[imText1]“I have never before seen such petitioning eyes as I did in the eyes of my brothers upon our meeting in a Pyongyang hotel. They shone strangely, like eyes of an animal in the darkness.”
Second-generation Japanese-Korean opera singer Jun Wul Son revealed the tragedy of her family through her autobiography, Aria in a Strait, early this year.
Tokyo-born Jun graduated from the Jochongnyeon (General Association of North Korean Residents in Japan) Community School, went through Doho Institute’s Music School, joined Japan’s representative opera school, Nikigai, in 1983, and prepared herself as an opera singer. Afterwards, she entered the stage as Japan’s top prima donna and held concerts across the U.S., Europe, Pyongyang, Seoul, and of course, Japan.
Through her autobiography, she shared with the public the story of her four brothers—returnees to North Korea—who were taken to the Yoduk Prison Camp in North Korea, and of her mother, who sacrificed herself to report North Korea’s disastrous human rights situation.
Early this year, Jun’s published memoir in Japan won the best nonfiction award at the 13th Nonfiction Competition, presented by the publisher, “Shogakkan.”
The Seed of a Tragedy: Sending Japanese-Korean Immigrants to North Korea
Jun’s mother had four children with her first husband.
Jun, unaware of the existence of her four brothers until elementary school came across a faded, old picture one day. Her mother told her the story of her half brothers, who had gone over to North Korea.
In 1959, when sending Japanese-Koreans to North Korea began to gain popularity in the Japanese-Korean society, Jun’s brothers also joined aboard the ship, “the Mankyungbong,” with great hopes and expectations for “paradise.”
Shortly after the brothers went to North Korea, contact ceased and her mother met and started a new family with her father.
In the midst of that, her mother received a letter in 1971. The letter, sent by a friend who had gone over to North Korea, contained the bolt-out-of-the blue news that “her sons were confined at a prison camp.”
At the time, her mother had absolute trust in North Korean society, the North Koreans in Japan, and Kim Il Sung, so she could not believe the story. But the mother, after repeatedly hearing similar news, visited North Korea in 1980 to see with her own eyes her sons lived.
At a hotel in Pyongyang, the mother had a tearful meeting with three of her sons. The state of their health, along with the news of the death of her second son, shocked her. With emaciated faces, the condition of their health did not seem well. Further, she sensed that her sons were filled with fear about something.
When the guard left momentarily, the sons informed their mother of stories that left her in disbelief. They relayed that they had been released after a 10-year incarceration in a prison camp. They confessed that they had lived in daily fear at the camp, where torture was a daily occurrence.
The prison camp described by the sons was a place where people died from torture and starvation and were publicly executed if they were caught while escaping. Reality was a “living hell,” where even children died everyday.
Subsequently, the mother visited North Korea several times and it was around the second time that she heard the particular circumstances of her sons’ imprisonment.
In the summer of 1969, her sons were arrested with the title, “South Korean spy,” by the North Korean authorities and confined to a prison. In 1970, they were transported to Yoduk Prison Camp and released in 1978.
But the brothers did not know why they were held at a prison camp nor the charges. Only, they could assume that the statement of the first son that “he admired Michelangelo” led to their imprisonment.
While knowing the reality in North Korea, I could not sing songs praising its regime.
The mother’s health, upon returning to Japan, deteriorated drastically from the shock. However, she, since then, diligently pioneered a movement testifying to North Korean prison camps. At that time, the coexistence of fear and trust in North Korea in the immigrant community made it difficult to speak out the truth, even when one knew the actual conditions in North Korea.
Despite this, the mother started talking to each of the customers who came in her to self-operated Korean restaurant about reality in North Korea and the existence of prison camps; using her testimony as a stepping stone, a NGO called “A Committee to Preserve Life and Human Rights of North Korean Countrymen” was inaugurated.
Around 1985, the first meeting between Jun and her brothers took place. For Kim Il Sung’s 60th birthday on the 15th of April, she received the invitation to participate in the “Spring Goodwill Arts Festival” from the Jochongnyeon Culture Bureau. She visited North Korea and sang the aria from the opera “Blood Sea” in front of Kim.
After the performance, Jun met her brothers at a hotel. The relationship between her brothers and her were awkward and nerve-wrecking at first, but they were able to confirm their family heritage through their conversations.
The older brother handed Jun a letter, which he had secretly been writing all this time, to give to their mother. In the letter were contents about their tortured lives and their conviction to seek revenge on Kim Il Sung.
Jun received more requests to visit North Korea, but she refused all of them. The reason was that she could not sing songs praising the regime while knowing about the reality that affected her brothers.
In 1990, her oldest brother died and her third brother also passed away in 2001.
Upon meeting Kang Cheol Hwan, who visited Japan in 1995, Jun heard about the story of her brothers again. Kang said that he became acquainted with her brothers at the Yoduk Prison Camp. Around the time Kang defected, the brothers even gave him clothes that their mother had sent from Japan.
The book also contains vivid depictions of the history of sending Japanese-Koreans to North Korea. The immigrants who had gone over to North Korea had to live under ceaseless watch and control of North Korean authorities. Jun’s mother told her that “there are many parents who sent their children to the motherland but ended up with tragic fates like us.”
Even if families in Japan found out about North Korea’s real state of affairs, they could not say anything because of their families in North Korea and could only send them items of necessity.
Jun’s mother, who left the world last year, did not save herself from disseminating the news of this tragedy and Japanese NGOs continued her “solitary fight” by reporting on North Korea’s human rights violations.
