So, on the last day, I was able to go to church openly, humming a hymn. When everyone else piled onto a truck to go home, I was the only one left behind, waiting for some new work to do. When they were all gone, the supervisor called me over.
You know, if you’d just give up that religion of yours you would be a model comrade, working for the good of the People. Don’t bother staying the three extra days—just go home. I’ll put in a good word for you with the County Authority.
Before the war broke out, as conflicts along the thirty-eighth parallel became more and more frequent, you could have cut the tension throughout Hwanghae Province with a knife. People couldn’t even visit neighboring villages after dark unless they had an official permit. I think it was around then that young men started joining the Democratic Youth League—they started soliciting volunteers. It was also around then that I saved the life of Yohan’s friend, Sangho.
I took the cow and went to Pujŏngnae. There was always plenty of good grass there, all along the hillside by the stream. It was around the time Big Brother Yohan first went into hiding—he could no longer show his face freely.
After the Unification Corps incident, a sizeable number of the Christian Youth fled to the Kuwŏl mountains. At first Yohan did the same, hiding in a dugout covered over with branches and leaves in a ravine of the neighboring mountain. Every other day I would take him cooked rice or some rice cakes in a wicker basket. Then the war started. There was a rally in town—they said that the valiant People’s Army had reclaimed Seoul and taken full control all the way down to Taejŏn, all in one breath. By then the general mobilization had begun, so each town had its share of draft-dodging youngsters and thirty-somethings who could only drop in to visit their homes in secret after dark.
I tied the cow up at the bank of the stream and sat down a short distance away from it to study the Bible. I was attending a middle school in town back then, but I’d already promised Father that I would enter the Pyongyang Seminary someday.
Hey, Yosŏp, I’ve been looking for you. I went all the way to your house. Crossing the footpath between the rice paddies, Sunho was making his way up the stream bank. Although he didn’t go to school, we still ran into each other quite regularly. The young men in town were pretty much gone, and with nothing but women and children making up the households that were left, Sunho and I had to go out and help with the field work. The only young, able-bodied people still in the village, both male and female, were those who’d joined the Democratic Youth League or become Party members. Despite the general mobilization order, farmers who were over thirty-five and had a lot of mouths to feed had also been allowed to remain Your brother—is he still in the mountains? he asked.
There was no one around besides us and the cow, preoccupied with grazing.
Why?
I have a letter to deliver. From my brother.
I tensed. Sunho’s brother Sangho had fled to the Kuwŏl mountains with the young men who’d joined the Unification Corps. The worst thing that could happen to Yohan if he got caught would be getting packed off to the army, but Sangho’s was a different case altogether. His father had been jailed for a week at the police station, where they interrogated him on the whereabouts of his son.
What kind of a letter is it?
Don’t know. He just said I had to get it to your brother, without fail.
Give it to me. I’ll deliver it.
I decided to just ask him point-blank.
Wait a minute . . . your brother’s come home, hasn’t he?
What are you talking about? How could he come home?
Oh yeah? Then where’d you get this letter?
Okay, well, this is just between you and me. Your brother and mine, they’re both on the same side, right? Big Brother Sangho came down from the mountain last night . . . but it was just for a visit.
Without another word, I held out my hand. Sunho reached into the inner pocket of his chŏgori and pulled out a yellowish paper ribbon. It was the letter, folded into a thin strip and tied in the middle.
I’ll go up the mountain tomorrow and give this to him.
As I put the letter away in my pocket, my throat began to tingle from trying to swallow the temptation to tell Sunho that Big Brother Yohan was not, in fact, up in the mountains. He was hiding at home under the wooden floor.
Your brother Yohan must be having a really hard time. My brother’s with a group of people—he says the time just flies by.
Suddenly, with a deafening roar, a formation of airplanes appeared over the mountain ridge. Back then, each day at dawn airplanes of every imaginable shape and color would streak across the sky. They would fly every which way. Silver, black, green and sky blue, some with propellers, others without but with fuel tanks on their wings, and then some B-29swith long white streams of smoke trailing behind. Just by looking at them we could tell what their targets would be. The ones with propellers came to destroy smaller stations or military bases nearby, but the jets and B-29s were on their way to bomb Pyongyang. The ones that had just come over the ridge were jets, so they were making their way towards a big city somewhere. A formation of four flew away like two pairs of birds, followed by another set of pairs, which were followed again by another set—again and again, pairs of planes kept flying by. Sunho was looking up, trying to keep count. Suddenly he exclaimed, Wow, today there are too many to even count!
Yesterday was like that, too.
They say this war’s gonna last a long, long time.
Sunho looked up at the sky again, a worried expression on his face.
Listen, I gotta go, he said. Be sure to deliver the letter.
When I got back home, I looked around to make sure no one was hanging out around the fence before I went into the kitchen. Once inside, I squatted down near the big hangari39 and quietly called out, Hey, Big Brother—come out for a second.
