questions in class, and when she did, the student called upon to answer would stand up, hands at their sides, and shout out the answer as if addressing a regiment. We were not required to formulate any views of our own, or to discuss, or interpret ideas in any subject. Almost all of our homework was simply memorization, which I was good at, and often came top of the class.
Propaganda seeped into every subject. In our geography lesson we used a textbook that showed photographs of parched plots of land, so arid that the mud was cracked. ‘This is a normal farm in South Korea,’ the teacher said. ‘Farmers there can’t grow rice. That’s why the people suffer.’ Maths textbook questions were sometimes worded emotively. ‘In one battle of the Great Fatherland Liberation War, 3 brave uncles of the Korean People’s Army wiped out 30 American imperialist bastards. What was the ratio of the soldiers who fought?’
Everything we learned about Americans was negative. In cartoons they were snarling jackals. In the propaganda posters they were as thin as sticks with hook noses and blond hair. We were told they smelled bad. They had turned South Korea into a ‘hell on earth’ and were maintaining a puppet government there. The teachers never missed an opportunity to remind us of their villainy.
‘If you meet a Yankee bastard on the street and he offers you candy, do not take it!’ one teacher warned us, wagging a finger in the air. ‘If you do, he’ll claim North Korean children are beggars. Be on your guard if he asks you anything, even the most innocent questions.’
We all looked at each other. We had never seen an American. Few Westerners, let alone Americans, ever came to our country, but for some reason the threat of the unseen made this warning all the more chilling.
The teacher also told us to be wary of the Chinese, our allies in communism just across the river. They were envious of us, and not to be trusted. This made sense to me because many of the Chinese-made products I saw at the market were often of dubious quality. The lurid urban myths circulating in Hyesan seemed to confirm the teacher’s words. One story had it that the Chinese used human blood to dye fabrics red. This gave me nightmares. These stories affected my mother, too. When she once found insect eggs in the lining of some underwear she’d bought she wondered if they’d been put there deliberately by the Chinese manufacturer.
One day early in the first semester our teacher had an announcement to make. Training and drilling for the mass games would soon begin. Mass games, he said, were essential to our education. The training, organization and discipline needed for them would make good communists of us. He gave us an example of what he meant, quoting the words of Kim Jong-il: since every child knew that a single slip by an individual could ruin a display involving thousands of performers, every child learned to subordinate their will to that of the collective. In other words, though we were too young to know it, mass games helped to suppress individual thought.
Mass games marked the most sacred dates in the calendar. We practised all year long except during the coldest weeks. Practice was held on the school grounds, which could be especially arduous in the heat of summer, with the final rehearsals in Hyesan Stadium. The highlight of the year was Kim Il-sung’s birthday, on 15 April. I played the drums in the parade. This was followed by the gymnastics and parades for Children’s Day on 2 June, at which we’d march through the city holding tall, streaming red banners. Then we trained for the anniversary of the Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War (the Korean War) on 27 July, at which we’d join with other schools to form massed choirs. Shortly after this were the mass games for Liberation Day on 15 August (which commemorated the end of Japanese rule), and Party Foundation Day, on 10 October. There was little time left over in the year for proper education or private pursuits.
I didn’t enjoy these vast events. They were nerve-wracking and stressful. But no one complained and no one was excused. My friends and I were assigned to the card section of the mass games in Hyesan Stadium, which was made up of thousands of children executing an immaculately drilled display of different coloured cards flipped and held up to form a sequence of giant images – all timed to music, gymnastics or marching. Though none of us said it, we all used to worry about the ‘single slip’ that could ruin the entire display. That filled me with terror. We practised endlessly, and to perfection. Each of us had a large pack containing all our cards, which we displayed in order. We were led by a conductor who stood at the front holding up the number of the next card. When she gave the signal, everyone held up that card in unison. The final pattern in the display formed a vast image of the Great Leader’s face with a shimmering gold wreath around it, which the children moved to give it a dazzle effect. We never got to see the visual display that we were creating, but when the stadium was full, and we heard the roar of the crowd, with tens of thousands chanting ‘Long life!’ over and over – ‘MAN–SAE! MAN–SAE! MAN–SAE!’ – the adrenalin was electrifying.
At the end of that first year at secondary school the ceremonies held on the anniversary of the Korean War affected me deeply and made me very emotional. The day began at school with outdoor speeches from our teachers and headmaster. They opened with the solemn words, spoken into a microphone: ‘On the morning of 25 June 1950, at 3 a.m., the South Korean enemy attacked our country while our people slept, and killed many innocents …’
The images conjured for us of tanks rolling across the border and slaughtering our people in their homes moved us all to floods of tears. The South Koreans had made victims of us. I burned with thoughts of vengeance and righting injustice. All the children felt the same. We talked afterwards of what we would do to a South Korean if we ever saw one.
Despite the endless and exhausting communal activities I had one private realm I could escape to: in books. Reading was a habit I’d picked up from my mother. I had picture books of fairytales, myths and folktales. I had a Korean edition of The Count of Monte Cristo, a story I loved – but it had some pages glued together by the censor, and it was impossible to peel them apart. Tales of heroes struggling against oppression were permitted as long as they fitted the North Korean revolutionary worldview, but any inconvenient details got blotted out.
By the second year of secondary school I was reading North Korean spy thrillers. Some of them were so gripping they kept me up late, by candlelight. The best one was about a North Korean special agent operating in South Korea. He lived there with his South Korean wife, never telling her his true identity. He was controlled directly by the head of secret espionage operations, a figure he’d never met face to face but with whom he’d formed a relationship over time. The story climaxes when he discovers that his controller is his own wife. The best stories had endings that were obvious all along and yet took the reader completely by surprise.
One evening at the start of my second year at secondary school, I came home to find my mother cooking a special dinner to mark my father’s first day in a new job. I had known for a while that he was leaving the air force, but I wasn’t talking to him much these days, and taking little interest in what he told me. When he arrived home, I saw him wearing a civilian suit for the first time. He looked smart, and quite different. I was so used to seeing his grey-blue uniform. He was now working for a trading company, which was controlled by the military. He was grinning broadly, and said he would be crossing into China next week on business. He showed me his new passport. I had never seen a passport before, but affected a lack of interest. My mother, however, was in high spirits. A husband with permission to travel abroad was a real mark of status. We were moving up in the world.
The only time I spoke to him over dinner, and not very respectfully, was to ask what he actually did in this fancy new job. He gave some vague, unspecific response. Clearly it was supposed to be some big secret. I rolled my eyes and left the table, which angered my mother. My father remained silent. I knew I had hurt him, but I felt more resentful towards him than ever. This was yet another fact being kept hidden from me. The pain I felt over the truth about my parentage had not lessened at all. I did not realize that in not telling me about his job he was trying to protect me.
My father began crossing into China on business, sometimes staying away for a night or two. It was very fortunate, therefore, that he happened to be at home with my mother on the evening of the fire.
About two months later, I had gone to bed very early, aching and exhausted after mass games practice, and was already asleep