Star of the North

by D. B. John

  They were led in a file toward the wooden platform, their chains dragging on the concrete. The final two prisoners were both young men whose clothes had been torn, and she could see that their faces, even with blindfolds, were blackened and puffy from beatings. One of them stumbled and fell and was picked up and carried by two guards. The chains and the tips of his feet dragged along the concrete.

  On the platform, each prisoner’s head, chest, and waist were being tied to a stake. Then their hands and feet were tied together behind the stake. The whole operation was completed with synchronized swiftness. The guards then stepped in front of each prisoner and forced something into their faces: some sort of metal clasp that sprung apart in the open mouth and expanded it, stopping them uttering a word. Now the floodlights’ beams swung fully onto the platform, illuminating in the glare a gruesome sight. Eight condemned, trussed to wooden stakes like carcasses, their mouths grotesque holes in their faces.

  In the bright lights the yellow of the young woman’s scarf shone as brilliantly as a sunflower, and Mrs. Moon’s entrails turned to ice.

  Without thinking about what she was doing, she charged into the scrum of bodies, shoving, butting, squeezing her way through to the front. She had a single thought—that a terrible mistake had been made and she had to fix it before it was too late. Soon she was within arm’s length of the front of the crowd, but her way was blocked by two soldiers whose backs formed an impenetrable wall of khaki and leather. With a violent lunge she drove her shoulder between them, sending them crashing into people either side of them. Shouts rose around her. “Watch it, you bitch.” Someone grabbed her elbow but she struggled free. Finally she was at the edge of the runway where the Pioneers and kotchebi were sitting cross-legged. Their faces drawn by the commotion, one of them rose up from the ground right in front of her and stopped her with his hand. It was Kyu. His shaman’s eyes stared fiercely into hers. “There’s nothing we can do,” he whispered.

  Mrs. Moon looked in horror from Kyu to the platform. “Oh, Sun-i …” she whispered.

  Curly’s face was expressionless; her skin was cream white, with one livid red mark across her cheek. Guards standing behind each prisoner pulled the blindfolds off in unison, as if they’d rehearsed the act. The prisoners blinked, blinded in the glare. Then—in what Mrs. Moon knew was deliberate theater—the small electric light illuminating the Great Leader’s portrait went out, and a gasp arose from the crowd. God’s face was veiled; the darkness beyond the floodlights complete.

  She had been so distracted by the platform that she had not noticed the row of court officials in black robes that now stood facing the crowd. In front of the judges a microphone was placed, and a Party orator in a plain brown tunic stepped up to it. He stood motionless until the crowd was silent and still. Slowly, he began reading out the names of the condemned, his voice made metallic by a sound system mounted on the jeep.

  “… These men and women who stand before you are charged with conspiring to form an antisocialist criminal faction; with distributing seditious literature; and with treason of the first degree. They have made the fullest possible confession of their crimes …”

  He pointed at the platform but his eyes remained on the crowd. He was a small, hard-looking man with a wide, thin slit of a mouth and a grating voice.

  “These accused, these criminals, who are corrupt and sick of mind, have plotted to undermine our Revolution by practicing their pernicious religion …”

  One or two exclamations of anger broke out from the crowd.

  “They have selfishly conspired to spread untold poison among you, the glorious and pure people of Kim Il-sung …”

  On the platform the teenage boy’s eyes began to roll in their sockets. His gaping mouth was drooling, as if he were having a seizure.

  “They have turned their backs on his teachings, and on his love …” The speaker gave a sorrowful shake of his head. “They have reveled in their selfishness, their ingratitude …”

  The crowd seemed to stir and flex as if it were a single organism, reacting to a coarse energy in the voice. As surely as if the sky had clouded over, Mrs. Moon sensed the mood darken.

  “So infected are they by the foreign disease of their beliefs …” The orator’s voice began to rise. “… beliefs wholly alien to our way of life, that not one of them—not one of them, citizens!—has renounced the cancer of their faith when offered the benevolent mercy of Kim Il-sung.”

