When we were preparing for our performance in America, I had hired Kim Myoung-su to teach us Korean music and dance. She was a graduate of the Martha Graham School and was active in the US. She had learned ballet as a child and modern dance in college, and after graduating had apprenticed in Korean dances such as seungmu, salpuri, and taepyeongmu. With her knowledge of Korean rhythms and traditional courtyard narratives, she had helped make our courtyard play in New York a success. For our “reunification gut” performance in Japan, Cho Seong-wu invited her to help make that event a success as well. She and I worked closely together for another six months there, during which our friendly relationship turned into a romantic one.
When the Japan performance was over, our colleagues worried that we’d be arrested as soon as we returned to South Korea. We put our heads together and decided it would be safer for Kim Myoung-su to go back first, as all she was guilty of was helping us with choreography. I would follow after a good interval of time. When she arrived in Korea, everything seemed quiet. Later I heard that she wasn’t taken in for interrogation, but asked to come to a downtown café to answer some questions from a CIA agent. That was the extent of her troubles.
I emerged from the basement of the ANSP headquarters and went home to Gwangju for the first time in a year. Hong Hee-yun greeted me warmly as if nothing had happened. But the next day, when the children had gone to school and we were alone, she informed me that she knew about me and Kim Myoung-su. She said she’d been contemplating divorce for the past year, and wanted to focus her energies on the children: our daughter Yeo-jeong was still in elementary school, but our son Ho-jun was a middle-school student and entering the sensitive waters of adolescence.
I told her the honest truth about Kim Myoung-su. The rumor confirmed, disappointment and devastation deepened on her face. I felt like the world’s biggest fool—or maybe it was closer to despair, a sense that things had played out beyond my control. It wasn’t in me to make dramatic denials, and had she wanted a temporary separation, with me retreating into the countryside alone to write for six months, I would have been up for it. But now that she had reached a decision, after so much worrying and suffering over a man who was always wandering about and unable to be a responsible husband to one woman, she didn’t want to change her mind.
The children were very happy to have me in the house after my long absence. Hong Hee-yun stopped talking to me and wordlessly gave me my meals before retreating into the bedroom alone. Soon I couldn’t bear it any longer and accepted her proposal. I should have tried harder to understand her. I knew that giving me the silent treatment was the only way she could control her feelings of betrayal and anger and resentment, but I was weak.
We agreed that the proceeds from my most lucrative work, Jang Gil-san, would go to the family, and I would move out. Hong Hee-yun got the divorce paperwork and we filled it out before going to the courts together. The judge reviewed our papers in a dry, bureaucratic fashion, confirmed that we both consented to the divorce, and registered our application. Throughout the whole process he spoke down to us in banmal, the informal form of Korean, which left me barely able to suppress my anger. Hong revealed her own anger in a consoling way by saying, as we left the building: “That’s how they let us know what they really think of us.”
Before moving out again, I went to the public baths with my son Ho-jun. He was grown now, and I didn’t have to wash him anymore like I did when he was little. I explained to him as we walked down the street together that his mother and I were parting and that he needed to protect his sister and his mother now. Ho-jun had had little patience as a child. My son asked if I was really leaving, and whether he would ever see me again. I said that I was going to live apart from them but would visit from time to time. I also told him that I loved both him and his sister.
As I packed a few of my things, Hong Hee-yun said she would send me the rest along with my books when I knew for sure where I’d be living. She tried to seem indifferent but when I looked back at the house before turning at the end of the alley, I saw that she had come to the gate and was watching me. That’s how I left my family. It was 1986, the summer of our fifteenth year of marriage.
A month later, the painter Hong Seong-dam contacted me. He was such a close friend that, at home, my children called him Uncle. Seong-dam took down my new address, and a moving van arrived that evening. All of my books, notes, albums, and furniture had been carefully packed; Hee-yun was ever the perfectionist. I was seeing Seong-dam off at the entrance to my apartment building when he suddenly grabbed my arm and burst into tears, saying that he thought it was only a marital spat and how could I do this to my family. After he left and I was back inside, putting my things away, I noticed that Hee-yun had cut her image out of all our framed photos and albums. That gave me pause for a long time. She so wanted to be erased from my memory, and now I had to begin living a new life.
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1 This is the title of the new English edition. The original title was Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age.
2
Prison I
There was another month of interrogations when the Agency for National Security Planning handed me over to the Prosecutor’s Office in mid-May, after which I was finally able to take a breather in the detention center. I’d been arrested as soon as I got off the plane on April 27, 1993, and already I was entering my third month as a detainee. Prison life so far had consisted of being summoned immediately after breakfast to be handcuffed and have my arms and legs bound for good measure with rope, in preparation for transport to the Prosecutor’s Office along with other detainees for more questioning. Though I was already familiar with the route, which led from Seoul Detention Center past the Seoul National University of Education intersection and up the hill towards the Prosecutor’s Office, everything looked different through the grille covering the bus windows. The crowds waiting to cross the street and the young people taking smoking breaks in front of office buildings looked like scenes from a movie, like they lived in some other world that I could never be a part of.
