by Sungju Lee
“We want to help you,” he pressed on. “We’re not your enemies.”
Exactly what the interrogators in Joseon told prisoners to get them to spill their secrets, I wanted to snap at the man.
I finally wrote that my family was from Gyeong-seong; that my parents and grandparents were poor potato farmers; that I went to school only until grade four; after that, I had to work the fields; and that I was illiterate and unable to write anything more. I lied about everything, even my family name.
After the man looked at the paper, he asked me again to write about Joseon. “Tell me anything, just something truthful this time,” he said in a kind voice.
“Lee Seong-il,” I finally blurted out my father’s name. “My father, the father I was supposed to meet, who is waiting for me somewhere.”
“Come with me,” the man said, standing up. He was smiling now. This is it, I thought, I am being sent to my death. I moved on trembling legs, just as the prisoners I’d seen back in Gyeong-seong did before they were executed. I’d said my father’s name, and that was enough. Death. Death to me and soon to him, wherever he was.
I collapsed just outside the door, weeping. I didn’t want to be hung in the basement or taken to a courtyard and shot.
The man had to carry me under my arms down the corridor, which was lit with long bulbs that made the man’s skin look green.
We passed many doors with windows beside them. My eye caught something inside one of the windows. Something made me stand up straight. I pulled myself away from the man. Whatever it was, I felt a magnet pulling me inside.
All I could see was the back of another man.
I didn’t need to see his face.
I could tell by his broad shoulders and stocky stance.
My father.
The man who was interrogating me showed me how to push the metal bar to open the door. When I did so, my father turned. I couldn’t even say the word father, tears and hurt and pain flooded out of me. I did love him, after all. I was never as happy as this to see him.
He ran to me and pulled me tightly into his arms. “Son, adeul,” he said, sobbing harder than me. We both fell to the floor, like when eomeoni and I collapsed the day Kim Il-sung died, and in each other’s arms, we rocked back and forth.
Unlike that day when Kim Il-sung died, this time I did wail, harder than I ever had, inhaling my father’s musky scent that as a child made me feel safe at night. So many images passed in front of my eyes as we cradled each other: my brothers, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, Bo-Cho … I was pretty sure, too, I even saw in my mind’s eye those floating blue and soft white lights I first saw in the forest. The shan-shin-ryong-nim.
“Home,” I whispered in my father’s ear when we finally stopped crying, “is not a place, but people. I came to realize that as a street boy. You are one of my homes. And this time I am never letting you leave again.”
EPILOGUE
I left North Korea at the age of sixteen and have never returned. I can’t. As a North Korean defector with South Korean citizenship, I would be considered a traitor by the government of Joseon and would be imprisoned.
Not long after I arrived in South Korea, my father told me why we were kicked out of Pyongyang, but I cannot write it here. You see, my father was in the military. He and his story are known by the regime. Disclosing the reason would identify him and put the few relatives of my family still in North Korea at risk. I will say that if he had done what he did in a free country, such as the United States, his actions would be viewed as merely part of the democratic process. But in Pyongyang, they resulted in my family’s expulsion from the capital city and eventual separation.
When my father left Gyeong-seong in the winter of 1998 for China, he did become trapped, as my brothers and I on the street speculated. Our Gyeong-seong neighbors didn’t have border guards working for them, contrary to what they told my father. Trafficking people and goods—going back and forth between North Korea and China—was, and still is, very dangerous. Had my father done so, it might have been his execution that the schoolchildren watched.
My father met a human smuggler in China who said the best thing for him to do was to go to South Korea and then send for my mother and me. South Korea recognizes North Koreans as citizens, and despite rumors I had heard in North Korea, South Korea does not kill defectors. My father thought South Korea would be the safest place for us. Believing that the journey from China to South Korea would be just a few weeks, my father agreed. Unlike my journey, which my father paid a small fortune to orchestrate, my father’s exodus from North Korea to South Korea took six months. When he finally arrived in South Korea, it took another year for him to settle. By the time he was able to afford to send a smuggler back to find us, my mother and I had both left Gyeong-seong.
My father, like my grandfather, never gave up hope that he would find us. For four years he used all his income to pay for people to look for my mother and me. To this day, he still pays human smugglers in China and North Korea to search for my mother, whom we have never found. In fact, no one has even been able to find a shred of evidence as to where she went when she left Gyeong-seong.
I didn’t integrate well in South Korea, at least not at first. I was angry all the time. I had lost my childhood on the streets, and all I knew how to do was fight. South Korean children were not kind to me, viewing all North Koreans as their poorer and less respected cousins. I had been in South Korea for a year and a half and going to a Presbyterian church every Sunday with my father. I didn’t really like it. I didn’t understand Jesus at that time, and I felt the hierarchy and rules of the church were too similar to North Korea’s. But after a rich South Korean boy, the school bully, egged me on in a fight and I won, and the principal of my school threatened to have me expelled, I went to the church. It was a weekday, and I skulked around the outside. The pastor was clearing the garden. He saw me and asked what I was doing. I told him I wanted to study. I wanted his help. He took me inside his church and gave me a sheet of paper and a pencil.
