The Aquariums of Pyongyang_ Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-hwan Kang [104]
I did not join in the exaltation and enthusiasm shared by many South Koreans during the recent summit between North and South Korea. One has to be naive to believe that Kim Jong-il’s smile and affability as a host signal any real change in a dictatorial regime without equal in the modern world—a place where the population has been kept in a constant state of terror for decades. If Kim Jong-il is smiling, it’s because he is sure of his grip on power and plans to continue exercising it with the same contempt he has always had for the most basic of human rights.
Swimming against the tide of public opinion, I’ve attempted to explain—most notably in the July 2000 issue of the magazine Chosun—that Kim Jong-il’s friendliness is calculated. His feigned desire for greater openness has the same end as his years of calculated reclusion: to deepen and expand his own mythification. I also explained that reunification with the North as it stands today is impossible. South Korea is a democratic country, a place where power lies with the people. In the North, people lead a pathetic existence given over entirely to the Party and Kim Jong-il, who confiscates power for his own ends. The only acceptable reunification is one that grants North Koreans the freedom to lead a life worthy of human beings. They are now dying of hunger without the right to utter a word of protest, crushed by a system that walks all over their fundamental human rights.
We are told that the answer to these little problems—the respect for human rights, the concentration camps, the kidnaping of South Korean and Japanese citizens—currently is not of primary concern. We are told that this debate would be better left for another day, that the North Koreans’ lot should improve before we undertake reunification; but by then they’ll all be dead!
Reunification is inevitable, but it can only take place once Pyongyang has stopped crucifying the population under its control. How can we stand by while troops of orphans cross the Yalu and Tumen rivers seeking refuge in China? How can we stand by while parents sell their daughters for something to eat? I don’t want to see any more skeletal children with wide, frightened eyes. I don’t want any more children sent to the camps and their mothers forced to divorce their fathers. I want their grandfathers to be around to tell them stories—and their giggles on the banks of the Daedong never to be interrupted by the arrival of bureaucrats from the Security Force.
1
This name is encountered in the journal of Hamel, a seventeenth-century Dutch sailor, who lived in Korea for a time. He gives the spelling as Quelpaert. This spelling appears on a number of maps. (All the notes in this book are Pierre Rigoulot’s.)
2
See page 120.
3
Kang Chol-hwan is alluding to a short story by Alphonse Daudet entitled “La Dernière Class,” which appears in the collection Contes du lundi. The story tells of a painful falling out between a class of Alsatian students and their French teacher, whom the students abruptly abandon in favor of a newly arrived German Lehrer. Koreans lived through a similar experience during Japanese colonization, which explains why this story is one of the most famous works of French literature in Korea.
4
The letter dates from May 5, 1946. See Kim Il-sung, Complete Works, vol. 2 (Pyongyang: 1980), 193, foreign language edition.
5
Namdaemun is a large market in Seoul that is active day and night.
6
Literally, “older sister,” a respectful form of address employed regardless of any actual family connection.
Originally published in 2000 in France as
Les Aquariums de Pyongyang by Éditions
Robert Laffont
Translation copyright © 2001 by
Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
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