I told him I had actually been meeting with professors, intellectuals, and artists in New York, and that we were interested in communicating with Asian immigrant youth from China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Japan. Yoon Han Bong offered to introduce to me some youths who had been in Binari and a couple of people who used to be in Young Koreans United until they grew old enough to be moved to One Nation. “We need you to do your work. These are good, hardworking people. If you build a house, at least its traces are sure to endure, no matter what hardship befalls it.”
Observing the LA Riots that broke out not long after I had arrived in the States, I realized that the first order of business was to forge sociopolitical unity among the Korean community. In a sense, this was a bigger problem for the Korean American community than reunification. I came to think during my meetings with the Koreans in various spheres that helping 1.5- and second-generation Koreans establish their identities was crucial, that this had to be at the center of social activism in Korean American society. Not only that, we needed to have some kind of solidarity that extended to other East Asian youth. I created a committee chaired by Dr. Chee to establish the Institute for East Asian Culture, with me as the head. We had an opening and sign-hanging ceremony and hosted talks between youths every weekend. Kim Jong-ho, who led the Philadelphia branch of Young Koreans United, was the director, and two second-generation Korean women worked there full-time. They were highly educated housewives who took turns helping out. We decided to publish two monthly newsletters—“South-North-overseas” in Korean and Mother Bamboo in English—which would connect Koreans in all three territories.
In August of 1992, the Third Pan-Korean National Conference opened in Pyongyang. But without a passport, I was unable to leave the US and could only follow the conference secondhand. Around October, I finally heard the news that unification negotiations were in progress between the LA-based West Coast division of the Pan-Korea Alliance for Reunification associated with the North American Association for Reunification of the Fatherland and the East Coast–based Alliance associated with the Young Koreans United/One Nation. They wanted me, as the spokesperson for the whole Alliance, to arbitrate, which was why I went to the meeting for unification in LA on October 23. But just one day before, Young Koreans United/One Nation suddenly proclaimed the disbanding of the East Coast part of the Alliance without giving so much as a reason. Having no other choice, we spent a nervous month reorganizing some East Coast Koreans through New York’s Reuniting Dispersed Families Committee and managed to come to a “unification” of sorts at the American headquarters Alliance general meeting on December 5 in LA. But we failed to pass a resolution on the matter of the general headquarters at the Alliance’s New York meeting. I submitted my resignation as spokesperson, via the European branch, to the overseas headquarters and general headquarters in Japan.
I was contacted around this time by Joo Dong-jin, who said he lived in New York. I couldn’t recall who he was by his voice or name alone but recognized him on sight when we met at a Korean restaurant in Flushing. He had been a film director and owner of Yeonbang Movies, the company that produced the dramatization of my short story “The Road to Sampo.” The final scene had initially shown Baek-hwa being sent off on the train and the two laborers getting on their own train in a snowstorm. Then, when the censors objected, Joo changed the ending to the laborers seeing Sampo developed into a tourist attraction and cheering, in a kind of “New Village Movement” propaganda ending. This had bothered me for a long time.
As Joo Dong-jin spoke of what happened, he added that the censorship and political harassment had been so harsh that even he, who had filmed over 150 films in Korea, was forced to leave the country. What most complicated matters was his eldest brother in the North. He, too, worked in movies: Ju Dong-in was the head of the state film studio and served as a standing committee member in the Joseon Writers’ Alliance in the 1960s. Mere coincidence; but the fact of the brothers being in the same business was enough to rattle South Korean intelligence. Joo immigrated to the US, where his wife found work managing a shopping mall and he set up a film export company, called Cinema Empire. He produced the first North–South Korean film festival in New York as executive committee chair, with great success.
