(News music fades out)
Li Song Nam, a 46 year old North Korean national and his family fled Korea for the People’s Republic of China on the 5th of August, and have not been seen since they were detained by the Chinese police on the 6th.
I hate being frightened, I hate the torture, I hate the pain and the suffering. But what I hate above all is the fear.
My name is Hei Song Nam and this is my story. You are my only hope for the future, my friend who I can confide in, the one who I can tell everything… You’re much more than a friend, you’re my lifeline, and my hope. You’re someone who never judges me and never lets me down. Someone who’s always there, through everything. Yet despite this, I feel so alone. I feel so empty. As if someone has carved and scraped out my soul leaving just an outer shell.
Dramatic food shortages have occurred in North Korea since 1995, reaching famine proportions in several areas. The shortages have led to an increase in the number of North Koreans leaving the country illegally.
One-sided conversations are pointless, meaningless, the air beside me is left unfilled, matching the void in my heart. You are my hope, my link back to humanity and my last chance for survival. Without you I would be lost to fear. The fear that I don’t know where I am. The fear of not knowing if I’ll wake up tomorrow or more frighteningly the fear that I might never see my family again. That fear is the most treacherous, it seeks shelter in your insecurity and hides in your mind. It lies coiled up like a snake, waiting for a chance to strike when your defences are at their most vulnerable. Breathing your thoughts, it eats you up inside, wearing you down, day after day waiting for a chance to poison you.
For you to truly understand my story, I will have to take you back. Back to a time in North Korea, my hometown. The place I grew up, the place that’s full of so many memories, the place that is a part of me, and always will be, even when I die.
Chang-Sun Nam left North Korea illegally taking his wife and children with him. On the 5th of August, Chang-Sun Nam and his family reached the town of J’ian, near the city of Dandong in China.
My life back then was free, and so good, I’ve almost forgotten what it was like, the feeling of being free. You take it for
granted being able to laugh, smile and speak your own mind. You consider it insignificant, until it’s cruelly snatched away from you; your freedom withdrawn and locked away. Just thinking about it now makes me ache inside, it seems so far away, like a distant memory, because that’s all I seem to have left.
On the 6th according to accounts from relatives, Chang-Sun was brutally attacked and robbed. When he tried to protect his family, the attackers recognised that they were Koreans and denounced them to the police. Chang-Sun Nam and his wife were taken to a police station and questioned. Their children were taken to a detention centre for illegal immigrants. It is unclear whether they are still in the detention centre or have been returned to North Korea.
I can picture my father now, his dark foreboding eyes, that hid so many things, and my mother, busy behind closed doors. I remember her smile, so innocent, how was I to know the secrets they kept from me, trying to protect me. But the power of their secrets was too great for even blood love to withhold.
Later on I found out that my father ran a ‘free democracy’ campaign. He worked secretly with others for years, even before I was born, writing and publishing illegal political papers.
Political persecution has also been a key factor in this case. It is believed that Chang-Sun Nam was part of an underground political campaign, protesting against hunger, and the right for freedom of speech.
Chang-Sun Nam and his family’s whereabouts are still unknown.
During those first few months at my new home, thoughts of ending my life were the only thing that kept me sane. Suicide is a form of murder, it isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to, time for your brain to re-adjust to that thought alone. You have to numb yourself, become detached, dead (ironic laugh) in a way to your feelings and emotions and focus on the situation alone. You have to have a strong reason for wanting to be dead, or else you won’t really see it through. I remember a few years ago… a girl among us set herself on fire. She used fuel that she’d taken little by little every week, leaking it from the detention warden’s car. She and a few others, who weren’t seen as a risk, were given special permission to clean his car. They got a tiny taste of the freedom they used to know so well, they would have cleaned a thousand cars just to see the stars in the sky before dawn. I envied the fact that they got to see those stars. The same stars that I used to trace out in the midnight sky with my father. They tore me away from that life.
(Chokes down tears) MY life, ripped from my friends and family. They didn’t even stop to question why? What had I done? Did I deserve this? They… (breaks down, unable to speak)
I slept, dreamt and thought freedom, to be free. Free from the grey, claustrophobic walls that were suffocating my soul. To break free from the confinements of the heavy weights on my wrists and my heart. The freedom that we longed for, wasn’t the kind of freedom that occupied her mind day and night. She was never unhappy, at least she never showed it. She tried so hard to hide pain and sorrow, it almost made me cry watching her. She always wore her smile, making others feel better. She was comforting to those in pain, while no-one noticed her rot inside. She had no family, and no hope.
She dreamt of a free place, a place where she could never be captured. A place so beautiful and just that it could not be real.
I still see her scared face, when I close my eyes at night. Thick scars of pink and white, criss-crossed on her skin. Burns aren’t like skin. They have no character; they don’t show happiness or sorrow. She bore this scar and was no longer able to comfort people, only horrify them. Her neck was so severely torched that she could no longer move it. Her smile had turned into that of a hideous old woman’s, not of a young girl who had yet to see the world and live her life. Her face now matched her mind, emotionless, and burnt to the core, with pure hatred and rage, unlike any other. Slowly she disappeared as people turned away from her in disgust.
At that point I knew I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t give into the fear that they had instilled into us. I had a family, or I believed I had a family, and I was determined to see them again. Then it happened. That was the day time stood still, I’ll never forget that day.
Open the door. (taps his foot impatiently)
(fumbles with keys)
(panics) What’s happening? Where are you taking me?
Shut up.
You’re free. You are free to go.
But how…..why? (mumbles incoherently)
Stop your questions, before we turn you around and lock you up in there to die.
I didn’t point out to him that it had felt like I was already dead, the time I had spent in there, killed me. My wish had become a reality. My freedom was restored, and the air I breathed became lighter, almost sweeter. It felt as though the weight that had been bearing down on my soul had been lifted. The same weight that made me consider ending my life had evaporated, like that of morning dew in mid afternoon.
My mother and father had escaped the Korean officials. However before they got a chance to get out of China the Korean government hunted them down. My father was shot by a Korean official, Ki Mu-Hak. My mother managed to escape and had fled to England to seek help. It took her 4 years of tireless fighting and campaigning to find out where I was. She didn’t even know if I’d be alive, but she didn’t give up.
Chang-Sun Nam’s daughter has finally been released form the detention centre where she had spent the last 5 years of her life. Unfortunately her father cannot be with us to celebrate this triumph for the Nam’s and Human rights throughout the world.
Maybe one day when things are different, when humans don’t judge each other for their beliefs or the colour of their skin and everyone is treated equally and no-one is made to feel pain or suffering, then I will go back to Korea and face the ghosts of my past.
(Fades back to music)
END
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