Self-reliance was the best policy. Then you alone were entitled to the rewards—and you alone bore responsibility for the losses.
She passed an open street market and stopped, tensing for a moment. There was a foreign tourist not five feet from her. It was a man. He looked German, but she could not be sure. He had his camera out and was about to take a picture of the marketplace and the vendors.
Chung-Cha looked around for the tour guide who must accompany all foreigners. She did not see any such person.
The German had his camera nearly up to his eye. She shot forward and snatched it from him. He looked at her, stunned.
“Give that back,” he said in a language that she recognized as Dutch. She did not speak Dutch. She asked him if he spoke English.
He nodded.
She held up the camera. “If you take a picture of the street market you will be arrested and deported. You might not be deported, actually. You might just stay here, which will be worse for you.”
He paled and looked around to see several Korean vendors staring at him with malice.
He sputtered, “But why? It’s just for my Facebook page.”
“You do not need to know why. All you need to do is put your camera away and go and find your tour guide. Now. You will not receive another warning.”
She handed him back the camera and he took it.
“Thank you,” he said breathlessly.
But Chung-Cha had already turned away. She did not want his thanks. Maybe she should have just let the crowd attack him, let him be beaten, arrested, thrown in prison, and forgotten about. He was one person in a world of billions. Who would care? It was not her problem.
Yet as she walked down the street she thought of the man’s question.
But why? he had asked.
The answer to that was both simple and complex. An open street market said to the world that North Korea’s economy was weak, its traditional stores few in number, and thus the need for vendors in the street. That would be a slap in the face to a leadership acutely sensitive to world opinion. Conversely, an abundance of goods at a street market, if seen by the rest of the world, could result in international food aid being reduced. And since many North Koreans were barely surviving, that would not be a good thing. Pyongyang was not representative of the rest of the country. And yet even people here starved to death in their apartments. It was part of the so-called eating problem, which was very simple. There was not enough food. This was why North Koreans were shorter and lighter than their brethren to the south.
Chung-Cha did not know if either of these explanations was true. She only knew that these were the unofficial explanations for why the simple act of taking a picture could have such horrendous consequences, in addition to the fact that North Koreans did not like to have their pictures taken by foreigners. And things could get violent. The perpetrator would be arrested. That was reason enough never to leave your tour guide’s side while in North Korea.
Our ways are just different because we are the most paranoid country on the face of the earth. And perhaps we have good reason to be. Or perhaps our leaders want to keep us united against an enemy that does not exist.
She didn’t know how many other North Koreans had such thoughts. She did know that the ones who had publicly expressed them had all been sent to the penal colonies.
She knew this for a fact.
Because her parents had been sent to Yodok for doing that very thing. She had grown up there. She had nearly died there. But she had survived, the only one of her family to do so.
And her survival had come at a terrible price.
She had had to kill the rest of her family to be allowed to live.
Chapter
15
ROBIE LOOKED AT REEL.
Reel studied the floor.
It was nearly midnight a week into their stay here. After their psychological vetting they had undergone more physical endurance tests, each more difficult than the last. They had been given a bit of food and water and then brought back here, sweaty and tired and increasingly depressed. Over the next days they had been worked relentlessly and had dropped exhausted into their bunks for a few hours of sleep before they were hustled from their beds and it all started up again.
Tonight, they had gotten off relatively early. And so this was the first real time they had been able to speak to each other since the first day.
“How did your shrink session go?” asked Robie, finally breaking the silence in their tiny shared room.
“Great, how about you?” she said sarcastically.
“We spent a good deal of the time talking about you, actually.”
She looked up at him and then stared over at the nearest listening device.
She glanced back at him and mouthed, Here? Now?
He looked around the room and noted the video cameras that they both knew were embedded in the walls. He flipped up the mattress so that it leaned against his back, effectively shielding him from view. Then he motioned for her to sit on the other side of the bunk and face him. She did so, staring at him curiously.