  An ominous murmur rippled outward, a sighing and heaving of anger. Someone in the back yelled, “Shoot them like dogs!”

  “These men and women are beyond reeducation. They are beyond redemption.” He opened his arms. “Comrades! Brothers and sisters! When we find cancer in a body, do we not cut it out?”

  The murmuring grew louder, and the children at the front broke into a frenzy of applause.

  “Do we not act resolutely, without hesitation—before it spreads?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” came the chants.

  “Do we not act in the only way we can, in the Korean way, with Korean speed?”

  “Shoot them! Shoot them!”

  The speaker held up his palms, his face an expression of solemn duty.

  “I hear the justice you, the people, demand. The Party obeys the will of the masses because the Party and the masses are one.”

  A gathering swell of applause rose from all around.

  “In the name of the Party, the sentence is: death by firing squad!”

  The cheer was deafening and Mrs. Moon felt nauseous. The crowd was in the grip of an ecstasy of vengeance. And afterward, she knew, no one would recognize the baying beasts they had briefly become.

  A firing squad of three soldiers grouped mechanically before the first prisoner, the teenage boy, and raised their rifles. A gurgling noise came from the hole in his face. He was scanning the crowds, his eyes naked with animal terror.

  The stutter of shots—pan-pan-pan—echoed off the airport building, to more loud applause. The boy’s body twitched and jerked.

  Somewhere a child was crying. Children were hiding in the folds of their parents’ clothes. But the faces of the kotchebi sitting on the concrete were eager, fascinated, drinking in every detail.

  Kyu said, “Come, ajumma, let’s get you away.”

  But Mrs. Moon would not move. She would not look at the next execution, nor the one after. In the periphery of her vision she was aware of the powerful beam moving from one prisoner to the next as the firing squad dispatched each one. But she forced her eyes open for Curly, staring boldly at her, projecting a ray of love toward her. And to her amazement, in the bright focus of light, Curly’s eyes were calm, showing no sign of terror, even with that obscene contraption in her mouth. Her breathing, white vapor in the cold air, was steady.

  Afterward, Mrs. Moon knew she had imagined it, but if it were possible to read words in someone’s eyes, she thought she understood. And though she had not thought of those words in decades, they were still known to her.

  Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil …

  The firing squad moved in front of Curly and reassembled, and the young woman’s eyes settled into a profound peace.

  … You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies: You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.

  She was gazing back at the soldiers, meeting their eyes.

  Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life …

  An order was shouted; the rifles raised.

  … and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forev—

  Shots rang out in the clear night air, and Mrs. Moon’s knees would support her no more.

  25

  The “Forbidden City,” Compound of the Workers’ Party Elite

  Joong-gu District

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  It was early evening on November 25 when Cho arrived home. He’d been away only five days but it felt much longer. He unlocked the door to find his ap
artment silent and unlit. Strange, he thought, taking off his shoes and carrying his luggage into the hall. His ears still rang with the “Song of General Kim Jong-il” played by the band at the foot of the airplane steps. When invited by the welcome committee to say a few words, he’d praised the inspirational guidance of the Leader of All Socialist Peoples and stood for photographs. Despite the hero’s reception, he couldn’t shake the old fear he felt whenever he returned home to find his apartment empty. He went through to the living room, noting a fusion of cooking smells. Then he heard a rustling movement in the dark and hit the switch on the wall.

  Lights came on to loud applause.

  His wife, son, and parents were standing together in a chorus in front of the lacquered cabinet. They’d been joined by some of the courtyard neighbors—two Central Committee men and their wives. All were laughing like children at the joke and clapping their hands. A banner tacked across the cabinet said WELCOME HOME APPA! in his son’s childish hand. Books stepped smartly forward and raised his arm in the Pioneer’s salute. Cho knelt down for a hug and for a moment could bury his face in his son’s embrace, breathing in the warm dough smell of his skin, and not have to face the room. His wife and mother were either side of him, their faces beaming with pride, trying to embrace him and ask questions at once.

  “Appa, what did they look like?” Books said.

  “The Yankees?” Cho took off his officer’s cap and put it on the boy’s head. “Just like they do in the movies.”

