Gun could hear his uncle protesting. “General, he must have been influenced by some reactionary elements—he has never disobeyed the rules, he was a model for his factory!”
The square-faced soldier addressed his men, ignoring the pleas of Gun’s uncle. “Search the whole house. If you find something, report it to me later. We must go.”
“Gun! Gun!” his uncle shouted. Gun didn’t look back. His uncle cried, “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay here overnight. How can I face my brother in the other world? This is my fault! ”
As the car pulled away, Gun realized he had forgotten to tell to his uncle about the medicine. He had to take the medicine twice a day, not three times, like medicine in North Korea. Chinese medicine was much stronger.
To Become a Spy
Gun was thrown into a cell already overflowing with prisoners. He looked around the cell and realized he had been dragged into an underground prison. He had heard about these places, deep in the mountains: he had heard that people sent to them never returned. Runaways to China lived in fear of being caught by the Chinese police, handed over to the North Korean police, and sent to one of these prisons.
Most prisoners crouched and bowed their heads, just looking at the ground. The smell of urine filled the air, and nausea overcame Gun as he approached a woman whose chin was resting on her chest. She was slumped on the floor, and looked more like a corpse than a human being, her enormous belly dwarfing her tiny head. “That bitch pees more than five times a day on that spot. She can’t even wait until toilet time. I can’t stand it anymore,” one man complained, looking at Gun.
“What’s wrong with her?” Gun asked. No wonder there was space around her. An old woman stared at the grumbling man and said, “Don’t talk like that. Pregnant women have to go to the restroom more frequently because of the baby’s pressure.”
“Who wants a baby now!” the man sneered. “Besides, her baby’s butt has two different cheeks: one from China and the other from here. It must be deformed.” Some of the men around him smirked.
A policeman kicked at the iron bars. “Cut it out, national traitors! Do you fucking bastards want me to stop your laughing?”
The pregnant woman didn’t seem to care how people talked about her; she didn’t raise her head or move at all. Gun couldn’t help but sit next to her, as finding another place to lie down in the cell was impossible.
He wondered what Sun was doing at that moment. She must blame me, he thought. Why didn’t I leave as soon as I delivered the medicine to my uncle? What about Jaeho? Was he afraid the police would raid his house and arrest everyone for harboring a traitor? If Jaeho hadn’t said anything, nobody would have known; Gun could have said farewell to his uncle and his family, safely crossed the river, and started looking for Sun. Jaeho’s betrayal seemed coldhearted; if it was revenge for Gun’s leaving without telling him, it was too cruel.
A policeman opened the door of the prison cell abruptly. “Hey, new guy! Come out.” When Gun looked up toward the voice, three men were standing behind the policeman. Together they dragged Gun to another room, similar in size to the cell, though its emptiness made it feel much bigger and colder. A yellowish, umbrella-shaped light hung from the middle of the ceiling—the only decoration. Directly under it, in a chair, sat the square-faced soldier who had arrested him, with his legs crossed, smoking. Gun felt a chill that sank to the marrow of his bones; whether from the cold or from the man’s vicious smile, he didn’t know. He decided instantly that the fastest way out was to acquiesce. He stood at attention before his interrogator.
“We investigated you and your family’s history thoroughly. Up to now you’ve had no problems with the government, and yet you chose to destroy everything. How was China? Was crossing the border worth betraying your country?” Gun’s interrogator waved his cigarette back and forth.
Gun said nothing; there was nothing to say. He wondered how many times a day that man examined runaways, and how much information they must beat out of each one. It frightened him. The square-faced man seemed uninterested in any answers Gun might provide; he just kept smoking. Gun didn’t raise his eyes.
Back in the cell, Gun was lying on the floor when he felt warm water spread underneath him. It felt so good; he wanted to take off his clothes and soak his whole body in it. When he opened his eyes, he realized that it had come from between the pregnant woman’s legs. He met her eyes and she smiled, though her face was filled with shame. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but Gun didn’t complain. In fact, he didn’t care. The smell of urine didn’t bother him anymore.
Gun was dragged back to the room again the next day and beaten by the same men, the same way. They weren’t even trying to extract information from him, and after a while he didn’t feel pain anymore; his body had swelled to almost three times its normal size. All he heard, all day, was “national traitor.” When Gun was returned to the cell after a day of beatings, other prisoners consoled him, saying, “It’s just the first step. We all passed it, and it’ll be over soon. Just hang on a little longer.”
What had he done? Gun had been a good citizen in North Korea: never disobeyed the law, never went against the order of the government—in fact, he was the most enthusiastic member of the Propaganda Department in the factory where he worked. He hadn’t crossed the border to betray his country; he just wanted to make a living and not starve to death. More important than that, he didn’t want his parents to starve to death. He had waited for the government to help them, he had believed the government would do something, but nothing had happened. The situation only got worse, until crossing the river was the only way.
The pregnant woman fed Gun the rice-and-corn soup they were given, because he was bound and couldn’t hold a spoon himself. The soup was thin, but it helped restore energy to his injured body.
“How old are you?” he asked one day, as she put a spoonful to his mouth.
Her face turned red and she responded, hesitantly, “Seventeen.”
“How did you become pregnant at such a young age?” Gun asked the question despite himself.
She fed him another spoonful, looking into his face. “When I got over to China with my father the first time, he sold me to a Chinese plan. But it was for me—he did it for me.” She put the spoon in the bowl and went on, “I was actually happy over there. People blame my father, but I don’t care; my Chinese husband was really nice. We couldn’t communicate very well—sometimes we needed his Korean-Chinese friend or neighbor—but the language barrier didn’t cause too much trouble.” She spoke softly, so others couldn’t hear.
“He was fifteen years older than me, and very poor. To buy me, he spent almost all of the money he had saved, but I never missed a meal; he always tried to feed me well. When I got pregnant, we didn’t know what to do. We were so happy, but we were afraid because we knew we shouldn’t have children. His friends had warned us that a pregnancy would risk my safety, but we weren’t cautious enough. If the Chinese government found out I was from North Korea, I would be dragged back here. We knew we had to give up the baby, and walking to the hospital, we cried bitterly in the street, holding hands. Some policemen happened to pass us—two blubbering adults holding hands, who wouldn’t notice? We were so ignorant. They asked what had happened. I panicked and started to run, but they caught me. When they found out who I was, they sent me here. My husband tried to have me released, but the poor man has no power.”
She caressed her belly. “I saved my baby, but I lost my husband.”
Gun looked at her belly. He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Sun in her village. Sun could easily be in a similar situation, but he couldn’t bear to imagine it. He bit his lower lip hard. No! Asking such questions would only bring bad fortune.