In the Shadow of the Sun

by Anne Sibley O'Brien

  Hulking concrete buildings lined the streets, many topped with huge Korean slogans.

  “In … Min … Gong … Hwa … Gook … Man … Sei.” Mia slowly sounded out the syllables on one sign.

  “You hot ticket,” Dad said. She turned to see him grinning at her, his eyes shining. “What’s that mean?”

  Mia leaned closer for a moment, feeling warm inside. “I only know the last two, man-sei, which means ‘ten thousand years.’ People cheer ‘Man-sei!’ like ‘Long live our country.’ ”

  Dad’s expression was seriously pleased, like wasn’t his daughter brilliant and hadn’t they been great parents taking her to Korean school all those years and wasn’t this trip such a terrific idea? But looking at him, Mia could only remember his hunched-over posture in the hallway after midnight. What if this tour was a cover for some other purpose?

  She sat up and turned her face back to the window, frowning. Dad had always been her safe person, ever since she’d come home as a seven-month-old baby. For days after they’d picked her up, she’d clung to him, refusing to let anyone else hold her. He was the one she’d always been able to trust completely. She didn’t like this feeling, being suspicious of Dad.

  The bus cruised along the river for ten minutes or so before pulling into a huge parking lot. The three guides stood. The older, shorter man, Mr. Kim, gestured toward the young woman. He seemed to be directing the show.

  Miss Cho stepped forward and cleared her throat. “Here we will visit Mansu Hill,” she said. “The Korean people first erected this monument in April 1972 to the Great Leader, who is the Founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. President Kim Il-sung, the Eternal Sun of Mankind, fathered the ju-che idea, under which he led the Korean revolution. ‘Man is the master of everything and decides everything.’ That is the main point of the ju-che idea.”

  Mia wondered what Miss Cho really thought about the things she was saying. The young woman’s two front teeth were prominent, like a rabbit’s. She flicked a glance at Mr. Kim, showing the whites of her eyes. A scared rabbit. She was hiding her anxiety well, but she seemed to be new at this guide thing.

  “It is entirely thanks to the immortal idea that the DPRK is throwing radiant rays all over the world as the motherland of ju-che, a powerful socialist country, independent, self-supporting, and self-reliant in national defense. Indeed, the ju-che idea is a great and immortal revolutionary idea representing the future of the humankind.” Miss Cho finished her speech with a smile and a bow. Though Mia didn’t agree with what the guide had said, she felt an impulse to clap — good job! — just to encourage her.

  Mr. Lee, the tall guide with thick black-framed glasses, held a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He was gesturing over the seats, smiling. At Mia. He beckoned for her to come forward. Why was he picking her? What did he expect her to do?

  No. She did not want the spotlight on her. She did not want to be a poster child for North Korea. She glanced at Dad. He was smiling too. That’s a good girl.

  She huffed out a small sigh and clambered past Dad into the aisle. Giving attention and respect does not mean agreeing. Stepping off the bus, she shaded her eyes against the glare.

  “Mi-a?” Mr. Lee stood with his garish bouquet of flowers, still smiling at her. So he knew her name already. Well, that wasn’t too surprising. Of course the guides would have a list of the tour group members. “You are thirteen years of age?” He gestured forward and began walking across the pavement.

  Mia shook her head as she fell into step with him. “Twelve.” She kept her face blank, her eyebrows still when they wanted to go all squirrelly.

  “Yes, I think so. But American age twelve is Korean age thirteen. You understand?”

  She nodded. She’d learned at language school that Koreans counted the time your mother was pregnant in your age, so when you were born you were already considered one year old.

  They were moving up a long, paved ramp that climbed a high hill.

  “My daughter, she is thirteen also.” Mr. Lee beamed at her.

  Mia glanced back to see the other two guides shepherding the rest of the tour group up the hill, following her and Mr. Lee. Simon moved slowly, everything about him screaming, I do not want to be here and you cannot make me do anything.

  “My daughter, she plays football very well,” Mr. Lee was saying. “Actually, you say in America ‘soccer,’ yes? Do you like soccer?”

