A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea(4)

It just got worse from there. When my father returned home late at night, he’d wake my mother up, just so that he could beat her yet again. And every night, I was terrified when I saw his maniacal face. It was like looking into the face of a demon. I couldn’t get to sleep. I just kept seeing that face. And if I did fall asleep, I’d have nightmares about it.

Then came the worst night of all. It was autumn. I was twelve or thirteen. My father arrived home blind drunk, as usual. But this time, he didn’t say anything. He went to the kitchen and returned with a kitchen knife. He pressed it to my mother’s neck and forced her outside. I knew I had to follow them.

I hid behind a bush and watched as my father forced my mother up a steep hill pocked with craters. It had been quarried for earth and sand for use in the construction industry. I followed them in the darkness as my father forced my mother to the edge of a steep drop. I trembled with fear at the sight of the knife glinting in the dark night. He uttered a loud yell and then gave her a hard push. She howled as she stumbled backward, then toppled over the edge. My father just stood there for a moment, the knife still gleaming in his hand as he looked down from the top. Then he stomped off in the direction of our house.

I raced to the hill, to the edge where I had seen my mother tumble. I couldn’t make out how high it was, but I jumped over the edge anyway. Luckily, the soil was soft, and I wasn’t hurt. My mother lay there like a broken doll, her blouse soaked in blood. I hauled her up and held her, screaming, “You mustn’t die! Don’t die on me! You can’t go and die on me now!” Finally she regained consciousness. As I hugged her, she said, “Masabo, I have to leave. He’ll kill me if I don’t. You have to be strong.” I felt helpless and bereft as I clung to her. She was everything to me—the only kind person in my life—but I knew she had no choice.

I helped her limp along through the darkness. I burst through the door at the hospital near the railway station and woke up the doctor. He was a kind man who treated her injuries without hesitation. Miraculously, she didn’t need a single stitch.

Later we sat on a bench near the station together in silence, waiting for the first train of the day. Suddenly my mother spoke.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll work hard and save some money. And then I’ll come back for you and your sisters, so wait for me till then.”

And then she just wept, very quietly. Her face was thinner and paler than I’d ever seen it. She looked empty. I wanted to be strong. But there she was, covered in cuts and bruises, and there was nothing I could do about it. So I too began to cry, from sheer frustration and despair. Why did she have to go through such a terrible ordeal? Why did my father hate her so? She was so gentle and kind. It made no sense to me.

When the train pulled into the station, my mother stood up, gave me a quick hug, and walked away. She turned and waved to me from the ticket barrier. Then I plodded back to our house. I felt numb, bewildered, and utterly alone.

My father acted as if nothing had happened. To make matters worse, his mistress moved into the house shortly after my mother left. Her name was Kanehara, and she was Korean, like my father. She was wicked and cruel, especially toward my younger sisters, but my father never struck Kanehara. Not once. In fact, to my surprise, they seemed quite besotted with each other. They were constantly laughing and smiling at each other. Their behavior made me sick. I tried to be strong, but my sisters missed my mother desperately and cried every night. When they cried, Kanehara would slap them and berate them, which only made them miss my mother even more.

I gave up going to school and instead scoured Tokyo every day, looking for my mother. Every morning, I boarded the train and walked the streets for hours on end. This went on for half a year at least. I painstakingly searched every restaurant in the area, determined not to give up, and my efforts finally paid off. One afternoon, I spotted her through a restaurant window. Unable to move, I watched her as she scrubbed a table. Then I started to cry. I must have looked pretty suspicious to the restaurant owner, but he beckoned me in. I ran straight to my mother and hugged her.

The restaurant owner kindly gave me something to eat. And suddenly, the words came gushing out. I couldn’t stop talking. I told my mother all about Kanehara—how she was living with us, and how she was treating my sisters, and how they missed her, and on and on. She smiled gently. “Be patient for a little while longer,” she said. Then she gave me her necklace and gold ring. “If you have any trouble,” she said, “take these to a pawnbroker. But don’t talk to your father about me, okay? Don’t tell him you’ve seen me. Don’t tell him where I am.”

Now that I had found my mother, I started going to school again and went to see her almost every afternoon as soon as classes finished. Sometimes, on the weekend or on public holidays, I took my younger sisters with me. The restaurant owner was very kind to us. I guess he knew our story. As for Kanehara, she could hit me all she liked because I truly believed that, one day soon, my mother would come back and rescue us.

Looking back on it all, I think I can make sense of my father’s frame of mind at the time. But I can’t forgive him for what he did.

In his heyday, he had twenty or thirty followers. And he was the boss. The main man. The godfather. In the black market, your birth and background meant nothing. You could be an ex-military man. You could be nobility. Japanese . . . Korean . . . It didn’t matter. Your birth or background meant nothing. All that mattered was your physical strength, and my father knew how to live by violence. But later on, when the war ended and everything returned to normal, his physical strength no longer had any value. Suddenly, nationality and background meant everything. And in this new hierarchy, my father was nothing. He had no family connections by birth. Worse, he was Korean. That made it tough to get a job. When the General Association of Korean Residents was outlawed, his leadership role in his “action force” vanished. As his ex-comrades rose to lofty heights in the League of Koreans in Japan, he remained scrabbling about in the dirt with no prospects. So he took it out on my mother. Her family owned property of a kind, and she herself had a reasonable education—things he was hungry for but could never obtain himself. So she bore the brunt of all his anger toward the world. At first, I wondered why he never hit Kanehara. My guess is that it was because she was Korean and didn’t serve as a constant reminder of all that he couldn’t have.