“Write why you want to study,” he told me. “Then I’ll think about helping you.”
Being a street boy, I had learned how to lie to get what I wanted from merchants. So I wrote a long, flowery essay about how I wanted to be a judge in his society. I wanted to protect justice. I wrote a beautiful dream about how I wanted to protect defectors from North Korea, because even though they have a good place to live in South Korea, they have difficulty in school and landing a job because of prejudice against them. Someone has to protect them from injustice, and that person would be me.
But as I was nearing the end, I looked up, and my eye caught some dust floating in a beam of light streaming in from a stained-glass window. I remembered Gyeong-seong then, and I suddenly thought: This essay is not from my heart. (At least not then. Yes, it did become my dream, but I didn’t know it at that time.) I put the pencil down and remembered something my mother told me while she prayed over her bowl of water: If you truly, truly want something, you have to be honest. That’s what the water represents in my bowl. Try to empty your mind. Clean it of impure thoughts. Be honest and tell the truth.
“I just want to study,” I wrote the pastor. And that’s all I wrote.
The pastor asked not to be named in this epilogue because he does not want praise for what he did after he read these words. It was all part of his selflessness, a selfless path of service that he eventually taught me. The pastor has two daughters and one son. His second daughter was supposed to go to the United States to study. She deferred a semester to teach me. As my tutor, she helped me pass my middle-school examinations so I could go to high school. In high school, I graduated high in my class—Oh, and after my fight with the rich school bully, I never fought again … ever.
On my entrance interview for the university, my professor asked me two questions, the second of which was: How can we prepare for the reunification of the two Koreas?
“How we are to reunify keeps changing,” I
told him. “As a result, so many youngsters have no interest in reunification. They don’t know what to believe. But reunification is coming, so we have to prepare. We have nearly thirty thousand North Korean defectors in South Korea. We have to work with them, not isolate them. If we cannot be their friends, we cannot prepare for unification. The key, then, is in South Korea. First step: Unite all the Koreans within South Korea. Get rid of this mentality that South Koreans are superior and North Koreans are inferior. This cannot solve any problems. Approach each other as friends and learn.”
For a while in my freshman year, studying political science and journalism at Sogang University, I began to struggle with my studies. My grades were poor. I lost focus of my dream of friendship and reunification. I lost hope I could make my dreams a reality. I was depressed with all the work. I was anxious and overwhelmed. I felt for a while that studying was a waste of time: studying and taking exams, studying and taking more exams. I found the process very boring. But I had learned a valuable lesson as a street boy: “You can’t wait for hope to find you. You have to go out and grab it.”
By the end of my freshman year, I began to get involved in public-speaking contests and I gave speeches. If I participated, I felt I could learn from others in these debates and meet people with similar dreams, who could inspire me. By the start of my sophomore year in 2011, my hope had returned to help in the reunification of the two Koreas. I realized that to achieve my dream, I had to study and find some way to enjoy studying. I knew, after everything I’d been through and how far I had come, I couldn’t drop out. I learned how to deal with the stress, and soon I came to love school. The more I study, the more I see what I don’t know and want to learn.
I grew up being brainwashed that America was evil. As a result, I didn’t trust Caucasians. In 2010, though, I was given the opportunity to study English at Arizona State University. At first, I was worried to go, because America was my sworn enemy. Yet I went. I saw that Caucasians don’t have horns on their heads. I now have so many American friends. I feel the only thing different about us is our skin color. Oh, and our politics. Real freedom to me is democracy, in which you can do what you want, but you also have to take responsibility for yourself. I came to understand in America that this is what I never had. I feel the first sixteen years of my life were stolen from me. Stolen by the government of North Korea, and that’s why I study so hard, to make up for all the lost time.
In October 2015, I started my master’s degree in international relations at the University of Warwick in England on a Chevening scholarship, which is funded by the UK government. I was also accepted to the London School of Economics.
After my master’s degree, I hope to pursue a doctorate in the same area. While there are many experts on Korean reunification, there are few who are from North Korea. Yet our voices are needed. To help gain diplomatic experience, I interned in 2014 with Canadian member of Parliament Barry Devolin as part of a program funded by HanVoice, a North Korean advocacy organization. In the late summer and fall of 2015, I worked for the UK Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.
My interest in the human rights of defectors came by way of personal experience. My father and I have never given up looking for my mother. In 2009, a smuggler gave us a lead of a woman living in China who was very similar to my mother in both appearance and background. My father and I went to China to meet her.
It wasn’t my mother.
My father and I were silent in the taxi on the way back to the airport until, as we were pulling into the departure zone, my father turned to me and said, “Adeul, that woman is not your mother. But she has a husband like me and a son like you somewhere. If we leave China without rescuing her, she will lose her hope. We don’t have a lot of money. But we have enough. Let’s save her.”
My father and I hired a broker, a human smuggler, and moved the woman to Thailand and then to Seoul. To this day, we are all close friends.
