The Aquariums of Pyongyang_ Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-hwan Kang [54]
Another, more difficult, part of the job was protecting the rabbits from rats that tried to squeeze into the cages at night to devour the young. To try to control the problem, we set up rat traps using wooden boxes, but the captured rats very often chewed their way out. The only viable solution was to mount a guard. The late hours were hard on kids who were only twelve or thirteen years old, but it gave us a chance to steal a few fruits and vegetables from the fields otherwise reserved for the guards. The rabbits were our allies in these endeavors, disposing of the pits and peels that threatened to denounce our thieving. Thanks to them, I was able to taste melon for the first time in three or four years.
Given how hungry we were, it was inevitable that our stealing would eventually get out of hand. The armed sentinel who guarded the vegetable field always fell asleep in the first hours of his watch. The temptation was just too great. While we were never caught red-handed, the pillaging eventually became conspicuous, and our teacher let us know that we, the students, were the leading suspects. He quoted the loss estimates and threatened serious consequences should the trend continue. We were in a tight spot and needed to weigh our options carefully. Apart from the teacher’s warnings, we also had to consider another, more immediate danger. A new guard had been assigned the night watch, and he was likely to be less sleepy and quicker on the draw than his predecessor. Yet if the theft ended from one night to the next, it would be tantamount to admitting our guilt—with God only knows what consequences. We ultimately decided we should keep on stealing for a while, making the best we could of the moonless nights and the aural cover of what turned out to be the new guard’s snoring. In the end, it was so easy we almost felt sorry for the guard, who was always getting chewed out by his superior.
We slaughtered the rabbits in the fall, stripping and preparing the furs in their most luxuriant season. As for the meat, its dispensation was the exclusive prerogative of the agents and their families, who each received their own rabbit. When they came to fetch their animals, we waited on them like regular butchers, asking if they wanted their animals eviscerated; whole or cut into pieces; with or without the head, liver, or kidneys. What joy we felt when they turned up their noses at the lungs or the heart and bade us, “Keep it!”
Yet it wasn’t just disgust that compelled the guards to refuse the offal; in Korean culture there is the idea—born partly of generosity and partly of disdain—that one should always leave a portion of what one eats to an inferior. It’s a way of establishing one’s superiority, of saying, “I don’t need it” and “it’s good enough for you but not for me.” To break with this custom is to lose face, even in a camp, and this was very much to our benefit. At the end of the slaughter day, we divvied up the innards and cooked them in the simplest and fastest way possible, by boiling them in water. It seemed like the most exquisite meal ever, though the kids were sometimes so hungry they couldn’t wait for the meat to cook and just ate it raw.
Such charmed days were painfully rare, however, and pinching a rabbit on the sly was no easy feat. The animals were continually being counted and recounted, so