Nothing to Envy Read online

  One of the songs taught in music class was “Shoot the Yankee Bastards”:

  Our enemies are the American bastards

  Who are trying to take over our beautiful fatherland.

  With guns that I make with my own hands

  I will shoot them. BANG, BANG, BANG.

  Reading primers told stories of children who were beaten, bayoneted, burned, splashed with acid, or thrown into wells by villains who were invariably Christian missionaries, Japanese bastards, or American imperialist bastards. In a popular reader, a young boy was kicked to death by GIs when he refused to shine their shoes. American soldiers were drawn with beakish noses like the Jews in the anti-Semitic cartoons of Nazi Germany.

  Mi-ran had heard a lot about U.S. atrocities during the Korean War, but she wasn’t sure what to believe. Her own mother remembered the American GIs who drove through her town as tall and handsome.

  “We used to run after them,” her mother recalled.

  “Run after them? You didn’t run away?”

  “No, they gave us chewing gum,” her mother had told her.

  “You mean they didn’t try to kill you?” Mi-ran was incredulous when she heard her mother’s story.

  For history class, the children went on an excursion. All of the larger elementary schools had one room set aside for the purpose of teaching about the Great Leader, called the Kim Il-sung Research Institute. The children from the mining kindergarten walked to Kyong-song’s main elementary school to visit this special room, which was housed in a new wing and was clean, bright, and better heated than the rest of the school. The Workers’ Party conducted periodic spot checks to make sure the school janitors were keeping the place immaculate. The room was like a shrine. Even the kindergartners knew they were not permitted to giggle, push, or whisper when in the special Kim Il-sung room. They took off their shoes and lined up quietly. They approached the portrait of Kim Il-sung, bowed deeply three times, and said, “Thank you, Father.”

  The centerpiece of the room was a model of Kim Il-sung’s birthplace in Mangyongdae, a village on the outskirts of Pyongyang, in a glass-topped case. The children peered through the glass at a miniature thatched-roof cottage, and learned that this was where the Great Leader was born, in humble circumstances, and that he hailed from a family of patriots and revolutionaries. The children were told how he shouted anti-Japanese slogans during the March 1 Movement, a 1919 uprising against the occupation—no matter that Kim Il-sung was only seven years old at the time—and how he used to scold wealthy landlords, having been a Communist in spirit at an early age. They heard how he left home as a thirteen-year-old to liberate his nation. Oil paintings lining the walls of the room depicted Kim Il-sung’s exploits in the anti-Japanese struggle. From the North Korean perspective, he almost single-handedly defeated the Japanese. The official history omitted his time spent in the Soviet Union and Stalin’s role in installing him into the North Korean leadership.

  If anything, Kim Il-sung appeared greater in death even than life. Pyongyang ordered that the calendars be changed. Instead of marking time from the birth and death of Christ, the modern era for North Koreans would now begin in 1912 with the birth of Kim Il-sung so that the year 1996 would now be known as Juche 84. Kim Il-sung was later named “eternal president,” ruling the country in spirit from the confines of his climate-controlled mausoleum beneath the Tower of Eternal Life. Kim Jong-il assumed the titles of general secretary of the Workers’ Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, the latter being the highest office in the nation. Although there was no doubt that Kim Jong-il was the head of state, his deferral of the presidential title to his father demonstrated his filial loyalty while allowing him to wield power in the name of a father who was genuinely revered and far more popular than himself. Prior to 1996 he banned statues of himself, discouraged portraits, and avoided public appearances, but after his father’s death he began to assume a higher profile. That year, the Ministry of Education issued orders for schools around the country to set up Kim Jong-il Research Institutes. They would be just like the special rooms for his father, except in place of the humble village of Mangyongdae, the room would have a model of Mount Paektu, the volcanic mountain straddling the Chinese-North Korean border where the younger Kim’s birth was claimed to have been heralded by a double rainbow. Mount Paektu was a good choice: Koreans have long revered it as the birthplace of the mythological figure Tangun, the son of a god and a she-bear who was said to have established the first Korean kingdom in 2333 B.C. No matter that Soviet records showed Kim Jong-il was actually born near Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, while his father was fighting with the Red Army.

