III

Nobody speaks, because nobody is here. Encroaching, enclosing silence. I lie on my back in the darkness of the evening, just thinking. Remembering. Recalling the times when any kind of quiet would be punctured by Junsu's laughing. And times when Father still got enough money from his job to comfortably feed a family of four. Times when I didn't have to retch with hunger, and the electricity stayed on for more than fifteen minutes a day. When I had faith.

I wasn't always disillusioned with the Great Leader's warped stories. They're not marketed as an opinion, or as the ideas of one political party in which we had the freedom to not believe in. His word is truth. His word is for the best of all of us, and he has sacrificed so much for us. My mother would recite every poem or song in praise of him she could think of whenever possible. She would dust the portrait of him in our living room religiously, every morning, beaming with joy at the end of her task. When the local theatre was still open, before the electricity turned to shit, she would encourage us to go and see the latest propaganda films, shoving won into my hands.

I was fed the Leader's lies from the very day I was born. Of course I believed in it. What choice did I have?

My moment of clarity came with the news that two of the homeless orphans from our neighbourhood had died from starvation on the streets. I rushed outside to see, as did other children in our apartment building. But while they saw the two emaciated little boys on the road, grossly fascinated, my eyes were drawn to the huge poster on the wall behind them. Our Great Leader, his face a shining light, surrounded by plump children playing happily in a field. The only splash of colour in a ghastly town of grey. The Great Leader promised abundance, health, wealth, happiness. What we actually got were starved children who would be dragged away to be buried in a mass grave later on that day.

And despite being told my entire life that our Great Leader cares for us all, and is pained at the loss of all North Korean lives, I knew this wasn't right. I wanted to leave this place, because changing it would be impossible. I wanted to take my family to live somewhere where Junsu wouldn't have to be shut away, where Father didn't have to live with hatred and guilt, where Mother could laugh again.

It turned out that Father had the same dreams as I. We talked at length about the possibilities that might lie before us if we were to successfully make it out of North Korea – did people in China really have a bowl of rice three times a day? Could they actually go to the markets and buy exotic, strange fruit? Have the South Koreans – our brothers and sisters – truly developed a communications device that you could carry around in your pocket?

We researched as often as we could the safest ways of leaving. We managed to save a small amount of money. We could just never find the right time to do it.

But now he is dead. Father is dead, and Mother is dead, and Junsu is dead. And I am alone in the dark silence. I have a feeling they will come to take me away sooner or later. I am of tainted blood now. I am the last living member of the Baek family, and soon I will probably be slaving away in one of the prison camps until the day I breathe my final breath.

I'm not sure if I have the heart in me to get away anymore. That hope died with my Father. He knew the terrain, and he was the brains. I hated that all of his hard work finding out about various routes out of the country would go to waste. I wish I could complete the task my father never could, but without him and Junsu whatever future I have seems too bleak. This isn't something I can do without their support.

Mother dragged us down with her reverence for the system, but that was just because she was too weak, too dependent to do anything else. She could ignore the gnawing hunger in her stomach by convincing herself that her Dear Leader would get her through it. Mother had no clue.

Father always harboured anti-government feelings, but said nothing about them until he found the scrap of paper on which I wrote about my own. He burnt it – in case it fell into the wrong hands – but he discussed with me his own hopes. He wanted to defect. A childhood friend of his was now a guard posted at the Tumen River, beyond which is the border of Northeast China, and Father was sure he could be convinced to turn a blind eye to let our family past – with the help of a generous tip, of course. Father had it all mapped out.

Junsu was full of unconditional love. He wasn't much of a talker, but he understood more than we ever would. His eyes would glimmer with wonder when I'd tell him stories of the Chinese and the South Koreans. He loved the fact that, somewhere out there, people had their own cars and their own choices. I think he was happy - but I knew how much he wanted to be able to go outside and play. Go to school and make friends and sing songs. The regime deprived him of all that – and yet he was always the most optimistic of us all. Junsu was our purpose.

And now my world is upturned, the world is chaos. You, Junsu, the last glimmer of light in this godforsaken hell, have finally been put out. I can't see my life happening without you. I don't want a life without you.

But I think of the shit you went through when you were alive. The isolation, even by North Korean standards. The yearning to be free. The desire to be yourself. The need to live…

And there it was.

My second moment of clarity.

I have no reason to stay here anymore. Nothing is holding me back except my own hesitation.

Your death won't be in vain, little brother. I'm going to find the world I used to tell you stories about.