Now he was negotiating with the US State Department to produce a seminar and film festival toward a North–South film collaboration. He asked after the Jang Gil-san movie dramatization project, and I told him what had happened in Berlin. Sounding determined, he proposed to represent me as my agent to produce the North–South collaboration himself. Every few days or so after that, he visited me at home or at the Institute for East Asian Culture offices in Manhattan to update me on his progress. Considerable interest was expressed in South Korea, on the part of former Korea Times CEO Jang Gang-jae, Samsung, movie production houses, and broadcasters. Then he informed me that the film actor Kim Bo-ae was coming to New York to sign for the South Korean side. Kim Bo-ae, wife of film actor Kim Jin-kyu, represented Samsung for the agreement. She also happened to be the sister-in-law of Lee Duck-hwa, the man who had once sent someone to Berlin to negotiate with me.
It was the day of the seminar and film festival, but this fell around the time that South Korea, about to enter a presidential election period, was preparing for a “wind from the North”—a local term for how the situation up there can influence the outcome of an election. I learned later that Jung Hyoung-geun, who led the ANSP investigative branch, was preparing what would later be called the Lee Sun-sil spy incident, as the South Korean ruling party had determined that having good relations with North Korea would not benefit them in the elections. All events and contact related to North Korea were canceled. Therefore, many South Korean filmmakers and actors reached LA but didn’t make the connecting flight to New York, with only Kim Bo-ae flying over directly from Seoul. The North had sent the vice chair of their state film studio, a male and a female actor, and screenwriter Ri Chun-gu. I got Joo Dong-jin’s call and had dinner with them. Ri was very glad to see me. The deputy minister of the propaganda ministry, who headed all of North Korea’s entertainment and film, was not at that dinner but transmitted the news that Kim Jong-il had already signed off on the North–South collaboration over Jang Gil-san. Kim Bo-ae signed for the movie companies in the South, and a state film company was the signatory of the North, with Joo’s Cinema Empire producing.
Myoung-su confirmed through her mother in Korea that the money for the rights had been transferred to my bank account. I had been concerned that my period of exile would last a long time, or I’d need funds for the Institute for East Asian Culture, and had requested 200 million won from North and South producers, which according to the 800:1 conversion rate at the time was about $250,000. The North Koreans hadn’t brought the cash with them this time but promised to send it through the mail in two weeks. Later, the North sent over their share of the fee through their representatives at UN headquarters.
Joo Dong-jin, as my agent, revealed the Jang Gil-san North–South collaboration agreement details to the reporters. Later, when I returned to South Korea and was arrested, the ANSP announced that this contract fee was my payment from the North Korean government for acting as their spy. I called up the actor Kim Bo-ae as a witness. She clearly stated in court: “I left with the express permission of the South Korean government for a collaborative film production. If you wish to rescind that permission now, I will cease working on it.” Before the reporters, I demanded to know how anyone could be paid as a spy and then hold a press conference about said payment; but, according to the National Security Act, any kind of exchange in money or goods with North Korea is illegal, and that includes any measures of hospitality or even the wild ginseng that I had devoured.
One day, the novelist Yi Mun-yol called me saying he was in New York. Despite our political differences, I was lonely, and it had been such a long time since another writer had visited me that I was glad to meet him. I borrowed some cash from an acquaintance who had made their for
tune through shopping malls and went out to Manhattan. My pride demanded that I, as the senior writer, be the one to buy him a drink, even if I was in exile. Yi showed up with the director Yun Ho-jin and the future Korea Theater Association president Jung Jin-su. They were planning the musical The Last Empress and were writing up the play on which it was based, “The fox hunt.” They had come to see some Broadway shows for research.
After we’d had a few, Yi asked when I was coming back to Korea. I said I was biding my time. He talked about the breakdown of the socialist Eastern Bloc and railed against the unreasonable socialist system of North Korea. I listened for a while and said I agreed with him. The North had entered a “system of protest” for stronger unity and regulation as they went through the Cold War, taking them far from the fundamental principles of socialism, and in reality they were a dictatorial system with elements of both socialism and militant fascism. He asked why I’d visited North Korea then, and I repeated my standard answer that “we can’t have true democratization without reunification.” A mature democracy in South Korea would help to spark change in North Korea, and that would open a path to peaceful reunification. I suspected that my previous statements had been twisted by the mainstream press ever since I’d visited North Korea. But this was probably like when a bus driver veers right and the passengers lean left in order to keep their balance. I remember saying then that we should work together to keep our balance.
