Bandi - The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea

THE ACCUSATION

Bandi is the Korean word for firefly. It is the pseudonym of an anonymous dissident writer still living in North Korea.

THE ACCUSATION

FORBIDDEN STORIES FROM INSIDE NORTH KOREA

BANDI

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PENs PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Serpents Tail,
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

3 Holford Yard

Bevin Way

London

WC1X 9HD

www.serpentstail.com

Original title: / Gobal

First published in Korea by Chogabje.com

Copyright 2014 by Bandi and Happy Unification Road

Translation copyright 2017 by Deborah Smith

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 78283 312 3

Contents

NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

The provenance of the Korean manuscript from which this translation is derived is detailed in the two afterwords to this edition. In order to protect the identity of the author, some of those details have been changed. Beyond the assessment presented there, the publishers have no further information about the origins of The Accusation, but believe it to be an important work of North Korean samizdat literature and a unique portrayal of life under a totalitarian dictatorship.

In Place of a Preface

[A poem included with the original manuscript of The Accusation, with this title]

That old man of Europe with his bristling beard
Claimed that capitalism is a pitch-black realm
While communism is a world of light.

I, Bandi, of this so-called world of light,
Fated to shine only in a world of darkness,
Denounce in front of the whole world
That light which is truly fathomless darkness,
Black as a moonless night at the years end.

Bandi

Record of a Defection

S angki, its me, Il-cheol. Im sitting down now to write this record of my defection. You remember Choi Seo-haes Record of an Escape, which he wrote back in 1920? But now its 1990, more than fifty years since our land was liberated from the Japanese colonizersand unlike Choi, Im escaping from my own country. Sounds absurd, doesnt it? But I want you to understand, so Ill try to explain it all as simply as possible. In a way, you could say it all began with a medicine packet, the one I showed you that time.

The packet fell into my hands quite by chance. You remember my brothers youngest sonhe was eight years old then. The kid used to be at our place so often youd think we were his parents. Of course, this wasnt so strange when you consider that the apartment I shared with my wife was practically next to my brothers house, where Id lived until I got married. But as I think back on it now, that wasnt the only reason for the visits. No, the real reason was my wifes constant readiness to drop whatever she was doing and lavish attention on the kid. She was tenderhearted by nature, true, but this was something elseshe welled up with compassion every time she set eyes on him, and was always happy to have him stay over, unrolling an extra mattress right by hers.

After a while I got to thinking that perhaps the maternal instinct grows even stronger when a woman doesnt have a child of her own, making the most of whatever outlet it has. In her eyes the boy could do no wrong, and he adored her every bit as much. The day everything changed, the day of the medicine packet incident, was also the first time he showed up at our door.

My wife had gone downstairs to help our local Party secretary repaper his ceiling, leaving me to my own devices. I was getting on with some work when the kid burst in, looked around for his aunt, and, when he couldnt find her, promptly settled on pestering me instead. It was a kite he was after; we were at the end of autumn, when the wind which tosses the fallen leaves starts producing the kind of splendid gusts that children find irresistible. And my nephew was so innocently eager, I didnt have it in my heart to disappoint him.

Now, for a kite, ordinary paper wouldnt doyou needed something tough yet pliableand I remembered thered been some scraps left over from when wed last repapered the door. As it was, I ended up turning the place upside down looking for them, even rummaging through the wardrobe where we stored the bedding during the day. But when I thrust my hand into the tiny gap between the quilts and the back of the wardrobe, the rustling material my fingers closed around wasnt the offcuts from the door, but a paper packet of loose pills.

I didnt think much of it at first, just carried on with my search, but I soon found my thoughts straying back to it. Where was my wife in all this? The more I wondered about those pills, the more puzzling they appeared. What kind of medicine has to be hidden away out of sight like this, and taken only when nobodys looking? What kind of illness has no external symptoms? Then it dawned on me. Of courseit had to be something to keep her from getting pregnant!

I was too distracted to make a good job of the kite, and I cut myself twice in the process of making it. The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that confronting my wife directly would get me a straight answer. And so I tried a different tack, and ended up knocking on your door, Sangki, seeking your advice as a doctor. But what you told me when you looked at the pills Id brought only served to confirm my worst suspicions.

Contraceptives? I burst out, forgetting the many other patients, some women included, who were waiting just outside your consulting room. Are you sure?

Now, now, theres no need, you blustered, wincing at the volume of my voice, your eyes entreating me to remember where we were. I left you standing there and raced back home, not even stopping for breath, the accusation balanced on my tongue like a primed grenade the whole way. But when I finally did fling our door open, I found myself face-to-face with my wifeand the pin jammed. Seeing her there reminded me that this was a delicate situation, one in which Id do best to tread carefully. After all, it was an open secret that my wife and I werent exactly equals.

Im not talking about any difference in personalitythere was nothing much to choose between us therebut as far as our family history was concerned we couldnt have been further apart, and that, after all, is what counts in this society. On her side, my wife could boast a spotless record, without even so much as a distant relation whose loyalty to the Party might be questionable. Whereas on my side, a different story Ive no doubt more than a few jaws would have hit the ground when word got out that Lee Il-cheol and Nam Myung-ok were engaged. A white heron and a black crowwhat good can come of a match like that? Those would have been the words on everyones lips.

And now that white heron had been going behind my back, looking out for her own interests at the expense of our marriage, which after all was the one blemish on her otherwise flawless reputation. This was the first thought that sprang to mind, and was it really any wonder? How else could I interpret the fact that my wife, for whom married life should hardly have had time to lose its shine, wished to avoid having a baby with me?