I cried every day, so much that it became impossible to conceal from my
uncle and aunt. They were sympathetic but I could sense they were getting
fed up with me. I didn’t blame them.
At about this time, I had the first nightmare. I dreamed that my mother
had
been arrested by the Bowibu and sent to a labour camp, one of the
political zones of no return, and had died there. Min-ho was now an orphan
and a beggar. I saw him – so vividly in my dream – walking alone along a
desolate dirt track. He was in rags and barefoot. His features had turned
mean and he was obsessed with food, like a feral dog. I felt paralysed with
guilt. The dream changed scene. Before she died, my mother had written to
me. It began:
My dear daughter, I’m so sorry that I went first and that I
couldn’t take care of Min-ho …
I woke up gasping for air. When I realized it was a dream I started to sob
and became hysterical. The noise woke my aunt. She ran in to see what was
wrong, and held me as I cried. It had been so lucid, this dream, that I was
convinced something very bad had happened. There was no way to know.
The next day I was subdued. I felt bereaved.
The following night I had the second nightmare. I had sneaked over the
frozen river and was walking alone through a deserted Hyesan.
It was night-
time, and nothing was lit. It was like a city of the dead. I went to my house.
Through the window I could make out my mother and Min-ho huddled
together. My mother was weeping and Min-ho was comforting her. They
had no money and no food. It was all my fault. I could only watch. If I
entered the gate the neighbours would see me and inform on me. I walked
to the river to find Chang-ho. I felt guilty about him, too. I saw him
patrolling the bank but I couldn’t approach him, so I hid in some trees and
watched from a distance. Suddenly,
Bowibu agents
emerged from the
shadows all around me. I ran for my life back across the ice to China, with
the sounds of whistles and police dogs behind me. Then I woke up.
These two dreams would replay over and over again. The same scenes
played on a loop, hundreds of times, night after night.
Any feeling that I was living a liberated life of excitement and discovery in
Shenyang had vanished. From that summer of 1998, I had entered a long
lonely valley. I deserved my fate. I had brought this upon myself.
If the chance came now I would do it, I thought.
I would go back.
By now I knew that North Korea was not the greatest country on earth.
Not one of the Korean-Chinese friends of my uncle and aunt had a good
word to say about the place, and the Chinese media seemed to regard it as a
relic, an embarrassment. Shenyang’s newspapers openly lampooned Kim
Jong-il.
I didn’t care about any of that. My country was wherever my mother and
Min-ho lived. It was where my memories were from. It was where I’d been
happy. The very things I’d regarded as symbols of our backwardness I now
missed the most. Burning
yontan, kerosene lamps,
even Korea Central
Television with its Pioneer ensembles playing accordions. The simplicity of
life. One thing was for sure – I’d never known true misery until now.
One morning when my uncle and aunt had gone to work I called Mr
Ahn’s number in Changbai, hoping he could pass a message to my mother.
His phone was no longer in service. I got a dead signal each time I tried. In
the end I called his next-door neighbour, Mr Chang, the other trader my
mother knew.
He was very angry to receive my call.
‘Why are you calling me?’
‘I want to send a message to my mother.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t know you.’
‘Yes, you—’
‘Don’t ever call this number again,’ he shouted, and hung up. I thought
perhaps he’d been drunk and so I tried again the next day.
This time, the
line was dead.
My lifelines to Hyesan had been cut.
Aunt Sang-hee became desperate to pull me out of my despair. I was
becoming a serious worry to her. I had no role in life, and she could see I
was becoming depressed. She began to hatch a plan that she thought would
be the solution to my situation.
I knew nothing about it until one evening when the doorbell rang. I was
in my bedroom, as usual, playing sad songs on the guitar. She knocked
softly on the door, and told me I had a visitor.
My heart leapt. My depressed mind was making
all kinds of irrational
connections. I thought maybe it was someone from Hyesan.
I followed her into the living room.
