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2017.06.28
| Won | Pyongyang | Sinuiju | Hyesan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exchange Rate | 8,070 | 8,050 | 8,095 |
| Rice Price | 5,800 | 6,000 | 5,900 |
Nine Years in the Wilderness
Alexandra Licha, intern. Interview conducted by Oh Yun Ju |
2012-06-08 14:36
“I feel that refugees who feel they are confident talking about the past should talk about it. There is a need for that,” says Kim Eunsun, a young defector studying Chinese language and culture at Sogang University.
[imText1]Kim hopes to eventually become a child psychologist, but for the time being she is more famous, in France at least, for her life story as written by Le Figaro journalist Sébastien Falletti under the title “Corée du Nord: 9 ans pour fuir l’enfer.” Kim is also currently appearing on the Donga Ilbo-run ‘Channel A’ entertainment show ‘Ijae mannaro kamnida’, a weekly talk show in which a group of defector women share pieces of their past with an increasingly interested cable TV audience.
True to her word, Kim doesn’t shy away from talking about her life in North Hamkyung Province, not even the difficult moments. For instance, she recounts without fondness the year she spent living as a child beggar (“kkotjebi”) on the streets of Rajin-Sonbong, the Special Economic Zone in North Korea’s far northeast.
“We would be sleeping at night when one of the kkotjebi would say ‘Now is the time,’ and we would all wake up; it was like a sign to go and steal [potatoes, green onions and other seasonal crops],” she explains, adding, “There isn’t just one type of kkotjebi, you see. There are three I guess, and we were in the middle class: that meant we were able to find food to survive.”
“The lower kkotjebi would have no strength to even go out to steal. They would stand around the markets waiting for someone to throw away their food so that they could eat it. Eventually they would walk around eating soil and then faint,” she adds. “The upper class would gather and go to take money from people. They were like a really weak gang.”
Recognizing that this was not going to improve, Kim, her mother and older sister finally defected before embarking on nine years in China en route to Seoul. Given the permanent uncertainty and fear North Korean defectors face in China, it was amazing that Kim and her family managed to survive, avoiding both the police and the menace of forced prostitution at the same time.
“We all spoke Chinese fairly well, so we would go to places that had signs saying that they are looking for someone to work for them,” she explains. “In China, many don’t hold an identification card. Due to the ‘one-child policy’ parents usually don’t register the second child. So they end up going into the woods and living there their whole lives.”
“Employment offices do ask for your ID, but it isn’t a serious problem if you don’t have one,” she goes on. “They look you up and down to check if you are physically good to work and then send you right over to the work place. Where we lived in Shanghai, there were many ethnic Koreans so it wasn’t as hard for us.“
As with many defectors, Kim also converted to Christianity in the process. ”The first time I met a Christian was on the border with Mongolia,” she says. “After walking many hours across wasteland, three women [who had escaped with Kim and her family] held hands and prayed. My mom and I held hands with them and prayed too, saying thank you to whoever is up there.” After arriving in Seoul, Kim says she went to church in search of community life.
Even though she has no intention of going back to North Korea and is thankful for her situation, deep down Kim still misses home. “I remember when I went to pick clover with my dad when I was young,” she recalls. “Most families in North Korea raise rabbits. The school asks us to bring rabbit fur. Actually, the next show on Channel A will be about our home town. I am very touched by the fact that I even have a place to call home. But it makes me sad that I don’t have reunions to attend and pictures of childhood friends.”
[imText1]Kim hopes to eventually become a child psychologist, but for the time being she is more famous, in France at least, for her life story as written by Le Figaro journalist Sébastien Falletti under the title “Corée du Nord: 9 ans pour fuir l’enfer.” Kim is also currently appearing on the Donga Ilbo-run ‘Channel A’ entertainment show ‘Ijae mannaro kamnida’, a weekly talk show in which a group of defector women share pieces of their past with an increasingly interested cable TV audience.
True to her word, Kim doesn’t shy away from talking about her life in North Hamkyung Province, not even the difficult moments. For instance, she recounts without fondness the year she spent living as a child beggar (“kkotjebi”) on the streets of Rajin-Sonbong, the Special Economic Zone in North Korea’s far northeast.
“We would be sleeping at night when one of the kkotjebi would say ‘Now is the time,’ and we would all wake up; it was like a sign to go and steal [potatoes, green onions and other seasonal crops],” she explains, adding, “There isn’t just one type of kkotjebi, you see. There are three I guess, and we were in the middle class: that meant we were able to find food to survive.”
