Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  It is untrue that the Wavering Class will be reclassified as Hostile. The despicable scum of Seoul, worse than dogs, spread this lie to weaken our Juche spirit. The major classes will remain as:

  Elite

  Core

  Basic

  Wavering

  Hostile

  THREE MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH DATE:

  A cool wind swept from the East Sea over the top of the launch tower at Musudan-ri Rocket Launch Centre. Lee Ha Neul shivered in his grey vinylon jacket as he looked down at the massive rocket.

  His jacket bore the logo of the National Aerospace Development Administration. It was a dark blue globe with the constellation Ursa Major, the Administration’s Korean name, and the English acronym “NADA” in white. A foreign languages student had told him that “NADA” meant “nothing” in Spanish. Ha Neul did not know if that was true or not.

  It was October, merely three months before Dear Leader’s birthday. Technicians scurried around both the base and the top of the tower, working on the rocket and the spacecraft it carried.

  Cho Yoon Ah, Director of the Cosmonaut Office, gripped the collar of her black wool coat. Slender and beautiful, with straight teeth and unblemished skin, Yoon Ah was a woman of the Pyongyang Elite. She had grown up with food, housing, health and dental care, education, clothes, shoes, jewelry, hair stylists, and cosmetics that most Northerners could never have. Her great-grandfather had fought alongside President Kim Il Sung, and her parents were high-ranking officials of the State Commission for Science and Technology.

  “Cosmonaut Lee, let’s inspect the spacecraft,” Yoon Ah said.

  The Chollima 1 spacecraft, named after a mythological flying horse, looked like an ancient Russian Vostok, a silver spherical crew module attached to a cylindrical service module that carried an engine.

  The crew, consisting of a sole cosmonaut, would ride in the crew module, with the service module propelling the spacecraft through its orbits. Then the crew module would jettison the service module and descend to Earth.

  “I don’t have enough training to fly this spacecraft,” Ha Neul said.

  “You’re a pilot. That’s enough,” said Yoon Ah. “Let Mission Control fly the spacecraft for you by remote control. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. The only time you have to do anything is when the radio control does not work. Then we authorize you to take control of the spacecraft. However, there is only a small risk of that happening.”

  “I don’t think the risk is small. We rushed construction of the spaceship without any of the original designers or engineers,” Ha Neul said.

  She pulled him aside, away from the technicians. “No more excuses. Dear Leader is counting on you to succeed on this mission.”

  “I don’t want to fly anymore. I just can’t,” Ha Neul pleaded.

  Yoon Ah scowled at him. “Don’t say that! Your parents bribed the doctor to destroy your psychiatric assessment.”

  Ha Neul gasped. “It’s destroyed? Gone?”

  “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Thank you, Director Cho.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank your parents. They paid two hundred United States dollars. At least pretend to be happy.”

  When Ha Neul didn’t respond, Yoon Ah continued. “Korea is the happiest country on Earth. We have nothing to envy in the world. Our people have no mental weakness. Anyone who shows signs of mental illness is a traitor. You know the penalty for treason. Now the record shows you have no mental illness.”

  Ha Neul nodded silently. He knew that Dear Leader never made mistakes and wanted his people to learn from him. Like a good parent, Dear Leader rewarded and punished his children. If Ha Neul succeeded in every task, he would be promoted to Hero Cosmonaut, and his family would join the Elite and live in a luxury apartment in Pyongyang. But if he made one mistake, he and his family would be sent to a prison camp. They would die within two years.

  Yoon Ah softened her tone. “Comrade Cosmonaut Lee, think of the rewards. You’ll get a photo op with Dear Leader, and your songbun will be raised to Elite. You will get anything you want: food, clothes, luxury apartment. You can do it!”

  Flight Director Jang rushed onto the platform. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man in a blue business suit and tie. Jang, a former Air Force Colonel, learned aerospace engineering in Russia and thus escaped the purge of all staff who had trained in China.

  “Comrade Cosmonaut Lee, Comrade Director Cho, listen to me! I have received an order from Dear Leader!” Jang shouted.

  Ha Neul and Yoon Ah quickly stood at attention, like soldiers under inspection. Jang stared sternly at them.

