"The soundless shadow": a story that needs a wider audience

As you are all no doubt aware--in fact, I'm embarrassed to even bring it up, since I'm so certain it's common knowledge--the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is holding its general election of the Supreme People's Assembly--more or less its parliament--on Sunday, March 10th. I'm sure you've all had the day marked on your calendars for months.

Just in case you've forgotten, the election of the Supreme People's Assembly, or SPA, is kind of a big deal.

The current SPA in a plenary session from 2017. Photo from BBC. 

This week, I was reading in DailyNK, the South Korean online newspaper dedicated to North Korean issues. There was a fascinating story written by a defector who had lived over 50 years in North Korea. I can't see that there is an English version on their site, and that seems like a shame, so I've taken it on myself to make an English version.

The story centers around the 1998 SPA elections and a defector's recollection of a harrowing event. I'll let him tell the rest. It's a two-part story. Part one in the original Korean is here. I'll get to part two as soon as I can. Don't hate on me for my translation errors; I started this yesterday and hurried to get it done, since the election is on Sunday. I've taken a few small liberties in places. Without further ado..."The Soundless Shadow":

The Soundless Shadow, Part One: Who Insulted the "Most Sacred Thing" Before the Election? 

There are truly many stories spinning around in my head from the more than fifty years I lived in North Korea. I want to tell all of them, but I'll have to settle for telling a few of them here and there, owing to my own lack of energy. So I open my diary of memories, which I've left idle for a while.

In North Korea right now, the whole country is abuzz with the impending Supreme People's Assembly General Election (March 10th). Since the government issued a proclamation announcing the date, the people have been as silent as the dead. The government is taking advantage of this opportunity to act decisively.

This is the moment when the concept of obedience sinks in the most profoundly. The government hangs political signs and the people abstain from all sorts of words and deeds. If the government tells them to contribute to a building fund, they do it; if they are told to contribute money to putting together a polling station, they do it; they simply nod their heads like a chick feeding on honey.

I left North Korea when Kim Jong Un had been in power for two years. I can still see what it was like in my mind's eye as though I were watching a video.

There are stories these days that the government, under the pretext of carrying out a successful election, is heavily controlling the people through the Ministry of State Security. (Translator Note: For Western audiences, the closest familiar analogue to the MSS would be the KGB.) At times like this, I recall a man who, during an earlier election, disappeared, charged with being a reactionary. That was the first time I went to a polling station, and although I've been through other elections since, every election made me remember the sad story of that man.

The Soundless Shadow

I recall it was the summer of 1998. It happened in the downtown area of Chongjin, where I was living. (Note: This is in the far Northeast of North Korea.) The people of North Korea, unable to die from the arduous march, just kept on living. (Note: "The arduous march," in this context, refers to the period of mass starvation that took place in the 90s in North Korea.) Groups of vagrant children wandered the city, and flies buzzed on the corpses strewn about. Under that backdrop, political events were carried out, as though nothing were different.

That spring, the government announced that it would hold the SPA election.

At that time, the people, backed into a corner by starvation, had reached a high water mark in their protests against the government. They grumbled that under Kim Jong Il, the country was worse off than it had been under Kim Il Sung, that the people were dying and the government was doing nothing, and they asked what the hell the government was doing.

The party cadres, who had been living well by treating the country as their own property, were forced to face the crisis themselves when the country's cupboards ran bare, and they complained even louder than ordinary people. I remember clearly the face of a woman in her sixties, who had been living the good life as a bank manager, crying out about our helpless government and wondering when "our beggar nation would ever be worth something."

It was in those days that the revolt of the 6th Corps met with an ill fate, and the rumor of that event traveled wide. (Trans. Note: For something of a primer on the 6th Corps' rebellion, see this link. The salient point for this story is probably that the 6th Corps was in Chongjin, where this story takes place.)

That was the situation in which the SPA election was carried out. The country's economy was in turmoil, and the only people able to live off the government rations were those working for the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of People's Security. (Trans. Note: MSS and MPS from here out; the MSS is the Gestapo/KGB and the MPS is the police force, more or less.) In order to overcome the crisis, the government focused more on supplying rations to the MSS and the MPS than even the military. The government only gave regular rations and salaries to the MSS and MPS.

Only the security forces were able to live with boldness in the world at that time. The party cadres were poor just like the masses. People who had dreamed of becoming party cadres faced a conundrum. They asked themselves: "The party members have nothing to eat, so what good is it to join the party? I need to become a uniformed employee like the MSS or the MPS."

It was the dawn of the era of dreaming of becoming a uniformed worker. Party cadres worked feverishly to make their children into uniformed workers. In families where someone had been in the party for a while, they tried to pay bribes to become uniformed workers. Young women preferred to marry men in the MPS or MSS, who had a secure livelihood. These were the same people who had once shaken their heads at work like that of the security services, spying on people and treating them roughly.

