“I’m sorry to say . . . a Japanese husband for my daughter . . . well, that wouldn’t be acceptable, I’m afraid.” She looked as though she felt guilty about her decision. I sensed that she was casting about for an explanation that would somehow assuage me.
“You see, the thing is . . . well, I’m sure you’re a perfectly upstanding young man . . . I mean, I know you are. But the thing is . . . if my daughter married a returnee, well, we’d be in a dangerous situation too, you see.”
I clenched my fists until they went white. I looked at Su-yon. She had turned pale.
I can’t remember exactly what I did after that. I must have run off, ashamed. But I do remember the thoughts that clattered through my mind.
What were you thinking? A man whose quality of life is no better than that of a beggar! Who in their right mind would marry me? It had been laughable to think Su-yon’s mother would ever give her consent.
The next time I saw Su-yon at the farm, I wanted to run and hide. But she hugged me and whispered, “I’m sorry. Take me somewhere and let’s escape together.” How I wanted to run away with her, to live out this fantasy—but where could we possibly go? And what about my poor mother and sisters? I could never abandon them; it was as impossible as my dream of bettering myself or going to college. Soon after, I heard that Su-yon married a bigwig in Pyongyang. I decided not to fall in love with anybody ever again.
A year later, Kim Chan-bon and his cronies suddenly disappeared. I didn’t know the official details, but there was a rumor in the village that his unit had been dismissed. There were no mass media in those days, so all news came by word of mouth, but the grapevine was reliable enough most of the time. In the end, it came out that Kim Chan-bon had been purged by Kim Il-sung.
It was the usual story. For a while, Kim Chan-bon had been the apple of the Great Leader’s eye. Kim Chan-bon could do no wrong. But he made a sincere effort to modernize and better organize the military. And that proved to be his downfall. It enabled him to build up his own power base within the military and push through his own initiatives. It wasn’t long before Kim Chan-bon had amassed power over an entire swathe of North Korea, effectively carving out his own autonomous region. Kim Il-sung obviously saw that as a challenge and a threat. So he was purged.
We returned to Dong Chong-ri right away. Fortunately, our house was still standing. When we arrived, we got some water from the well, boiled it, and drank a toast. I looked at my parents’ wizened faces as we drank that toast. My father was fifty-five; my mother was forty-four and had about eight teeth left. What on earth were we drinking a toast to? A better future? A return to the past? I don’t know. We were just overjoyed to be out of the Kim Chan-bon nightmare, I guess.
“I want to eat a rice ball coated with sweetened red beans,” my mother said after our toast.
My father looked bereft, as my mother never asked for anything. He knew it would be impossible to fulfill even such a modest request. Red beans were as expensive as rice, and sugar was even more dear. A sack cost a hundred won on the black market, a ridiculously huge sum for us.
“Don’t worry!” she said, knowing what he must be thinking. “Come to think about it, I couldn’t eat a rice ball if I tried. I don’t have enough teeth. My rice-ball-eating days are over.”
And then she just laughed.
I hadn’t heard her laugh for ages. It was contagious. We all began to laugh together—until tears sprang to our eyes.
Three uneventful years passed after Kim Chan-bon’s unit was dismissed. We still struggled with the miseries of poverty, of course. But at least our life was peaceful. The only newsworthy event during that time was that my sister Eiko received a marriage proposal at the age of twenty-three, from a man named Kan Ki-son who was originally from Kobe. His father was suffering from late-stage cancer, so he wanted to get married before his old man passed away. His family was wealthy—which was unusual for returnees—so my father thought that his family and our family weren’t a good match. He politely turned the proposal down. Even so, Kan’s mother started coming to our house to plead her case. “I want your daughter to be my daughter-in-law,” she said. Although she came to ask several times, still my father balked.
Early in 1972, a middle-aged man showed up at our house one day. At first, I thought he was one of Kan’s relations. I was really surprised when I took a good look: it was none other than Young Seok-pong, an old friend of my father’s who had been a member of the General Association of Korean Residents back in Japan.
He dropped the bag he was carrying and flung his arms around my father’s shoulders.
“How have you all been? You’ve sure grown up a lot!” Young said to us. My mother invited him in.
Then he opened his bag. He handed me a watch and took out some scarves for my sisters. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Japanese watches were a coveted rarity. Everybody longed to get ahold of one. He then reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of alcohol for my father. But that wasn’t the end of it. He produced medicine, sugar, and several other valuable commodities and lined them up on the table. My mother burst into tears.
He and my father drank until late into the night. I could hear them talking in hushed tones.
“Look at me!” my father said. “I used to be called ‘Tiger,’ but now I’m a wreck of a man, thanks to the fucking League of Korean Residents in Japan. Those deceitful bastards!”
“Hey, careful,” Young said as he glanced around the room. “Walls have ears, you know! Watch your back!”
My father said nothing but nodded.
“Anyway,” Young continued, “let’s see if we can help each other out from now on. I gather you’ve been through a lot of difficulties.”
He was vice chairman of the party committee in some city or other and a very busy man, but after that night, he managed to visit us from time to time. As soon as he found out about Eiko’s offer of marriage, he paid Kan a visit. “He’s a good man. Kind and gentle. Don’t worry about the money issue,” he said to Eiko. And he recommended that my father reconsider his position. After all, Kan was a returnee too.
That settled it. They fixed a date for the wedding two months later. Sadly, we couldn’t get any new clothes or even buy a futon for her. Kan’s mother told us that as long as she could get married, that was enough. She didn’t need to bring any kind of dowry with her.
But Young gave some money to my mother. “Here. Make her pretty with this,” he said.
I was very impressed. Moved, even. His thoughtfulness was like a breath of fresh air. We rarely witnessed or experienced any real humanity or warmth in our daily life. Everyone was always thinking of themselves—how to get ahead, pretending to care about the party, watching their own backs, scrambling for food, and using cigarettes and alcohol as bribes to get in with people who had power. To be fair, it was the only way to survive. The system had dehumanized them completely. Us. The sad thing was that I was starting to think the same way myself. But Young’s behavior reminded me what it was to be a human being. And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn’t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it.
One day, Mr. Young appeared at our house, looking completely disheveled. Normally he was fastidious, but on this particular day, his hair looked tousled and his eyes were bloodshot. Worst of all, he looked scared to death. He called out my father’s name and then grasped his hands silently for a while. Then he started talking madly.