Chapter 37
‘Welcome to Korea’
I joined the crowd of disembarking passengers, not knowing where to go or
what to do. It felt like a race. People wheeling
carry-on luggage scurried
away as fast as they could. A few peeled off into the restrooms, and I
wondered if they, like me, were buying time before some encounter with
destiny at the immigration barrier.
For so long I’d thought of my arrival in Seoul as the end of a long
personal journey. I had not given much thought to what would happen once
I’d got here. I found myself dashing along with everyone else,
in small
nervous steps. A sign coming up ahead directed any transit passengers away
from immigration. My ticket would take me to Bangkok, if I wanted a way
out. My stomach was filling with butterflies. I breathed in, slowed my pace
a little, and committed myself to the confrontation ahead.
The crowd fanned out into lines behind the immigration counters. I
joined one for foreigners. We moved steadily forward, one person every
minute or so, until there were five people standing in line between me and
the immigration officer. My mouth was dry but my palms were sweating. I
had no idea what I would say to him. With a mounting anxiety I watched
him look carefully at each person, scan their passport, check a screen. Four
minutes and it would be my turn. I heard the commotion behind me and saw
the line lengthening as passengers arrived from another flight. When I
turned back, the line had moved forward again. Only three people in front
of me. I was starting to feel stage fright, and embarrassment.
Two people in
front of me. There was no way of avoiding
a public spectacle when I
stepped across the yellow line and declared myself an asylum seeker.
One
person in front of me.
My courage failed.
I left the line, and went right to the back.
As I stood there I noticed a room over to the right. Through an open door
I could see officers in navy uniforms working at computers, and three
people sitting in front of them – two women who looked Southeast Asian,
and a man who looked Chinese. I guessed there was something wrong with
their documents.
This would be less embarrassing than the immigration counter. I walked
into the office. No one looked at me.
My heart began beating so fast
it made my voice sound strange, like a
tape recording. ‘I’m from North Korea,’ I said. ‘I would like asylum.’
The officers all looked up.
Then their eyes drifted back to their screens.
The man who had looked up
first gave me a tired smile.
‘Welcome to Korea,’ he said, and took a sip from a plastic coffee cup.
I felt deflated. I had thought my arrival would create a drama, but at the
same time something primal in me reacted.
He had just used the word
hanguk.
North and South Korea refer to themselves by different names in Korean.
The South’s name,
hanguk, means country of the Han, a reference to the
Koreans’ ancient ethnicity. Its official name,
in English, is Republic of
Korea. The North calls itself
chosun, a name that derives from the time of
Korea’s Joseon Kingdom. Its official name is the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea. Such is the hatred and ignorance created by a bloody
history and by propaganda that we in the North grow up associating
‘
hanguk’
with
enemy, and all things bad.
‘Well done for getting here,’ he said. ‘Please wait a minute.’
He returned with two men in the same navy uniform, and a woman in a
dark skirt suit. One of the men carried a small scanning device. They asked
for my passport and scanned it. They shook their heads and tried again.
Something wasn’t right.
‘Are you really North Korean?’ the woman said. When she’d addressed
her male colleagues she had not used honorific forms of address. This
convinced
me that she was the senior one, the intelligence agent.
‘I am.’
‘Your passport and visa are genuine,’ she said. ‘North Koreans don’t
come here with real passports. They have fakes.’
‘It is a real passport, but that is not my real identity. I’m from North
Korea.’
I realized with alarm that she thought I was a Korean-Chinese pretending
to be North Korean so that I could get citizenship in the South.
Then my hand luggage caught her eye.
‘This
Samsonite is real, too,’ she said curtly. ‘It’s not a fake.’ I hadn’t
noticed the Western trademark so I didn’t understand why she called my
case ‘Samsonite’. I had bought it because it looked sturdy. Later, I learned
that South Koreans are very brand-conscious. Only foreigners and defectors
carry fakes. She looked me in the eye, as if she’d caught me in a lie.
‘Tell the truth now,’ one of the officers said. ‘It’s not too late.’ His tone
was half threatening, half friendly.
‘I am telling the truth.’
‘Once you submit to an investigation by the NIS there’s no turning back.
If you’re Chinese, you’ll be jailed,
then deported to China,’ he said.
The National Intelligence Service was the agency that processed North
Korean arrivals. I had heard that if they deported me there would be a huge
fine to pay in China. There was also a risk that the Chinese authorities
would discover my deception and return me to North Korea. I had made it
to South Korea and now I was not being believed?
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