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We drove for about twenty-five miles before arriving at a village that would be our temporary home until more permanent lodgings could be found for us. In North Korea, each county (do) is divided into several cantons (gun), and each canton into several districts. For the time being, we were not permitted to leave our gun, which was a part of the county of Yodok. This restriction was applied to all recently released prisoners. We spent our first night in a run-down little hotel where I dreamt I was still in the camp. When I woke up, I still thought I was there. But a glance at the white floors brusquely reminded me that I was “out.” In the camp, a bell woke us up every morning at five. Here, there was no bell. I was overtaken by a very odd feeling, and it took time to fully grasp that I had entered a different universe. The countryside stretched out in every direction. We were at first assigned to an agricultural part of the gun, and for a time we lived and worked on a collective farm. Now that we were free citizens, our diet was much better and usually consisted of rice, soybean curd, and whiting. This was in 1987, before the famine had taken root and spread throughout the country.

We were only at the farm a short while when my uncle managed to receive authorization to move to Pyungsung, where his valuable skills as a biochemist could be put to better use. The rest of us had our assignment to Yodok confirmed, and that’s where we stayed until April.

Every district in North Korea is administered by two committees: one administrative, and the other political. Upon reentering civilian life, the Security Force handed us over to a Work Section controlled by the former, which assigned us to agricultural work on a collective farm. We were, of course, marked as former prisoners—in North Korea, identification cards always give a citizen’s most recent occupation. Mine indicated that I had worked for army unit 2915. That wouldn’t mean much to a civilian, but a security agent could immediately understand he was dealing with a former political prisoner. We were constantly being watched, in our neighborhood and at our work, both by security agents and ubiquitous snitches, who were just as plentiful on the outside as they had been in the camp. Everyone in North Korea, of course, is under surveillance; as former prisoners, ours was just a little tighter. The odd thing was they had no reason to watch me; I had a policeman inside my head. The camp had trained me so well that I was still greeting every agent I came across with a sweeping, ninety-degree bow. This made all my new friends laugh, which gradually helped me break the habit.

My family and I had no desire to stay in the countryside, but citizens who wanted to leave their gun had to obtain permission from the director of their work group, the police, and the local security office. Former prisoners also required a supplementary authorization from the State Security Agency. Fortunately, many of our relatives had avoided the camps, and several of them—most notably, two of my dad’s sisters and my first uncle—were ready to help us. Because they were related to political prisoners, they had long ago been dispersed to small towns and villages at a remove from the capital. (One of my aunts thus wound up in Changjin, a mountain village made famous by the dramatic defeat dealt there to the Americans during MacArthur’s retreat in December 1950.)

Yet my relatives had remained free—as free as anyone can be in North Korea—and by giving the bureaucratic wheels a generous greasing, my first uncle was eventually able to reassemble my father’s side of the family in Musan. There he eventually met one of our former Yodok neighbors, who told him of our release. He quickly arranged for the whole family to take the long, difficult train ride to our kun. The reunion was very moving. At first, my uncles didn’t recognize my sister and me, but after a moment of silence, we threw ourselves into one another’s arms. They hadn’t