The Prisoner

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  This old man in his seventies was more worried about me than I was about him. I went into the residence, where Pastor Moon told me Chung Kyung-mo would be. As soon as I stepped into the living room, Chung wordlessly raised a hand in greeting but kept his seat. He had earphones on and was concentrating on something. When I asked what he was doing, he put a finger to his lips and handed me an earphone. It was the eighteenth song of Schubert’s, titled “Winterreise Der stürmische Morgen” (“The Stormy Morning”). It begins: “See how the storm has torn apart / Heaven’s gray cloak! Shreds of clouds flit about / In weary strife.” The first song of the cycle is “Gute Nacht” (“Good Night”), which includes the words “A stranger I arrived; a stranger I depart,” depicting the feelings of a man who must leave the woman he loves on a frigid winter’s night to wander alone. As I listened, Chung said, “Isn’t that exactly how we feel?”

  I know that we had all thought long and hard about risking prosecution to visit North Korea, but it was absurd how cool and calm they were acting. As I mentioned earlier, while South Korea insisted on a “community of nations” system and the North pushed its “federation,” these were just words that in the end meant the same thing. Pastor Moon had managed to convince Kim Il-sung that South Korea needed a transitional period because of its particular circumstances, which is why the chairman had retreated a step and come up with his “loose and low-level” federation proposal. Our efforts would later be enshrined in the June 15 North–South Joint Declaration.

  I wish to take a moment here to address the politicians who call this “loose” reunification a sentimental take on the issue. I say to them: Don’t mistake a hypothetical future for an actual one. Kim Il-sung is dead, his successor Kim Jong-il as well, but North Korea is still intact. A political power that has managed to preserve itself for the past half-century cannot be so easily toppled. It’s been twenty years since Kim Il-sung’s death, and we cannot maintain a North Korean policy that relies on simply waiting for the North to implode. It would be a very dangerous situation if it did implode, for then we would be at the mercy of the world’s superpowers, just as we were on Liberation Day when division was foisted upon us, unless we take control of the situation. It is my opinion that, for North and South to survive, we must take ownership and lead the change ourselves.

  After seeing the others off, I spent twenty more days in the North, touring the Paektu, Kumgang, and Myohyang Mountains, and the Tumen River. I also attended the April spring festivities, held around Kim Il-sung’s birthday on April 15.

  ~

  On Kim Il-sung’s birthday, the chairman and his wife Kim Sung-ae invited me and some others to a dinner with Cambodia’s Norodom Sihanouk. The setting was the chairman’s building. Kim was waiting for us in the lobby. At the reception next to the banquet hall, he sat down next to Minister of Armed Forces O Jin-u, with me and Secretary Yun Gi-bok across from them. The Sihanouk couple and Kim Sung-ae were not there yet. The reception area was wide enough for each seat to have its own side table.

  Kim Il-sung pulled no punches. “The Japanese bastards spread rumors of my death several times when I was a resistance fighter. A few years ago, the Western media and newspapers in the South suddenly reported that I was dead, that Comrade O who sits next to me now had shot me, and that the People’s Army had revolted. Long ago, when the May 16 coup happened in the South, one of my people said it was one of our people’s doing, but I didn’t believe it. I told everyone to wait and see. Of course, the new South Korean government became even more hostile to North Korea. I spent my whole life plagued by infighting. When I launched the armed resistance in Manchuria, many of the independence fighters left or broke away when the situation worsened. If they weren’t going to fight, they could at least have stood aside, but they instilled doubt in the minds of young people who were determined to risk their lives, and created conflict among comrades. It wasn’t enough to be nationalists or socialists, they had to draw even more lines among themselves and fight it out. Koreans love dividing themselves so much that if you put two Koreans together they’ll create three parties: my party, your party, and our party.” To his way of thinking, these party schisms were where the enemy had slipped in to create chaos.

  Kim Il-sung finally got to his point. “Pak Hon-yong helped us significantly as the theorist of the Party, but he created much division both inside and outside the country. I’ve fought in armed resistances overseas since I was young, but it must be understood that there are quite a few spies and reactionaries even among those who fought their battles at home rather than abroad. I appointed Pak Hon-yong as my deputy prime minister and introduced him to his wife, but he did not manage the people around him properly. During the war, we held meetings on the move, and each time we changed our lodgings, too. And yet, each time, the American planes would bomb us very precisely where we were. This was how I knew there was a mole in our midst.”

