The next day, Sun was gone. Her mother said Sun had left to see relatives, and I didn’t ask her anything more, though I could hear sobbing through the walls. To her parents, Sun was a treasure. They had her when they were both over 40, after they had given up on ever having a child. They had waited for her for 20 years and lost her in just one day.
The previous night, in my room, Sun had smiled at me and laughed more than usual. I knew that she had decided to look for Gun in China, and I also knew there was nothing I could do to stop her; I couldn’t even tell her I knew of her plans. I felt deeply sad. Gradually, I was losing every familiar face around me.
I never expected to hear from her again.
Gun’s Story
Several months passed, and the signs of famine persisted in the city. Winter made people even more desperate. We were adjusting to the possibility that family members, relatives, neighbors—people with whom we had exchanged smiles hours before—might disappear without a trace.
In factories and offices, lunch was no longer provided. Whether we worked or not hardly mattered, as showing up for a job often didn’t result in food or wages. Kim Jong Il’s regime emphasized that we could overcome this hardship by working together, but words do not fill an empty stomach, and the search for food drove people to desperate measures.
One winter evening, I went to bed early, and was staring at the ceiling through the darkness. The government shut off power to residences at 8:30 P.M., and the city plunged into impenetrable darkness. In those days of darkness, and with Sun gone, I was spending more nights at the hotel than at home, out of loneliness. The hotel was empty, but the manager was ordered to keep lights on in 20 rooms to make the city look a little alive. That night, however, I thought I should return home; I felt guilty, having left my room empty for several days. My apartment was not any bigger than Aunt Ann’s, but somehow being alone made me feel the cold more keenly, so I tried to fall asleep as quickly as possible. Just as I was drifting off, I heard a cautious knock at my door. At first I thought it was a rat, struggling to find food, but the sound became louder and more insistent. Eventually, I got up and put an ear to the door.
“Jia! Jia!” a low voice came through.
“Who is it?” I was afraid. Nobody had come by my home in the wee hours since Sun had gone. “Who is it?” I rasped again.
“Jia, it’s me. It’s Gun.”
I tripped over myself struggling to pull some clothes on.
“Jia. Please let me in.”
I opened the door a crack, but the light was off, and I couldn’t see anything. It hadn’t worked for many days. After the electricity shortage, the government had supplied power from 5:00 to 8:00 A.M. and from 6:00 to 11:00 P.M., but even that soon became irregular. They would only supply electricity to apartments whose residents gave them extra money. My building didn’t want to pay extra money; people relied on kerosene lamps.
Before my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was as good as blind.
“It’s Gun. Don’t you remember my voice?”
I could hear the desperation in his voice, and opened the door at once; a black figure rushed into the room. When my eyes finally adjusted, I recognized him.
“Heavens! What are you doing here? Didn’t you leave?” I seated him on the sofa, but he dropped to the floor, heaving a sigh of relief as he saw my fear dissolve.
“I came back for Sun, but there was no way to contact her except through you. I waited for her half the day, hiding on the other side of the building, but I didn’t see her. Could you bring her here?”
He smiled. I could see teeth were still white and even. I could read the happiness in his eyes and his haste to see her. I watched him for a while, and his smile slowly died as we spoke.
“Could you? Is it too difficult? Maybe it’s not the right time to call her…” Gun scratched the top of his head over and over again.
I spoke slowly. “She is not here anymore, Gun.”
His smile disappeared altogether, and he sat upright in front of me. “What do you mean? Why isn’t she here anymore? Did she leave for someplace else?”
I held his hand and said gently, “Gun, she left after you did. I’m sure she left a note with her parents. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know exactly where she is right now. But I think she left to look for you.”
His mouth hung open, and his stare was blank. Silence lingered between us for a time.
“How could this happen? It’s my fault. It’s my fault… I should have come back faster.”
Gun sobbed in front of me. I let him cry as much as he wanted, just as I had with Sun.
“If I had come back a little faster… If I had left her a note before I ran… this would never have happened.”
Gun told me that he had hesitated before running away. He hadn’t wanted to leave without Sun, but there was no choice. He had heard that in China and other countries people could eat as much as they wanted. The government told us the floods had hit the entire world and that people in other countries were suffering more than we were. But while running an errand for his factory, Gun had traveled to Sinuiju, a ghost town on the Chinese border, and had witnessed the land of China beyond the Amrok River. He was stunned. He couldn’t take his eyes off it—the high buildings and splendid lights were in such sharp contrast to the dark and barren Sinuiju. Gun imagined plentiful food for his parents there—how would the Chinese have money for all that light unless they were well fed? The loving son couldn’t stand letting his parents grow sicker from starvation.
Gun had crossed the border with his elderly parents—a dangerous journey. They settled in a small Korean-Chinese village, where Gun worked day and night, but he could not forget Sun. His parents knew that returning to North Korea was much more dangerous than getting out, but they couldn’t stop him. They couldn’t bear to see their son’s face so empty any longer.
Gun had returned here to take Sun with him to China.
Gun knew that China wasn’t very safe, especially for a woman, and that it wasn’t the happy land they had imagined. He knew now that he’d have to return to China to find Sun, as quickly as possible. He could only hope that no ill fortune had befallen her.
He lifted his head and turned his reddened eyes to me. “You really don’t have any idea where she is? Didn’t she leave a note? Not even to you?”
“I’m sorry, Gun. Nobody knows where she is, or how she is. She slept here the night before she left. I guessed she would try to track you down, but I didn’t stop her. No one could have. You must understand, you know how determined she is.”
He sighed deeply. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I needed money to come back here. I worked in factories, farms—anywhere I could make money. But I didn’t return in time.”
“Gun. You must go back to China and find her. She’s a smart girl. I’m sure she’s safe and she’s looking for you.”
He shook his head. “Jia, you don’t know about that place. How can I find her? We are inferior to insects over there. Here we have no hope, but at least we’re regarded as human. Over there, we’re just trash. No one even looks at us.” Gun grabbed his head again. It was too much to think of Sun, alone in China.
He suddenly stood up in the darkness. “I have to go, Jia. I should go back now and find her. The sooner, the better.”
With that, Gun disappeared as suddenly as he had come. I didn’t have time to ask about his parents’ health, or his life on the other side. The execution of runaways was increasing, but that didn’t stop people from trying to cross the river. The hunger wracking their bodies every moment of every day gave them no choice. All I could do was pray for Gun and Sun, and for the others who had gone the same route.