The Target

Chapter 13

The place had several different names: Bukchang, Pukchang, Pukch’ang.

It was officially known as Kwan-li-so Number 18. That meant Penal Labor Colony in Korean. It was a concentration camp. It was a gulag. It actually was hell, near the Taedong River in North Korea’s P’yongan-namdo province.

The oldest of North Korean labor camps, Bukchang had been hosting dissidents and alleged enemies of the state since the fifties. Unlike the other labor camps, all of which were run by the Bowibu—also known as the State Security Department or the secret police — Bukchang was operated by the inmin pohan seong, the Interior Ministry. There were two parts to the camp. One zone was for reeducation. Inmates here would learn the teachings of the country’s two great dead leaders and might be released, though they would be monitored for the rest of their lives. The other zone was for lifers who would never see outside the camp. The majority here were lifers.

Nearly the physical size of Los Angeles, Bukchang housed fifty thousand prisoners who were kept in by, among many other things, a four-meter-high fence. If you were sent here, so was your entire family — the classic definition of guilt by association, which extended to infants, toddlers, teenagers, siblings, spouses, and grandparents. Babies born here shared the same guilt as their families. Unauthorized babies born here, because intercourse and pregnancies were strictly regulated, were killed. Age and personal culpability meant nothing, and a toddler and an ancient grandmother were treated the same — brutally.

At Bukchang everyone worked nearly all the time, in the coal mines, in the cement factories, and at other vocations. All of the work was dangerous. All of the workers were left totally unprotected. Many died from work accidents. Black lung disease alone had felled legions of forced coal miners. Food was largely unavailable. You were expected to scavenge for yourself, and families feasted on garbage, insects, weeds, and sometimes each other. Water came from the rain or the ground. It was dirty, and dysentery, among many other diseases, was rampant. These living conditions were used at Bukchang as highly effective population control.

It was not known precisely how many labor camps there were in North Korea, although the international consensus was six. The fact that they were numbered and those numbers reached at least as high as twenty-two was an indicator of their pervasiveness. At least two hundred thousand North Koreans, or nearly one percent of the entire population, called these labor camps home.

There were allegations of corruption inside Bukchang. Things were not going smoothly. For one, there had been ten escapes in less than two months. That, by itself, was inexcusable. Two armed battalions guarded the camp. The four-meter-high fence was electrified, with booby traps everywhere. Five-meter-high guard towers ringed the fence, and guards on the ground remained both overt and hidden, looking for any signs of problems. Thus escape should have been impossible. But since it had happened, there had to be an explanation. There were rumors that the escapees had benefited from inside help. That was not only inexcusable, it was also treasonous.

The female prisoner was huddled in a corner of the stone room. She was a recent arrival here after being caught in China and repatriated. She was barely twenty-five but looked older. Her body was small, scarred but also hardened and sinewy; there was strength in her small footprint. The money that she had hidden inside an orifice had been discovered. The guards had pocketed it before beating her.

She now sat shivering with fear in the corner. Her clothes were rags, filthy from the trip out and now the forced journey back. She was bleeding, her hair matted and dirty. She was breathing heavily, her small chest pushing out and pulling in with each frantic breath.

The heavy door opened and four men came in: three guards in uniform and the administrator of Bukchang, who wore a gray tunic and pressed slacks. He was well fed, his hair neatly combed into a precise side part, his shoes shined, his skin smooth and healthy. He looked down at the mess of a human in front of him. She was like an animal found by the side of the road. He would treat her as such, which was how all prisoners here were treated. Any guard showing pity or kindness would in turn become a prisoner himself. Thus no guard ever showed compassion. From a totalitarian mind-set, it was a perfect arrangement.

He gave orders to his men, who finished stripping her down. The administrator stepped forward and nudged her exposed buttock with his glossy wingtip.

She bunched tighter, seemingly trying to melt into the wall. He smiled at this and then drew nearer still. He squatted down.

In Korean he said, “You have money, it seems.”

She turned her face to his, her limbs trembling. She managed to nod.

“You have earned this while away?”

She nodded again.

“By taking Chinese filth into your bed?”

“Yes.”

“You have more money?”

She started to shake her head but then stopped. She said, “I can get more.”

The man nodded in satisfaction and looked up at the guards.

“How much more?” he asked.

“More,” she said. “Much more.”

“I want more. Much more,” he answered. “When?”

“I will need to get a message out.”

“How much more can you get?”

“Ten thousand wons.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not enough. And I don’t want wons.”

“Renminbis then?”

“Do I look like I want Chinese toilet paper?”

“What then?” she said fearfully.

“Euros. I want euros.”