  “Comrades, Dear Leader has told us the objective of the Chollima 1 space mission,” Jang announced.

  Ha Neul took a deep breath. The mission objective had been secret. Not even he knew what it was. Was it for scientific research? Was it for military intelligence?

  “Your spaceship will broadcast Dear Leader’s theme song from space. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has selected a radio frequency and told all foreign countries to listen to it during your flight. The whole world will hear Dear Leader’s theme song from the heavens.”

  Ha Neul’s stomach grumbled.

  “Dear Leader has given us so much,” Jang said. “The least we can do is to broadcast his song to the heavens on his birthday.”

  Jang clicked his heels, turned away, and marched to the technicians.

  Yoon Ah turned to Ha Neul and said, “This is a great honour!”

  Ha Neul walked away and looked over the railing of the tower. He stared down at the ground, a great distance below. He closed his eyes, gasped, and teetered as he gripped the railing.

  Yoon Ah pulled him back and pushed him into the elevator of the tower.

  As they rode down, Yoon Ah said, “The past month of training has been strenuous. Start your leave now. Get some rest. I’ve arranged for Flight Sergeant Park Bon Hwa to fly you to Onsong. It’s faster than taking the train.”

  Ha Neul nodded. Park had been his co-pilot during the War of Chinese Aggression. Now he was Cho Yoon Ah’s assistant and Ha Neul’s babysitter.

  Flight Sergeant Park Bon Hwa, a pilot with a perfect flying record, would be a better cosmonaut than Ha Neul. But their ancestors’ songbun decided who would stay on Earth and who would fly in space.

  Bon Hwa had the rough look of people raised on rocky, infertile farmland. Like most peasants, he was shorter than the Pyongyang Elite because he had eaten smaller food rations all his life. Since his village had no dentist, his teeth remained yellow and crooked. He was born to toil hard and die young so the Elite could enjoy life. However, he took advantage of the wartime turmoil to rise in social status.

  Bon Hwa flew the old L-39 training airplane higher into the clouds. Sitting beside Bon Hwa, Ha Neul felt a shiver run down his spine.

  “We’re going too high,” Ha Neul protested.

  “There’s no problem, Ha Neul,” Bon Hwa replied, addressing him by his given name, a sign of their close friendship from the war. “The sky is clear again. I haven’t seen a foreign plane for a long time.”

  In the past, only men with Elite songbun could be pilots. However, the Southern War killed most of the country’s pilots, and the government was desperate to replace them before the inevitable war with China. The Air Force quietly took trainees with Wavering to Core songbun, men like Ha Neul and Bon Hwa. They trained as postal pilots and flew mail across the country. By classifying them as civilians, the government fed them smaller rations than military pilots got. However, the Air Force held all civilian pilots in reserve.

  When the War of Chinese Aggression broke out, the Air Force pushed them into service. They had minimal peacetime flight experience and no military training. As Korean troops pushed into China, Ha Neul and Bon Hwa flew supplies to them.

  Although the Chinese retreated on the ground, they fought fiercely in the air. The new Chinese Chengdu J-60 stealth fighters decimated the Korean MiG-29’s, antiques from the twentieth century. T
he Koreans flew transport missions without fighter support. Chinese fighters, anti-aircraft guns, and missiles easily shot them down.

  The transport planes flew in groups. Ha Neul and Bon Hwa watched in terror as their comrades’ planes exploded and crashed all around them.

  Two months after the war started, the Chinese surrounded the entire Korean invasion force at Helong. No supplies could reach them by ground. Dear Leader ordered the Air Force to fly supplies to the trapped Koreans twenty-four hours per day.

  On one mission, twenty planes took off for Helong. Only one plane, flown by Ha Neul and Bon Hwa, returned to Korea. They repeated the mission the next day.

  On their last mission, Ha Neul froze at the controls on the return to Korea. Fear gripped him. He sweated, and his heart beat rapidly. He felt a cramping feeling in his chest. His stomach hurt.

  As his mind went blank, he gripped his side-stick and plunged the plane into a dive.

  “Lee, what are you doing?” Bon Hwa yelled.

  Ha Neul said nothing.

  Bon Hwa pushed the priority button to lock out inputs from Ha Neul’s side-stick, grabbed his own stick, and forced the plane to climb.

