Free Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor by Yong Kim, Suk-Young Kim

countryside because the economy there was so bad. People nicknamed them penguins, as they moved in groups and wore dark, tattered rags. They had no place to live or work, so they carried bundles of personal belongings—dirty blankets, dented pots, shoes with holes, and other minor items. They lived mostly by begging or doing odd jobs, such as transporting sacks of imported flour from China and getting a sack as payment. I still vividly see images of those penguins and think that they looked more like refugees from the Korean War era than citizens of the glorious happy socialist republic.
    Because my job as a foreign trade official allowed me to travel all around North Korea, I witnessed many tragedies that other people with restricted mobility would not have seen. The situation in Pyongyang was not as terrible as elsewhere, but in the early 1990s, even Pyongyangites were struggling with food problems. The food ration system was becoming dysfunctional just like everywhere else in the country, but the citizens were better off because of power they abused. The ones with influence could usually get whatever food they wanted through underground channels. The ones who had overseas relatives or a chance to travel overseas were also relatively better off than most people stuck in the country because they could get their hands on foreign goods, which were highly desired among wealthy North Koreans ready to pay any sum for them.
    I remember how in the early 1980s, I learned about the unfortunate former Korean Japanese ( buksong gyeopo ) in the city of Hamheung. These were ethnic Koreans who had previously resided in Japan but decided to return to the Korean homeland and chose the north over the south as their legitimate land of origin. Because of their ties with relatives in Japan, these former Korean Japanese were known to be better off than average North Koreans. Those in Hamheung were visited by the local party members and were urged to contribute to the construction of Kim Il-sung’s statue. The visitors gave false promises of granting Pyongyang residency in return for their donation. Having contributed a handsome amount, one Korean Japanese waited and waited for a reply, became anxious, and started to pester the local party official about the transfer of residency. Annoyed by the frequent contact, the party official agreed to meet the Korean Japanese late at night by a warehouse on the outskirts of town. When the hopeful Korean Japanese showed up, the official chopped off his head with an ax. Then he chopped up the body, put the parts in a trunk, and dumped it into the sea. When the trunk was found by fishermen, the local authorities ordered the murderer to investigate the case! In the end, the criminal was exposed and publicly executed.
    There is a less grim incident about a former Korean Japanese that I heard from my colleague at NSA. It was quite common for Korean Japanese to cremate ancestors, put their remains in jars, and keep them in the house. When the time came to commemorate the dead ancestors in an annual ceremony ( jesa ), the Korean Japanese would bring out the jars, bow in front of them, and offer sacrifices. Cremation was not a custom known to North Koreans, so when a pair of thieves broke into a former Korean Japanese’s household, they thought that the remains in the fancy jar was some kind of herbal medicine that a rich Korean Japanese had sent to their relatives in North Korea. So the thieves stole the jar, made a potion out of the remains, and guzzled it down like a special treat. When the former Korean Japanese found out about what happened, he was outraged and despaired, but in the end, he had to give up the idea of accusing the thieves, because now they were the only remains he had of his parents and he would have to invite the thieves to sit instead of the jar and offer sacrifices in annual ceremonies for his ancestors!
    But not many stories end in laughter.
    In the early 1990s at the Chilgol Collective