“When we got to the hotel,” Dad said, “there was a message asking me to be in the lobby at twelve thirty a.m. It wasn’t that unusual. I’ve sometimes met agency contacts in the middle of the night, when they wanted to say something off the record. But when I got downstairs, the person waiting was someone I’d never met. He introduced himself as an official from MPS. He suggested we go for a walk along the river. We talked about music, of all things. He was an admirer of Beethoven and Mahler. I kept waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. Maybe he had something he wanted to tell me, or give me. Maybe it was some sort of test. I never found out.”
So Dad really was a kind of spy. But not really. Not intentionally.
“Whatever it was,” Dad went on, “the whole thing was ill-advised. As soon as I was arrested, I suspected that meeting was the reason. The whole time I was being held, all I could think of was how foolish I’d been, and how I put you and Simon in danger. I owe an apology to both of you — and to you, Kay. I put my own children at risk.”
Mia took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “We did some things too. We decided to keep the phone and try to get it out of the country. Probably not the safest choice. There was one time I was thinking of deleting the photos. That would have made things less dangerous for us. Maybe for you too, Dad. But I thought about the people in the pictures and I couldn’t do it.”
Simon nodded. “We could have left the phone in the forest, buried it somewhere. I could have thrown it in the river, but I threw the player instead.”
“Let’s be clear about one thing,” Dad said. “That phone, those photographs. If you hadn’t opened it when you did, then run with it … if they’d gotten ahold of those pictures … I’d never have gotten out of there.” He looked into Mia’s eyes, then Simon’s. “You really did save me.”
They had done it. They had saved Dad.
Finally, Dad had looked at Mom. “Kay?”
She frowned at each of them. “All of you.” She shook her head. “I’ll need some time.” For some reason, that made them all laugh.
Mia had been right. Her family would never look the same to her again.
There was a clang from the kitchen.
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes!” Mom’s voice, exasperated.
Dad leaned his head against Mia’s. “You want to see if your mother needs a hand in there, sweetie?”
“O-kay.” She sighed and pulled away from him.
The kitchen counter looked like the shelf of a small grocery store. Half a dozen cans of beans. A package of meat and one of fish. Boxes and bags of pasta and rice. Tomatoes, peppers, and onions. A large wooden salad bowl full of lettuce.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“I can’t decide what to serve.” She was holding a saucepan in one hand, a frying pan in the other. “There’s the pasta sauce I was thinking of making, but what if he prefers meat? Or I have this fresh cod I got this morning —”
“Mom. Stop. You’re not feeding a volunteer army. It’s just dinner. For five of us. Just choose one thing.”
“But Daniel Moon —” Her voice cracked. Mia stepped closer and put her hand on her mother’s arm. Mom was the ultimate campaign organizer. The Master Multitasker. Mia couldn’t remember ever seeing her flustered like this.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
“It’s just that … if it weren’t for Daniel — staying in touch with me, being there to meet you in China, being part of the negotiations to get your father released — I just don’t know what I would’ve done. The more I learn about what happened, how much he did, the more grateful I feel to him. No matter what I think of cooking, it’s not enough.”
She was right. What would have happened if Daniel hadn’t been there in Dandong to answer the phone? If it weren’t for Daniel, they probably wouldn’t all be here, together. A family again.
Mia smiled at her mother. “Mom. Daniel will like whatever you serve. Your pasta sauce is great. Let’s have that.”
Mom blew out a breath. She set the pans back on the stove, turned to the counter, and started slicing up vegetables with scary efficiency. Back on track.
Mia put the fish in the fridge. Wow, they really did have enough to feed a volunteer army.
At first the whole food thing — regular meals, leftovers, grocery shopping, eating out, restaurant ads on TV — had been challenging for her and Simon. The number of choices, the huge servings, the waste. It felt overwhelming, and kind of obscene.