“The lower kkotjebi would have no strength to even go out to steal. They would stand around the markets waiting for someone to throw away their food so that they could eat it. Eventually they would walk around eating soil and then faint,” she adds. “The upper class would gather and go to take money from people. They were like a really weak gang.”
Recognizing that this was not going to improve, Kim, her mother and older sister finally defected before embarking on nine years in China en route to Seoul. Given the permanent uncertainty and fear North Korean defectors face in China, it was amazing that Kim and her family managed to survive, avoiding both the police and the menace of forced prostitution at the same time.
“We all spoke Chinese fairly well, so we would go to places that had signs saying that they are looking for someone to work for them,” she explains. “In China, many don’t hold an identification card. Due to the ‘one-child policy’ parents usually don’t register the second child. So they end up going into the woods and living there their whole lives.”
“Employment offices do ask for your ID, but it isn’t a serious problem if you don’t have one,” she goes on. “They look you up and down to check if you are physically good to work and then send you right over to the work place. Where we lived in Shanghai, there were many ethnic Koreans so it wasn’t as hard for us.“
As with many defectors, Kim also converted to Christianity in the process. ”The first time I met a Christian was on the border with Mongolia,” she says. “After walking many hours across wasteland, three women [who had escaped with Kim and her family] held hands and prayed. My mom and I held hands with them and prayed too, saying thank you to whoever is up there.” After arriving in Seoul, Kim says she went to church in search of community life.
Even though she has no intention of going back to North Korea and is thankful for her situation, deep down Kim still misses home. “I remember when I went to pick clover with my dad when I was young,” she recalls. “Most families in North Korea raise rabbits. The school asks us to bring rabbit fur. Actually, the next show on Channel A will be about our home town. I am very touched by the fact that I even have a place to call home. But it makes me sad that I don’t have reunions to attend and pictures of childhood friends.”
It is spring 1997 in Eundok, North Hamkyung Province. Kim Eunsun writes her last will. She’s eleven.
So begins one of the most recent contributions to the growing body of defector memoirs, ‘9 ans pour fuir l’enfer’ or ‘9 years to escape from hell’. The book was released by French publisher Michel Lafon this spring, but understandably got shaded out by the publication of Shin Dong Hyuk’s compelling ‘Escape from Camp 14’ at more or less the same time. However, this is a great misfortune, for Sébastien Falletti has added gracious eloquence to Kim Eunsun’s life story and in the process created an adventurous novel that can be read easily but never drifts away from describing an often harsh reality.
As the title suggests, ‘9 ans pour fuir l’enfer’ is the account of a nine-year journey from one Korea to the other. Contrary to other defector memoirs such as ‘This is paradise!’, it concentrates more on the Chinese and Mongolian peripeteia of Kim Eunsun, her older sister and their mother, who make the decision to flee from Eundok after their father passes away from starvation, and from there out of North Korea for good after several months of begging in nearby Rajin-Sonbong.
Reading her memoir, we cannot help reaching the counterintuitive conclusion that, in their own way, Kim Eunsun and her family were extremely lucky: even though they were sold to a Chinese farmer soon after crossing the Tumen frontier, a fate that comes across as almost inevitable, they are not torn apart and manage to escape both servitude-like treatment and brief deportation to North Korea before fleeing south to Dalian and onward to Shanghai, where they manage to survive on the income from small jobs without ever falling into the claws of prostitution. Kim Eunsun and her mother manage to finish their odyssey and arrive in Seoul, where Eunsun resumes studies. Her sister Keumsun even finds genuine love in China.
Lamentably, being “unfortunately fortunate” in this way does mean that Kim Eunsun’s story is never likely to gather as much wind in its sails as the naked brutality of ‘Escape from Camp 14’. Moreover, since it has so far only been published in French, it is limited by definition in terms of Kim’s main goal: to appeal to general readers and help raise awareness about the everyday reality in North Korea. Her testimony is precious for its completeness, for its detailed tracts about the fate of defectors in China, and for its appreciation of the perilousness of moving on from China to South Korea, about which many defectors remain at least partially silent. It deserves to be read.
Even though Kim Eunsun has already succeeded in integrating into South Korean society – she currently studies Chinese language and culture at Sogang University in Seoul – she admits at the end of the book: “I sometimes miss the solidarity we had in North Korea; the society here seems too egotistical,” reminding us that her story might not be sensational, but it is no less strong for that.
