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Nonfiction

A Blackened Land

By Kim Yeon-Seul
Translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell
Kim Yeon-seul sheds light on North Korea’s drug epidemic and gives its ruler a brave warning.
A close-up image of crystal meth.
Radspunk, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons

So many miracles have happened to me in the last few months. I left behind my beloved homeland where I was born and raised and made my way through hell, just under the nose of the grim reaper. Today, I enter through the gates of heaven. The Republic of Korea! This is heaven. When the gates of this paradise open wide—a heaven once glimpsed only in fairy tales—that beautiful world I so ardently longed for will spread out before me. I will no longer be forced to struggle against oppression, as if trapped alone inside a box. I no longer have to be carted off by People’s Security agents for the crime of wearing blue jeans, or bite my tongue to keep from voicing complaints, or tremble in fear of surveillance. My sense of emptiness about the gloomy future has disappeared.

This is freedom. Freedom is life for a human being. A poet once wrote that he could give up his life for the sake of love, but he would give up that precious love for the sake of freedom. Yet the supreme leaders of North Korea have obliterated the freedom that should be our human birthright. The people of North Korea are slaves and machines first, that must be torn apart and broken for the sake of Kim Jong-un and his father, and human beings second. This is the world of Kim Jong-il, a tyrant above all other tyrants, who would stop at nothing to suppress the people’s freedom. And this is the reason above all other reasons that I left my homeland.

Twenty-eight years ago, on Lunar New Year’s Day in 1984, a day when large flakes of snow fell like cotton wool from the sky and blanketed every village, a tiny baby, runtish and wrinkled and dark-skinned, was born in a shabby one-kan­ room in the northernmost city of North Korea. That ugly baby, who lay on the white blanket her mother had made by hand and who bawled and flailed her bony hands and feet every which way, was me. Because I was an ugly child who did not take after her mother, my nickname from the moment I was born was “Ugly Duckling,” after the Hans Christian Andersen story.

My father was one of the few electrical engineering specialists in North Korea, but his career stagnated and left him as nothing more than a clerk for the Chongjin Railroad Factory. My mother was an ordinary North Korean housewife supported by the worthless clerk. My childhood memories are all of trembling with fear and anxiety. When I do make the effort to remember something beautiful, what comes to mind is the memory of picking an armful of the azaleas that blossomed gloriously on the mountainside behind our home, putting them in a bucket that had a hole in the bottom, and pouring a tremendous amount of water into it. That, and returning home from kindergarten one day to my mother’s warm smile and a beautiful doll that she made for me. I tried to avoid my father, who was always the object of my fear, while he in turn sought me out on the days he drank as the target of his anger.

How I resented him back then! In truth, he was a wonderful person. He was a bright, intelligent man who had earned the epithets of “walking encyclopedia” and “amateur artist who puts professionals to shame” from his friends. His descent into becoming a twisted antagonist and the object of terror in our household started with the banishment of my grandparents, a husband-and-wife screenwriting team that had once enjoyed the trust of Kim Jong-il. But due to Kim Jong-il’s strange caprices, the elderly couple was sent one day to work in the coal mines to be “revolutionized.” My father, who was their eldest son, was expelled from college. His young dream of studying hard and shaking up the world of electronics in North Korea stopped as abruptly as a car with a blown tire. For my father, life was no longer beautiful. Life itself was both his hell and the shackles of his humiliation. As I grew up, I slowly began to understand his madness, which I had concluded was simply a result of alcohol, and I began to get a faint sense of the pain he felt, like making out the contours of a mountain through an early morning fog. Perhaps I had already made up my mind at that young age, when I was still oblivious to the woman inside of me, to live alone forever, because of the fear that marriage would mean having to live with a frightening man like my father.

Despite my instant fright at the mere mention of the word men, spring arrived one day, and I went through a dreamlike puberty. It happens to everyone. Puberty is a time when our hearts grow aflutter with unnameable impulses toward our objects of desire. When I turned eighteen, I became a beautiful woman, having cast off the ugly duckling past and transformed into a lovely swan. I did not keep my promise to myself of never marrying after all. The cruel world introduced men to me and gifted me with the time bomb called marriage.

Marriage! Why would I refer to such an elegant and beautiful word as a “time bomb?” Because marriage in North Korea, which is a playground for all sorts of social evils, is just like a time bomb—you never know when it will all fall apart or just how you will hurt each other.

My husband, who was a year ahead of me in high school and an athlete, was very popular among the other boys and girls. He had a pretty face that put the girls to shame: his pale, clear skin looked sculpted, and he had the dark eyes typical of a North Korean youth, that sparkled behind soft double eyelids. Then there was the high, straight nose and the cute, full, rosy pink lips. Every time he walked by, the girls all swooned and I was no different.