  I had the impression that he regretted executing his political rival Pak Hon-yong for being an American spy, this man who had entered the resistance movement from a different angle and was affiliated with a different group. There was a theory among scholars that Kim’s 1953 purge of the former members of the Workers’ Party of South Korea was to shift the blame of war, and the 1956 removal of Kim Tu-bong and others after the August Faction Incident was to avoid political interference by China and the Soviet Union and strengthen his standing. Later, when I talked to Yun I-sang in Berlin about our impressions of Kim Il-sung, he described Chairman Kim as usually displaying a genial demeanor save for a sudden, cruel expression that would cross his face if something displeased him, his gaze turning as ferocious as a tiger’s, a recollection that made us think about Kim’s two faces. It was thanks to this hidden cruelty that he could efficiently kill the many competitors who had formerly been his comrades.

  Kim Il-sung affirmed that the people loved him very much. He went on, “In Manchuria there were other Korean regiments carrying out armed resistance against the Japanese whose leaders were more experienced than I was, like our comrades Kim Chaek or Choe Hyon. I had many shortcomings, but my comrades encouraged me and tolerated me, which is how I ended up with the great responsibility I have today.”

  The Sihanouks and Kim Sung-ae arrived. Yun Gi-bok introduced me to them. The couple spoke a few words in greeting to me and continued to speak in French for the rest of the evening, aided by an interpreter who sat on a folding chair between them.

  King Sihanouk had received a French education from a young age and attended university in France. He was eighteen when he ascended to the Cambodian throne and also served as president, premier, speaker of the house, UN representative, and head of the provisional government in exile, making him one of the most titled kings in history. During World War II he was inspired by the Japanese to declare Cambodia’s independence from France, but when the French returned after the war, he waited until their defeat in Indochina in 1953. He was young but benevolent and wise. His wife, born Paule-Monique Izzi, was Cambodian-French-Italian and his sixth marriage. Sihanouk was outwardly restrained and for fifteen years ruled with a soft touch that spared Cambodia the disorder that reigned in some of the other Southeast Asian countries. His neutral stance regarding the Vietnam War did not sit well with the US. While North Vietnam did not support Cambodia’s communist Khmer Rouge, he overlooked Vietnamese communists using eastern Cambodia as a secret base of operations. He was deposed in a coup d’état staged by General Lon Nol with the aid of the US in 1970. Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge had used Sihanouk to gain the backing of the Cambodian people and discarded him once they were done. The king initially fled to China, until Kim Il-sung granted him exile in North Korea. He went back and forth between China and North Korea, became interested in directing and producing movies, and made a film with North Korea’s help. He regained his crown in 1993 after peace talks in Paris with the Cambodian coalition government. A happy ending; but the road to postcolonialism for the prince of this small Asian country had been long and hard
.

  Kim Sung-ae wore a modest gray hanbok and looked like an ordinary, elderly housewife. It was said that she was never mentioned or shown in North Korean media. As a People’s Army soldier during the war, she had come down as far as the Nakdong River front but had fallen behind and marched a thousand li to rejoin her troops.

  Queen Monique was a middle-aged, mixed-race woman who wore a gentle smile the whole time as she looked from one speaker to another.

  King Sihanouk was a small, stout man with slender fingers. His large eyes made him seem like a sensitive soul. He had lived in China since losing his throne but spent his springs and autumns in North Korea. Kim Il-sung, who once served as vice chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, had many close friends among third-world leaders. He was helping the unfortunate Sihanouk like he would a younger brother.