The hangari began to totter. Grabbing hold of it with both arms, I dragged it a short distance into the inner part of the kitchen. The hole it had been covering came into view, and then brother’s hand was visible, too. We’d broken down the bottom part of the wall and covered it with the hangari. The hole was connected to the hideout underneath the floor, a space that had taken Father several days to dig out before brother finally came down from the mountain. I’d crawled down there myself—it was spacious enough for a couple of people to sit down. We’d covered the earth with a double layer of straw mats and put in some bedclothes and blankets. It could get a little dark, but during the day there was enough light to lie down on the ground and read a book.
There’s no one outside, is there?
No. I have a letter for you.
What letter?
Don’t know. Sunho’s brother sent it.
Sangho? That idiot. He should be lying low.
Big Brother Yohan sat down on the edge of the kitchen stove. Taking the letter out of my pocket, I handed it to him. He untied it very calmly. It was knotted with a piece of string and had been folded extremely meticulously. The moment he finished reading it, Yohan hastily clasped his hands together and said a short prayer under his breath.
Thank you, Lord. Amen.
He was beaming as he finished his prayer.
What does it say? Did something good happen?
Huh? Ah . . . well, the hard times are over now. Our freedom crusaders have finally landed in Inch’ŏn.
I snatched the piece of paper from his hand as he waved it about.
I wanna see it, too!
Hey! Hey, we have to get rid of that! Hand it over right now!
The letter was short. I’m fairly certain that it was something along these lines:Yohan. I hope this letter finds you safe and well. Thanks to the grace of our Lord, we are doing fine. We have received word that the U.S. Army landed in Inch’ŏn this past September. The time has finally come for us to raid the Reds. When the Crusaders make their triumphant entry into Hwanghae Province, we will be the first to rise. Let us all make ready to rise up together. Hallelujah!<
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As I tried to read through it one more time, Yohan grabbed it. Taking a box of matches out of his pocket, he lit the letter on fire. We sat together without saying a word, watching the flame eat away at the piece of paper until nothing was left but a pile of ashes. Cautiously, I broke the silence.
Brother, Sunho said that his brother came down from the mountain for a visit.
What? That imbecile! This is no time for him to be running around like some sort of squirrel.
He turned to me.
Where’s your sister-in-law run off to?
Don’t know. She probably went next door. It looks like no one’s home—
I wonder if they’re all out in the fields. Look here, you, I need you to do something for me. Go to Sunho and tell him to meet me at seven o’clock tonight at the funeral house.
You’re going to meet with Sangho?
Yeah. This little note isn’t enough for me to know what’s really going on. Make sure nobody knows what you’re doing, got it?
Brother Yohan crawled back into his hole.
Come on, cover it up.
I moved the hangari back over the hole and came out of the kitchen. Sunho’s house was located in the inner part of the village, way up on a hillside that was much higher than the main road. Surrounded by pines and oaks, his house commanded a clear view of all the roads that led into and through the village. The main wing of our house was the only one with a tiled roof, but Sunho’s house was huge and had tiled roofs for both the main quarters and the separate wing. Even their storehouse had a galvanized roof. Their front yard, too, was at least three or four times bigger than ours.
When I finally got to Sunho’s, the main gate was wide open, and a group of people were milling about the front yard. I sensed that something was up, but I wandered into the yard anyway. The first person I recognized was Ichiro. Ichiro and a bunch of men from the police station were up on the maru of the house with their shoes still on, busy checking every room—even the kitchen. Sunho’s father, the presbyter, was crouched in the front yard, smoking tobacco from his long wooden pipe. Sunho stood next to him. Sunho’s mother, his grandmother, and his aunt were all huddled together by the entryway; his younger brothers and nephews had apparently long since set themselves to the task of wailing up a storm. Seeing me enter the yard, Ichiro motioned for me to come over. Some time had passed since we young ones stopped using the low form of speech to him, all because he’d become the party chairman of the village.
You. Come over here.
Feeling like I’d been called on by a teacher at school, I quickened my pace and came to a stop directly in front of him.
What did you come here for?
Nothing, really, had changed except for the worker’s cap that now sat atop Comrade Pak Illang’s head, and yet, unlike before, a certain chill seemed to emanate from him these days.
I came to play with Sunho.
Your brother . . . where has he gone?
I felt my heart sink with a thud but tried to make my answer sound casual.
He said he was off to Haeju.
Where in Haeju?
I dunno, sir. He might have joined the army or gone to work in a factory. We haven’t heard from him.
If he comes home, you be sure to tell him to come by the office, you hear?
Yes, sir. I will.
While we were talking, there was some sort of huge uproar inside the house. The reason became clear as two men from the police station dragged Sunho’s brother out into the open living room.
You little bastard—thought we wouldn’t find you if you hid in the attic, did you?
