by Barry Lancet
“The film about activists bringing North Korean defectors out through the underground railroad? Yeah, sure.”
It was a spellbinding and sometimes heartbreaking documentary about escapees from the North, relentless Chinese authorities, and the volunteers who dressed, fed, and coached the fleeing refugees so they would have a chance at passing through the maze of obstacles in China to safety in the South. Escaping the North was only the first step in a harrowing journey.
“That’s the one. Pak is one of those guys. He’s not shown in the movie. Might not even be with the same organization, but does the same work.”
While Simmons checked the thumbnails on his camera, I thought about Pak’s haircut. He lived and breathed the part. But more important was what he could do: if he could spirit people out of North Korea and China, he would know how they might be snuck in.
* * *
Simmons photographed the Bear Hall in record time.
“Shooting two more serious sites this afternoon,” he said. “This is the whimsical one of the lot.”
A family of four fashioned from what might have been giant nuts and bolts sat on a shelf two stories up. All of them dangled their feet in the air. One of the children was perched on the shoulders of a parent. Sitting on the roof six stories above us was a single parent with child, legs dangling, arms raised in exuberance or greeting.
“Maybe not an earth-shattering work but, like I said, the sculpture’s on the building.” Simmons fired away.
He was right. There was nothing profound about the Bear Hall ornamentation. Nothing as monumental as the I-Park Tower abstract. And yet, the playful sculptures would jar passersby, if only for a moment.
And maybe that was the point.
The seated figures were simple and approachable and immediately understood. Earth-shattering no, but in their unexpected locations they could startle a viewer into a new awareness so that he or she might give the next work of art encountered the extra moment of consideration it deserved. I was all for that.
Simmons finished up swiftly, then looked at his watch. “You all set?”
“Yeah.”
“You need anything more from me?”
“No. Looks like we’re in good hands.”
“Pak knows everything there is to know. Just don’t cross him.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Then you’ll be fine. He’s one of the best. He’s a defector himself, you know. Crossed over with his parents when he was only twelve. Their Chinese broker double-dipped. He took their money, then once they were in China he turned in the father for a reward and sold Pak’s mother to a farmer’s collective in the east, as a wife or something worse.” He shuddered. “Hard to get my head around that. What kind of person makes a living selling other people? The broker planned to sell Pak as slave labor to some factory owner, but Pak escaped, hid out, and learned Chinese while he worked his way around the country and searched for his mother. He never found her. Nine years later he made it to the south, joined up with a refugee rescue group, and has been with them ever since. He’s one of the leaders now.”
“What happened to the father?”
“Executed by the North for trying to escape.”
I shook my head. “Man, that’s tough. But Pak seems to have come through it okay. And he looks to know his stuff. I owe you.”
Simmons signaled for a taxi. “A couple of rounds of saké back in Tokyo ought to cover it.”
“Done deal.”
A glimmer of concern flickered across his features. “You be careful over there.”
“Always am.”
“World’s different in northern China. Changbai is what they call an autonomous Korean county. It’s part of China but surrounded by North Korea on three sides. It’s tightly controlled. Some damn good folks up-country but also a lot of smuggling, so a lot of police and a lot of scum. Gangs, smugglers, traffickers. Some of them will kill you for your smartphone. Is Anna Tanaka pretty?”
“Yes.”
“Then she’s in play. Her minders drop their guard, they’ll lose her to traffickers. So if you do find her, watch her back. And watch your back.”
“Got it.”
“No, I mean watch your own back too. You’re also trophy meat up there. Americans are a big prize. If North Korean agents sandbag you, or even the wrong kind of Chinese trafficker, you’ll wake up in the Hermit Kingdom. They’ll put you on display as a morality lesson, carve you up some, then execute you in a public square. You’ll disappear off the face of the earth.”
“That kind of stuff actually happens?”
“Yeah. I’m your wake-up call. Make sure you get your carcass back to Japan in one piece so you can buy me that saké you promised.”
CHAPTER 69
10 P.M.
CHANGBAI, CHINA, ON THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER
WHEN moonlight caught the ripples on the Yalu River, it looked like the flash of silk—a soft glowing wink, there one moment, gone the next.
We peered into the night, with and without night-vision goggles. On the North Korean side of the water, the town of Hyesan was steeped in darkness. And yet, in the darkness, there was life.
“In front your eyes three black shadow, you see?” Pak said.
The river separated China from North Korea. In Hyesan, under the cover of night, people darted through the streets. Along the river were the silhouettes of watchtowers. They had broad tented roofs and long rectangular bases. They had no lights, which would blind their occupants. Occasionally there was movement inside. Soldiers on watch. Pak was referring to three forms at the edge of the river, on the North Korean side.
“Yes.”
“Two women carry rubber boat to come China side. Trading for black market. All women, you know?”
“I’ve heard the stories.”
