job also included slowly harvesting the crop, stripping off any leaves, and getting it ready for a pickup. I took a corn plant, snapped off the ears, shucked them, and tossed them onto a pile. At the end of the day, I would spread the ears out on the ground to dry. Every week or so during the harvest season, Small Grandfather showed up on his bicycle, we would bag up the dried corn, and he would pedal back to Hoeryong with it, to keep for the winter. Over the entire season I harvested more than four hundred kilos of corn, which could make you big money in North Korea. But it took a great deal of work and many long hours in the sun.