One of the men held Sangho by the neck and one arm while the other had grabbed his other arm and handful of his hair to drag him out. A third man jumped out of one of the bedrooms and began tying him up with a rope. When they stepped down into the front yard, the women of the family, screaming and wailing, threw themselves at the men. Quietly, I backed out of the place. I ran wildly down the main road. It had suddenly dawned on me that Big Brother would have to find a better hiding place before Sangho owned up to sending the letter. As soon as I got home I let everyone know what had happened, but Father decided it was safer for Yohan to stay hidden at home. From then on Big Brother no longer came out to sit in the kitchen during the day when it was quiet outside or to go next door for dinner like he once had—we just passed down food for him to eat. After that, he never came out from under the floor at all.
I got to know Sunnam for a long, long time before that winter.
It was around the time I graduated from middle school in Haeju and came down to the country to work on the farm.
On market days, I would go into town to visit Mr. Kang, partly because it was great fun borrowing his books but mostly because I had so much respect for him. Somehow, Mr. Kang had arranged to use the Union storehouse to hold some night classes. He asked me to help him and I agreed to teach the beginning classes. That was how I first met Sunnam; he was one of my students in class. We were the same age, so we soon became friends. When I learned that he was living with his sister, working as a handyman, I began to take more of an interest. Sunnam was a man with a great deal of intelligence and passion, and he also read a lot of books he borrowed from Mr. Kang. After liberation I heard he’d joined the People’s Peacekeeping Troops, but I was just a simple farmer in Some by then, so there was really no opportunity for us to get together. It was a full month after I returned home from serving my compulsory labor term that I finally saw him again. I was summoned up to the county hall, and when I arrived they guided me into an office. There I was greeted by the chief clerk, who’d apparently been waiting for me.
Ah, Comrade An, the reason we asked you to come by is none other than this: we were wondering if you would care to be in charge of the Christian League in Sinch’ŏn County.
Our church considered the Christian League, an organization established by the state, to be a bunch of heretics, just like the shrine worshipers during the Japanese occupation. I told the clerk exactly that.
We churchgoers consider members of the Christian League to be heretics, sir.
There’s a war going on right now for the liberation of our nation. The churchgoers, too, ought to stand on the side of the People, don’t you agree? What I mean is that you ought to believe in the God of Chosŏn, not the God of America.
I will give your offer some thought.
This position has been offered to you because you come so highly recommended from above for your earnestness and good nature. Think it over carefully.
Without actually giving them a yes or a no, I sat quietly for a while. Later, as I made my way out of the county hall, someone ran out after me. I couldn’t place him right away, but his face was very familiar.
Sŏngman, it’s me. It’s Sunnam.
Delighted, he grabbed hold of my hands. Finally, I recognized him in spite of his changed appearance and shook his hand in return, overjoyed to see him again.
How long has it been? What’s brought you here?
I told him the story about the League. He nodded.
First the country was divided; now the church is split in two as well. Anyway, do think it over carefully. Most of the reactionaries have left for the South, but there are still law-abiding Christians living among us in the People’s Republic. Somebody has to protect their interests, don’t you think?
I just listened to him. He continued.
Seoul was reclaimed the day before yesterday. Now that unification is right under our noses, we need people like you to help us transform the church into a national institution.
I went straight home after we parted ways, but my mind was so troubled that I couldn’t get any sleep. I spent the night out in the front yard, praying out loud until dawn. Then, the following morning, I went back into town and found Sunnam. I agreed to accept the position as a committee member. The commissioner at the time was Reverend Kim Iktong of the Sinch’ŏn Church, the same man who’d organized the Christian People’s
General Rally and been branded a heretic by our church. There really wasn’t much for the committee to do—our job was to meet once a week in a conference room that took up a corner of the Party Office and discuss religious matters or speak with Christians who’d been sent to us by the Party.
It was completely by chance that I happened to be there when Cho Sangho was brought in. Another presbyter among the committee members happened to mention the fact that Presbyter Cho’s eldest son had been arrested. Having no idea that he was a close friend of Yohan, I went looking for Sangho with the vague hope that he might have some news about our family—his father had been Christian for a very long time and was close with my sister’s father-in-law. When I entered the police station, everyone was quite friendly; they all knew me by then. When I said that I wanted to see Cho Sangho, however, the officer in charge frowned.
Oh, that little shit’s a real problem.
Well, I don’t know about that. Just because he’s Christian and so has a different ideology hardly makes him a problem.
At that, the officer shook his head.
The Party wouldn’t bother someone just because of his religion. This bastard’s a reactionary spy who’s been working with an underground network, hatching plots against us.
Even so, unless he’s committed a grave crime, I’d like to try and talk to him. Isn’t that the job you’ve entrusted us with?
He let out a long sigh, nodding in spite of himself.
We have no alternative at the moment. Unless he agrees to join the military . . .
The officer glanced at a clerk and soon, Cho Sangho was brought into the office. He cut a shabby figure indeed, shod in a pair of heelless komusin. I turned to the clerk.
Is there someplace quiet we can go?
The clerk shot a fierce, sidelong scowl at Sangho then led us to a room with “Investigations” written across the entrance. Opening the door for us, he growled, You shouldn’t waste your time.
I entered the room and took a look around. One desk and three chairs, two chairs on either side of the door and one pushed back against the opposite wall. I took a chair and offered him one facing mine.
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