We lay in a doorway a half a block beyond the Dandong Noodle Shop, waiting for plan C to unfold. Once again darkness had fallen. Once again Noda and I had night-vision binoculars strung around our necks. Once again we were in a blind. Only this time it was the deep doorway of a neighborhood grocery closed for the evening with a view of the noodle shop, the name of which Habu had reluctantly disgorged at knifepoint back in Tokyo.
We were hidden behind the shop gate, peering through a six-inch gap at the bottom. We’d been there since nightfall, after walking right off the plane in Jilin with forged visas that passed the squinty-eyed scrutiny at Chinese passport control, then taking a Chinese wreck of a car Pak had waiting and arriving around four in the afternoon.
I pointed to another pair huddled in conference a hundred yards downriver on the Chinese side. “What about them?”
“Korea woman and China man, also trading.”
“So the reports are true, then?”
“Yes, yes, all women all trading all true.”
His voice was a whisper brushing my ear.
“Survival economics,” I said.
“Yes, yes. Otherwise just starving their bellies.”
Which is exactly how the horror stories began. The great socialist experiment of the North faltered when the Soviet Union collapsed and was no longer able to subsidize its communist offspring. North Korea didn’t grow enough crops on its own. Government food rations dried up. The elite closed ranks. Everyone else scavenged for scraps. Dogs, cats, squirrels, frogs, and anything else on four feet were devoured.
Next, grasshoppers, moths, ants, and cockroaches disappeared. The hunger persisted. Tens of thousands starved to death. In increments. Slowly, painfully, irreversibly. Some collapsed in shame in their homes, often leaving death notes and farewells addressed to relatives in other towns. Others collapsed on the streets while begging or hunting for any scrap of nourishment. People clawed the bark off trees. Shrubs and weeds were harvested, chopped, and boiled. For their juices and nourishment, roots and leaves were chewed to a pulp.
Tens of thousands more died.
Survivors sifted the dirt for worms and decaying vegetation. In the end up
ward of three million people died, according to high-end estimates. Low-end calculations put the total at a third of that number or less, none of which were a consolation to anyone.
While husbands held down their mandatory government day jobs with their increasingly shrinking inflation-depleted salaries, the wives began to barter among themselves: trinkets and furniture and any spare scrap of nourishment they could find—anything that brought in a few extra pennies. Some clawed their way out. Many others did not.
Enterprising survivors slowly grew their businesses. They bought goods from the haves. A few pears, a couple of eggs, a half pound of meat. And piled up a few more pennies as their stomachs growled. They got by on one meal a day. When they had a stake, they began to buy goods from repatriated Koreans with relatives on the Chinese side of the border, then cut out the middlemen and ventured across the water themselves, doling out scraps of food, then monetary bribes to the guards, whose own families also needed to eat.
So was born North Korea’s black-market economy, which popped up everywhere and disappeared in an instant at the first sign of authority. Additional bribes found their way into the pockets of local officials—and the markets stayed open longer and sold more. As the food supply stabilized, minor necessities were next. An extra pair of socks, a winter jacket, good shoes. Then luxuries like CDs and DVDs surfaced. The unsanctioned markets evolved into a conspiracy of survival.
Which is how the ruling elite found themselves trapped in a catch-22, North Korean style. The burgeoning black markets represented the most basic form of capitalism. They went against everything the Supreme Leader preached and everything the State’s system stood for, but the government could not stamp out this wave of private entrepreneurs without sending the whole country back into another downward spiral of extreme poverty and famine, which could in turn lead to the collapse of the regime.
So top officials turned a blind eye—after accepting bribes of their own. As they saw the small traders grow more prosperous, they dipped into the practice themselves and expanded it.
“What about the Chinese guards on this side?”
Pak rubbed his thumb across the index and middle fingers of the same hand. “Money speak.”
“We’re looking at a well-oiled machine, then?”
“No, no. Many problem. Some China men steal Korea trading women when they cross river. Thas very bad. I see China men take woman, I kill.”
Their Chinese broker double-dipped. He took their money, then once they were in China he turned in the father for a reward and sold Pak’s mother to a farmer’s collective in the east, as a wife or something worse . . . He never found her.
I said, “Anyone who traffics in women deserves what they get.”
The selling of North Korean women was an open secret in China. Escapees arrived with little money, no language ability, and no path outward from the sprawling country into which they had fled. Unless they met an honest broker, they were easy prey. In China, Koreans were fourth-class citizens at best, and Korean women lower still.
Pak’s face was red. “Stealing Korea woman big shocking for Korea people. Why so many China men stealing North Korea woman, you know? Why China government know what trafficker man’s doing but they no stop?”
Pak was venting. He knew as well as I did what the reason was. China’s one-child policy had changed behavior. Couples wanted male heirs to support them in their old age and continue the line in order to take care of the ancestors. So female babies were “erased.” As a result, during its nearly four-decade run, the now-defunct policy had created a surplus of thirty million bachelors, leading to a huge black market for marriageable women. Mail-order brides from poorer countries filled only a fraction of the need. Eligible Asian women of any nationality were in demand by these “broken branches” that made up the “biological dead ends” of family trees.
