The Aquariums of Pyongyang_ Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-hwan Kang [37]
It’s easy to imagine how angry my comrades were with me that afternoon. Some of them accused me of putting on an act and even started kicking me, disguising their blows as friendly pick-me-ups to rouse me from my stupor. The next day the teacher assigned me to an easier detail: keeping track of the round trips completed by the others. But it wasn’t long before I was again judged ready for hard labor.
SEVEN
DEATH OF A BLACK CHAMPION
My first months at Yodok were among the most difficult. I had to adjust to a life without comforts, to restrictions on my time, to extreme physical exertion, and to unfamiliar food. And I had to do it in relative solitude, for in a place like Yodok, rare are the bonds of friendship and solidarity.
Our arrival had initially constituted a major event in the lives of Yodok’s detainees, a chance to reestablish contact with the outside world. Talking to a newly arrived prisoner was like feeling a fresh wind from the world beyond their valley prison. But in the beginning I cringed at getting too close to the other detainees. Their faces were ugly, they had missing teeth, their hair was caked together and overgrown, and they were all filthy as animals. Yet more striking than their physical appearance was the aura of weakness that oozed from their every pore. Their weariness and dejection seemed the root of their neglect—these and a pervasive sense of desperation, which they were perhaps more adept at dissimulating. None of them made any effort to look presentable. It was clear that they bathed rarely, if at all, and that the work of laundering was usually left to the rain and snow.
During the first days of my detention, I met a kid who wore black socks. At least that’s what I thought until I realized his socks in fact were an incredible layer of dirt and grime. I, too, would one day wear such “socks.” I’m still grateful to my grandmother for forcing us to wash our hands and feet whenever we had a little time and energy. It was a way of resisting the imposed conditions and the feelings of exhaustion and self-loathing they engendered.
My father, uncle, and sister seemed as exhausted as I. When we returned to our hut at night and sat around the little low table eating our corn, hardly anyone said a word. As soon as we were done eating, we hurried off to bed, knowing instinctively that to survive here, we’d need to recuperate all the strength we could.
Still, before getting into bed, I would spend a few minutes hunched over my aquarium. It seemed too large now for the three or four fish that still clung to life. It mattered little that I changed their water and that I provided them food by catching insects during my work. They were having as hard a time at Yodok as I was. Eventually there was only one survivor: a black fish who had succeeded in adjusting to his catch-as-catch-can diet. As temperatures dropped throughout November, he continued to hold strong; then he held out through December, too. To keep the aquarium from freezing over, I wrapped it in rags and asked Grandmother to move it near the stove whenever she did any cooking. Yet winter deepened, my efforts seemed every day more hopeless. The temperature soon fell below freezing in our hut, and we spent our nights shivering in our blankets.
Despite all my cares, the black champion died. Over the last weeks of summer I had gathered roaches, dragonflies, silkworms, and any other bugs that might pass for fish food. I had dried these in the sun and ground them into a powder. My fish accepted the food, but the cold got the better of him. Seeing his lifeless body floating on the surface of the water filled