The prosecutors went over every line in my statement for the ANSP, trying to squeeze out as many allegations as possible. I mostly answered yes to all their questions, but sometimes they went too far. Around the time the ANSP was nearly finished with their interrogation, a night-shift investigator came to see me. He said he had a favor to ask and presented me with pen and paper. He wanted me to write down general information on certain activists in the opposition group, the National Association for Democratic Activism (Jeonminryeon). With his short stature and soft voice, I couldn’t help thinking that he would have made a great elementary school teacher. I asked him what he was going to do with the information, and he said it was just for himself, a souvenir. The request was so unusual that it threw me off a bit, since I knew so little about them that I couldn’t recall a single name. But then I remembered seeing a few activists profiled in a newsmagazine when I was living in New York: Lee Bu-young, a former reporter with a gentle demeanor and a strong intellect; Kim Geun-tae, a democratic youth group organizer with firm principles but generous in his leadership; and Chang Ki-pyo, who had quick political reflexes and a deep understanding of mainstream activism. I wrote down a couple of lines for each person, but the investigator pushed for fuller profiles. I refused, as the official interrogation was over and I was only waiting at that point to be taken to the Prosecutor’s Office. The mild-mannered investigator badgered me for a long time before giving up. But when I got to the Prosecutor’s Office, I found that this “souvenir” had been entered into my statement as part of a nonexistent interview with the North Koreans during my visit. I forcefully objected to this fraud.
The prosecutor became irritated at my tone.
—You’ve said worse things on record, so why do you care? You told them Korea has a thousand nuclear warheads or something.
—I said that because I didn’t want to see two countries of the same nation anni
hilate each other. And everything I said is public knowledge and printed in newspapers.
—It’s still minor compared to what you’re really being accused of.
My North Korean visit was being milked by the prosecution so that they could wield every last statute of the National Security Act against me. Moreover, the simple fact that I had been spokesperson of the Pan-Korea Alliance for Reunification was being interpreted as my founding a terrorist organization under North Korean orders.
Exhausted, I gave in. Fine, execute me, that’s what you really want. I didn’t learn until much later, during my trial, that writing these character profiles fell under the National Security Act’s “dissemination of secrets” statute, constituting the clearest evidence of espionage.
My days consisted of three meals and up to one visitor and attorney’s consultation a day, plus an hour of exercise. I had a team of three lawyers headed by Park Sung-kwi, who took care of my welfare in the detention center and kept my family and colleagues informed of any progress. I got to know Park Sungkwi when he tapped me as a witness for the publisher Na Byung-sik, who had printed my Gwangju book and was later arrested for his publication of Hanguk minjungsa (A People’s History of Korea). Park Sung-kwi initially had nothing to do with political activism but was a loyal and trustworthy friend from Na’s home in Jeolla Province. Park didn’t really have political leanings despite the cases he took, and though sharp as a tack when it came to defending clients, he knew so little of the activist sphere that I had to explain to him who everyone was. No lawyer in his right mind wanted to take on a National Security Act case, as there was almost no way to win against the state and it only hurt your reputation. Park however was steadfast and did everything by the book, qualities that never changed the entire time I was detained. My new wife, Kim Myoung-su, who had remained in the States, had hired Park after Na Byungsik’s recommendation and paid his fees on my behalf.
Another lawyer on my team, Han Seung-heon, was the first to come running to demand an interview when I was arrested by the ANSP. He was a famous human rights lawyer and later headed the Board of Audit and Inspection during Kim Dae-jung’s administration. Han took on National Security Act cases of every magnitude and had even been arrested in court by the military dictatorship. He specialized in Korean Japanese defendants with mainland connections, who had been visiting Korea for study or tourism and ended up falsely accused as spies under the act. He volunteered for my defense and even cracked a joke at our first interview: “The National Security Act is unbeatable, which is why everyone calls me the Sure Loser. But at least I might get you a lighter sentence.” We both laughed.
Park Won-soon, who would later become mayor of Seoul, also aided me pro bono. I knew him from before his Institute for Korean Historical Studies days. Two months into his freshman year at Seoul National University, upperclassmen brought him to his first protest. The protest leaders gave rousing speeches to get everyone fired up and then advanced toward the school gates with the lower-year students positioned at the front, as per tradition. Park was among them, of course. As soon as they started to move, the riot police, who’d been waiting for them at the school gates, cut into the crowd and threw the students at the front into police buses. These fifty or so students were expelled to set an example. Park Won-soon had been hoping to declare as a law major but found himself kicked out of school with a criminal record instead. Reflecting on it later, he had to ask himself why he’d joined the protest in the first place and why he had to be expelled. Deciding he needed to learn more about history, he entered Dankook University as a history major and later took the bar and became a prosecutor. Not long after, he opened his own legal practice. He took on human rights cases and founded the Institute for Korean Historical Studies and the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, as well as the Beautiful Foundation. He stayed with me for a time when I was in exile in Berlin and New York, unconcerned about what others might have thought.