A month later, she was mostly used to it. But she still couldn’t see food wasted without remembering the soldiers on the road or the photos of the starving people in the camp. Or even her own and Simon’s few days of hunger, what they would have done for just one of the plates she saw being tossed out in the middle school cafeteria every day.
With everything put away, the pasta sauce simmering on the stove, Mia went up to her room to get ready. Daniel would be here soon. She felt a little fizzy with anticipation. All that time they’d spent together in China had turned him into kind of a favorite uncle. A young, handsome uncle that she might have a little crush on.
She also couldn’t wait to hear any news he might bring. His last message had said that there might still be some kind of shake-up in the ministries, which could result in some minor changes. Better food distribution to the people, or less harsh treatment in the prisons.
“But real change isn’t something that can be forced from the outside,” Daniel told them. “That will have to come from the North Korean people.”
Mia had thought of Mr. Lee, Miss Cho, and Mr. Kim. The prison guard who took the photographs, whoever he was. Soon-ok. Mr. Shin and his mother. The men who’d let them escape.
That was the one thing she wanted that Daniel couldn’t give her: information about all the people who’d helped them. What had happened to the guides after Mia and Simon ran away from the tour? Daniel said they’d probably never know.
Yet bit by bit, some of them were learning the truth about their country. They were the strength that might one day break down the prison walls. The people of North Korea.
My people, Mia thought.
She pulled on a clean shirt. Studied her reflection in her closet door mirror, turning to one side, then the other. She took the shirt off, tossed it on on her bed, reached for another. And another. Somewhere in here she had to have the right one.
She wanted to look … different. Maybe more sophisticated. More knowing. Like North Korea had changed her. Like she was more mature and interesting than …
Really, Mia?
She stopped in place and made a face at herself. She’d just seen Daniel last week. He wasn’t going to notice what she was wearing. Just like she’d told Mom about the food. If she was going to let Daniel see how deeply her North Korean experience had affected her, it certainly wouldn’t be by obsessing over her outfit. Anyway, Daniel already thought she was great, just the way she was.
She grabbed her most comfortable shirt, the soft red one that felt so good on her skin. Buttoning it up, she caught her own eyes in the mirror.
There she was again. There, back behind her eyelids, that lively something, looking out at her. She gazed at herself. Hi, there.
Mia had always known that to Dad she was … well, a light in his life. In this last month she had discovered, again and again, just how much her mother loved her, in her own way. And after everything they’d been through together, Mia knew she had her brother. For good.
But most of all, now she knew she could count on herself. If anything, that’s what she wanted Daniel to see.
She gave herself a smile and turned to join her family downstairs.
He had to stop for a moment or his lungs would burst. Sheer blind panic had propelled him straight up the steep slope, thighs and calves burning, but he couldn’t take another step without a break. Kwang-soo grasped a pine and hauled himself around it, collapsing against the trunk as he gasped for air.
As soon as he could breathe, he
peered back down the valley toward the camp far below. A convoy of trucks, tiny in the distance, crawled past the guards’ barracks to the south, but there was no movement near the main gate, nor where he’d hidden the jeep, down an embankment and behind a crop of bushes. So far, it seemed, his treachery hadn’t been detected. He needed to get as far away as possible before the alarm sounded,
He turned and forced himself upward, catching hold of branches to keep himself from slipping in the dusty, brush-covered soil. Hong had not been at their arranged meeting place, and Kwang-soo had acted instinctively, before he could think or plan. If Hong had been caught, it was only a matter of time before they came for him. The fear jolted him like an electric charge, kicking him into action from which there was no turning back.
He was nearly to the summit now; once he’d cleared it, he’d be out of sight of the camp. Still, if they let the dogs loose, he was finished. He’d seen the broken body of one girl the beasts had mauled — and the extra rations the handlers gave the dogs as a reward. At least a death like that, however painful, would be quick. If they discovered what he carried, he’d endure weeks or months of torture first.