“Euros?” she said, shivering once more since it was freezing in here and she was naked. “What good are euros here?”

“I want euros, bitch,” said the warden. “It is no concern of yours why.”

“How much euros?” said the woman.

“Twenty thousand. Up front.”

She looked shocked. “Twenty thousand euros?”

“That is my price.”

“But how can I trust you?”

“You can’t,” he said, smiling. “But what choice do you have? The coal mine awaits.” He paused. “Your record says you are from Kaechon,” he said.

This was known as Camp 14 and located on the other side of the Taedong River, adjacent to Bukchang.

He continued. “They coddle their prisoners there. Even though we have a reeducation zone here, and Kaechon is only for sons of bitches that are irredeemable, we do not coddle at Bukchang. You will not leave here alive. You will be caught trying to escape. And you will be tied to a pole, your mouth stuffed with rocks, and you will be shot five times by each guard. And every minute you are here alive will feel like death.”

He looked at his men. “Kaechon,” he said, and laughed. “For shit coddlers.”

They all laughed too, grinning at each other and slapping their thighs.

He stood. “Twenty thousand euros.”

“When?”

“Five days.”

“But that is impossible.”

“Then I am sorry.” He motioned to his guards, who moved forward.

“Wait, wait!” she screamed.

The men stopped and looked at her expectantly.

She rose on quivering legs. “I will get it. But I need to get a message out.”

“Perhaps that can be arranged.” He looked over her naked body. “You are not so scrawny. When you are cleaned up, you will be pretty, I think. Or at least not so disgusting.”

He reached out and touched her hair. She flinched and he slapped her so violently he drew blood.

“You will never do that again,” he ordered. “You will welcome my touch.”

She nodded and rubbed the skin where he had struck her and tasted the blood on her lips.

“You will be cleaned up. And then you will be brought to me.”

She looked at him and knew what that meant. “But the euros? I thought that was the payment.”

“In addition to the euros. While we wait the five days. Or do you prefer the filthy, dangerous mines to my bed?”

She shook her head and looked down, defeated. “I…I do not want to go to the mines.”

He smiled and cupped her trembling chin, lifting her gaze to his.

“You see, not so difficult. Food, clean water, warm bed. And I will have you as often as I want.” He turned to his men. “As will they. Anytime we want. You understand? Anything we want, I don’t care what it is. You are nothing but a dog, do you understand?”

She nodded tearfully. “I understand. But you will not hurt me? I…I have been hurt enough.”

He slapped her again. “You make no demands, filth. You do not speak unless I ask you a question.” He put his hands around her throat and slammed her against the wall. “Do you understand?”

She nodded and said in a defeated voice, “I understand.”

“You will call me seu seung,” he added, using the Korean word for master. “You will call me this even after you leave here. If you leave here. I make no promises, even if you get me the euros. You may not safely escape. It is up to me and me only. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I understand.”

He shook her violently. “Say it. Give me my proper respect.”

“Seu seung,” she said in a tremulous voice.

He smiled and let her go. “See, that was not so bad.”

A moment later he clutched at his throat where she had struck him. He staggered backward, colliding with one of his men.

She moved so fast it seemed that everyone else had slowed by comparison. She catapulted across the room, slipped one guard’s gun from his holster, and shot him in the face with it. Another guard came at her. She turned and kicked so high her foot caught him in the eye. Her jagged toenails ripped his pupil, blinding him. He screamed and fell back as the third guard fired his gun. But she was no longer there. She had pushed backward off the wall and cartwheeled over him, taking the knife off his belt holder as she sailed past, landing a foot behind him. She slashed four times so fast no eye could follow. The guard clutched at his neck where his veins and arteries had been severed.

She never stopped moving. Using his falling body as a launch pad she leapt over him and caught the blinded guard in a leg lock around his head. She twisted her body in midair and hurled him forward, where his head struck the stone wall with such force that his skull cracked.

She picked up the pistol she had dropped, stood over each guard, and fired into their heads until they were all dead.

She had always loathed the camp guards. She had lived for years with them. They had left scars inside and outside of her that would never heal. She would never be a mother because of them. Because of them she had never even contemplated being a mother because that would mean she had come to accept herself as a human being, which she never could. Her name in the camp had been “Bitch.” Every woman in the camp had had that name. “Bitch. Bitch.” That was all she had ever heard from light to night for years on end. “Come, Bitch. Go, Bitch. Die, Bitch.”

She turned to the administrator, who lay on the floor near the door. He was not yet dead. He was still clutching his throat and gasping for air, his eyes unfocused but panicked. She had planned it this way, hitting him just hard enough to incapacitate but not kill. She knew exactly what the difference was.

