He explained that he’d attended a New Year’s party. There were some party bigwigs in attendance, and poor Young had made a slip of the tongue. Apparently, after moving to North Korea, he’d written letters to a man by the name of Ham Do-kusu, chairman of the League of Koreans in Japan. He’d known Ham for years, but he never got a reply. Naturally, Ham’s behavior annoyed him.
Young mistakenly brought this up at the party. He said something to the effect of, “Do-kusu only became chairman because everybody helped him and supported him. But he doesn’t appreciate what everyone did for him. Now he’s far too grand to write back to the likes of me. What a snob!”
That turned out to be a fatal blunder. The following day, Young was removed from his party position. Criticizing Kim Do-suku meant criticizing Kim Il-sung himself.
Young looked a bit calmer after talking to my father.
“Let’s live strong, shall we? The future will be better. I know it will. You’ll see,” my father said. I guess he couldn’t think of anything better to say.
Young nodded weakly. “Be happy!” he said to Eiko. Then he bowed to us and left.
A few days after Eiko’s wedding, we learned Young had hanged himself. In his suicide note he wrote:
I’ve lost face so much, I can’t live any longer.
And so ended the life of a kind and decent man.
By the time my father went to see his body, it had already been taken away by the secret police.
His wife committed suicide a few days later.
I don’t know how many returnees experienced such tragedies. I expect there were countless stories like these. Some were sent to concentration camps. Others were purged or executed. So many lives wasted.
When my sister Hifumi was of “marriageable age,” as they used to say, another kind man, Lee Song-rak, helped find her a husband. Lee had worked in the publicity department of the League of Koreans in Japan and had brought transmission equipment with him from Japan when he moved to North Korea. He contributed a great deal to the party and was publicly recognized and admired for his efforts. He was also a warmhearted person. When he learned that Hifumi was eligible for marriage, he contacted a returnee who lived in Wonsan. Not long after that, my sister married him. I didn’t like Hifumi’s new husband at all. I thought he was lazy, and I resented his coming over to our house all the time to ask for food for his parents when we had hardly enough food to survive ourselves. My mother worried that if she refused, he would be cruel to Hifumi, so she asked the villagers to give us food to help out. I couldn’t stand the fact that she was begging on his account. Eventually we couldn’t keep it up any longer, and they ended up moving to Pujon.
Meanwhile, Lee was assigned to a transmission-equipment factory in Sinanju. Then, one day, he was suddenly denounced as a traitor because he’d married a woman from South Korea. The real issue had nothing to do with his wife, of course—they’d known about her all along; it was just that he’d attempted to make improvements in his new post. Lee became persona non grata and was dismissed from his post. Just like that, he became a nonperson. I later heard that his family split up, and he became a vagrant who could be seen loitering around the Sinanju train station.
My father’s friends were disappearing one by one. Kim Uu-yon was another one who came to a sad end. He was a returnee who used to run a laundry in Kawasaki back in Japan. Like my father, he was married to a Japanese woman. In North Korea, Kim became a bus driver. One day, during a break, he started talking to his colleagues about his life in Japan. A few days later, he and his wife were picked up by the secret police and whisked off to Yodok concentration camp, a notorious hellhole. After ten years—an eternity in a place like that—his wife was released and came to live near our house. She’d been a cheerful person before, but now she was completely numb and empty. Her face was expressionless, her voice devoid of any feeling. She avoided contact with people at all costs. She’d become yet another nonperson living among us.
One day, she turned up at our house, carrying her son. We were stunned, since she made such a point of avoiding people. It turned out that her son was desperately ill. I carried him on my back to the village clinic.
“His tongue is festering, and he hasn’t been able to eat for three days. Could you give him a penicillin G injection?” I asked the doctor.
I didn’t know whether penicillin would work, but in North Korea, that was the only antibiotic there was. I thought it was probably his only chance at survival.
“What? You want me to treat him for free? Impudent prick! Why should I use up valuable medicine on him? Pay up, or at least bring me some medicinal herbs! Then we’ll talk.”
Health care in North Korea is supposedly free, but in reality it isn’t free at all. Poor people can’t get treatment without some form of payment. If you don’t have any money—bring some alcohol. Bring some cigarettes. Bring some Chinese medicine. Or forget it.
I noticed a framed quotation on the clinic wall behind the doctor. It said, “Medicine is a benevolent art. A doctor must be a greater Communist than anybody.” The words of Kim Il-sung.
Suddenly, I was burning with rage. And something cracked inside me.
“Who do you actually treat? No one at all?” I yelled.
And with that, I punched him. It was as if a dam had burst inside me. All the years of misery and hopelessness came rushing out. Suddenly I was on top of him, whaling on him with my fists. But even that wasn’t enough. My anger was boiling over. I ran back to my house to grab a knife. I really wanted to kill the guy. A doctor who didn’t help people was worse than useless—he was a mockery of everything he stood for. When I got back to the clinic, several police officers were standing in the corridor. I considered killing them too. But suddenly, out of nowhere, my father appeared and wrested the knife from my hand.
He told me to get out of there. Suddenly the reality of what I had been about to do came crashing down on me. I ran home.
My father stayed at the clinic for a while, and then he came home. Three days later, he had to report to the police station, but again he came back unscathed. I have no idea what happened. He never told me. But it must have been something good, because I wasn’t arrested and nothing ever came of it.
I used to hate violence, especially since I had witnessed my father brutally beating my mother when I was a child. But after the confrontation with the doctor, my attitude changed. Violence began to seem like the only answer. I felt so helpless as I stood by, watching good people being purged and exiled and destroyed. My mother advised me to cool my temper. Otherwise, I’d disappear too.
In the seventies, a new slogan appeared: “Speed strategy!” This became yet another meaningless mouthful repeated ad nauseam at our study meetings. We also had to memorize Kim Il-sung’s Ten Commandments and then repeat them endlessly until they were chiseled into our brains for all time. In the end, I felt as though my very mind had been occupied.
I can remember those commandments to this day. Well, of course I can. I’d have been dead long ago if I couldn’t. Here they are:
Thou shalt give thy all in the struggle to unify the entire society with the revolutionary ideology of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung.
Thou shalt honor the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung with all thy loyalty.
Thou shalt make absolute the authority of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung.
Thou shalt make the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary ideology thy faith and make his instructions thy creed.
Thou shalt adhere strictly to the principle of unconditional obedience in carrying out the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung’s instructions.
Thou shalt strengthen the entire party’s ideology and willpower and revolutionary unity, centering on the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung.
Thou shalt learn from the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung and adopt the Communist look, revolutionary work methods, and people-oriented work style.