  A peaceful resolution to the Cambodian problem was being discussed in Geneva at the time, and naturally our conversation arrived at this topic. Sihanouk was worried that Pol Pot and Heng Samrin were leaning on their respective backers, China and Russia, and were refusing to come to terms despite his own mediation. He wondered if Chairman Kim could step in to mediate as an elder statesman. Kim responded:

  “The smaller the country, the harsher the sectarian conflicts. These leaders rely on the strength of powerful countries because they do not trust the power of their people. I suffered because of sectarianism for forty years. There are many countries in this world and many nations, and of course each wants to live in its own way. Koreans must live in the Korean way, Cambodians in the Cambodian way. We cannot live like the Americans or the Soviets. I hope for good results from these talks, but the people must come together if Cambodia’s problems are truly to be solved. These problems will not be solved by someone else telling them what to do. But do bring those two to me, Your Majesty. If I succeed in mediating peace, Your Majesty must buy me a drink.”

  He then consoled Sihanouk. “I visited Indonesia once when President Sukarno was alive. We took a detour through Cambodia then as well. Indonesia had many poor people and beggars. But under your rule Cambodia was prosperous in comparison. Any country is livable if the rulers are not greedy and they work hard with the people. The problem is that strong countries do not allow them to do that.”

  Sihanouk dabbed at his eyes with a white handkerchief. Queen Monique looked moist-eyed too.

  I had visited Paektu Mountain, the highest mountain on the peninsula and considered sacred in Korean mythology, a few days before and could still recall the awe I felt while looking upon the endless Kaema Plateau rising from the mist. I spoke of how the peaks beyond the lake in the crater were Chinese land, so we could not stand on that side to look down at Manchuria, but it was moving to see, from the North Korean side, how our land flowed from the top of this mountain to beyond what the eye could see.

  Kim Il-sung began to talk about borders. “Our borders were decided with China after the war. The trickiest part was Paektu Mountain. The border problem came up not long after China’s revolution, so it must have been around 1950. We had already resolved this problem during the Joseon era with the Qing. A border marker was supposed to have been placed on Paektu Mountain, but when I ordered a search for it, we found that it had been left somewhere in the foothills of Nampo Taesan instead. The mandarin in charge of setting the stone had obviously gone no further on his palanquin. Hiking into the primordial wilderness would have been too much work for him, so he just tossed the stone there and left. China knew what had happened, yet still insisted on the misplaced stone as the basis for our border. There was no talking sense into them. Zhou Enlai and Peng Dehuai said they would come. Zhou was, of course, not someone you could talk sense into. I was in hospital at the time, and the two of them came to visit me there. I brought up the border problem. They didn’t want to speak too long with a sick person. We decided then and there to divide the Amlok River in half, with the northern half on their side and the southern one on ours, Paektu Mountain and all. The Tumen is a mere stream upriver, but the northern part of it became China and the southern, Korea.”

  Sihanouk turned the topic to health, and Kim had this to say: “What other secret can there be to good health, except to follow a good routine and be optimistic? People like us are young at sixty and sixty at ninety, so I’m not even sixty yet. There are many people older than ninety in the countryside. Maybe if I’ve lived so long it’s because of all the rumors of my death when I was a resistance fighter. The Japanese supposedly arrested me, assassinated me. They put my face on Wanted posters. But if you want a revolution, you have to be optimistic, like the people.”

  Indeed, Kim Il-sung’s teeth were straight and white and he had hardly a wrinkle on his face. He was slightly hard of hearing in his right ear, so his assistants talked a little louder and each person in official meetings with him was given a small speaker in front of their seat. But normally, guests would be seated right in front of him.

  He discussed Korean reunification for a bit with Sihanouk, then handed me a photograph. “This was taken last week. I was in the garden one morning when I saw a white bird I’d never seen before, sitting on the grass. I thought it was a pigeon at first, but it was a white magpie. I had my aides quickly fetch a camera and take a picture.”

  Just as he said, the photograph showed a white magpie, long-tailed and nimble-bodied, sitting underneath a pine tree.

  “It flew there twice. I asked Hong Ki-mun if there was any precedent. There are several such instances in The Veritable Records of King Sejong. It’s an augur for a country’s good fortune. Maybe our countries will be one again. You take good care of that photograph, Writer Hwang. Be that white magpie that brings the happy news of reunification to our nation.”