I will never forget the day he told me he loved me.

Our graduation ceremony had ended and I was on my way home. A track athlete in the April 15 Sports League named for Kim Il Sung’s birthday, he stood waiting for me in the middle of the sports field. He gestured for me to follow him. Drawn to him like a magnet, I did not ask why but simply went with him. We sat on the old, rusted swings. . . .

The creaking of the swing as it shook beneath his strong, muscular legs was the only thing that broke the silence of the night. I listened as the swing creaked back and forth, feeling like we were the only two people in the world, and my body trembled with the thrill of first love. If he had called me there for any reason other than love, I might have died on the spot. Ah, I cannot take any more of this leaden silence, I thought . . .

I prayed earnestly for him to hurry up and say something, anything. Finally, the creaking stopped, and he confessed his love. His voice, which was unexpectedly clear and sonorous, seemed unfamiliar, as if I were hearing him speak for the first time.

“I’ve had my eye on you ever since we met. You’re so beautiful . . . Will you be my girl?”

It seemed like it was difficult for him to get the words out. He was shaking, and he let out a deep sigh. Then I think he said something else, but I couldn’t hear a word.

All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. I was cold and my heart was racing, as if I had just stepped inside an enormous pressing plant. My legs trembled. I felt like life would be beautiful forever and ever so long as we were together and he was by my side.

Lost in a beautiful fantasy, I got no sleep that night. But that dreamlike honeymoon did not last long.

This is how our tragic romance began. Harsh reality trampled cruelly on our blissful and beautiful dream.

It was several days after our wedding. The husband that I came to know during what was supposed to be our fairytale honeymoon period turned out to be an entirely different person. I found out that he had been doing drugs and hiding it from me while we were dating. From that point on, he began indulging his addiction openly.

At first, I was shocked. I tried to be understanding, as he had lost his father. I tried to sympathize, imagining the pain of a bird whose wings had been broken in the prime of its life. I tried reasoning and pleading with him, and sometimes wept and wailed.

This drug, which was a clear white crystal, was called “ice” because it looked just like a chunk of ice. When he rolled it up in the shiny aluminum lining of a cigarette pack and touched the lighter to it, bluish gray smoke would curl up from it, like a cobra dancing to a flute. He inhaled this fearsome smoke through his nose and exhaled it through his mouth; from that moment, man turned to beast. The scourge of North Korea that obliterated personality and reduced people to animals—crystal meth. It turned men into monsters.

Our love also began to fall apart. When the drug took hold of him, my husband’s once-compassionate eyes turned to those of a starving hyena, and his once beautiful rosy-cheeked face gradually wrinkled and sprouted age spots like a man in his seventies. His skin would flake off for days at a time, making him look like he was suffering from a skin disease . . . The gray hairs that sparkled in the sunlight were so soft that I sometimes caught myself stroking them. But if I pulled on them, they would break off like corn silk, and his thin, disheveled hair grew tangled and matted. His soul was in slow decay. I could tolerate that much, but what I could not stomach was the madness that would seize him at any moment. Already under the influence of the drug, he was occasionally vaguely aware of my existence through the fog that clouded his mind, but I meant nothing to him, like a doll that one quickly tires of. When I saw him like that, my heart sank.

What turned him into such a monster? Despite being one of the top students in our high school, he was not allowed to enter college because his grandfather, who was once a high-ranking North Korean general, died in a camp for political prisoners after one of Kim Il-song’s bloody purges. He had shone in school and had a lot of pride, but the day his grandfather died, he drank his fill of alcohol, which he had never touched before, and was carried home by his friends. From that moment on, his personality was derailed, and he became a brute who sought pleasure in drugs and gambling.

I cried and lamented my life, which had already gone astray as a result of my poor decision. But the fact that I was not the only woman in North Korea to suffer this way gave me comfort. Among the women like me who were crying and struggling were wives of party workers and wives of military intelligence officers. After North Korea began producing drugs, under the pretext of cultivating white bellflower to bring in foreign currency in order to keep the economy going, the effort to sell to other countries turned the entire country into drug dealers. The number of addicts among party workers and their wives surged. North Korea became so steeped in drugs that party leaders and drudges alike had to keep using them in order to do work, and even intelligence officers had to do drugs in order to recover their lost spirits and do their jobs.

Who on earth could have dreamed up this horrible thing? When I learned one day from an intelligence officer that the heads of North Korea and even the high-ranking leaders of the central party used this drug at their secret inner-circle banquets, I shook with rage. The maker of this hateful drug that had caused the downfall of my beloved husband and ripped to shreds the hearts of all parents and wives and mothers in North Korea was none other than Kim Jong-il and his son, who claimed to be walking the front lines every day for the good of the people.