  Mia shook her head again. “No, I’m not really into sports.” She wasn’t acting very friendly. She tried to think of what she could share. Her favorite video game, Quest. Did North Koreans have video games? She liked making collages. Beading. Maps. All kind of hard to explain. “I like to read,” she said.

  Mr. Lee nodded, smiling even more. This was apparently a good answer by North Korean standards. “You must be good student.”

  Mia started to shake her head again, then stopped herself and just smiled back.

  At the top of the ramp, an enormous open square led up to two bronze giants standing side by side: Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the two former dictators. On the left, the smiling statue with the raised arm, Kim Il-sung, looked like a tour guide, presenting the city of Pyongyang. Behind the statues, like a stage set, was a white building with pillars framing a dramatic mural of snow-covered mountains. To each side, in the wings of the stage, bronze soldiers and citizens charged forward under a huge flag.

  The tour group crossed the square and climbed several wide sets of steps toward the base of the statues, peering up at the figures looming far overhead.

  “Would you look at that?” Mrs. Blake, the plump, white-haired lady they’d met at orientation the day before, sounded awestruck. “They’re enormous!”

  “The way the North Koreans tell it, the first one they built is a monument to Kim Il-sung’s modesty!” That was the professor-type guy in the horn-rimmed glasses. “Supposedly, they wanted to make the statue twice as tall, but Kim refused, said they should use the money for the ‘people’s needs’ instead. And of course there’s Kim Jong-un, who doesn’t have any statues because he’s too ‘humble.’ ” His words were mild, but an edge to his tone alerted his American companions that he was being sarcastic. Mia figured he was referring to how these leaders acted like they put the North Korean people first, when in reality the dictators prospered while the people went hungry. She wondered if Mr. Lee would be able to pick up on his tone. Dad stood at the back of the group, looking distracted, not joining in the chatter.

  As the stragglers joined their group, Simon among them, Mr. Lee moved forward. Mia, not sure what she was supposed to do, followed. Her head didn’t even clear the platform on which the Great Leader and Dear Leader stood. It was not yet ten a.m., but already dozens of plastic-wrapped bouquets and wreaths lay at the feet of the two statues.

  Mr. Lee bowed toward the statue, his back parallel to the ground. Then he handed the bouquet to Mia and gestured for her to place it on the pile. She did, and he bowed again before turning back to the group. Patriotic music blared from invisible speakers. Mr. Kim herded everyone into a more compact group and indicated that they should be silent for a show of respect.

  Mia stood up straight, head bent, sort of like praying in church. She’d never admit it to Simon, but she actually liked being given a set of instructions, especially in a place as strange as North Korea. Following rules was easy, and it was how to stay safe. But Simon always hated being forced to do anything. Mia peered sideways through the curtain of her hair. Her brother stood on the outer edge of the group, his back to the statues, looking out toward the river. He wasn’t causing a disturbance, but he certainly wasn’t even pretending to show respect.

  As the moment of silence ended, Dad moved quietly around the group, took Simon’s arm, and moved him a little farther away.

  “Okay, now you take photograph,” Mr. Lee announced, gesturing an invitation. Everyone reached for their bags or shoulder straps or phones. At least no one was paying attention to their little family drama.<
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  Mia, chewing her lip, watched Dad speaking to Simon, too quietly for anyone in the group to hear. She could tell from their father’s posture that he was delivering a message, directly and urgently. Simon glowered and shrugged out of Dad’s grasp.

  He looked up then and caught Mia looking at him. An expression passed over his features, a flattening. His eyes went blank. Then he looked away.

  Mia winced. He’d been mad at her ever since August. Not yelling-mad like he was with Dad. You’re dead to me mad.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she sighed and turned around to look up at the monument, one hand shielding her eyes like a salute. The statues’ heads seemed to touch the clouds. She took a few steps back, but she was still caught in their shadow. Mia remembered how she’d felt about the portraits in the hotel lobby. What if the statues had surveillance cameras in their heads? The Great Leader and the Dear Leader could still be watching over their people, even though they were dead.

  The guides began herding the group back toward the bus. Moving away with her back to the statues, Mia could feel their gaze following her.

