Defector who returned to N.Korea releases memoirs

"This story, which filled the first page of childhood memories, is about what happened in the winter of 1950 before many people were even born in this world."

This is the beginning of the memoirs of Park In-suk, a North Korean defector who recently returned to the Stalinist country.

One day, Park wrote, she was jumping rope with her friends when she saw a group of adults going somewhere and followed them. "Nice-looking cars on which soldiers sitting in rows were slowly coming in. There were people on both sides of the main road, with some holding bouquets and others with none. They were standing awkwardly in one row, behaving uneasily without being sure about if they should wave the bouquets. How could I know that it was the start of a war that would stain this land with blood and separate 10 million families?"

Fear was the first impression she had when she saw South Korean soldiers for the first time. Her grandmother was almost shot to death by South Korean forces asking for directions just because she pointed toward the direction with a poker.

"Two South Korean soldiers made my grandmother stand in the middle of a field and were fuming with anger, pointing a pistol at her," Park wrote. "I had goose bumps all over my body as if a cold sharp dagger was slashing me in the back. I ran to hold my grandmother and begged the soldiers not to kill her. The grown-ups in the neighborhood also came and begged. Fortunately, my grandmother was saved from the brink of death."

Other South Korean soldiers stood out in Park`s memories. When she had blisters on the soles of her feet, one soldier treated her, breaking the blisters and searing them with the light of a match. Though she cried hard because of the pain, she was able to run again from that day on. The soldier also gave her cookies and candy.

"I liked him very much. He watched me eating food with a good appetite. In the evenings, he used to be lost in contemplation but called me over and taught me songs. I used to sing the songs with sorrow by myself every time I missed my father, who was in the South."

The Korean War, which saw both the best and worst of soldiers, meant a life-or-death situation for adults. The world sometimes changed just overnight. Children were just children, however.

Park`s family also hit the road to flee from the dangers of the war. She was simply rushed ahead without knowing that she would be separated from his father soon. She insisted on walking to win her grandmother`s favor but she got tired soon. So her father carried her on his back. The short journey ended on the side of a river.

"A boat was big enough for just half of my family. Someone suggested that my family split in half on two boats, but her father refused. We couldn`t be separated after all the trouble we experienced. Had we got on the boats, we wouldn`t have lost my father."

Park`s family headed back home. Someone from a group of refugees they came across on the way back home recognized my father, saying, "What a nice surprise, Dr. Park!"

"A South Korean soldier pushed my father with the stock of his rifle, asking, `Who is Dr. Park?` My mother and grandmother tried to scramble to my father but were unable to wedge their way through the crowd. Children were crying. Grown-ups thought that they would see him somewhere in the South. However, that was the last time I saw my father."

After Park escaped from North Korea and defected to the South in August 2006, she finally found her father, who was on his deathbed, unconscious and breathing on life support. He died just 20 days after she found him, not knowing that his daughter had finally come for him.

Park`s family is not the only one with such a heart-breaking separation and tragedy of a divided country.

"Park (not related with Park In-suk) became a platoon leader (of the North Korean military) because the behavior he showed in his reunion with his family (in the South) received high ideological appraisal. Hearing that his father and older brother had defected to the South, Park resolutely turned his back on his mother, who was trying to hug him," she wrote.

Despite his staunch ideological loyalty, Park could not be free from the fetters of being from a family of defectors. He volunteered to work in one of the North`s most remote and barren mountain villages. When Park In-suk arrived in Seoul, she visited the older brother of the other Park.

"Shedding tears after hearing his younger brother was still alive, living in one of the poorest areas of North Korea, the older brother told her that his father had left 3,000 U.S. dollars for the younger brother," she said.

zsh75@donga.com