Two last, labored steps and he crested the hill. He risked a final look back, scanning the length of the camp. It filled the narrow, branching cleft between steep wooded hills that cast deep shadows in the late afternoon light. Clusters of buildings spread out along the length of the valley for nearly twenty kilometers: the main gate, the guards’ barracks, the detention center. He could just make out the first group of mud huts for mothers and children, the quarters for single prisoners, the execution grounds. Out of sight beyond the far hills were the fields, the mines, and more living quarters. He’d heard that all together, there were some fifty thousand prisoners.
A death camp. That was the truth of it, though he hadn’t seen it that way when he’d first arrived. His training had deeply instilled the belief that the “re-settlers” brought here were insects, vermin, scum. They tainted the purity of the people. Whether their deaths came by overwork or accident, by beatings or starvation, by torture or execution, they deserved to be exterminated. They were enemies of the state, and all the bad things that were happening in the country at large — the shortages of food and power, the failure of missile launches or economic programs — were their fault.
Still no sign of any unusual movement. He turned and started making his way north along the ridge, recalling the moment everything had changed. Last spring, he’d been lined up with the other guards, ready to sort and herd a new batch of prisoners to their quarters. The trucks pulled to a stop in the dirt square. As people began clambering out, Kwang-soo had caught sight of a familiar face: Yoon-ah, his schoolmaster’s daughter. Only sixteen, three years younger than he, she was a soft-spoken girl with a beautiful singing voice. She blinked in the bright light, then she reached back to lift out a smaller girl, perhaps six years old, who clung to her, sobbing. The next person to climb from the truck was the schoolmaster, followed by his wife.
The schoolmaster and his family were the most respected citizens of Kwang-soo’s town. He remembered the light in the schoolmaster’s eyes as he talked of the glory of the socialist state they were building together. Everyone in their neighborhood knew about the food the schoolmaster or his wife had delivered to needy students during the terrible hunger of the Arduous March.
Kwang-soo had forced himself to concentrate on his habitual tasks, separating the families. The men would be transported to quarters near the mines, the women and children to the huts. None of them would ever see each other again.
“Ah-bbah!” the little girl had cried as her father was pulled away.
“Keep her quiet!” another guard bellowed, then reached out and whacked the side of Yoon-ah’s head.
Kwang-soo had dropped his gaze, grateful that the group of men he was corralling didn’t include the schoolmaster. He was terrified that he’d exposed himself when he had seen them. Had he gasped involuntarily? Had his cheeks reddened?
Later, Kwang-soo sought out Yoon-ah. He had to know: Why was she here? What possible crime had someone in her family committed?
Yoon-ah was bewildered. Someone had accused her father of criticizing the Grand Marshall. She knew it was a lie. Remembering the schoolmaster, Kwang-soo did too.
Over the next few weeks, he had watched Yoon-ah from a distance, helpless to protect her. It wasn’t long before the guards took note of the pretty young woman. Soon the bloom in her cheeks faded, and dark shadows stained her face. She no longer sang at all.
Quietly, when none of the guards were watching, Kwang-soo began to ask other prisoners why they had been sent to the camp. One woman had crumpled a newspaper, unaware that a photograph of the Grand Marshall was on the other side. An old man’s son had dropped a portrait of the Great Leader while cleaning it, smashing the glass. The father of a girl his age had tried to cross the river to China to find food for his family. Many had no idea why they had been imprisoned. Most were guilty only by association, or too poor to pay the bribes that could have kept them out of prison. The more Kwang-soo learned, the more his heart sickened.
So when Officer Hong contacted him (how had he known?), he was ready. Yes, he would take the forbidden mobile phone and shoot photos out of a small hole in his shirt pocket. Yes, he would meet Hong again, hand the phone over, receive a new one. This trade had happened three times over the past six months. Hong did not say what he did with the images, and Kwang-soo did not ask. He only knew he must act, or lose something more precious to him than his own safety.