Kim Jong-il was a devil who wore the mask of a great leader. In an anonymous letter that was found in Kim Jong-suk’s birthplace in Hoeryong, Hamgyeong Province, the three generations of the Kims are compared to three bears in a funny, satirical song. Though bears that frequently appear in fairy tales can be rather foolish, they are nonetheless respected and much loved. But the comparison of the Kims to bears was all too gentle a description. If I were a writer, I would have written a song about a poisonous spider. I think of the Kims as spiders spewing black poison.

When I was a young girl, I saw a cartoon about a colony of ants who worked together to defeat a spider that was controlling them—an evil spider that trapped countless ants in its web, suffocated them with poisonous gas, and devoured them one by one. North Korea—where people’s lives are held cheaply, where nuclear tests are held and missiles fired while three million starve to death—is a land blackened with the poison of despotism, closed politics, and three generations of dictators.

The earth is dark, the sky is dark, and the people’s hearts are dark. In this land thick with toxic smoke, the people slowly die as they cough and fight to breathe. Who will save them?

We will. We, the defectors who miraculously escaped. We, who have become free and good citizens of the Republic of Korea, must breathe deep the fresh air of this land and pool our strength so that we might save our parents, our brothers, and our children. Kim Jong-un, be warned: Your people are leaving.

February 2013

© Kim Yeon-seul. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2013 by Sora Kim-Russell. All rights reserved.

English Korean (Original)

So many miracles have happened to me in the last few months. I left behind my beloved homeland where I was born and raised and made my way through hell, just under the nose of the grim reaper. Today, I enter through the gates of heaven. The Republic of Korea! This is heaven. When the gates of this paradise open wide—a heaven once glimpsed only in fairy tales—that beautiful world I so ardently longed for will spread out before me. I will no longer be forced to struggle against oppression, as if trapped alone inside a box. I no longer have to be carted off by People’s Security agents for the crime of wearing blue jeans, or bite my tongue to keep from voicing complaints, or tremble in fear of surveillance. My sense of emptiness about the gloomy future has disappeared.

This is freedom. Freedom is life for a human being. A poet once wrote that he could give up his life for the sake of love, but he would give up that precious love for the sake of freedom. Yet the supreme leaders of North Korea have obliterated the freedom that should be our human birthright. The people of North Korea are slaves and machines first, that must be torn apart and broken for the sake of Kim Jong-un and his father, and human beings second. This is the world of Kim Jong-il, a tyrant above all other tyrants, who would stop at nothing to suppress the people’s freedom. And this is the reason above all other reasons that I left my homeland.

Twenty-eight years ago, on Lunar New Year’s Day in 1984, a day when large flakes of snow fell like cotton wool from the sky and blanketed every village, a tiny baby, runtish and wrinkled and dark-skinned, was born in a shabby one-kan­ room in the northernmost city of North Korea. That ugly baby, who lay on the white blanket her mother had made by hand and who bawled and flailed her bony hands and feet every which way, was me. Because I was an ugly child who did not take after her mother, my nickname from the moment I was born was “Ugly Duckling,” after the Hans Christian Andersen story.

My father was one of the few electrical engineering specialists in North Korea, but his career stagnated and left him as nothing more than a clerk for the Chongjin Railroad Factory. My mother was an ordinary North Korean housewife supported by the worthless clerk. My childhood memories are all of trembling with fear and anxiety. When I do make the effort to remember something beautiful, what comes to mind is the memory of picking an armful of the azaleas that blossomed gloriously on the mountainside behind our home, putting them in a bucket that had a hole in the bottom, and pouring a tremendous amount of water into it. That, and returning home from kindergarten one day to my mother’s warm smile and a beautiful doll that she made for me. I tried to avoid my father, who was always the object of my fear, while he in turn sought me out on the days he drank as the target of his anger.

How I resented him back then! In truth, he was a wonderful person. He was a bright, intelligent man who had earned the epithets of “walking encyclopedia” and “amateur artist who puts professionals to shame” from his friends. His descent into becoming a twisted antagonist and the object of terror in our household started with the banishment of my grandparents, a husband-and-wife screenwriting team that had once enjoyed the trust of Kim Jong-il. But due to Kim Jong-il’s strange caprices, the elderly couple was sent one day to work in the coal mines to be “revolutionized.” My father, who was their eldest son, was expelled from college. His young dream of studying hard and shaking up the world of electronics in North Korea stopped as abruptly as a car with a blown tire. For my father, life was no longer beautiful. Life itself was both his hell and the shackles of his humiliation. As I grew up, I slowly began to understand his madness, which I had concluded was simply a result of alcohol, and I began to get a faint sense of the pain he felt, like making out the contours of a mountain through an early morning fog. Perhaps I had already made up my mind at that young age, when I was still oblivious to the woman inside of me, to live alone forever, because of the fear that marriage would mean having to live with a frightening man like my father.