  “No, no! Please stop now!” Mia flinched at the loud voice. Mr. Kim, the head guide, was advancing up the aisle of the bus, shaking one raised hand like a scolding teacher. He stopped two seats in front of Mia, focused on Mr. and Mrs. Blake. “You cannot take picture.”

  From the aisle seat, Mr. Blake peered up over his glasses.

  “Please give me your camera.” Mr. Kim extended his hand, palm up. From the window seat, Mrs. Blake murmured apologetic sounds. Mia tugged on her necklace, putting the locket to her lips.

  “What is it? What’s the problem?” Mr. Blake asked as the guide examined the camera.

  “No picture. You do not have permission.” Mr. Kim’s fingers manipulated the buttons, scanning the recent images, deleting. Finally, he grunted, then handed the camera back. “You must not take picture without permission,” he repeated before marching back down the aisle.

  Mia breathed out, feeling as if she’d narrowly escaped being sent to the principal’s office.

  “What did they delete?” someone whispered.

  “All Grace did was take a few shots out the window.” Mr. Blake bent over the camera, clicking through the images. “Looks like he got rid of the ones of soldiers.”

  “Yes, they don’t like anyone taking pictures of anything related to the military,” Dad said, his voice low. “But sometimes they just want to remind us who’s in charge. One day you can take pictures in one direction, the next day it’s forbidden.”

  Mia leaned her head back against the seat. All these confusing feelings and impressions, all the tensions bombarding her. The tour had just begun, and she felt exhausted already.

  “Mr. Andrews, guests for you.” Mr. Lee stood at their table, looking expectant.

  They’d just finished lunch with another member of the tour group, Daniel Moon. They’d first met him the day before at the tour orientation in Beijing, where he had told Mia she could call him Daniel. So far he seemed like the only interesting person on the tour. He was older — like thirty — but he was handsome, and nice enough to notice Mia existed. Even though he and Dad had spent most of the lunch talking about North Korean politics, it was a relief to have someone break up their little family triangle.

  “Please come,” Mr. Lee said, gesturing toward the lobby. Mia tensed. Maybe somebody had discovered what Dad was doing in the middle of the night. But Mr. Lee had said “guests.”

  In the lobby, two men in business suits rose from a cluster of couches. There were lots of bows and handshakes as Mr. Lee introduced Dad.

  “They’re saying they’re from the Ministry of Agriculture,” Daniel translated for Simon and Mia. “They’re thanking your dad for all the work he’s done on famine relief.”

  The man in the navy suit presented Dad with a large rectangular box. More bows and handshakes.

  “A plaque of appreciation,” Daniel said, talking low to Simon. “Koreans are big on those.”

  The men turned toward Mia and Simon as Mr. Lee spoke, probably introducing them as Dad’s kids. Simon didn’t step forward to shake hands, but he nodded his head. Once. With no expression. Mia bowed an extra time or two to make up for her impossible brother.

  The shorter guy, wearing a black suit, held out a square package, about the size of a small bakery cake box, toward Mia and Simon.

  Mia knew from Korean school that Simon should be the one to accept the gift. Firstborns and sons came first. But he just stood there, hands behind his back, face grim. She stepped forward, taking the box with both hands and a bow. “Kam-sa-ham-ni-da.”

  She stepped back and whispered to Daniel, “Am I supposed to open it?”

  “No, that’s not usually done. You can look at it later.”

  There was some lively discussion back and forth between the two officials and Mr. Lee. Mia heard two words she knew: ddal — daughter — and ee-byang-ah — adopted child. So they were talking about her. A South Korean adopted into a white American family must have seemed strange to the North Koreans. The ultimate victim of the “Yankee imperialists.” Or the ultimate villain, siding with the enemy.

  But the man in the black suit was smiling and nodding. She must have passed some kind of test. The men made their last bows to Dad, and the little group broke up.

  At the end of their afternoon tour, the bus pulled up to the curb by the hotel. Everyone streamed off, heading to their rooms to prepare for dinner and the evening performance of the Arirang Mass Games. As Mia moved from the window seat, her backpack strap caught on the armrest, halting her. Pausing to untangle it, she ended up the last one off the bus.