She knelt down next to him. He stared up with bulging eyes, his hands at his throat. She did not smile in triumph. She did not look sad. Her features were expressionless.

She knelt down closer.

“Say it,” she said in a whisper.

He whimpered and clutched at his ruptured throat.

“Say it,” she said again. “Seu seung.”

She cupped a hand under his neck and squeezed. “Say it.”

He whimpered.

She placed her bony knee against his crotch and pressed. “Say it.”

He screamed as she jammed her knee down harder against his privates.

“Say it. Seu seung. Say it and no more pain.” She rammed her knee against him. He screamed louder. “Say it.”

“S…seu…”

“Say it. Say it all.” She ferociously ground her knee into him.

He screamed as loud as his damaged windpipe would allow. “Seu seung.”

She straightened. She did not smile in triumph. She did not look sad. She was expressionless. “See, that was not so bad,” she said, parroting his earlier words.

As he stared helplessly up at her she leapt into the air and came down on top of him. Her elbow slammed into the man’s nose with such force that she pushed the cartilage there right into his brain, like a fired bullet. This killed him instantly, whereas his crushed windpipe would have taken more time to finish him off.

She rose and looked around at the four dead men.

“Seu seung,” she said. “Me, not you.”

She searched the guards’ pockets and found a walkie-talkie. She pulled it out, turned it to a different frequency, and said simply, “It is done.”

She dropped the walkie-talkie, stepped over the dead men, and walked out of the room, still naked, covered in the men’s blood.

Her name was Chung-Cha, and she and her family had been labor camp prisoners many years ago at Camp 15, also known as Yodok. She had been only one year old when the Bowibu had come for them in the night. They always came at night. Predators did not come during the light. She had survived Yodok. Her family had not.

Other guards passed her in the hall and rushed onward to the room where the dead men were.

They said nothing to her. They didn’t look at her.

When they got there two of the guards vomited onto the stones after seeing the carnage.

When Chung-Cha reached the prearranged spot two men who wore the markings of generals in the North Korean military greeted her with respect. One handed her a wet towel and soap with which to clean off. The other held fresh clothes for her. She cleaned and then dressed in front of them without a shade of embarrassment for her nudity. Both generals averted their gazes while she did so, although it did not matter to her. She had been naked and brutalized in front of many men. She had never had privacy and thus had no expectation of it. It simply meant nothing to her. Dogs did not require clothes.

She glanced at them only once. To her, they did not look like soldiers; with their broad-rimmed puffy caps they looked more like members of a band, ready to pick up musical instruments rather than weapons. They looked funny, weak, and incompetent, when she knew them to be cagey and paranoid and dangerous to everyone, including themselves.

One said, “Yie Chung-Cha, you are to be commended. His Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has been informed and sends his personal thanks. You will be rewarded appropriately.”

She handed back the soiled towel and soap.

“How appropriately?”

The generals glanced at each other, their features showing their amazement at this comment.

“The Supreme Leader will determine that,” said the other. “And you will be grateful for whatever he decides.”

His companion added, “There is no greater honor than to serve one’s country.”

She stared up at them both, her features unreadable. Then she turned and walked down the corridor and made her way out of the camp. As she passed, many watched her. None attempted to make eye contact. Not even the most brutal of all the guards there. Word of what she had done had already made its way through the camp. Thus none wanted to look Yie Chung-Cha in the eye because it might be the last thing they ever saw.

Her gaze never wavered. It pointed straight ahead.

Outside the four-meter fence a truck awaited. A door opened and she climbed in.

The truck immediately drove off, heading to the south, to Pyongyang, the capital. She had an apartment there. And a car. And food. And clean water. And some wons in a local bank. That was all she needed. It was far more than she had ever had. Far more than she had ever expected to have. She was grateful for this. Grateful to be alive.

Corruption could not be tolerated.

She knew that better than most.

Four men dead today by her hand.

The truck drove on.

Chung-Cha forgot about the corrupt administrator who had demanded euros and sex in payment for her escape. He was not worth any more of her thoughts.

She would return to her apartment. And she would await the next call.

It would come soon, she thought. It always did.

And she would be ready. It was the only life she had.

And for that too she was grateful.

No greater honor than to serve one’s country?

She formed spit in her mouth and then swallowed it.

Chung-Cha looked out the window, seeing nothing as they drew nearer to Pyongyang. She spoke to none of the others in the vehicle.

She always kept her thoughts to herself. That was the only thing they couldn’t take from her. And they had tried. They had tried mightily. They had taken everything else. But they had not taken that.

And they never would.