Despite my instant fright at the mere mention of the word men, spring arrived one day, and I went through a dreamlike puberty. It happens to everyone. Puberty is a time when our hearts grow aflutter with unnameable impulses toward our objects of desire. When I turned eighteen, I became a beautiful woman, having cast off the ugly duckling past and transformed into a lovely swan. I did not keep my promise to myself of never marrying after all. The cruel world introduced men to me and gifted me with the time bomb called marriage.

Marriage! Why would I refer to such an elegant and beautiful word as a “time bomb?” Because marriage in North Korea, which is a playground for all sorts of social evils, is just like a time bomb—you never know when it will all fall apart or just how you will hurt each other.

My husband, who was a year ahead of me in high school and an athlete, was very popular among the other boys and girls. He had a pretty face that put the girls to shame: his pale, clear skin looked sculpted, and he had the dark eyes typical of a North Korean youth, that sparkled behind soft double eyelids. Then there was the high, straight nose and the cute, full, rosy pink lips. Every time he walked by, the girls all swooned and I was no different.

I will never forget the day he told me he loved me.

Our graduation ceremony had ended and I was on my way home. A track athlete in the April 15 Sports League named for Kim Il Sung’s birthday, he stood waiting for me in the middle of the sports field. He gestured for me to follow him. Drawn to him like a magnet, I did not ask why but simply went with him. We sat on the old, rusted swings. . . .

The creaking of the swing as it shook beneath his strong, muscular legs was the only thing that broke the silence of the night. I listened as the swing creaked back and forth, feeling like we were the only two people in the world, and my body trembled with the thrill of first love. If he had called me there for any reason other than love, I might have died on the spot. Ah, I cannot take any more of this leaden silence, I thought . . .

I prayed earnestly for him to hurry up and say something, anything. Finally, the creaking stopped, and he confessed his love. His voice, which was unexpectedly clear and sonorous, seemed unfamiliar, as if I were hearing him speak for the first time.

“I’ve had my eye on you ever since we met. You’re so beautiful . . . Will you be my girl?”

It seemed like it was difficult for him to get the words out. He was shaking, and he let out a deep sigh. Then I think he said something else, but I couldn’t hear a word.

All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. I was cold and my heart was racing, as if I had just stepped inside an enormous pressing plant. My legs trembled. I felt like life would be beautiful forever and ever so long as we were together and he was by my side.

Lost in a beautiful fantasy, I got no sleep that night. But that dreamlike honeymoon did not last long.

This is how our tragic romance began. Harsh reality trampled cruelly on our blissful and beautiful dream.

It was several days after our wedding. The husband that I came to know during what was supposed to be our fairytale honeymoon period turned out to be an entirely different person. I found out that he had been doing drugs and hiding it from me while we were dating. From that point on, he began indulging his addiction openly.

At first, I was shocked. I tried to be understanding, as he had lost his father. I tried to sympathize, imagining the pain of a bird whose wings had been broken in the prime of its life. I tried reasoning and pleading with him, and sometimes wept and wailed.

This drug, which was a clear white crystal, was called “ice” because it looked just like a chunk of ice. When he rolled it up in the shiny aluminum lining of a cigarette pack and touched the lighter to it, bluish gray smoke would curl up from it, like a cobra dancing to a flute. He inhaled this fearsome smoke through his nose and exhaled it through his mouth; from that moment, man turned to beast. The scourge of North Korea that obliterated personality and reduced people to animals—crystal meth. It turned men into monsters.

Our love also began to fall apart. When the drug took hold of him, my husband’s once-compassionate eyes turned to those of a starving hyena, and his once beautiful rosy-cheeked face gradually wrinkled and sprouted age spots like a man in his seventies. His skin would flake off for days at a time, making him look like he was suffering from a skin disease . . . The gray hairs that sparkled in the sunlight were so soft that I sometimes caught myself stroking them. But if I pulled on them, they would break off like corn silk, and his thin, disheveled hair grew tangled and matted. His soul was in slow decay. I could tolerate that much, but what I could not stomach was the madness that would seize him at any moment. Already under the influence of the drug, he was occasionally vaguely aware of my existence through the fog that clouded his mind, but I meant nothing to him, like a doll that one quickly tires of. When I saw him like that, my heart sank.

What turned him into such a monster? Despite being one of the top students in our high school, he was not allowed to enter college because his grandfather, who was once a high-ranking North Korean general, died in a camp for political prisoners after one of Kim Il-song’s bloody purges. He had shone in school and had a lot of pride, but the day his grandfather died, he drank his fill of alcohol, which he had never touched before, and was carried home by his friends. From that moment on, his personality was derailed, and he became a brute who sought pleasure in drugs and gambling.