  Reinventing history and erecting myths was easy enough in North Korea; much more difficult in 1996 was actually putting up a building. The Kim Jong-il room had to be of comparable quality with his father’s room, but with the factories out of commission, bricks, cement, glass, and even lumber were in scarce supply. The material most difficult to procure was glass for the windows, as the glass factory in Chongjin had closed. These days, when windows broke, they were covered with boards or plastic. The only place that still manufactured glass was a factory in Nampo, a Yellow Sea port, but schools had no money to purchase the glass. The school in Kyongsong devised a plan. Students and teachers would collect some of the area’s famous pottery—produced from the kaolin of the mines—and take it to Nampo, which was home to famous salt flats. The group would trade their pottery for salt, sell the salt at a profit, and use the proceeds to pay for the glass. It was a rather convoluted plan, but nobody had a better idea. They had been instructed to build the Kim Jong-il room with their own resources as part of a nationwide campaign. The principal was asking teachers and parents to join the trip. As Mi-ran was known to be energetic and resourceful, and most of all trustworthy, she was asked to go to Nampo.

  MI-RAN STARTED PLOTTING the minute she heard about the trip. She furtively consulted a map of the railroad lines. As she suspected, Nampo was on the other side of the Korean peninsula, to the southwest of Pyongyang. Whichever train they took would have to go through Pyongyang and would most likely stop at the big terminus on the outskirts where the universities were concentrated. She would be within a few miles of Jun-sang’s campus!

  Since Kim Il-sung’s death, it had become harder than ever for them to stay in touch. They had long passed the awkward stage in which being together brought about as much discomfort as pleasure; now they were relaxed in each other’s company, and enjoyed the simple friendship. But lately the letters that once took weeks to arrive now took months or would not arrive at all. People suspected that railroad employees burned mail to keep warm during the bitingly cold winter.

  The intervals between Jun-sang’s visits home also grew longer. Mi-ran hated being the one stuck at home waiting, hoping for a knock on the door, a surprise visit, even a letter, any sign that he was thinking of her. She wasn’t a passive person by nature and would have liked to take the initiative herself to visit him, but travel permits to Pyongyang were notoriously hard to get. In order to keep Pyongyang as a showcase city, the North Korean government restricted visitors. Mi-ran knew of a family in her neighborhood who had been forced to move from Pyongyang because one of the sons suffered from dwarfism. Ordinary people from the countryside would visit Pyongyang only on a group trip, with their work unit or their school. Mi-ran had been to her nation’s capital only once before, on a field trip. She would have no chance of getting a permit on her own. But who would stop her from hopping out at the train station?

  There were five of them traveling together—two parents, the principal, another teacher, and Mi-ran. The trip to Nampo took three days because of the poor track conditions. As the train stopped and started, jostling over the rails, Mi-ran stared out the window, lost in thought, trying to figure out how to make her break from the group. It didn’t take long for her traveling companions to wonder why the young teacher, usually the most vivacious of the bunch, was incommunicative and withdr
awn.

  Oh, you know. Family problems,” she told them. The fib gave her an idea, and one lie gave birth to another. On the return trip she would get off the train near Pyongyang to meet a relative at the station. She would catch the next train back to Chongjin on her own. They shouldn’t question her too closely as this was an urgent, personal matter.

  Mi-ran’s traveling companions nodded knowingly, averting their eyes with embarrassment as she got off the train. They assumed that she was stopping in Pyongyang to beg money from a wealthier relative. They could relate. Everybody in Chongjin was broke, especially the teachers. They hadn’t been paid in over a year.

