Gun was plagued by nightmares. In one he saw Sun, her naked body in chains, suspended from a big brick wall. She struggled to cut the chains, but if she cut one, another came out of the brick and bound her more tightly. She was crying out and bleeding, but as she wriggled, the chains pulled her into the wall. She called for Gun over and over; it felt so real. He could feel his breath quicken, watching her desperately, unable to reach her as she was gradually sucked into the brick. In the end, her whole body was engulfed; the brick wall turned so peaceful and shiny, with no scars on its brown face.
Sometimes, the dreams were happier. Sun would smile, wearing her bright, pretty hatibok, as she walked arni in arm with a man in Chinese clothes. They looked so intimate and were always walking away. Whenever he had those dreams, Gun woke up in a cold sweat. He didn’t like either one.
On the eighth day of Gun’s incarceration, he was given two meals of corn, along with salty water and cabbage, and sent to another prison cell. There, he found four men seated, one in each corner. They all seemed to be around his age, but they looked like half-wits. They were eerily quiet; he could hardly hear them breathe. Gun wandered around the room for a while and finally sat in the center of the room. No one spoke. Since they all had the same stories of torture to tell, there was no point in sharing them.
It was a new setting, but the investigators asked the same questions, and Gun gave the same answers. They beat him for yet another week. He had to kneel down on the ground, and his hands were tied behind his back so that he couldn’t move. That was the daily routine. Beginning early in the morning, they kicked his face and his body, and sent him back to the cell at night. They gave him a spoon without a handle, so he wouldn’t commit suicide or make a weapon. He was never allowed to wash, and soon enough he was giving off the same smell as the prisoners he first met. He wondered about the pregnant girl, but there was no way to find out what happened to her.
Then things changed: they began interrogating him and torturing him at the same time. The square-faced man showed up again.
“How have you been? You look much fatter than before. I didn’t know you were so satisfied with this place.”
He sat down on a worn-out wooden chair so wide that he needed only the right half, and set his cigarette down on the left. “So, where are your parents?”
Gun’s stomach spouted a lump of acid. “They’re dead. Please, believe me: that’s why I came back here—I was lonely and missed my relatives. I won’t run away anymore, and I really regret doing it the first time. Please, please forgive me.” Gun thought the square-faced man was his last hope.
The square-faced man was not moved by Gun’s confession. He simply lit another cigarette and asked his subordinates, “Where is the kettle?”
A big, round kettle was brought in. The man asked again, “Are you sure your parents are dead?”
“How could old people survive such a fast current?” Gun cried. “We were stupid, we tried to cross the river, but it was the worst decision of my life. I regret it to the bone.”
The square-faced man stroked his stubbly chin. The back of his hand was flecked with tiny scars and scabs. Grinning lightly, he trilled, “Start.”
Two men made Gun lie down and forced his mouth open. Holding his lower jaw down, they poured water into his mouth from the yellowish metal kettle, and though he tried not to swallow it, the pressure of the water made it rush fiercely down his throat. When his stomach was full, they stamped on his torso until water came out of his mouth and anus—every orifice in his body—and he vomited white liquid. Gun felt his eyes would shoot out; his legs kicked in every direction, and his wrists wriggled in the grip of the men holding him down. They repeated this procedure several times.
The square-faced man finally came and crouched down next to Gun, watching him from above, so that his face appeared to be upside down. “So, did I see ghosts in China? I had dinner with your parents four days ago. Your mother cooked bean paste stew for me. Bean paste stew, with green onions and tofu. Isn’t that her best dish? I don’t understand why you left such nice parents so readily—they looked so sad not to be able to see you, but I said you were fine with me. They were so happy and relieved to hear those words!”
Gun realized why they had stopped asking about his parents. He grabbed the square-faced man’s arm. He couldn’t help stuttering, “Please—spare their lives. They are too old to handle this. They just followed me. I planned everything by myself.”
The man grinned. “I can treat them as my real parents,” he sneered. “I’m sure they’ll take to me, but what can you do for me? Taking care of old people, as you know, isn’t easy, especially in the case of your limping father…”
Gun kept his grip on the man’s arm, white liquid still running from his mouth. They looked at each other for a while, and Gun felt he would never forget that steel block of a face. Then the man stood up, took his cigarette from the chair, and said, “Send him back to his cell.”
As he was dragged from the room, Gun felt capable of murder for the first time in his life.
For a week after that, Gun was left alone. As soon as his body recovered, however, the beatings resumed, lasting for ten more days. Whenever he asked about his parents, the blows came even harder, and Gun begged over and over to be taken to the square-faced man. He shuddered with fear at the thought of his parents coming to harm, but no solution presented itself. Gun was sure they wanted something from him, or he would have been executed immediately.
Gun’s body was no longer his own. Even his voice sounded foreign when they demanded he sing the revolutionary hymns he learned in kindergarten and recite the Great Leader’s instructions. After several weeks, he was on the brink of total collapse. And then the harassment stopped.
The policemen took him and the four other men into the shower room and they were given their first shower in months. Then, a regular meal—meat soup and rice. Gun couldn’t swallow the food at first and was wary of being poisoned, but they threatened him and the others until they cleaned their plates. Their stomachs didn’t trust the food—all five rushed to the toilets after finishing. Within a few days, they were able to digest solid food, and the torturers even brought roasted chicken and sausages. The smell was irresistible, though every time Gun was offered a meal, he felt it could be his last. This treatment lasted for two weeks.
Once their bodies had grown stronger, the prisoners were called to a large, clean office they hadn’t seen before. They were treated differently, almost like humans.
The square-faced man wore a dark-green army uniform and sat behind a desk, resting his feet on the gray desktop. “Come in, my comrades, make yourselves comfortable,” he bellowed, dusting off his round army hat, which looked much older than his tidy uniform. He blew on the hat roughly and pulled it onto his head; it emphasized the squareness of his face. He locked his fingers together, rested his forearms on the edge of his desk, and stretched his neck out toward them.
They tried to figure out how they had progressed from being national traitors to being comrades.
“There is good news. You should appreciate the kindness of the government. You were supposed to pay the penalty for the crime you committed, but the government has decided to forgive you—only you five. You’re chosen people; you might have been prisoners forever, finishing your lives in that filthy jail, but the government has shown mercy. We’ll let you slip, under certain conditions, which means we will give you a mission to strengthen the government.”