I cried and lamented my life, which had already gone astray as a result of my poor decision. But the fact that I was not the only woman in North Korea to suffer this way gave me comfort. Among the women like me who were crying and struggling were wives of party workers and wives of military intelligence officers. After North Korea began producing drugs, under the pretext of cultivating white bellflower to bring in foreign currency in order to keep the economy going, the effort to sell to other countries turned the entire country into drug dealers. The number of addicts among party workers and their wives surged. North Korea became so steeped in drugs that party leaders and drudges alike had to keep using them in order to do work, and even intelligence officers had to do drugs in order to recover their lost spirits and do their jobs.

Who on earth could have dreamed up this horrible thing? When I learned one day from an intelligence officer that the heads of North Korea and even the high-ranking leaders of the central party used this drug at their secret inner-circle banquets, I shook with rage. The maker of this hateful drug that had caused the downfall of my beloved husband and ripped to shreds the hearts of all parents and wives and mothers in North Korea was none other than Kim Jong-il and his son, who claimed to be walking the front lines every day for the good of the people.

Kim Jong-il was a devil who wore the mask of a great leader. In an anonymous letter that was found in Kim Jong-suk’s birthplace in Hoeryong, Hamgyeong Province, the three generations of the Kims are compared to three bears in a funny, satirical song. Though bears that frequently appear in fairy tales can be rather foolish, they are nonetheless respected and much loved. But the comparison of the Kims to bears was all too gentle a description. If I were a writer, I would have written a song about a poisonous spider. I think of the Kims as spiders spewing black poison.

When I was a young girl, I saw a cartoon about a colony of ants who worked together to defeat a spider that was controlling them—an evil spider that trapped countless ants in its web, suffocated them with poisonous gas, and devoured them one by one. North Korea—where people’s lives are held cheaply, where nuclear tests are held and missiles fired while three million starve to death—is a land blackened with the poison of despotism, closed politics, and three generations of dictators.

The earth is dark, the sky is dark, and the people’s hearts are dark. In this land thick with toxic smoke, the people slowly die as they cough and fight to breathe. Who will save them?

We will. We, the defectors who miraculously escaped. We, who have become free and good citizens of the Republic of Korea, must breathe deep the fresh air of this land and pool our strength so that we might save our parents, our brothers, and our children. Kim Jong-un, be warned: Your people are leaving.

February 2013

© Kim Yeon-seul. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2013 by Sora Kim-Russell. All rights reserved.