And now, the fourth time, Hong wasn’t where he said he would be. If Kwang-soo was caught with the photographs, not only he but his parents, his grandfather, his younger brother, would all end up in a camp like the one behind him. When his superiors discovered he was gone, his family might still be taken. There was nothing he could do to prevent that.
In the dying light, he followed the ridge as it rose toward a higher peak. Ahead lay eighty kilometers of mountainous wilderness. He had no food, no water, no light, no weapon, no blanket, no map. Winter was coming on. He might die trying to reach the Chinese border or trying to cross. But he would surely die if he stayed.
He had heard rumors of others who had made it out. He wore a guard’s uniform and a sturdy winter coat, not prison rags. He hadn’t been starved. He was young and strong; if prisoners could eat grass and insects to survive, so could he. When he agreed to Hong’s proposal, he’d already decided that the evidence he now carried — the truth — was worth risking his own life. Here was the test of his devotion.
As night fell, he pressed north.
Writing this novel has been a ten-year journey of research, hard work, conversation, and reflection, especially on the subject of identity. I’m a white American whose own identity was profoundly shaped by moving from New Hampshire to South Korea in 1960, when I was seven years old. Korea, where my parents worked as medical missionaries, was our family’s home base for twenty-one years. I speak fluent conversational Korean, spent my junior year of college at a Korean university, and have returned to Korea many times throughout my adulthood. Korea is “home” to me, even as my connection remains that of an outsider-insider. But prior to this book, my sphere of personal knowledge, experience, and interest in Korea had never included the North. Even when I was a child and teenager in South Korea, the country occupying the other half of the peninsula seemed unknowable, foreign, and menacing — a feeling exacerbated by the bellicose threats and posturing of the DPRK, and its 1968 assassination attempt on South Korean President Park Chung-hee.
Ten years ago, a chance interview question about reunification led to the idea for a novel about two American kids on the run in North Korea. I did some reading and daydreaming, but I felt uncertain about my connection to the material until I met Reverend Peter Yoon, a member of the Council on Korean Studies of Michigan State University. In 2007 he had traveled into the DPRK from China by train and had an hour and a half of video footag
e of the countryside between Sinuiju and Pyongyang. The images were spellbinding, and to my surprise, they were familiar. Rural North Korea in 2007 — wide plains filled with rice fields, farmers planting in flooded paddies, people pushing carts and riding bicycles, clunky concrete apartment buildings painted pink and blue — looked exactly like the South Korean countryside of the 1960s where I grew up. I realized the DPRK was not unknowable and foreign; despite its government, it was part of a land I knew and loved. Over the years of research and writing that followed, North Korea came into focus more and more as a place of enormous complexity and contradiction, and most of all a place full of real people.
Indeed, contrary to the popular image of a country shrouded in mystery about which we know almost nothing, I’ve found an extensive amount of information available about the DPRK. These books and films emerged as some of the most significant for me, especially in illuminating the variety of contemporary life experiences of North Korean people. I encourage readers to seek out primary sources, to learn from authentic North Korean voices speaking about their own experiences. (Resources appropriate for younger audiences are marked with an asterisk.)
The Bradt Travel Guide, North Korea* (2003, 2007, and 2014 editions) by Robert Willoughby, the “only major standalone tourist guide to North Korea.” The guidebook Mia brings with her is based on the 2005 reprint of the 2003 edition.
Camp 14: Total Control Zone, a filmed interview with Shin Dong-Hyuk, the only person known to have been raised in and to have escaped from a no-release North Korean prison camp. Shin has since admitted that not all details of his account were accurate, in both the film and a book about his experiences — for instance, that he was not born in the camp but sent there with his family as a young child. But observers seem to agree that as his story is similar to accounts of other former adult inmates and guards, it still provides important and accurate information about the realities of prison camp life.
In the Shadow of the Sun Page 26
