Twisted Rope

Major and Minor Keys

New York, Wednesday.

Jeong-hyeok lay on his hotel bed, watching the TV news. North Korea was hitting the headlines again. It seemed to be getting more and more chaotic there. Really hard to know what was going on or how it would end. It troubled him. There was some sort of power struggle amongst competing factions underneath the Leader. Kang Sung-ho was still very much a presence in one of those factions. He hoped Senior Director Kim's team had some good intelligence. Anything to do with Kang Sung-ho still unnerved him, even after all these years.

It was because of Kang Sung-ho that he and his mother had ended up in the South when they did. When Director Ri killed Military Director Kang, he had saved Jeong-hyeok's life; but actions have consequences. His son, Kang Sung-ho, vowed to take revenge. After Director Ri had died from cancer, the risk from Kang intensified. Eventually, Kang Sung-ho's vendetta against the Ri family had caused his mother to flee her home, and come and find him when he was with Seri in Switzerland. Once he knew he could never return to his home in the North and that his mother was safe, the opportunity for him and Seri to be married had been created. From then on, they had built their lives together. The threat from Kang Sung-ho had never gone away completely. Even when they had escaped from him in Switzerland and were in Seoul, he had tried to damage him with allegations about his late father.

Over the years, there had been occasional alerts and warnings. Once the National Intelligence Service had sent an alert whilst Seri was away on a business trip in China. She had returned home straight away, and he remembered how anxious he had been until she landed back in Seoul. Then there was the time when the NIS arrested a suspected North Korean agent, and amongst his records had been photographs of him in the park with the girls. That had been frightening, too. Keeping his family safe was of paramount importance to him; but he had learnt to live normally, with a part of his subconscious brain dedicated to being alert to any threat.

He never discussed the North with anyone. Only his mother, and to some extent Seri, had properly understood what it was like. He avoided questions about it from friends or colleagues and made sure any public statements didn't cover it. Partly he didn't want any statements to provoke Kang Sung-ho, but partly because he found it too complex to describe how he felt about it. He didn't think that anyone else could possibly understand his feelings. Over their marriage, he had built a wonderful life with Seri and the girls, and he had developed a successful career in the South. He truly appreciated the greater freedom and opportunity he had there. And he did think of it as home, at least most of the time. But his childhood memories were all in the North and he couldn't help having affection for places and people there. He hated the corruption, the nepotism and the lies that had tainted the society, but he knew there were many good, honest people there. He had always felt guilty about leaving people like that behind.

Now his mother had died, he felt isolated, as if he had no-one left who could understand those feelings and memories. Would he be like his mother, never able to return there? He tried not to look ahead and speculate about what might happen with the country, there were too many uncertainties. But he had to admit that sometimes the thought of never going back still had the power to disturb him.

He turned the news off. Instead, he thought about that night's performance, and hoped it would be better than the ones in Los Angeles. He thought it would be. Los Angeles hadn't been as good as it should have been, and he was disappointed with himself. But Park Hyun-ki was right, focus on New York, be positive.

He had wonderful memories of New York. He'd played a concert here three years ago, and it had received an enthusiastic reception. It felt good coming back to a place that had welcomed him before. Seri had been with him then and they'd had a few days together in the city. Seri had visited once before on business, but it had been his first time there and he'd loved it. He smiled, looking back on those few days. They'd even stayed in this hotel, in fact, this very suite.