연기에 그을린 땅

지난 몇 개월 동안 내게 참 많은 기적들이 일어났다.
나서 자란 정든 고향을 버렸고 저승사자의 바로 코앞을 지나 지옥을 통과 했다.
그리고 오늘은 천국의 문으로 들어선다.
대한민국 여기는 천국이다 동화세계에서나 볼 수 있었던 천국 이제 천국의 문을 ! . ,
활짝 열어젖히면 그리도 맘속으로 염원하던 아름다운 세계가 내 앞에 펼쳐진다.
폐쇄된 공간에 홀로 갇힌 듯 압박감에 몸부림치지 않아도 된다 이제 더 이상 청바 .
지 입은 때문에 보안원에게 끌려 다니지 않아도 되고 불만을 참느라 혀를 깨물지 ,
않아도 되고 감시 때문에 떨지 않아도 된다 , .
암담한 미래에 대한 공허감도 사라졌다.
자유 오직 자유다 ! .
어느 시인이 말했던가 사랑을 위해서라면 목숨도 버릴 수 있고 자유를 위해서라 ,
면 그토록 귀중한 사랑도 버릴 수 있다고 노래 할 만큼 인간에게 자유는 생명이다.
그러나 북한의 최고 통치자들은 너무나도 당연한 인간의 권리인 자유를 모두 말살
해 버렸다 북한국민은 사람이기 전에 김정은 부자를 위해 찢어지고 부셔져야만 .
하는 노예이고 기계다 국민의 자유를 억압하는 것이라면 무엇이든지 하는 폭군 .
중의 폭군인 김정일의 세상.
이것이 내가 고향을 버린 이유 중의 이유이다.
 28 지금으로부터 년 전 하얀 목화 솜 같은 함박눈이 펑펑 쏟아져 내려 온 동리를
수북이 덮었던 년 의 설날 북한의 최북단 도시의 초라한 단칸방에서 살 갓이 1984 ,
까맣고 조글조글한 볼품없는 작은 아이가 태어났다 엄마가 손수 만든 흰 포단에 .
누워서 앙상한 손과 발을 제멋대로 허우적대며 울어대던 그날의 못생긴 아이가 바
로 나다 안 . 데르센의 세계 명작동화 “ ” 못생긴 새끼오리 에서처럼 엄마를 닮지 않
은 못생긴 계집애라 해서 태어나자부터 나의 별칭은 “ ” 못생긴 새끼 오리 였다.
나의 아빠는 북한에서 손꼽히는 전자공학연구사였지만 언젠가부터 강직되어 청진철
도공장의 사무원이 고작이었고 엄마는 그 보잘 것 없는 사무원의 부양을 받으며 사
는 북한의 평범한 아줌마였다.
어린 날의 나의 추억은 늘 불안과 공포에 떨던 기억뿐이다.
가끔 애써 아름다운 추억을 생각한다면 고향집 뒷산에 화사하게 피는 진달래를 한
아름 꺾어서 구멍 난 양동에 꽂아 놓고 엄청나게 많은 물을 퍼붓던 기억 유치원 .
다녀온 나에게 예쁘게 만든 인형을 주시며 밝게 웃으시던 엄마의 따뜻한 미소가 전
부다.
나는 늘 공포의 대상이었던 아빠를 비실비실 피해 다녔고 아빠 또한 술 드신 날이
면 화풀이 상대가 되어 줄 나만을 찾고 계셨다 어렸을 적에 그렇게 원망했던 나의 아빠! . 그는 사실 대단한 분이셨다
그는 친구들로부터 “ ” 걸어 다니는 백과사전 “ ” 프로의 뺨을 치는 아마추어 미술가
라는 닉네임으로 불리 울 만큼 총명하고 지성이 높은 분이셨다.
그러던 아빠가 이해할 수 없는 괴한으로 변하여 온 집안에 공포의 대상으로 되었던
이유는 김정일의 신임을 받던 부부 시나리오 하이라이트 작가 할아버지와 할머니의
추방으로부터 비롯된 타락 때문이었다.
김정일의 이상한 변덕으로 인해 어느 날 탄광으로 혁명화를 가야했던 노부부
그들의 장남이었던 나의 아빠는 한, 창 다니던 대학에서 출학 당했으며 공부를 열심
히 해서 조선의 전자학계를 뒤 흔들어 놓겠다던 아빠의 푸른 꿈은 타이어가 터져버
린 승용차처럼 그 자리에 주저앉고 말았다.
그런 아빠에게 남은 삶은 더는 아름다운 것이 아니었다.
삶, . 그 자체가 치욕의 굴레였고 지옥이었다
나는 점차 성장해 가면서 단순히 알 콜 때문이라고 단정해 버렸던 광기를 조금씩
이해하기 시작 했고 아빠의 맘속 고통을 새벽 안개 속에 드러나는 산의 윤곽처럼
어렴풋이 느낄 수 있었다.
내안의 여자를 알지 못하던 어린 날에 벌써 영원히 홀로 살 것이라고 맘 다지고 된
것도 결혼하면 아빠 같은 무서운 남자랑 살게 될 것이란 두려움 때문이었던 것 같
다.
남자라고 하면 무조건 무서워하던 내게도 어느덧 봄은 찾아와 환상의 사춘기를 맞
이했다.
사춘기는 누구에게나 있다 이 . 성에 대한 알지 못할 야릇함으로 가슴 설레는 시절
이다 나는 세에 . 18 못생긴 새끼 오리의 탈을 벗고 어여쁜 백조로 아름다운 여성
