After the meeting with my mother’s parents, men in dark suits came to the orphanage several times and asked me whether I remembered anything of my past and how I got so lost. My answer was always the same: “I don’t remember.” I was afraid any comments I made about my sister or grandparents would cause hurt to them.
I became one of the orphans, living at the orphanage and attending the school. The director of the orphanage decided to take care of me. Sometimes she gazed at me for a moment and patted my shoulder, but she never asked me about my past. I began to thrive, in my new home. In fact, it didn’t take long for me to become the orphanage jump-rope champion.
“This is your schedule.”
Teacher Song—as the sharp-eyed woman ordered me to call her—threw a piece of paper onto the desk as soon as I stepped into her office. Forgetting I had planned to thank her for choosing me to join her dance group, I picked it up with haste. She wore a white shirt and black pants over her firm body. I looked around her office and saw that everything was in perfect order. In addition to Kim Il Sung’s big picture in the center of the room, there were several pictures of a woman dancing. I assumed it was Teacher Song—it was hard to tell because of the thick makeup she wore in the pictures—but her body seemed unchanged. One bookcase was filled with books and the other with medals of various sizes.
“All the students get the same training. So don’t say it’s too much.”
I was excited to learn something new. The schedule promised I would be busy, though I couldn’t understand what a lot of the classes entailed.
“Of course not. Thanks for giving me this chance.” I smiled at her, but she never smiled at me. Perhaps she didn’t show her gentle face to anyone.
She asked, “Did you see your room?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head, holding the paper with both hands. I had just come from my new room. It was for 20 girls, but I hadn’t seen my roommates yet. The driver who’d picked me up from the orphanage said they were in the gymnasium all day and wouldn’t be back until dinner.
“You’ll stay there until the festival is over,” she said. That room is for professional dancers, not amateurs like the children in other dancing groups, so try to learn from them and get along.” Teacher Song stretched constantly as she spoke to me. It seemed that she couldn’t stand to stay in one place.
“The big festival is exactly one year away, and we are preparing several performances for it. You are already several months behind the other dancers, but I believe you’ll catch up. You’ll get extra training after dinner every night. Got it?” She stretched her leg in my direction, leaning on the edge of the desk.
“Yes, I’ll do my best.” I was still anxious in her presence.
“Okay. You may go.” As soon as she finished speaking, she sat down in her chair and turned to the papers on her desk. Just as I was leaving, she said, “Oh, by the way, don’t mention that you’re from the orphanage to the other dancers. Just say you were raised by your grandparents, who were in the army, if they ask.”
She didn’t look up at me as she spoke. I bowed and tiptoed out.
My new home was huge: several buildings, all much more colorful than the orphanage. All the furniture was new, too. The driver had told me most of the buildings were dormitories for the dancers. Next to them was a big, round gymnasium; I could hear music inside even from far away.
On the way there, I noticed several buildings under construction in the middle of the city: much had changed since the orphanage’s sightseeing trip the previous year. I had lived in Pyongyang for ten years, but I still felt like a stranger there.
From the next day forward, I woke up at 5:30 A.M. and had breakfast in a huge cafeteria on the first floor of the dormitory at 6:00. In the gymnasium, 300 performers sang and danced all day, under the intense direction of Teacher Song. Megaphone in hand, she shouted at us from a balcony where she ran back and forth. Whenever someone made a mistake, she scolded her from above. Her booming voice kept us nervous and alert.
My name was the most famous among the dancers; Teacher Song enjoyed driving me hard. I always hoped someone else would come to instruct me, but it was always she who showed up for my private lesson after dinner. I couldn’t believe she was over fifty; her body was elastic and tireless. Eventually, she stopped pointing and reprimanding me in front of the other students, but she didn’t stop the private training until I was finally selected as one of the eleven dancers for one of the festival’s main dancing performances, entitled “Unity.” It supported the festival’s theme, “For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace, and Friendship.” Teacher Song wanted to express the goals of the festival through our dance.
The number eleven is meant to symbolize the five oceans and six continents, and in the Unity dance, five men and six women wore different-colored clothes, designed by Teacher Song. Each of us would wave a silk cloth, followed by a flag, and then a farm implement. We struggled with this routine in the beginning: Teacher Song demanded big, wild motions, and a different facial expression for each motion. We were instructed to wrap others in our cloths, and then wrap ourselves. Our struggle ended with the emergence of a boy in a uniform. We surrounded him and danced around him. We were unified through him: there would be no struggle, no further conflicts. I also took part in two other performances, the fan dance and the flag dance.
Teacher Song changed the choreography constantly; she never wanted us to be still. She continually emphasized that 177 countries had promised to participate in the festival.
“One single mistake would humiliate our country,” she said. This was her favorite threat.
I went to bed utterly worn-out every night, but I felt alive. I felt as though there was a place for me.
My 19 roommates and I so looked forward to seeing the many people from other countries. We had to study a booklet titled 100 Questions and Answers for Foreigners, and memorize all 100 to pass a test. We always carried a small book of Russian and English words in order to memorize them during our breaks. We had to be ready to welcome our guests, to help them understand our country, our lives, and the Great Leader.
My roommates and I were all selected for the fan dance. They were especially trained for traditional dance and all aspired to be professional traditional Korean dancers.
One day, Jangmi, after returning from a visit home, took a small yellow bottle out of her backpack. Sora, who usually slept next to her, instantly snatched it from her hand. “What is this?”
Jangmi closed her backpack and motioned for Sora to smell her hair, moving closer to Sora’s nostrils.
“You smell so good!” Sora exclaimed, sniffing at Jangmi’s neck. The rest of us surrounded them at once.
Jangmi gave each girl a whiff of her hair. “My mom bought it for me in a department store. It’s shampoo. It came from abroad,” she said, smiling exultantly.
“What? Shampoo? Is it soap? Why is it in your hair?”
“This kind of soap is specifically for your hair.”
“You can’t use it to wash other parts, body and face?”
We moved our noses close to smell the bottle.
“No, just for hair. It makes it feel like velvet,” she cooed.
“Let me see.” Not satisfied with the smell, several girls tried to touch the bottle.
“Be careful,” she said, staring nervously at the other girls.
That night, they all made urgent calls to their parents and soon got their own bottles of shampoo. Except me, of course.