Escape From The Sun

Chapter 3: Death and Succession

The 4 years in Ryongsong Residence passed as it was, with me learning more and more things with each passing day. As I learned more, my tutor eventually moved me to the highest level of high school syllabus. I was a good student, according to him. I learned fast, and picked up fast. What he didn't understand was that after twelve years of uncertain schooling, and of only concerning myself regarding my next meal, the freedom to learn and absorb as much information as I wanted without worrying if I would starve to death was liberating. It was a freedom I had never imagined. It had also been my first taste of freedom.

Throughout my time there, my father was often missing from Residence. As the health of the Dear Leader improved, he too went along with my father, on state visits to China and Russia. I had been interested, and even expressed my curiosity regarding these foreign countries once. But that was a line my father never crossed. He expressly forbade it, in such a way that warned me never to broach the subject again. But forbidding me did not mean i stopped being curious about a subject. My curiosity would eventually prove my downfall one day, but I tried to get my hands on as much literature as I could find about these states.

Yet try as I could, all I could find was content that praised the nobility, grace and spectacular stuff our Dear Leader and Supreme Leader had done. I had had enough of those, and did not wish to read what was essentially a repeat of pointless praises.

So I was left clueless, but still curious.

My birthday passed with no hubbub. After my mother's passing, I had not bothered telling anyone else my birthday, but when it came with the first snowfall of the year, the second year I entered the Residence, I had smiled my first real smile ever since the death of my mother. It was the memory of my birthday last year, when Mother had still been around. She had made it a point to save our rations, so she had enough to make my favorite rice cake egg stew for dinner that night. Cheap as the dish was, it was the most comforting dish we could have for a cold night, and it warmed me from head to toe. More warmth than any of the warm, fur-lined coat my father had purchased for me that winter. I had asked Madam Lee for a bowl of the egg stew that night, but even if I finished the whole bowl, comforting as it felt amidst the frigid December winter, it was not the warmth I remembered.

As I sat at my kitchen counter stirring the last dredges of soup, a part of my mind remembered my neighbors in Dongdaewon, and if they were any better off. We had just begun to recover from the effects of the Arduous March which had happened a good ten years earlier, yet from the last of my days there, it felt as if food was getting scarcer by the day.

Five days after my birthday, my grandfather died.

I had been in my room, finishing up the work my tutor had assigned me the day before, when a maid came to tell me that my father had returned, and I was wanted belowstairs. As per usual, no one denied a request from the Kims. The maid quickly helped me dressed from the shorts and shirt that I wore, and I descended the stairs to find almost the whole cadre gathered within the cavernous hall of Ryongsong. My eyes zeroed in on the empty circle they had formed around a coffin, and only then did I realize who was the one who laid motionless upon it.

My father had left just the week earlier with the Dear Leader, who had seemed in good spirits. They were scheduled to return later that week. From what I gathered, they had been on a train to the outskirts of Pyongyang, when harabeoji had suffered a heart attack. The train and all traffic had been cleared to bring the body of the Dear Leader back within a day. The days that followed were a flurry in my eyes. I had been seventeen, finishing up the final year of my academia. Father was supposed to decide on my course upon my enrolment to Kim Il-Sung University upon his return, but everything was postponed until after the funeral of the Dear Leader was held.

Cadres were summoned from all corners of the DPRK, and they streamed in at every hour of the day to pay respects. My tutor too, came in red-eyed and weepy, quite often distracted even if my father had instructed for lessons to continue until the official funeral to be held seven days hence. Due to my status as the illegitimate daughter and in accordance to his father's wishes, I was not paraded along with the family when the funeral took place. Instead, just before the official ceremony, my father had fetched me to privately pay respects to the body of my grandfather.

"He will be the Eternal General Secretary of the DPRK. I have assumed position as the Supreme Commander yesterday." my father informed me.

"And what of me?" I asked, turning to see him. By then, I stood at his shoulder. I am nowhere near the normal height an eighteen year old should be, and even till today I stand shorter than everyone around me in South Korea, but then again, no one in my homeland was ever very tall to begin with. "He mentioned I am to never be publicly announced as your daughter. I am a blight to him."

It was the very first time I had told him, in the 6 years I had come to stay in the Residence, what my grandfather had told to my face within the first month of me staying there. For the briefest of second, I wonder till this day if it had been shock and indignance I saw in Kim Jong-Un's eyes, before it had disappeared, and he composed himself.

"I am to marry." he replied monotonously. "Comrade Ri Sol-ju had been my father's choice of wife for me. I will honor his wishes in his death."

"So you are to marry upon your father's deathbed?" I was outrageously outspoken for my people in North Korea, yet perhaps it was due to my relation, and my blood being related to his, that my father forgave many of my outspokenness, this instance being one of them. His eyes did flash a dangerous warning to me however. But I have developed a distrust for anyone within the Party. I simply could not believe the amount of wealth and abhorrent displays of power, yet whenever I had the chance to go out of the Residence walls, I see nothing of the greatness and wealth promised to the state.

It is not often I get the chance to roam outside of the walls on my own. Kim Jong-Un's reasoning being I was too young, to be out on my own. I had my own personal attendant, but surviving and growing up as a kotjelbi on the streets, outsmarting a skinny personal attendant was no big deal. Whenever I could escape, I would always try to find my way back to Dongdaewon, for I am curious if my neighbors still did well. Because I had been brought to Ryongsong in a car however, I had never been able to find my way back. But I had seen many sides of Pyongyang hidden from the naked eye, and they are the sides that did not reflect the richness of the state so proudly declared upon the media.

"You will be Comrade Ri Sol-ju's First Attendant, until a time when a proper one can be trained." my father had instructed, that evening we stood alone in the dark halls, with only my grandfather's cold and preserved body as company.

"And my education in Kim Il-Sung University?" I asked.

"You will be enrolled under Philsophy within the university, but you will remain in Residence over the weekends." his voice held a tone of decision.

I gave a nod. Knowing I had no choice in the matter, I had never given it much thought. In North Korea, the idea of culinary arts was not even acknowledged, and that had surprised me upon my first entrance to the South. In North Korea, the best of the best had the choice of where and what they wanted to study. For me, with my uncertain background and gray existence, choice was a foreign word."I will take my leave then, Leader Kim."

That night as I lay upon my bed, I wondered for the thousandth time, just how could anyone believe that we were truly happy in this land, when even what I was to study in tertiary education, was to be decided by the state. And in that instant, I realize that nothing I have done so far in life, was by any choice of my own.