[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.” It wasn’t long before these became so tattered and grimy as to be indistinguishable from our uniforms.After a few months in the camp, the appearance of our rags bothered us no more than they did anybody else.The only thing that mattered was keeping warm.When the winter cold set in, we put on everything we could get our hands on, hoping against hope that the layers of rags might protect us.We were also constantly on the lookout for ways to steal more clothes.Working on a funeral crew, we never buried a corpse without first stripping it naked.Apart from the cold, the worst part was underwear.The camp authorities provided us with briefs and undershirts, but their cloth was so rough that it rasped our skin, causing us to itch and sometimes to develop open wounds, such that we soon found it preferable to go without them.I ultimately came up with the idea of recycling my old tattered briefs into linings, sewing them to the inside of my camp-issued underwear.As for socks, our annual quota of one pair never lasted long, despite my grandmother’s ceaseless and often miraculous darning.At night, after a brief dinner of corn, we all scrambled immediately off to bed, thinking of the day to come, our first day of work in the camp, a day that would surely be difficult.For me it was simply horrible.SIXTHE WILD BOAR : A TEACHER ARMED AND READY TO STRIKEGrandmother woke me up just as the sun was beginning to rise.Here at Yodok, there could be no question of arguing or of feigning sleep.I rolled out of bed under the pallid light of our solitary bulb.I put on my horrible uniform, swallowed another little helping of corn, and walked off to my assigned assembly location.By the time I arrived, several of the children were already there waiting.They all stared at me with wide, curious eyes.Several minutes passed, then a few students—I supposed them to be delegates of some sort—got us into rows and marched us toward the school, leading us in a rendition of “The Song of Kim Il-sung,” which I knew from my days at the People’s School in Pyongyang.Unfortunately, our singing on this morning was judged too reserved by the teachers waiting for us at the school entrance and we were ordered to back up ten yards and take the march and song again with more vigor.The school was a square compound composed of two facing buildings joined on either side by a wall.A flower bed and a lawn stretched between the buildings.The classrooms were floorheated in the traditional Korean manner, but only when the temperature dropped below 14˚F.Above the blackboards, dominating every classroom, hung the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.The school’s rickety collection of desks were jerry-built things, nailed together by prisoners from leftover building materials.Since North Korea has always maintained that war is imminent and that enemies are everywhere, the country is in a constant state of alert.Little surprise, then, that our school buildings were under twenty-four-hour surveillance.To make this oversight possible, two annexes were added to the back of the buildings.The first housed the on-duty schoolmaster, while the second, slightly larger building lodged the twelve student guards who worked on twelve-hour shifts.A little farther off was the little building that held the Kim Il-sung Room, a sort of shrine filled with posters, books, and photos honoring the exploits of the Great Leader.Behind the annexes was a row of warrens that caged the school’s rabbits.In September 1977, I was beginning my final year of grammar school.(In North Korea, primary education lasts four years and is followed by five years of middle school.) At Yodok, all the kids from several neighboring villages were placed to one of two mixed-level classes with fifty students each.We began our school day by sweeping and mopping the classroom floor.After this little exercise was done, at around seven, the schoolmaster gave us our morning assignment.For the first hour, students were supposed to get in groups and review the previous day’s lesson.Since I was new, I had nothing to do but sit and wait.The review session was followed by lessons in Korean, mathematics, biology, and, finally, the politics of the Party, which was the teacher’s clear favorite.The latter class essentially consisted of repeating formulas I’d been mouthing my entire life, about the advantages of the brilliant “Juche” ideology extolling the self-sufficiency of the Korean community, whose singular existence was animated by the spirit of our one and only Great Leader.In this course as in the others, I learned little I did not already know.Each lesson lasted fifty minutes and was followed by a ten-minute break.Classes were over by noon.I had teachers at Yodok who actually took their jobs seriously.Most teachers, however, showed a total disregard for our well-being, sometimes even letting us nap with our heads on our desks under the pretense that this was teaching us self-sufficiency and discipline.Apart from the ideological regime, which was more or less the same everywhere in North Korea, there was simply no comparison between the lives of Yodok students and those of students on the outside.Our teachers generally addressed us in the harshest, crudest manner.Instead of using our first or last names, they blurted things like “Hey, you, in the back of the room! Hey, you, the idiot in the third row! Hey, you, son of a whore.” It was also common for them to beat us.That came as quite a discovery for me.Unlike the teachers I’d had in Pyongyang—who were attentive, patient, and devoted—my instructors at Yodok were simply brutes, whose primary concern was crushing “counterrevolutionary vermin”—or rather the offspring of counterrevolutionary vermin, which to them amounted to the same thing.The camp had many difficult times in store—the death of good friends, my grandmother’s illnesses, my frostbite, the obligatory witnessing of public executions—but by the time these things happened, I’d had experiences to help me absorb the shock.No good is ever expected of an accident or an illness or an execution
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