  “Did they smell bad?”

  Cho’s white-haired father shuffled toward him. “How could you feel safe in such a place? We were worried, I can tell you.”

  Cho’s heart was a swamp of emotions. On the long flight from New York, sleep, even the shortest rest, had been impossible. For thirteen hours one bleak thought had chased another. On the final leg, from Beijing to Pyongyang, in the rusted Tupolev that reeked of latrines and aviation fuel, the junior diplomats and the political officers had begun freshening up and combing their hair in preparation for the welcome reception, while he’d rested his head against the cabin window, staring at the ranges of white mountains, sharp as teeth, and ravines of abyssal shadow. He’d said nothing to them of the report in the New York Daily News. First Secretary Ma would be recalled to Pyongyang and to his fate, probably tomorrow. He was already an unperson.

  He clasped the frail hands of his parents, smiling at them absently, and bowed to his wife. His father was wearing his veteran’s medals. The women’s faces were powdered and made up; they’d put on the long colorful chima jeogori dresses normally reserved for the Leader’s birthday. His wife seemed to read something in his eyes and her smile wavered. “Sang-ho,” she said softly, taking him by the arm. “Come and see the gifts.” She led him away from the party and into the next room.

  Arranged on the dining room table were six or seven bouquets of flowers, a basket of fruit, including a pineapple and bananas, a box of canned meats, a Chinese flat-screen television in its box, and two wooden crates, one of French Bordeaux wines and another of Hennessy Black cognac, his favorite. The most striking bouquet was arranged entirely of blood-red kimjongilia. Cho opened the card.

  For Respected Comrade Cho Sang-ho,

  who spoke for our country in the true spirit of socialism and revolution.

  From his grateful colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  His wife said, “The wines are from the Central Committee of the Party …”

  “And the TV is from the politburo,” Books shouted, tugging Cho’s sleeve. “Can we open it?”

  “Wait, the best is to come,” said a booming voice from the hall. Yong-ho entered the room in his cap and greatcoat to a cheer from the others. His face broke into an enormous smile for his brother. He stepped forward to embrace Cho, whose arms hung limp, like a manikin’s. “Younger brother, you must prepare yourself,” he said, squeezing Cho’s shoulders.

  Cho would not look at him, but he seemed not to notice. He turned Cho toward the window, opened the curtains, and signaled to someone with a wave of his hand.

  Lights came on below. In the center of the courtyard, parked between the gingko trees, was a silver Mercedes-Benz sedan. Its upholstery was still in its plastic covering. A uniformed driver pointed the beam of a flashlight at the three-digit license plate, 2★16.

  Cho moved his head closer. Cars with that particular date as their license number were few. February 16th, the Day of the Bright Star, the Dear Leader’s birthday.

  “From …”

  “. . . The great man himself!” Yong-ho shouted, giving Cho’s shoulder another violent squeeze. “No checkpoint will dare stop that car! The traffic girls will close streets to let you pass.”

  The family and neighbors had followed Yong-ho into the dining room and began clapping and laughing again, radiating pure happiness for Cho. Cho smiled inanely and scratched the back of his neck, feeling the weight of new expectations settling on him like a lead yoke.

  While the women cleared the gifts from the table and started laying the banchan dishes and glasses for dinner, Yong-ho handed out packets of cigarettes to the men—American Marlboros. In addition to his brother and father, there were the two courtyard neighbors, both middle-aged Central Committee men in brown staff uniforms, and one other man Cho had only just noticed, a foreigner standing in the corner apart from the others—a diminutive figure dressed in a linen suit for tropical climates. He had rounder eyes and resin-colored skin. His hair was white and cropped very short, exposing a bumpy, liver-spotted skull. Cho caught his eye and the man bowed with a smile.

  Yong-ho put his hand to his forehead. “I’m forgetting my manners. Younger brother, I hope you don’t mind my inviting a business associate. Mr. Thein is an industrial adviser from Burma. He’ll be our neighbor in the courtyard for a few months.”