  As the train disappeared down the tracks carrying her colleagues back to Chongjin, Mi-ran stood frozen on the platform. It was a cavernous station, barely illuminated, the exhaust from the train engines blotting out what little light seeped through the roof. Mi-ran had never traveled alone before. She had almost no money and no proper documentation. The travel papers she carried stated very clearly that she was allowed only transit through Pyongyang. She looked at the crowd of passengers that had disembarked from the train being funneled into a line that led to a single exit, flanked by police. It was much stricter than the control system in Chongjin. She hadn’t thought through this part of the plan at all. If she were caught trying to sneak out with the wrong papers, she would most certainly be arrested. She could be sent to a labor camp. At best, she would lose her teaching job—yet another black mark for a family already plagued by their low class rank.

  Mi-ran walked slowly down the platform, trying to find another exit through the haze. She turned and noticed that a man in uniform was watching her. She kept walking and then glanced back again. He was still watching. Then she realized that he was following her. Not until the man came close enough to speak to her did she understand that he’d been staring because he found her attractive. Nor did she realize that his uniform was that of a railroad mechanic, not the police. The man was about her own age and had a kind, trusting face. She explained her predicament, more or less, just omitting the part about the boyfriend.

  “My older brother lives near the station,” she blurted out, genuine in her distress although lying. “I wanted to visit him but I forgot my papers. Is the control here very strict?”

  The railroad mechanic fell for the damsel-in-distress act. He escorted her past crates of cargo to a freight exit that was unguarded. Then he asked if he might see her again. She scribbled down a fake name and address. She felt guilty. In just one day, she’d committed a lifetime’s worth of duplicity.

  AT THE FRONT GATE of the university, the student guarding the entrance eyed Mi-ran suspiciously. He then went off to look for Jun-sang. He directed her to sit down in the guardhouse, which she did reluctantly. She tried to compose herself, even as she felt curious eyes on her from the university’s courtyard beyond the gate. She didn’t want to look as if she was primping so she stifled the impulse to smooth her hair or to resettle her blouse, which was sticking to her skin in the heat. It was late summer and the day was still hot even though the sun had just dropped behind the row of university buildings. She watched the young men crisscrossing through the shadows on their way to dinner. The science academy was nominally coeducational, but the female students lived at another end of campus and were sufficiently few in number to be a novelty. One of the students poked his head into the guardhouse and started ribbing her. “So is he really your brother? Not your boyfriend?”

  It was almost dark by the time she spied Jun-sang emerging from the courtyard. He was pushing a bicycle and was dressed in a T-shirt and gym pants—he clearly was not expecting a visitor. A security light in the courtyard behind him had been switched on, obscuring the expression on his face. All Mi-ran could see as he approached were the contours of his cheekbones pushing out into a startled grin that she saw stretched across his face when he turned toward her. He kept his hands on the handlebars—it was out of the question to hug her—but she had no doubt that he was thrilled to see her.

  He laughed. “No, no, no. It can’t be.”

  She stifled her own smile. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  Mi-ran and Jun-sang walked off campus with the same measured gait they used to demonstrate their nonchalance when they went out back home. Behind them, Mi-ran heard a few of the male students whistling and making catcalls, but she and Jun-sang didn’t flinch or look back; it was better to act cool. Gossip about them that started at the university could eventually filter back to Jun-sang’s parents, perhaps even to Mi-ran’s. He wheeled the bicycle so that it formed a barrier between them, but once they were out of sight, Mi-ran hopped on the luggage rack, sitting sideways for modesty’s sake, as Jun-sang pedaled. Only her bare upper arm grazed Jun-sang’s back as they rode into the dark. It was as much physical intimacy as had ever passed between them.

  Jun-sang marveled at her audacity. His relatives hadn’t even managed to get a travel permit to visit him in Pyongyang. When the student had come to tell him an hour earlier that his “younger sister” was waiting for him at the front gate, he assumed it was a mistake. He had never dared to imagine, not in his wildest fantasies, that Mi-ran would come. Jun-sang was always trying to figure out what exactly it was about her that kept him so hooked, and now he remembered—she was full of surprises. On the one hand, she seemed so girlish, so naïve, so much less capable than he, but on the other hand she had the nerve to pull off a stunt like this. He reminded himself that he should never underestimate her. He was surprised again that evening when, sitting together on a bench under a tree with drooping branches, she did not protest when he put his arm around her shoulders. The night carried the first hint of autumn’s chill, and he offered his arm for warmth. He was sure she would brush him away, but they sat there, comfortably nestled together.