으로 자랐다 하지만 나는 . . 결혼을 않겠다던 자신과의 약속을 지키지 못했다 잔
인한 세상은 나에게 남자를 알게 했고 결혼이라는 시한탄을 선물하고 말았다.
결혼! . 이 우아하고 아름다운 단어를 나는 왜 시한탄이라고 표현할까
온갖 사회악이 판을 치는 북한에서의 결혼은 언제 터져서 서로가 어떻게 다칠지 모
르는 것이 꼭 시한탄을 닮은 것 같아서다.
고등학교 선배였던 나의 남편 학교 , 운동선수인 그는 남녀학생들 사이에 인기가 많
었다. 희고 투명한 피부의 얼굴은 깎아놓은 조각 같았고 부드러운 쌍까풀 속에 반
짝이는 북한청년의 까만 눈, 반듯한 코와 도톰한 장밋빛의 귀여운 입술까지 그는
여학생들이 굴욕감을 느낄 만큼 어여쁜 얼굴을 가졌다 그가 . 스쳐가는 자리마다
에 여학생들이 넋을 잃었는데 나 역시 그 여학생들 중 한사람이었다.
 . 운명의 프러포즈를 받던 날을 잊을 수 없다
 . 아름다운 판타지에 빠진 나는 온밤을 잠들 수 없었다
졸업식을 마치고 집으로 귀가 하던 날 먼저 4.15체육단 육상선수로 활약하던 그가 학교 운동장 한가운데서 나를 기다리고 있었다.
그는 나에게 자기를 따라오라고 말없이 손짓했다 나는 자 . 석에 라도 끌 린 것 처럼
이유 한마디 묻지 못하고 그를 따라 나섰다.
우리는 말없이 쇠 녹이 쓸어 붉은 밤색을 띄는 낡은 그네에 올라앉았다.
…..
근육이 탄탄한 긴 다리로 흔드는 그네의 삐걱 소리만 밤의 정적을 깨우고 있었다.
세상에 오직 우리 둘만의 고요한 공간속에서 규칙으로 울리는 그네소리를 들으며
나는 경험해 보지 못한 첫 사랑의 짜릿함에 몸을 떨었다.
나를 불러낸 것이 사랑이 아닌 다른 이유라면 나는 금방 죽어 버릴 것 같았다.
 , …. 아 도저히 이 납덩이같은 침묵을 견딜 수가 없다
나는 그가 무슨 말이든지 빨리 하기만을 간절히 빌었다.
 . 마침내 삐걱 소리가 멎었고 그는 사랑을 고백했다 뜻밖에 맑고 낭랑한 목소리
는 처음 들어 보는 목소리 같이 귀에 설었다.
“오래전부터 너를 지켜보았어 너 정말 . … 곱다 내 여자가 되어 주지 않을래? ”
 . 참 힘든 말을 한 것 같았다 그는 심하게 떨며 긴 한숨을 “후 하고 내 – ” 쉬었
다 그리고는 다시 무 . . 슨 말인가를 한 것 같은데 더는 아무소리도 들려오지 않았다
 . . 오랜 침묵 속에 오직 내 심장의 쿵 쾅 소리만이 들려왔다 마치 거대한 프레스
공장에 들어 선 것처럼 가슴이 벅차고 너무 춥다 두 다리가 가늘게 떨렸다 . .
그와 함께 라면 그만 같이 있어 준다면 세상이 끝날 때까지 아름다울 것 같았다.
그러나 꿈 만 같은 밀월은 오래가지 못했다.
우리의 비극적 로맨스는 이렇게 시작되었다.
 . 그토록 황홀하고 예쁜 꿈을 무참히 밟은 것은 혹독한 현실이었다
결혼 후 며칠이 지났다 하지만 . 알록달록 깨가 쏟아진다는 허니문 기간에 내가 만
난 남편은 다른 사람 같았다.
연애시절에 숨겨가면서 몰래 조금씩 하던 마약복용사실을 나에게 들켰기 때문이다.
그 때부터 그는 노골적으로 흡연을 시작했다.
처음, . 그러는 남편을 보았을 때 충격이 컸다 아빠를 잃은 그의 심정을 이해하려고
애써 보았다 한 . 창 나이에 나래 꺾인 새의 슬픔이 얼마나 괴로울까 동정도 해
보았다 나는 그에게 사정도 하고 . . 애원도 해보았으며 때로는 울며불며 난리를
치기도 했다.
설탕처럼 하얀 투명의 결정체인 이 마약은 꼭 얼음 덩어리를 닮아서 아이스라고
부른다 담 . 배곽 속포장지로 쓰이는 반짝이는 은지에 싸서 라이터를 켜 열을 주면
피리소리에 춤추며 일어나는 코브라처럼 푸르스름한 재 빛 연기가 구불구불 위로
올라간다.
이 무서운 연기를 코로 들이켜 입으로 내 뿜으면 그 순간부터 인간은 야수로 변한다 인간의 인 . … 성을 말살시키고
동물 세계로 돌아가게 하는 북한의 흡연 그것이 바로 . ! . 신종 마약 쿠기 물뽕 얼음
으로 불리며 사람을 과물로 만들어 버린다.
우리의 사랑도 그로해서 참혹하게 무너졌다.
몸 안에 약기운이 퍼지면 그리도 인정 깊던 남편의 눈빛이 굶주린 하이에나의 눈으
로 변했고 아름답던 홍안의 피부엔 차츰 칠순을 넘긴 노인처럼 주글주글하고 겸은
반점이 무수히 돋아나군 했다.