  By sheer luck, the Chinese anti-aircraft guns missed them. Bon Hwa flew the plane back to Korea.

  Ha Neul never flew an airplane again.

  Dear Leader declared victory over China the next day. Ha Neul did not know how the entrapped Koreans could have defeated China, since none of them ever returned home. Everyone gossiped that Dear Leader had unleashed secret miracle rockets on China, but nobody knew what had actually happened.

  Before the war, Dear Leader hired Chinese engineers to build Korea’s first spaceship. He distrusted the Chinese but used them because they were cheaper than the Russians. When war broke out, he killed the engineers, leaving the National Aerospace Development Administration with nobody experienced in building a spacecraft for humans. Nonetheless, Dear Leader insisted that his people launch a cosmonaut into space for his fiftieth birthday.

  Eight fighter pilots, each with Elite songbun, had survived the war. NADA conscripted them into cosmonaut training. Five of them died in explosions on the launch pad. The remaining three stole airplanes and defected to the South. Despite their Elite songbun, they didn’t want to die for Dear Leader’s birthday.

  Cho Yoon Ah, Director of the Cosmonaut Office, had to find replacements. She looked for military transport pilots. Only Lee Ha Neul and Park Bon Hwa had survived the war.

  Bon Hwa had inherited Wavering songbun. His great-grandfather, a Southern soldier, was captured during the Fatherland Liberation War. Southern prisoners had Hostile songbun, but he partially redeemed himself by spitting on a photo of Syngman Rhee, the hated first president of the South. For this act, the government raised his songbun to Wavering. Bon Hwa had a perfect flight record, but his Wavering songbun made him unsuitable to be a Hero Cosmonaut.

  Ha Neul had better songbun. Both of Ha Neul’s parents had Core songbun, two classes above Bon Hwa’s. However, they were not born that high, a secret the family kept to itself.

  “Ha Neul, do you want to fly the plane for a minute?” Bon Hwa asked. “You won’t know if you can do it until you try.”

  “Okay,” Ha Neul muttered.

  “I’ve shifted control to your side-stick. Go ahead.”

  Ha Neul gripped his side-stick. The old memories came back. His heart pounded, and he breathed heavily. He felt a heavy weight pressed against his chest, and he sweated.

  He pushed the plane into a steep dive.

  Bon Hwa pressed the priority button, regained control of the plane, and pulled it up to a level flight.

  “Ha Neul, remember what I taught you,” Bon Hwa said. “Imagine the plane landing safely. Imagine you are the pilot who lands the plane without trouble.”

  Ha Neul imagined himself at the controls of a plane.

  “What is the weather like in your perfect flight?” Bon Hwa asked.

  “It’s good,” Ha Neul muttered.

  “Tell me more,” said Bon Hwa.

  “There’s no rain and no wind resistance. The sun is behind me, not in my eyes. There’s enough light for me to see ahead.”

  “Perfect conditions for a perfect landing. Think of the runway.”

  Ha Neul forced himself to see a runway in the distance.

  “What is it like?”

  “Long, straight, paved. Hah, better than the airstrip in China.”

  “Are there any vehicles or aircraft in the way? Is it clear for landing?”

  “It’s clear for landing.”

  “Approach the runway,” Bon Hwa urged. “Gently point the nose to the runway. Lower the landing gear. Check your speed. Check your altitude . . .”

  Ha Neul imagined landing the plane smoothly. He imagined the sun’s warmth on his face as he walked unharmed to the airport terminal.

  He breathed normally again and sighed in relief.

  “Good, you are learning to visualize. I used the technique when infiltrating the American Zone,” Bon Hwa said. “You can do it, but you’ve got to learn to do it without my coaching. I can’t be with you all of the time.”

  Ha Neul nodded.

  Bon Hwa said, “It won’t be long until we reach Onsong. You’ll see your parents in no time.”

  Ha Neul’s mother wore a blue blouse made of Chinese polyester. The blouse symbolized her family’s rise in wealth and songbun. Ordinary Koreans wore clothes made of vinylon, the shiny synthetic fibre made from limestone, anthracite, and polyvinyl alcohol. Vinylon was a stiff, coarse fabric that deformed and shrank easily.

