The Aquariums of Pyongyang_ Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-hwan Kang [92]
“An-hyuk, what are you doing here?”
They hugged each other, and the man asked us in. Then we got another surprise: he had a woman with him.
“You’re married?” An-hyuk asked.
“No, she’s just a good friend. We live together.”
In North Korea, it’s not possible for an unmarried couple to live together. The young man spoke of love, but An-hyuk and I found the situation scandalous and quickly changed the subject. We told him our story, and he agreed to put us up for a while, then escort us to the South Korean consulate in Beijing. After a month of postponements, we finally set out on the seven-hour train ride.
The Chinese capital impressed me as more Western and capitalist than specifically Chinese. Most striking were the billboards for Daewoo, Samsung, and Lucky Star, all featuring both Chinese characters and Latin script. South Korea may be a small country, I thought, but it seems to reign supreme in China. It was a shocking sight for someone who had grown up on doomsday depictions of a country rife with strikes, where legions of poor workers struggled desperately to survive from one economic crisis to the next. . . . I was also impressed by the width of the streets and the cleanliness of a city that was livelier and more modern than Shenyang.
Behind the big buildings and commercial advertisements, certain aspects of a more traditional China still held fast. Take the public bathrooms, for example. I remember my first experience with one of them: on opening the door, I found myself face to face with people squatting next to one another, chatting and reading their newspapers as they relieved themselves; I quickly closed the door. Was I dreaming? No partitions, no flush chains. Even in the camp, we had partitions and swinging doors to give us a little privacy! The public bathrooms would turn out to be one of the most difficult aspects of our sojourn; all the toilets we encountered followed the same basic model. Since I absolutely needed to go, I waited discreetly at the exit until the bathroom was nearly empty before entering.
Our reason for coming to Beijing was not tourism, however, and we quickly left the station and flagged down a taxi. As we climbed in, An-hyuk’s friend nonchalantly commanded the chauffeur: “To the Korean consulate.” We arrived about fifteen minutes later. Just as we were stepping out of the car, we realized there had been a serious misunderstanding. We were standing in front of the North Korean embassy! We turned tail and hailed another taxi. The South Korean consulate turned out to be the second floor of an ordinary-looking building. Upon entering the office, we were greeted by a young woman, who smiled at us from behind her reception desk.
“Hello,” I said. “We’ve come from the North.”
Her smile went suddenly flat, and she scurried off toward the back to tell someone about our arrival. She returned followed by a man, who politely invited us into a large office. A South Korean flag hung from one of the walls. My feelings were powerfully confused: I was face to face with both the diabolical South and the longed-for end of my journey. The world had turned inside out. We told the man our story, and he took notes, neither making comments nor asking questions. Something about him struck me as too calm. I tried not to let my feelings show, but I was choking with indignation: we had come so far, traversed so many dangers, and none of it seemed of much weight to this man. Not only did he appear untouched by our suffering, he seemed skeptical of our story’s veracity. I had hoped the consulate would be willing to hide and protect us, but that, it turned out, was out of the question. The diplomat gave us a bit of pocket money, wished us luck, and bid us to come to see him in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he would see what he could do for us. . . . Before we could respond, we were being led out to the staircase. Returning two weeks