  The night passed quickly that way. They talked until the conversation would without warning run out, and then they would walk some more until their legs grew tired and they looked for another place to sit. Even in Pyongyang street lamps by now weren’t working and no ambient light leaked from the buildings. Just like at home, they could hide in the darkness. Once the eyes adjusted, you could discern the outline of the person immediately next to you, but everybody else was invisible, their presence marked only by the shuffling of footsteps and the babble of other conversations. Mi-ran and Jun-sang were wrapped in a cocoon with life streaming by them, never intruding.

  After midnight, Mi-ran’s exhaustion began to show. She hadn’t slept much during the journey. Jun-sang reached into his pocket to see if he had enough money from his allowance to pay for a room in the hotel next to the railroad station. With a small gratuity, he assured her, the proprietor would overlook her lack of travel papers so that she could have a decent night’s sleep before heading home. He had no other intentions; in all innocence it hadn’t occurred to him that a hotel room could be used for anything else.

  “No, no, I must go home,” she protested. She had already violated enough rules and customs and was not about to break the taboo against a young woman sleeping in a hotel.

  They walked together to the railroad station, the bicycle again between them. Although it was well past midnight, it was lively around the station. People had acquired the habit of waiting all night for trains, since they didn’t run on fixed schedules anymore. Near the station, a woman had set up a small wood-burning stove on which she stirred a big cauldron of doenjang jigae, a spicy soybean soup. They ate side by side on a low wooden plank. Mi-ran accepted Jun-sang’s gift of some biscuits and a bottle of water for the journey. By the time the train left, it was 5:00 A.M., and she quickly fell asleep in the first light of morning.

  MI-RAN’S ELATION AFTER the trip soon evaporated. As the adrenaline rush of the adventure left her, she felt drained and uneasy. The difficulty of getting to and from Pyongyang underscored the hopelessness of the romance. She didn’t know when she would see Jun-sang again. He was ensconced in university life, while she lived with her f
amily back home. How was it that, in a country as small as North Korea, Pyongyang could feel as far away as the moon?

  She was also nagged by some of what she’d seen on her journey. It had been the first time in years that she’d traveled outside Chongjin, and even in her distracted state, she couldn’t help noticing how shabby everything looked along the way. She saw children barely older than her own pupils dressed in rags, begging food at the train stations.

  Their last night in Nampo, after buying the glass, she and her companions were sleeping outside the train station since they didn’t have money for a hotel and the weather was mild. In front of the station, there was a small park, really more like a traffic rotary with a tree in the center and a grassy lawn on which people had spread out cardboard boxes and vinyl mats to sleep. Mi-ran had dropped into a fitful sleep, turning this way and that trying to get comfortable, when she saw that a group of people had stood up. They were talking quietly among themselves and pointing to one of the people near them, curled up under the tree, soundly asleep. Except he wasn’t. He was dead.

  After a while, a wooden ox cart pulled up. The people who were standing around grabbed the body by the arms and ankles and hoisted it up. Just before the body dropped with a thud onto the wooden planks, Mi-ran caught a glimpse of it. The dead man looked young, maybe even a teenager, judging from the smooth skin around his chin. His shirt fell open as the legs were lifted, revealing the bare skin of his chest. The ridges of his ribs glowed luminescently out of the darkness. He was emaciated, skinnier than any human being she’d ever seen, but then again, she’d never seen a dead body before. She shuddered and drifted back off to sleep.

  Afterward she wondered what had happened to the man. Could he have died of hunger? Despite the fact that nobody had quite enough food these days and even the government had acknowledged a food crisis after the floods of the previous summer, Mi-ran had never heard of anybody starving to death in North Korea. That happened in Africa or in China. Indeed, the older people talked of all the Chinese who died during the 1950s and 1960s because of Mao’s disastrous economic policies. “We’re so lucky to have Kim Il-sung,” they would say.