  During my time in North Korea, Kim Il-sung invited me to several personal meetings where he spoke of many things. He said that he was glad my family was to join me in Germany the next year, and broached the subject of Pastor Moon’s sentence being commuted from life imprisonment to ten years. “That National Security Act … Without it, you would be much safer … I don’t think the people of the South feel ready. I met Pastor Moon twice. Not two hours in all. How much of my ‘red dye’ could have rubbed off on him? Sending an old man to prison for ten years is a death sentence. Pastor Moon is a man of God and a patriot. We need people like him to stay around for a long time. I even asked if there was anything I could do for him. The cold is not good for old people. I should send him some herbal medicine.”

  The student protester Lim Su-kyung had come to Pyongyang to represent South Korean college students at the World Festival of Youth and Students. Chairman Kim spoke regretfully of what had happened to her since. “Lim is a true daughter of the nation and a hero. I tried to convince her not to cross back through the Demilitarized Zone. My officers went to her and asked how old revolutionaries like them could sit by while a young female student walked into the maw of a tiger. She answered that if they didn’t let her, she would jump off the thirtieth floor of her hotel. No one could eat properly while she was on her hunger strike in the DMZ.”

  He talked about his imprisonment for agitating against Japan’s building of the Gilhoe Line railway during his days at Yuwen Middle School, and how lucky he was that his sentence had been shorter than that of other comrades, who were imprisoned for decades, if not executed. He spoke of the good and bad things about prison. “I’ve met so many people that I can read their fates in their faces. Writer Hwang is a man of multiple talents and he’ll do great things. You must use your talents for the good of the nation. Look how Yi Kwang-su’s early talent gave so much hope to the youth of Korea. Although he sold out to the Japanese bastards later on, which harmed our nation. Writer Hwang must write many masterpieces, even after reunification. I used to read a lot during my instruction tours of the country, but now my eyesight is failing and I can’t read for long. If there is a book I really want to read, I have a pair of actors record it for me. I listen to these recordings when I can. I also have the letters o
n my documents enlarged.”

  I’d heard from an aide that Kim Il-sung had listened to the whole of Jang Gil-san in a recording and had praised it. Kim Il-sung had read numerous books since he was young and, like revolutionaries in other countries, had experience in the arts himself, which naturally gave him an interest in literature. He was fluent in Japanese and Chinese and could speak some Russian. His books displayed in a museum of the revolution were above all translations into Japanese and Chinese. He seemed to have read mostly Japanese books on Western thought early on.

  “The first time I was introduced to such books was in Manchuria, when my father gave me Japanese translations about the October Revolution and the Paris Commune. I also read Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and was moved by it. I didn’t read many novels at first, but I read as many books on modern thought as I could. I left Wusong for Huadian, where the nationalists had founded a two-year school called Hwasungeuisuk to educate young people. It had about sixty students. Among them were two twenty-years-olds who were attending on the recommendation of the resistance fighters. Some of the students went on to fight alongside me. One of my father’s friends in Huadian lent me plenty of books, which I then discussed with my comrades. The Communist Manifesto, Capital, Wage Labor and Capital, I read all of those then. My reading expanded in earnest when I entered Yuwen Middle School. I was always picked as the librarian at student council. Yuwen had the most progressive library at the time. The works of Lenin on the question of colonized nations and imperialism were especially helpful. The book club created at the time became the start of the Down-with-Imperialism Union. I spent all night devouring books like Maxim Gorky’s The Mother and The Song of the Stormy Petrel, and Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered. I read Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Alexei Tolstoy’s The Road to Calvary. I read Dostoevsky and Shakespeare as well, but while they were great writers, from the perspective of the people, they were reactionaries. We couldn’t get hold of any books when we were guerrilla fighters in the mountains, so we made a mimeographed newspaper where we’d read the writings of our colleagues. We had someone in the Korean villages keep their copies of the Dong-a Ilbo and Japanese papers, which we consumed in fortnightly stacks. Comrades who had gone on missions to Seoul sometimes returned with books and magazines. We were so eager to read anything in our language that we absorbed every word, even the ads. I once read a short story by some writer, the title had something to do with toes. I was infuriated for our people when I finished it. The writer was in Seoul, so he obviously would not have known about us fighting in the middle of snowstorms, but surely he must have seen other people suffering around him. You must not make literature or art of that sort.”