When he was drunk, Yi began talking about his father who had fled to the North. He had tried to track him down several times through the authorities. He wondered if I could find out anything more about him. I had an idea and asked if he were coming back to New York soon; he said he’d be in Washington for a week before returning to fly back to Korea. I told him to call me then. I knew a Korean American who ran a travel agency-cum-“dispersed family reunion service” in LA, but I was also in contact with the North Korean UN delegation in nearby New York, so I called them instead. I faxed them the specifics of what Yi knew about his father and the time period in which he would have gone North. I received a fax and an answer after exactly four days of waiting. The fax contained a simple CV of his father and a description of his relatives, as well as his current address. The North Korean diplomat also disclosed a few more things over the phone.
As scheduled, Yi Mun-yol returned to New York in a week, and this time he bought the drinks. I brought out the fax. I still remember what it said. His father, Yi Won-chul, changed his specialization from agricultural economist to mechanical engineer. This was probably after 1956 when there was a slew of reeducation and political killings, like the Workers’ Party of South Korea incident, and during the time Pyongan Province was undergoing extensive postwar engineering and repairs. Even judging by Yi’s father’s very short CV, the man was an accomplished intellectual. That’s probably why he’d survived. He took a job at some industrial university in Wonsan, remarried, and had five children. There was a long list of the names of Yi Mun-yol’s younger half-siblings and their jobs. Yi stared at the paper for a long time then suddenly bent over as if he were about to collapse, clamped his mouth shut, and began to sob. I couldn’t bear to see him so devastated and had to turn away as I wiped my own tears. A long time after, when he’d regained his composure, he drank another glass and tried to smile. “That old man, my mother knew he had remarried.” I told him about the additional details the North Koreans had shared with me. They said that if he ever visited the North Korean embassy in Beijing, they would allow him to talk to his father over the phone. But I had my own thoughts on that. There was a famous soccer player who’d become a coach; he was in Beijing for an international match when he heard news about his father. He went to the North Korean embassy and cried his eyes out while talking to him on the phone, then illegally visited North Korea to see him. The incident was covered up and he wasn’t arrested, but he was sacked from all official positions. I probably told Yi that this looked like bait thrown by the North Koreans. And I told him in New York, before we parted: “Forgive your father. Back then he was no older than your son is now, a young man who didn’t know enough about the world.”
Three or four days after Yi returned to Korea, I got a phone call from an intelligence consulate officer. No sooner did I pick up than he said in a nasty voice, “Mr. Hwang, don’t you care about what will happen to you when you return to South Korea? Why are you going around telling people to go to North Korea?” I had a bitter moment where I simply declared that I had never said anything of the sort, neither in the past nor would I ever. At the same time it made me want to shrug off this burden of the oppressions of division, both on myself and my art, and just live as an anonymous exile for the remainder of my days. I had been turning down numerous offers from the American government to request asylum, choosing instead to live as a stateless being. But I easily understood Yi Mun-yol’s fear. I hoped he would someday exorcise the ghost of ideology from himself and free himself as a writer.