Since then, my father, other defectors, and I have, on our meager salaries, helped rescue other defectors trapped in China. China views North Korean defectors not as refugees fleeing severe human rights abuses but as illegal work migrants. North Koreans caught in China are still deported to Joseon, where they are imprisoned. North Koreans in China live perilous lives, flirting in an underground work economy and suffering abuse, poverty, and depraved living conditions. All they want is freedom.
In the spring of 2015, I became the consultant for the rescuing team of Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, a nonprofit group that helps rescue defectors trapped in China. I speak around the world, raising awareness and money to rescue North Koreans in China.
A portion of the proceeds of this book are being donated to the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights to help North Korean refugees in China.
If Myeongchul were still alive, he might say, Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked in his boots.
Every Shooting Star is my boots. And the boots worn by thousands of other street boys in North Korea and around the world.
This book is for my brothers, Young-bum, Chulho, Mingook, Unsik, Myeongchul, and Sangchul.
For my grandparents, who never stopped looking for me. They have since died, or so my father and I believe, from natural causes due to old age.
Finally, this book is for my mother. She is still missing. My father and I search for her every day. I will never give up hope that we will be reunited.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the summer of 2014, I was living part-time in Ottawa and part-time in Toronto, interning with Barry Devolin, a member of Parliament and deputy speaker of the House of Commons. I was in Canada as the second recipient of the HanVoice Pioneer project, which provides speech, media, and government training to young North Korean defectors.
During this time, I came to meet book and magazine writer Susan Elizabeth McClelland, who had been working as a journalist within the North Korean community in Canada.
Susan and I discussed developing my story into a young adult novel. Susan, author of Bite of the Mango, the true story of a young female victim of the Sierra Leone war, felt that young readers—as well as adults—would empathize with my life as a street boy, and would come to see that there are few differences between themselves and children in North Korea, except circumstance. After all, I had, and still have, similar dreams as any child in the world, dreams of love of family and friends and making a difference.
My second spoken language is English. I wrote an outline of my story, starting as a child and ending when I arrived in South Korea. As English is not my first language, I needed Susan to help me flesh out the outline into book chapters. Over the course of many months, Susan and I, through interviews and sending the chapters back and forth, turned the outline into the book you have just read.
Every Falling Star is my childhood story based on my memories of events as they occurred at that time. Please note these were my childhood memories when I was a street boy, suffering from trauma, malnutrition, and starvation as well as sleep deprivation. Note also that conversations, while based on my memories, have been re-created for literary effect, as I don’t recall them word for word. Also, in some places songs and stories have been altered from their original form and/or telling as, again, I am basing these on what I recollect being told at the time.
This is my story as I remember it. I am told I speak nearly perfect English. However, I know that my spelling and grammar are not as good, and I have no experience in the literary world—writing scenes and dialogue, for instance. With Susan’s assistance, I was able to produce the final version, which is what you have in front of you today.
GLOSSARY
Words
abeoji [ah-buh-JI] – father
adeul [ah-DEUL] – son
annyeonghaseyo [ahn-NYUNG-ha-sae-yo] – hello
binjibpali [bin-GEE-pali]– people who sell abandoned houses, pretending to own them
boon-dan-we-won-jang [boon-dahn-WE-one-jahng] – class leader
buk [book] – drum
chang [chang] – spear
daejang [dae-JAHNG] – leader of a group or gang
degeori [dae-ge-RI] – traveling vendors
deodeok [da-DOC] – type of root, similar to ginseng, found mostly on the Korean Peninsula and in northern China
dububab [du-boo-BOB] – rice wrapped with sliced tofu
eomeoni [oh-mo-NI] – mother
gae-gu-ri [GAE-gu-ri] – frog
gamtae [gahm-TAE] – wild berry
gayageum [ga-ya-GUME] – traditional Korean string instrument
guhoso [gu-ho-SO] – detention center for kotjebi
hal-abeoji [hal-ah-BUH-ji] – grandfather
hal-meoni [hal-mo-NI] – grandmother
huecos (Spanish) [WAY-cose] – tiny holes into which rock climbers can slip their fingers to help them ascend a steep rock face
jultagi [jool-ta-GI] – street boy who steals clothes from clotheslines
kotjebi [kot-je-BI] – street boy or a homeless boy
omija [oh-mi-JAH] – type of fruit often used in Chinese medicine
pajang-jebi [pa-JAHNG-je-BI] – street boy who steals by knocking over vendors’ wares
ping-du [PING-du] – type of illicit drug
ring-nal [RING-nal]– doubled-edged razor blade
sasakki [sa-sah-KI] – Korean card game
seon-saeng-nim [suhn-SENG-nim] – teacher
shan-shin-ryong-nim [shan-SHIN-ryung-nim] – good spirits, thought to live in rocks and certain mountains
shibwon [SHIBwon] – amount of Korean currency
So-nian-jang-soo [so-nyun-JANG-soo] – popular television cartoon in North Korea
so-nyon-dan [so-nyun-DAHN] – organization for children like the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts, but heavily involved in North Korean propaganda
sojo [so-JOH] – club
sool [sool] – alcohol
srikoon [sriKOON] – a kotjebi who steals money by cutting open the unsuspecting victim’s bag
yaeya [YEH-ya] – little one