  Mother’s family originally had Hostile songbun because they owned land before the Fatherland Liberation War. The government exiled them to a dirt-poor farm near China. The location was a punishment intended to prevent them from escaping to the South. However, it became an unintended blessing during the Arduous March, when local authority collapsed. Her father earned a small fortune by smuggling Chinese goods to sell to the Elite. He bribed several state officials to change his songbun records from Hostile to Core, a difficult task when three state offices kept songbun records and auditors cross-checked them to find fraud. Mother continued the smuggling business, though she switched to Russian goods during the War of Chinese Aggression.

  Mother asked Ha Neul, “Did you have any, uh, problems concentrating on your training?”

  Ha Neul paused before answering, “No.”

  Mother grimaced. “You must overcome your fear. Our family has toiled to better itself. My father saved thousands of won to give us Core songbun. We finally got meat in our rations.”

  Ha Neul nodded and looked at the photo of his maternal grandfather wearing a green hanbok and smiling as he held up a tin of pork.

  “You will become the first Korean to fly into space,” Mother said.

  “Uh, wasn’t Yi So Yeon the first Korean in space?” Ha Neul said.

  “Don’t mention that Southern snake again!” Mother scolded. “She was a puppet who rode with the Americans and Russians. You will be the first free Korean to fly in space. Dear Leader will pose for a photo with you, and our songbunwill be raised to Elite. We’ll finally be allowed to live in Pyongyang. We’ll get an apartment with its own washroom, and it might even have a flush toilet.”

  Mother’s voice grew excited. “Our daily food ration will increase to three hundred grams per person! A whole one hundred grams of that will be meat! We’ll get two grams of sugar on national holidays! Imagine that!”

  The lights in their apartment flickered and blacked out. They relit a few seconds later.

  “And in Pyongyang, we’ll get electricity for eighteen hours per day,” Mother continued. “So much depends on you succeeding in our country’s first space mission! Ha Neul, you cannot fail!”

  Ha Neul’s father, who had been sitting with his newspaper, stood up. “Son, think of the rewards of being photographed with Dear Leader when you return.”

  Father pointed at a photograph of Dear Leader surrounded by
vinylon factory workers. Father stood three paces behind Dear Leader.

  “It is a great day when Dear Leader poses for a photograph with you. Because my father was born in the South, I inherited Wavering songbun, but after Dear Leader posed for a photo with me and the other workers, my songbunincreased to Core. Then I could finally marry your mother.”

  Father was an accountant at a vinylon factory. The factory managers enriched themselves by embezzling and using the funds to smuggle Russian electronics into Korea. Father enriched himself by taking bribes to cover the managers’ thefts. Since he and the managers added a small portion of their smuggling profits into the factory’s income, their factory seemed like the most productive vinylon factory in Korea. Thus Dear Leader came to congratulate the workers and their bosses, and everyone’s songbun went up.

  All of Ha Neul’s relatives had done desperate things to improve their songbun. Now it was his turn.

  Like all Korean families, they had Dear Leader’s portrait hanging on the wall. Ha Neul felt Dear Leader’s piercing eyes stare into his mind. Dear Leader could see his fear and disloyalty.

  Ha Neul sweated and felt his stomach churn.

  The lights went out for the evening.

  ONE MONTH BEFORE LAUNCH DATE:

  A grey-haired man with eyeglasses climbed out of Chollima 1’s crew module and walked to Flight Director Jang.

  “Comrade Communications Engineer Hong,” Jang said, “can the Chollima play the song?”

  Hong shrugged. “We may have a problem, Comrade Flight Director. The Chinese didn’t complete the spaceship before they were, uh, removed. We’ve finished their work, but we still have trouble with the on-board broadcasting system. The radio uplink from the ground to the broadcasting system is erratic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Jang grunted. “If necessary, can the cosmonaut manually activate the player and broadcast the song to Earth?”

  Hong smiled proudly. “That part of the system works. I built the on-board playback mechanism.”

  “Well, at least we Koreans can build a tape recorder,” Jang said. “We may have to depend on Cosmonaut Lee to broadcast the song. Let’s go and see how the flight simulation is going.”