The security services members ran scams to increase the rations they drew by adding parents or children from other families to their own register. That's why they were the only ones willing to stick their necks out for the government.

They were on the political front lines once the election notice went out, and they were fierce. They went out among the people to the polling stations, like they did every day. They read the political materials that the government had sent out, and they used a variety of slick methods to head off the plans of any spies. They even stayed at the polling stations at night to keep watch faithfully, and the station was surrounded by a tense atmosphere every day.

Nonetheless, their vigilance could not prevent the appearance now and again of reactionary activity in the election precincts. One of the stories I heard during that time when laughing was not permitted was a story that became a source of laughter for many citizens: a story of someone changing the words on on a sign at the polling center.

Although election officials, including the MSS and the MPS, had stayed up all night guarding the polling center with the lights on, when morning came, the letters on a sign hanging near the entrance to the polling center had been changed.

The words "songojang," meaning "polling center," were written in letters made of wood, but someone had removed the "n" to make it say "sogojang," meaning "place of death."

To call it a "sogojang" was to say the place was one and the same with the home where a funeral was taking place. That "n" didn't just fall off in the wind; it had completely disappeared. Someone had dared to do what nobody would ever dare to do and carried out a bold act under total surveillance.

The people who had stayed up all night guarding the polling center were terrified. They were all dragged in by the MSS and faced close questioning about how this could have happened with them watching the place. The security officials in charge that night were all stripped of their uniforms and kicked out.

The MSS, afraid a rumor might spread, quietly replaced the sign. The strictest secrecy was attached to it. They controlled things from behind to keep it quiet. It was quite a reactionary act, but nobody brought the fact of it into the open. They just carried on as though nothing happened. Afraid of copy-cat actions, they suppressed the whole thing. If they revealed a political act like that, they were afraid it might become a spark that would set off a widespread fire of revolt among the people.

Nonetheless, the citizens who had first discovered the sign talked about it, and the rumor spread, becoming something of a joke.

Ultimately, they couldn't find the person who had changed the sign from "polling center" to "place of death." Soon after, an even bigger event happened.

It was a few days before the election. Suddenly, the city went topsy-turvy. Graffiti criticizing the government appeared on bathrooms in the outskirts of Chongjin. What the graffiti said was kept a secret, so nobody knows what it said. The MSS just called it a "#1 crime."

For them to call it a "#1 crime" meant insulting the most sacred thing. In North Korea, the "most sacred" was a name reserved for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. So that means that the graffiti must have said something insulting about them. It was an extremely explosive act. There was no way to keep an act like that under wraps. If the MSS had tried to deal with this in private without facing such a serious matter head-on, they might have ended up in hot water.

It was reported directly to the central party. Special investigators from MSS and MPS headquarters were dispatched in a flurry with orders to find the criminal no matter what. Rumor spread that if they couldn't find the perpetrator and control the people, then the MSS official in charge of the region and even the MSS chief himself would be fired. That was probably true. There were many MSS officials afraid of being stripped of their uniforms and being put to work as ordinary laborers. A black cloud of uneasiness settled on the city.

They used handwriting analysis. It was enacted over a huge area. Thinking that it might have been someone from downtown Chongju as well as someone from the outskirts, they mobilized soldiers and sent them all over to carry out the handwriting analysis. Schools, factories, businesses, citizens' groups--the MSS and MPS overran all of them.

The MSS showed up in our factory as well. There was an order to gather every single employee. One-by-one, we carried a piece of paper with us to the propaganda room and wrote down the words the MSS told us to. What they were telling us to write was a short little story. People were saying the words of the graffiti were hidden in what they told us to write.

After that, the MSS official in charge was seen meeting often in a room in the back corner of the factory with people providing information. The workers were all uneasy. There was a lot of unhappy muttering about the MSS and how they watch the actions of others.

Everyone said that whoever the person who carried out the "#1 crime" was must have been extremely brave. I didn't know who it was, but I thought of him as a great hero. Whoever it was, he had looked upon the reality of our nation's situation and risked his life. People called the perpetrator the "soundless shadow." The crime was not solved before the election, and only the MSS still worried about it; for regular people, the memory of the incident began to fade.

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Translator note: There is a note at the bottom of this story that says that in North Korea, there is a "scribe" assigned to write down incidents and log them into a database. So this person knows a lot about what really goes on. The purpose of this story was for DailyNK to perform this role, using the testimony of North Korean defectors to carry out the role of "scribe." This story is meant to help present the reality of North Korea in a way that strict adherence to traditional news formats cannot.

I will try very hard to get part two done by tomorrow, before the end of the election.