  A foreigner in the Forbidden City?

  The man shook Cho’s hand and for the briefest moment Cho glimpsed the tattooed serpent coiled around his wrist, with its blue head peeping from beneath a cuff. “Congratulations on your triumph,” the man said in accented English.

  Yong-ho poured soju into small glasses for each of the men. “My own little brother, a hero of the Revolution,” he said, raising his glass. “Man-sae!”

  “Man-sae!” they cried, and toasted him.

  Cho downed his shot and held out his glass for another. They were grinning at him now, eager for his experiences. He knocked back the second, trying to summon up a feeling of bravura, but his mind remained pitilessly sober. He forced his face into a smile, and called the women back into the room.

  For the next half hour he recounted, for the guests’ entertainment, his night out in Manhattan and the Yankee plot to take him to the 21 Club. He exaggerated grotesquely his hosts’ immodest clothing and dog-like eating habits, the former president’s undignified manner, and Chris O’Brien’s cringing, gutless capitulation. He described O’Brien’s pinkish sandy coloring and did an impression of him getting flustered and nervously smoothing and resmoothing his hair while protesting in his strangulated voice. The room descended into gales of laughter.

  “Sandy hair!” Books cried, laughing.

  “But it was all down to our matchless Leader,” Cho said to admiring nods from all around him. “He knew how to play these Yankees. I was merely his messenger.”

  As he spoke he noticed the small Burmese man, Mr. Thein, gazing around the room, his yellow smile beaming on and off like a lighthouse as the guests exclaimed and laughed along to Cho’s story.

  When he finished they toasted him again, and Cho realized that there was one American he’d left out of his story. The woman whose face kept returning to him in the purple dusk through the airplane window. How are you liking New York, Colonel?

  At dinner the women served trout soup and steamed mandu. The made-up wives of the two Central Committee men smiled demurely, said little, and ate little, like imperial kisaeng women, Cho thought, suffering the soju-fueled men’s talk and the noxi
ous veils of cigarette smoke hanging over the table. His wife led Books around the table to bow to everyone and say goodnight. The boy went to bow to his grandfather, but the old man was engrossed in a question he was putting to Yong-ho, and Cho sensed straight away that something was wrong.

  Beneath the white bristles of his father’s eyebrows, Cho saw fear.

  Yong-ho’s collar was undone and his face rose-flushed and sheened with sweat. He was about two-thirds drunk.

  “Nah,” he said loudly, reaching to tip his ash into a banchan dish that still had pickles in it. “But they’ll announce it any day now. More bloody formalities to clear up. The matter’s gone up to those creeps in the OGD …”

  Cho stared at him, appalled. The teeming, unformulated resentments he’d been harboring toward his brother suddenly concentrated into a single clutch of fear. Yong-ho’s appointment had still not been announced? The investigation into his real family background was not yet closed? He’d almost forgotten about it. And why had matters gone up to the Organization and Guidance Department? A bead of cold sweat rolled from his armpit down to his belt. The Bowibu, like every other organ of the state, even the army, reported to the Organization and Guidance Department, the shadowy body through which the Dear Leader exercised power. If things had gone to that level, some issue had arisen that was beyond the Bowibu’s power to judge … He watched Yong-ho give a complicit snicker at some off-color remark one of the Central Committee men was whispering in his ear.

  The realization struck Cho like a blow to the neck.

  There IS a problem with our family background.

  He felt the blood draining from his face. The matter’s gone to the Organization and Guidance Department because Yong-ho is one of the Admitted and can’t be touched without permission from the very top.

  Cho looked down at his hands. They had become clammy and feeble, as if tendons had been cut. He couldn’t hold his chopsticks. He had the collapsing feeling of a man who’d gone to the doctor with indigestion only to be told he had stomach cancer. The Admitted were the elite of the elite—only if the Leader had asked to meet a specific person in private and had spent more than twenty minutes talking with them behind closed doors could that person be anointed as one of the Admitted. The Bowibu would never have referred the matter up to the Leader himself unless they had uncovered an extremely serious problem and they were very, very sure of their case …