At the end of that year, Kim Young-sam was elected president. Almost immediately, he expressed a willingness to improve North–South relations, stated that “nation trumps allies,” and claimed that he was “willing to meet with Kim Il-sung any time to discuss matters of our nation.” Bill Clinton’s administration also took power. Among the Korean delegates to his inauguration was National Assembly member Kim Deog-ryong, who sent a mutual acquaintance to say, “We wish to hold a North–South summit and would like to know if Chairman Kim is amenable.” I knew of a Korean American businessman in Philadelphia who visited North Korea to buy raw materials; he agreed to pass on the message. He came back from Pyongyang after ten days and said that he’d been staying at the Koryo Hotel after having passed on the letter when he was suddenly moved to the visitors’ residence in Seojaegol. He ended up having lunch with Kim Il-sung. Chairman Kim gave him his answer verbally. First, the meeting place had to be Beijing. Second, it had to be a closed meeting, at deputy-ministerial level. Third, the topic was to be a North–South summit. Fourth, they wanted to begin negotiations without the Americans knowing about it. I had already been assigned to contact a certain person about the answer, namely Ban Ki-moon, an acquaintance of mine, who was at the South Korean embassy in Washington. He asked me to come to Washington when I told him there had been a response. I said I couldn’t, upon which he said he would think of another way and hung up. The next day, I was told to come to a rendezvous where there were two people waiting for me. One was an intelligence officer I had seen before and the other a diplomat. I passed on to them, in spoken words again, the four points Chairman Kim had proposed. They tilted their heads at the fourth stipulation.
Park Hyoung-seon called me from LA after that. I was surprised to hear his voice. He had been imprisoned with Yoon Han Bong after the National Democratic Youth and Student Alliance incident. He later married Yoon Han Bong’s sister and had asked me to officiate and for the poet Kim Nam-ju to emcee. Park’s younger sister Gi-soon had tragically died from overwork; while a student at Chonnam National University, she had obtained a job at a factory in order to help organize the workers. I created the musical Imeul wihan haengjingok (March for the Beloved) based on a “spiritual marriage” between her and Yoon Sang-won, who had been killed by state forces as part of the citizen’s militia that had taken the provincial administrative building during the Gwangju Democracy Movement. Park said he could not come by New York on that trip and that he had called just to hear my voice. “You should come back, older brother, and write your good works,” he said, adding: “Your brothers and sisters in Gwangju are begging you to return before the May eighteenth anniversary.” Yoon Han Bong had decided to end his ten-year exile and return to South Korea; only later did I learn that he had asked Park to pass that message on to me. He couldn’t bring himself to tell me directly that he was leaving me behind in exile.
The poet Kim Nam-ju called me out of the blue the next day from the Association of Writers for National Literature offices. He, too, wanted to talk about my return t
o Korea. He said that as important as my writing was, my being imprisoned and the activism to get me out of prison would bring international attention to the issue of the National Security Act. After all, there were plenty of other people in the States who could do what I was doing. Later, when conditions improved, I could write a good book in prison. By a strange coincidence, the novelist Choi Ihn-suk visited New York to discuss the movie and came to my house. He announced that the Association of Writers for National Literature was formally asking me to return.
I decided to return to South Korea and began getting my affairs in order. I informed the Pan-Korea Alliance for Reunification overseas headquarters and the European branch of my decision. This was to show them that I had fulfilled my obligations to them and was finishing up. They were extremely upset on my behalf. The director Im Min-sik cried as he said, “You’ve worked hard for us. I’m sorry our own circumstances made it difficult for us to help you. When you’re interrogated over there, blame everything on me. Tell them I made you do it.”
I had expended so much energy in Berlin struggling to stay balanced in the volatile Cold War between North and South Korea that the tension had almost literally broken my back, and in America I felt like the vast continent itself was an enormous entrapping force. When I left Berlin, I had been determined to return to South Korea after setting up the general headquarters for the Alliance, but the realities I faced since coming to the US had turned me cynical and helpless. The fear that my life had become more that of an activist than of an author was also beginning to rear its head.
I wanted to go home. And my home was literature. Even as I wandered the world in a constant fog of anxiety, what I missed most, in moments of clarity, was that home.
I discussed many things with Myoung-su after deciding to return to Korea. She too had realized that we couldn’t sustain our unstable life in a foreign country for too long. It would take about fourteen months after returning to South Korea for the investigation, trial, and sentencing to take their course. We decided that the family would not follow me back until then.
The Prisoner Page 25