“Trafficker men sell Korea women to farmer or they do rape and sell for sex shop. When I see those men I can no speak any my words.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Pak’s whisper turned heated. “They dirty China animal. I find, I kill, you know? I kill every time. I kill all them.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” I said.
We spoke in hushed voices as we watched customers enter and leave the Dandong Noodle Shop. A red-and-yellow neon sign announced the store’s presence. Black pillars on either side of the door made the place look bigger than it was. Red dragons flew up the pillars, their tails undulating behind them, their toothy maws open and threatening to swallow the stars.
Dandong was a thriving Chinese port city six hundred miles away. It too was a border town, squatting proudly at the mouth of the Yalu River where the waterway flowed into the Yellow Sea. Dandong’s namesake a half block down the road was a twenty-four-hour operation and the only one in Changbai serving Dandong-style chow, according to Pak.
So we had the right place. The question was, would the kidnappers come?
Anna’s abduction had been sanctioned by North Korea, but her crossing into the North would be clandestine, since official entry points were monitored, and the North knew it.
The rest of the world could not know Anna had made the crossing.
Her passage must be secret and undocumented.
So this was the spot, the Dandong Noodle Shop the portal.
So we watched and waited.
CHAPTER 70
YOU can tell?”
Pak nodded in answer to my question. He’d just claimed body language would give the North Korean contact away in an instant. Whoever brought Anna to Changbai would need a contact to usher her over the border unharmed.
“A man or a woman?” I asked.
“Always man.”
“How will you know him?” I asked.
“You know what is North Korea Central Party cadre?”
“Yes.”
“They travel foreign land for government business. They do special performing like tonight. They carry big head and big greed for power. You know?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Thas how you find them. Look for double stink.”
* * *
Next, Pak cautioned us about the secret police, the militia, and the regular duty cops. Tonight, he told us, hazards were many.
“All police hunting trafficker and gang and Korea defector. Secret police coming later in night. They biggest danger. Most power.”
Our guide warned us for the fifth time to keep our voices low and conversation to a minimum after nine o’clock.
Then he explained why.
While the militia and regular cops simply patrolled the streets and would sweep up any suspicious character unless they’d received a bribe in advance, the secret police were harder to bribe, wanted bigger game, and possessed a heady bag of tricks. They wore civilian clothing and could appear at any time, from any direction. Even from the narrow passage two feet away, between our building and the next.
“They surprise our eye,” Pak said in his stealth whisper. “We are in safety from their eye but not from their ear, so careful careful with your word. Keeping word soft.”
Appearing unannounced was a popular technique. They might pop out from a hiding place or they could stumble forth from one of the bars, acting like drunken customers. Some patrolled the water’s edge at night. They didn’t like to soil their footwear, and only ranged near the riverbank when ordered by a superior or during a special crackdown.
Also on the prowl were smugglers who traded with the North Korean women, brokers who smuggled defectors out of the country, and traffickers who sold women and children. All of the nocturnal racketeers received protection by coughing up a steady stream of bribes. The police would corner the rest. We resided at the bottom of the food chain: any of the night creatures—police or criminal—would come after us.
“Criminal maybe sell us or give us like gift to secret police, so quiet quiet.”
We’d stepped into a nightmare.
* * *
As it turned out, the stretch of the street we’d burrowed into held a modest standing as a nightspot.
Which meant, Pak said, we should expect more security than usual.
Aside from the all-night noodle shop, there were high-end eateries for the dine-and-date set, flashy discos for the energetic, and a handful of bars up and down the spectrum. We’d taken our position in the closed courtyard of the grocery at seven. The night owls began to surface around nine, and by eleven thirty activity swung into overdrive.
Canteens and watering holes flung open their windows. Celebratory noises poured into the night. Two of the bars owned karaoke setups and competed for customers’ attention by rupturing the peace with Chinese ballads and pop numbers. There were homes nearby but no one complained. The police on patrol had received ample inducement to “close their ear,” Pak explained.
We dug in for the long haul. Surprisingly, the occasional K-pop tune surfaced in the song rotation. Or maybe not so surprisingly. K-pop—all out of South Korea, of course—had taken the infectious three-minute pop melody to new heights of irresistibility, claiming legions of fans around the world. Most converts had no inkling of what the hook-laden lyrics actually meant. But it didn’t matter. The music spoke for itself.
As the district came to life, cricket song along the banks of the Yalu River succumbed to the raucous vocal noodlings of amateur karaoke singers. The hours passed, then the trend reversed itself. Revelry dwindled. Crickets sent out tentative chirps. Customers staggered from bars and discos and eateries, climbed aboard rickety bicycles, and wobbled away. Owners of cars parked along the riverside trundled out, flopped down behind the wheel, and wove drunkenly into the night.
We prepared ourselves. We’d dozed on and off, watching in shifts, but from here on in the three of us would be on full alert. It hadn’t taken us but a moment to determine that Anna’s abductors would not show themselves until the precinct settled down.
Which is exactly how it played out.
