The Soundless Shadow, Part Two: The Reactionary Who Wrote the Graffiti Is a Low-Level Party Secretary...

Okay, here's part two of the translation of the story I started yesterday. Part one is here. The original Korean of part two is here. There are some passages in here that are more gist than translation, and I left a few small things out. I spent a good chunk of my weekend on this already, and I kind of just wanted to get done. Also, I started wondering about the reliability of some of the facts. How does the narrator know what happened to Kim Yong Hun in prison? But I still got everything in there that matters, I think.

Reminder from yesterday that MSS=Ministry of State Security, the Gestapo charged with spying on North Korea's own citizens in order to quell dissent.

On with the show.

The Reactionary Who Wrote the Graffiti Turns Out to Be a Low-Level Party Secretary...

It was a quiet day after the election was over. The people were beginning to forget all about the incident with the graffiti. But then there was a rumor that they'd caught the guy who did it. People relived the incident all over again, and the whole city was in an uproar. Everyone was overcome by extreme curiosity, and they were all talking about it.

To everyone's surprise, it turned out that the perpetrator was a party secretary at a fair-sized company in the city. His name was Kim Yong Hun (name changed for this story). They said his handwriting matched the graffiti exactly. The MSS dragged him off to prison and charged him with being a reactionary and a spy.

I was curious if this were true, so I asked a friend whose husband was in the MSS. My friend said it was correct. I don't know why, but I felt a lot of compassion for Kim Yong Hun, although I didn't even know him. I wished he hadn't been caught, that he'd have gotten away with it forever...I fell into these sorts of regrets.

Kim Yong Hun was a secretary in his forties. He came from a family that had had a good reputation since his father's day, with people who had been active in the party and whom the party had trusted. He also had the trust of the workers at the factory where he worked, and he was known as a faithful person. He'd been acting as a party secretary for almost ten years.

He worked alongside the workers at the factory, sharing in the work, and he carried out all the revolutionary tasks he was given within the party. Everyone judged him to be a diligent person. He had become well-known during his time as a party member. His unusual faithfulness was known even at higher levels in the party, and he had always been treated well as a party secretary.

People talked among themselves. They said that he all his faithfulness had been an act to hide the fact that he was a reactionary and a spy. They said that the party had been mistaken about him. They said it was hard to be sure about someone, and many other things like that.

There were others saying different things, things that the MSS took no notice of. Especially among the man's co-workers, there were people saying he was a good person, and that they were worried he'd been charged with a crime he didn't commit. Some even went to the MSS officials who'd done the investigation, and they all said the MSS had the wrong man.

They all testified that he was an exemplary man who did his best at everything he was told to do. But the MSS didn't believe the workers, and nothing they said did anything to reduce the severity of the crimes he'd been charged with or to help him.

From an NBC story on a UN investigation into DPRK labor camps. Available here.

The MSS started interrogating him. They called him several times a day and had him write things in different ways. In the end, they said the handwriting matched. Then, they started beating him when they interrogated him. Kim Yong Hun kept insisting it was not his handwriting. He said he wasn't just being obstinate, but that he was telling the truth.

But no matter how loud he shouted, nobody listened to him. In his isolated prison, they said all his denials that the writing was his were just bluster, and that it did no good to protest. It had all come out of nowhere for him, and he was at a loss to explain it.

MSS bosses were pressing the interrogators to get a confession by any means necessary, so the interrogations continued every day. But nobody was able to get to the bottom of it.

When he blacked out, the MSS would wake him up by throwing water on him, then beat him some more until they were exhausted. He was covered in blood every day. But he would not give in, even if it meant death. If he gave in and confessed, his family's fate would be horrendous.

If he were convicted as a reactionary and a spy, his family would either be thrown into a political crimes prison or be sent off to some unknown place where they'd live like animals. Therefore, he could not give in no matter what.

But before the power of the MSS, Kim Yong Hun was like a candle in the wind. He realized he would never survive to emerge from the prison where they had taken him. Every North Korean knows that nobody comes out again from the MSS's underground prisons. There are people who have disappeared like morning dew because of one ill-advised word spoken while drunk. He knew there was no escape.

In a dark, tiny cell, separated from his family and from everything, he realized he had to meet his fate, and felt confounded by what that fate was. He regretted having committed the sin of being born in North Korea. Regret was useless when he was fated to die, but such was his final cry of lament.

Unable even to move, he went on dying. But the MSS kept dragging him into interrogations. Because of the government threat to dismiss everyone if the matter were not resolved, the officers who had been ordered from on high were even crueler.

One day, Kim Yong Hun realized he did not have much longer to live. He could barely even feel the clubs they used against him anymore. His captors hung up his body, covered in bruises and dying.

"Just admit it. Say it one time. Say you wrote the graffiti. If you just do that, you can live." He faced his fate and with lips barely having the strength to speak, he spit out these words:

"I'm going to die anyway, so do what you want. Hit me. Kill me. I don't believe any of you, so I'd rather just die. So kill me!"

They only got angrier, and said, "You have no right to die until you confess your crimes," and they hit him all the harder. In this manner, Kim Yong Hun, after spending six months in an MSS prison, finally could take no more and he died.

Bodies of prisoners who die in jail are not returned to the families. Nobody knows where they go. According to what MSS officials later said, they shot 2200 volts through his body and burned him until there was nothing left of him. They did not inform his family. Kim Yong Hun could not clear the false charges from prison; his family was tarred with the mark of "political criminal family," and they were banished.

The shadow who had done no wrong, Kim Yong Hun, who knew nothing about the "#1 graffiti incident," was dragged into it suddenly and broken by it.

The truth that came to light after he died

So Kim Yong Hun died, and a year passed. A call came from the MSS station in Sinuiju (trans. note: on the border with China, right across the Yalu River from Dandong) to the MSS post in Chongjin City. The Sinuiju police had picked up someone for graffiti. In the process of interrogating him, the criminal had confessed, among other things, to having insulted the "most sacred thing" on several public bathrooms near Chongjin during the 1998 SPA elections. 

They sent his handwriting to the Chongjin MSS, who analyzed it. The writing was a perfect match. They did a side-by-side analysis of Kim Yong Hun's handwriting, too. Kim Yong Hun's was similar, but not a perfect match.

Now, the MSS fell into confusion. Kim Yong Hun was already dead, and his family had been sent off. Nobody knew if they were alive or dead. The news that the real reactionary had been caught, and that it was not Kim Yong Hun, spread throughout the city. The rumor that propagated spoke of the cover-up of the death of a treasured person. 

The MSS, fearing their own necks would be cut off in place of Kim Yong Hun's family if what they had done became known, covered the whole thing up rather than exonerating Kim's family and releasing them. His family was never freed. They still do not know that Kim Yong Hun's "crime" has been resolved. 

People dying like this in North Korea is common. My friend's father got drunk, said something wrong, and ended up being picked up by the MSS and moved to a political prisoner's prison. After less than a year there, he died, unable to stand it. There are many people like this, locked up in political prisons, having done no crime. It's deplorable, but there is no end to it in sight. 

Unfortunate souls who have died, rest in peace! But also, keep watch. One day, all things will be set right. I believe the day when your grudge will be resolved will surely come.