  Inside, she searched the lobby for her father. There he was, in the far corner toward the bar, standing with Daniel Moon. Mia started across to join them, then stopped. There was something about the way Dad was talking to Daniel that warned her not to call attention to them.

  She stopped beside a pillar, pulled her guidebook from her backpack, and bent over it as if she were reading. She raised just her eyes from the page, watching Dad and Daniel. They didn’t look like two men who’d just met, having a casual conversation. They stood close together, and Dad kept glancing up, scanning the area around them as he talked. They looked like they were sharing secrets.

  Mia turned and walked back to the elevator. Was Daniel somehow connected to Dad — and to whatever it was he had been doing in the middle of the night?

  That evening, Mia climbed on the bus to find Daniel with an empty seat next to him. He smiled up at her, and she surprised herself by sitting beside him.

  “So how’s the trip for you so far?” Daniel asked.

  Mia wriggled out of her backpack and sat back in the seat. The bus rumbled and began to move. “It’s … it’s weird,” she heard herself say.

  Daniel burst out laughing. Mia felt her face getting warm.

  “That, Mia Andrews, is quite an understatement.” Maybe he wasn’t laughing at her. “North Korea is such a weird place, in so many ways. So what in particular have you found weird?”

  “Well, first, all the Korean people.” She blushed harder. Blurting out stuff was not what she did. “I mean …”

  “Because you’re Korean yourself? But you haven’t been around many Koreans?”

  It sounded almost shocking, hearing him state it so plainly and matter-of-factly. She gulped and nodded.

  “So what’s that like for you?” Daniel asked.

  Mia put her head back against the seat and reached one hand up to touch her locket. She was familiar with invasive questions: “What are you?” “Are you Chinese or Japanese?” “How come your mom’s white?” “He’s your brother?” But once someone’s curiosity had been satisfied, that was the end of it. No one actually wanted to have a discussion about her identity. People acted almost as if it was impolite to talk about it.

  Except that Daniel was looking at her as if he really wanted to hear the answer. What was it like for her?

/>   “I dunno…. We live in Connecticut, in a town where there aren’t … many Asians. I go to Korean school, but we have to drive forty minutes to get there. I’m not used to seeing so many Koreans. It’s kind of overwhelming.” Mia stole a quick glance at Daniel. He was watching her. Curious. Not like he was just being nice to some kid. Like she was an interesting person who had something to say. She was used to being stared at, but not to being seen.

  “What’s weird here is the feeling that I don’t stand out,” she said. “Nobody’s looking at me like they do at home, like they’re wondering what I am.”

  “How’s that feel?”

  She fixed her eyes on the seat in front of her.

  “I like it that everybody’s staring at Dad and Simon instead of me. I just feel like I have more … space. Like I can disappear for a little while. Like having an invisibility cloak.” She wrapped her arms around her backpack, pressing it to her chest. There was something else she wanted to try to say. “But it’s not disappearing into nothing, not being invisible like you don’t exist. It’s blending in … to something bigger that you’re part of. Only … I don’t really feel like I am a part of it.”

  Daniel was nodding. “Yeah, I get that. I’m Korean too. My parents moved to the States when I was nine. But every summer we’d go back to Seoul to see my grandparents. I know that feeling, that it’s a relief to blend in, to be ‘normal’ for once.” He made quotation marks with his fingers.

  “At the same time,” he went on, “everyone could see that I hadn’t grown up in Korea, just by looking at me. There was something — my posture, my walk, my clothing — that said ‘American.’ And my accent wasn’t right. Of course that’s even more true here.”

  Mia sat in silence for a moment, letting the feeling of this conversation settle in her. Daniel wasn’t just connecting with how she appeared on the outside, the fact that both of them looked Korean. He was reaching out and saying hi to the person she was, inside. Curious about her thoughts, her experiences, her feelings. Beyond her immediate family and Jess and Alicia, that happened so rarely that sometimes she wondered if there was anyone there. If her name was actually M.I.A. — Missing in Action.