며칠씩 각질이 벗겨져 피부병을 앓은 환자처럼 보이기도 했다.
… 햇빛에 빛나는 금빛 머리카락이 하도 부드러워 나도 모르게 쓰다듬고 만져보군
했었다 하지만 어느 . 덧 강냉이수염 같이 잡아당기면 금방 끊겨 나가고 가늘고 푸
시시한 머리카락이 볼품없이 엉켜 붙었다.
끝없이 파괴되어 가는 그의 인격!
거기까지도 참을 수 있었다 하지만 때도 시도 없이 발작하는 그의 . 광기만은 정말
견딜 수 없었다 이미 마 . 약의 지배를 받는 그에게 나란 존재는 혼미한 영혼 속
흐릿하게 잠간씩 보일 뿐 금방 실증 나는 인형같이 아무런 의미를 갖지 못했다.
이러는 그를 보면서 나의 가슴은 무너져 내렸다.
그는 과연 언제부터 이런 사람이 되었을까 고 ? 등학교 최우수 학생이었던 그는 졸
업할 당시 북한고위 장성이었던 그의 할아버지가 김일성의 피 묻은 숙청으로 정치
범 수용소에서 사망되었다는 이유로 대학에 진학하지 못했다.
남달리 학업성적이 뛰어나고 자긍심이 높았던 그였지만 그날 그는 마실 줄 모르는
술을 기껏 마시고 친구들에게 업혀서 집으로 돌아왔다.
그때부터 그의 인성은 졸지에 궤도에서 탈선해 버렸고 삶의 쾌락을 마약이나 도박
에서 찾는 불량배가 되어버렸던 것이다.
나는 잘못된 선택으로 이미 삐뚤어진 내 인생을 한탄하며 울고 살았다.
북한에 이런 고통을 당하는 여자가 나 하나만이 아니라는 사실이 어쩌면 다행한 일
처럼 나를 위안했다 나 . 처럼 몸부림치며 울고 있는 여자들 속에는 당일군의 아내
도 있었고 군관 보위원의 아내도 있었다.
북한은 백도라지 농장 설립을 시작으로 외화를 벌어 들여 나라의 경제를 살린다는
명목으로 마약생산을 시작한 이후 이를 외국에 팔아넘기려다가 전국이 마약사범이
되어 버렸다.
당일꾼들과 그 부녀자들 속에도 마약중독자가 급증하고 있다 간부들과 사무원들 .
은 마약을 흡연해야 업무를 볼 수 있고 보위원들도 마약을 흡연해야 잃어버린 정
신을 다시 찾고 범죄자들을 단속 통제할 수 있다고 할 정도로 북한은 마약의 나라
로 되었다.도대체 누가 이런 악착한 물건을 생각해 냈을까?
나는 어느 날 한 보위원에게서 북한의 수장들과 중앙당간부들의 고위급 비밀파티에
도 이 마약이 사용된다는 얘기를 듣고 치를 떨었다.
내가 그토록 사랑했던 남편을 타락하게 만들고 북한의 모든 부모들과 아내들과 어
머니들의 가슴을 찢어발기는 원한의 마약을 맨 날 맨 날 인민을 위해서 전선 길을
가고 갔다는 김정일과 그 부자가 만들었다.
 . 그는 위대한 영도자의 탈을 쓴 악마였다 언젠가 함경남도 회령시의 김정숙 생가
에서 발견된 투서에는 김 부자의 대 세 3 습을 곰 세 마리에 비유하여 풍자 조롱한
통쾌한 노래가 적혀 있었다.
곰! 동화세계에 자주 등장하는 곰은 미련한 구석은 있지만 언제나 후더운 정으로
동물들의 존경을 받는 동물이다.
김 부자 네를 곰이라고 표현한 것은 너무나 점잖은 묘사이다.
내가 만약 필자였다면 독거미에 대한 노래를 썼을 것 같다.
나는 그네들을 항상 검은 연기를 내 뿜어 대는 독거미라고 부ㅡ른다
문득 어렸을 때 보았던 북한의 애니메이션이 생각난다.
개미들은 힘을 합쳐 저들을 통제하던 독거미를 쳐부수는 내용의 애니메이션이었다.
수많은 개미들을 거미줄에 묶어 놓고 독 연기를 내 뿜어 질식시키고 하나하나 잡아
먹는 독거미 국민을 ! 파리 목숨처럼 여기고 만이 300 굶어 죽어도 핵을 시험하고
미사일을 쏴 올리는 북한은 삼대세습, , 폐쇄정치 폭정이라는 검은 연기에 그을린 땅
이다 땅도 . . 검고 하늘도 검고 사람들의 마음속도 검다
그 연기 자욱한 땅에서 지금 이시각도 사람들은 숨 막히는 기침을 쿨럭 거리며 서
서히 죽어 가고 있다.
이 들을 구원할 이는 누구인가?
우리다.
바로 그곳을 기적적으로 탈출한 우리 탈북민들이다.
자유롭고 정예로운 대한민국의 국민이 된 우리가 이 땅의 신선한 향기를 마시고 힘
을 모아 우리부모 우리 , , . 형제 우리 자식들을 구해야 할 것이다
김정은 은 알아야 한다.
국민이 떠나고 있다는 것을 …..
2013年 2 … 月 김 연 슬
 

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