Free Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung Page A

was the first time we had met, he lamented that what he found more unbearable than the cold was the fact that he could not set foot properly on the bare earth. He had been assigned a twelfth-floor apartment and, as the lift was always out of order, he was stuck between the earth and the sky.
    When he started to talk about his home province, I could see that the burn marks on his coat were nothing compared to the scars in his heart. In the early 1980s, the North Korean state had decided thatthe presence of disabled citizens in Pyongyang was an affront to the beauty of the city, and banished them en masse to the countryside. Kim Sang-o’s only daughter, who had a physical disability, was left behind in Hwanghae Province when the rest of the family was instructed to relocate to Pyongyang. That woman was my friend Su-ryon’s mother.
    On the day of my first visit, Kim Sang-o took great pains to read every line of the poems I’d taken from my jacket pocket. When he had finished reading my attempt at an epic poem, he laughed heartily, saying that he knew I had written in imitation of Byron. To my astonishment, he did not scold me, but was accepting of it: ‘If you had come to me with something like “Oh, my homeland! Oh, my Party!” I would have refused to talk to you. I enjoyed your personal narrative of love. I can see that you’re faithful to your own voice.’
    Kim Sang-o’s words of moral encouragement became the cornerstone of my life as a writer. He taught me that ‘A piece of writing will stubbornly pursue its author and hold him accountable to the end. Look to your conscience; speak your own truth. That is the only way that you can go beyond what you have been taught and accomplish a literature that truly belongs to you.’
    In Kim Sang-o’s last years, the UFD pleaded with him continually in the hope that he would produce more state literature for them, but he refused to the end, saying that his health didn’t allow it. I wonder, though, if his choice to keep silence was the decisive act of Kim Sang-o’s conscience and his truth, after a life spent in loyal obedience to the Workers’ Party.
    With Kim Sang-o’s recommendation, I was able to submit my own poems to the selection process for literary works organised by the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department. The best would be offered for the judgement of Kim Jong-il himself, and my compositions made the selection.
    On 19 February 1992, the state newspaper
Rodong Sinmun
published an announcement to the effect that a collection of fifty poems entitled
The Songs of a Blessed Generation
had been presented to General Kim Jong-il on his fiftieth birthday. He had read the book and written the two poets a letter of commendation.
    Even today, I remember with vivid clarity the look on the face of the Party Secretary for Pyongyang Arts School as he presented Kim Jong-il’s letter of appreciation to me, a student of music who had wronged the school by straying from his assigned course of study. He had to do this in front of all the staff and students, and while he had no alternative but to say, ‘I am so delighted that we had such a jewel in our school,’ he twisted my ear with such force that I almost cried out loud on stage.
    It didn’t end there. In his letter, Kim Jong-il said that anything I asked of him would be granted, and I took him at his word. The Party required a graduate of music to serve the state in a musical capacity for the remainder of his or her working life. But the Party made an exception for me and granted me my first choice of career: I was assigned to be the Arts Writer of the Chosun Central Broadcasting Committee in the Propaganda and Agitation Department.
    In North Korea, there is only one television channel. Central TV is broadcast from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and from 10 a.m. on Sundays. In my new role as Arts Writer, I was responsible for curating North Korean poetry, and I helped with presenting poetry in a format suitable