Lawyers like Han Seung-heon and Park Won-soon wrote books about how the National Security Act went against democratic principles and human rights and called for its abolishment. The ANSP would quote Socrates during interrogations, saying “Harsh is the law, but it is the law,” whenever the subject of the National Security Act came up. But the act still persisted through the introduction of two democratically elected administrations. This warped framework branded anyone speaking out against it as a “North Korea–loving commie.” Both the United Nations and the US State Department have recommended striking down the act for years, on grounds that its statutes provide too much scope for abuse. The excuse of a North Korean threat seems outdated, now that South Korea has far outpaced its neighbor in terms of political and economic success. If anything, repealing the act would further highlight South Korea’s advanced democracy compared to the system in the North. Current criminal codes dealing with national security are sufficient, and this separate act needs to be struck down to prevent political abuse in the future.
Han Seung-heon and Park Won-soon each attended the trial, but Park Sung-kwi was the one who visited me every week. My literary friends also came, and politicians visited under special privileges. Many who came to the detention center were turned away, because each detainee was allowed only one visitor a day.
If I didn’t have anything else to do in the afternoons, I’d be called up by a special division that used to undertake the political conversion of leftist activists but by that time simply managed the political detainees. When National Assembly legislators came to meet me, they usually allowed us the privilege of using this special division’s office. A guard with a three-hibiscus insignia was in charge. He was said to be a rigidly devout Protestant and an elder of some church. The first time we met, he asked me to allow him a moment to pray for my soul. I’d grown up in a Christian household, so this imposition didn’t bother me. I even mumbled “Amen” after him when he was done. When I was sentenced to life after my first trial, he clasped both my hands and genuinely tried to comfort me, calling upon God to give me strength, and I was sincerely moved, even though I hadn’t been fearing or despairing of the future—to be honest, I couldn’t at the time fathom having to spend the rest of my life in prison.
If the government had let me write while detained, my sentence would have been much more bearable. I had nothing to fear as long as I had pen and paper. But that was wishful thinking on my part.
The Hankyoreh newspaper printed an op-ed on June 29, 1993, describing the international movement led by PEN chapters around the world to free me from jail. By August, I had heard that a committee devoted to my release had indeed been founded, consisting of 412 artists, politicians, and activists. They also petitioned for the repeal of the National Security Act, the pardoning of conscientious objectors, and the right for political prisoners to write and engage in activism. My record of my North Korean visit, Sarami salgo isseonne (They’re Just like Us), was also published. The 60th PEN International Congress was held in Spain from September 6 to 12 under the theme “Roads of Literature.” There, the representatives unanimously voted on a resolution to campaign for my release. They declared that the Korean government needed to stop persecuting me with the National Security Act for what had been a sincere effort toward peaceful reunification.
I had the absurd expectation early on that I would be allowed to write in detention. Had that been the case, then my cell would not have been a place of confinement but a space of unfettered imagination, free from the tedious distractions of daily life. After all, look at all the classics, from both East and West, that were written in prison. But decades of military rule had left Korea’s prisons devoid of paper and pens, let alone freedom to write. Even letters to our family had to be written on single sheets of regulation stationery that folded into envelopes. We would fill them to the margins with the aid of arrows and tiny writing. Any paper we wanted for statements or appeals had to be bought, a ream of twenty red-lined pages at a time, and if you ran out, you had to purchase more separa
tely. We were given a single Monami ballpoint pen with the guard’s name stamped on it. This meant that if the pen was discovered elsewhere, the guard would be held responsible. The only time we could use the pen was from after lunch until the guards changed shifts in the evening. The pens were then retrieved and locked away in a desk drawer in the guards’ room. Writing was strictly forbidden beyond letters home and documents submitted to the courts. I had to give up my daydream of our new civilian government reforming the prisons and granting us the freedom to write. Once I was transferred to prison, I went on a twenty-day hunger strike for the right to write, but to no avail, or at least, not in any meaningful way. It was true that I’d been more of an activist than a writer during my four years of exile after visiting North Korea, but they understood very well that preventing a writer from writing was a punishment in itself.
The guards’ room at the entrance of each cell block was like a gatehouse built into the corridor. The guards, or corrections officers, took shifts in there. The rank insignia of the regular corrections officers bore two leaves, while the senior corrections officers’ insignia bore three. The ones on the day shift during the week were all senior guards. The ones who fetched us for visitors’ meetings or took us out to the yard for exercise were regular guards, who also took the night shifts. A senior guard oversaw an entire block and was assisted by a group of regular guards. Past the block and through the big corridors that connected each block was another small office. This housed the chief inspector, with two hibiscuses on his insignia. One rank below them were the regular inspectors with their single hibiscus. A group of blocks was called a jurisdiction. Each detainee’s cell was referred to by its jurisdiction, block, and cell number, with this number stitched on one side of their uniform and their prisoner number on the other for easy identification. I happened to be locked up with many famous political and white-collar criminals, probably for easier management.
The Prisoner Page 6
