A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea(3)

In a strange sort of way, all this illegality actually set these people free. During the war, they had only two grim choices: they could either become soldiers in their enemy’s army or slave away as civilian war workers. The soldiers would be sent to the front to be used as human shields against the shells. The laborers would be worked to the bone—and sometimes death—in coal mines or munitions factories. The life of an outlaw was a kind of liberation.

At some point, my father joined what was then known as the General Association of Koreans in Japan, later to be known as the League of Korean Residents in Japan. This community for Koreans in Japan supported the principle of friendship between Japanese and Korean people and strove to help Koreans live a stable and regular life in Japan. But it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. Ever since before the Second World War, many Koreans with “permanent resident” status in Japan had respected the Communist Party. Communist policies were anti-imperialist, and the party campaigned for the rights of Korean permanent residents. After the war, not long after the Association was formed, a famous Communist by the name of Kim Chon-hae was released from prison, along with several other Communist Party members. These individuals had remained defiant in prison and had refused to change their thinking. After their release, they had a powerful influence on the Association, which naturally became more left-wing as a result. But the fundamental principle governing my father’s behavior at the time had nothing to do with socialism. The important thing for him was nationalism.

From my perspective, there wasn’t much difference between a socialist movement, a nationalist movement, and a brutal brawl in the black market. All of these people had a couple of things in common. They all had their own personal histories in Japan—and they were all poor. They just wanted to assert their own existence. And that meant fighting however they could to gain some kind of power.

Within the Association, my father became known as “Tiger.” No surprise there. He had his “action force” of loyal street fighters, in reality a group of guys who’d get together in front of the old shop, make a fire in an iron basket, and slug back liquor all day. I don’t know if they were discussing troubles in the black market or just waiting for their “action force” to be needed, but whenever something happened and their presence was called for, they’d spring into action and rush to the scene.

In the end, everything fell apart for my father. The General Association of Korean Residents was deemed a terrorist group and ordered to disband in 1949. The League of Koreans in Japan served as a replacement for many, but times had changed. By then, public order had been restored, and someone like my father, an impulsive and poorly educated street fighter, simply wasn’t needed anymore. What the newly launched League really needed at that time were skilled administrators—there was no place for my father, who couldn’t even read, in the new order. I can’t help but wonder now whether his rejection from that group ultimately made him more vulnerable to the promises he started hearing about a great life to be had in North Korea . . .

These days I find more and more memories coming back to me. Sometimes, I wish they wouldn’t.

I had three younger sisters—Eiko, Hifumi, and Masako—but we hardly ever lived together in Japan. Because our family was so poor, we were split up and sent to our relatives’ houses so they could share the task of taking care of us, thereby lightening the burden. That changed in my final year of elementary school when we all moved to Nakano in Tokyo. My father had decided to get a job in the construction industry. Or so he said. I do know that we had to move in a great rush. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye to our neighbors, and we had to leave our beloved grandmother behind.

Although I was initially worried about leaving everything I knew and moving to a place that I’d never seen, I was happy with our new life at first. We started living like a real family. We got up together in the morning and went to bed together at night. We ate dinner together, and we had family routines. Those little things meant so much to me. After all, the little things usually tie families together with the bonds of familial love. But that happy time was destroyed almost before it started. It wasn’t long before my father’s violence returned—worse than ever.

Within weeks of our arrival, my father started drinking again, as soon as he returned home at the end of the day. And he went on drinking until his face settled into a dark scowl. When that happened, my mother would sequester my sisters and me in the adjoining room. We’d stand there helplessly and listen to the inevitable unraveling. The vicious sound of his voice as he ranted at our mother. The sound of his hitting her. The sound of his trying to stifle her tearful cries. The same thing happened night after night after night. I often couldn’t understand what he was saying to her, but whatever it was, she never seemed to resist him. She just cried. Several times, I tried to burst into the room to stop my father. I even bit his leg once. But he just kicked me to the ground. My mother would lie over me, protecting me with her body. Finally, my father would get bored or so drunk, he’d stagger out of the house and disappear into the night. And my mother, my sisters, and I would sit on the floor, weeping silently, huddled together.

One night, one of the neighbors heard her screams and intervened. My father was caught off guard for a moment, but soon he seized the guy by the neck, forced him against the wall, and beat him senseless. No one ever came to our house after that.