"I realized my treatment by friends was different. They started turning their backs on me. Really close friends said, 'Why vacation so long? Go back and do your work.' They didn't want me to slip up again. But on two different vacation trips I slipped up and said something wrong, and my surveillance was increased. I think when I got back to Germany the last time there was an order to return me to North Korea. The att.i.tude of the man in charge of North Koreans in East Germany changed. He had been very lenient. But, after a while, whenever I went anywhere he went with me-even to the grocery store. In Germany when I watched TV he would be outside listening, then he would just open the door and come in. My next vacation was due in three months, but this supervisor said, 'Let's go earlier. Let's go now.'"

I asked Kim Young-song why he had been so concerned. I had heard that the punishment for saying that things might be better in capitalist countries was minor, only a month or two in prison. "Maybe sons of prominent high officials get small punishments," he replied. "But with my family background and history of trouble, a big slip would finish me. The people who were able to tell you about the lighter punishment are probably part of the family of Kim or close to State Security officials. The biggest difference between me and other defectors is that they made little mistakes, got scared and defected, while I was under surveillance for thirty years. This mistake would have been the end of me. I would have gone to prison and died there. Take the case of one of the students who studied overseas, returned to North Korea, went to a store, looked at the underwear made in North Korea and said, 'A person should wear this this as underwear?' He was sent to political prison." as underwear?' He was sent to political prison."

Kim's escape was made relatively easy by the fact that Germany had reunified the year following his arrival. "So I basically lived in a free country. I could defect any time, just get a cab and run away as fast as I could. I've been told by the South Korean authorities not to give details, but, briefly, I went through southern Germany. I thought of going to the South Korean consulate in Berlin, but North Korea had an emba.s.sy there so I thought it was too dangerous. The escape itself was unadventurous, though. I just got up earlier than usual one day, got my bag and left."

The unsettling part was abandoning his family back in North Korea. "I figured if I went back they would go to prison with me," Kim told me. Did that mean things were no worse for them than if he had gone back to face the music? "I can't say yes or no," he replied. "If I agree, it seems I'm rationalizing the abandonment of my family."

Kim took a pessimistic view both of his former country's future and of his new country's capacity for dealing with it. "North Korea will never change," he said. "The tragedy of South Koreans is believing that North Korea will change. There are three groups in South Korea. One group thinks, 'North Korea will change'; the second, 'North Korea is changing'; and the third, 'I "will make North Korea change.' You seem to understand me," he told me, "but South Koreans don't seem to understand what I've been through. South Koreans actually believe North Korea will change."

He said he saw no way to get Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il out of power so that change could take place, without war. "The North Korean regime is a very brutal one. There may be internal problems, but they have the ability, the power and the brutality to suppress them." I mentioned the American plan to start Radio Free Asia, which would broadcast news of North Korea into North Korea in the Korean language. It might help a little, he thought. "It wouldn't affect ordinary people but could affect high officials. I don't see any negative aspects in influencing at least some people." The people knew that high officials under Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were not the only ones responsible for all that went wrong, he said. "They just can't name Kim father and son as the reasons for their harsh lives, so they talk as if they blamed only the other high officials." In the case of the some ten thousand members of State Security, however, blame was cast sincerely. "If the regime collapses, the ten thousand are gone. People hate them so much. The radio service wouldn't affect them, but other high officials will listen. Changing a little can be positive."

Probably it is necessary to look beyond Korea to find whatever "factionalism" might have brought ruin upon three generations of Kang Te-hyu's family. Kang was one of the ethnically Korean returnees from j.a.pan. In Kyoto, he had run a lucrative pac.h.i.n.ko pac.h.i.n.ko business. Although his wealth came from a capitalistic enterprise in j.a.pan, Kang was a devout socialist who wore his Korean patriotism on his sleeve. Before moving his family to the communist motherland in 1963, he ran the trade and commerce unit of j.a.pan's Pyongyang-directed Korean residents' a.s.sociation, Chongryon. His wife headed Chongryon's Kyoto women's group. business. Although his wealth came from a capitalistic enterprise in j.a.pan, Kang was a devout socialist who wore his Korean patriotism on his sleeve. Before moving his family to the communist motherland in 1963, he ran the trade and commerce unit of j.a.pan's Pyongyang-directed Korean residents' a.s.sociation, Chongryon. His wife headed Chongryon's Kyoto women's group.

When the family moved to North Korea Kang gave his wealth to the state, to the tune of several million dollars. Indeed, his grandson told me, it was Kang who donated the funds to build the gigantic statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang to which visitors were urged to present flowers-the statue that was golden for a while before being bronzed in reported response to Deng Xiaoping's expression of distaste.

Kang and his family rated a royal red-carpet welcome. He became vice-director of a government unit that supplied goods for department stores. His wife became a member of the Supreme People's a.s.sembly. Kang had four sons and two daughters. The family lived "well in the communist capital.

In Pyongyang at the time, Kang's grandson Kang Chul-hwan told me, "it would have been rare to find anyone with a car, but we had a Volvo. We were what you "would call bourgeois even though Grandfather ideologically was very much a socialist. A j.a.panese reporter got a photo of our family taken in 1966 as Kim Il-sung propaganda, and sent it to the j.a.panese press to show the family was living 'well."

That was two years before Kang Chul-hwan's birth as son of patriarch Kang's eldest son. Chul-hwan's father, in keeping with East Asian custom, remained in the elder Kang's household after going to work as a photographer, marrying another ethnic Korean from j.a.pan and starting a family that eventually included Chul-hwan and a younger daughter. Chul-hwan recalled that the family had lived an "extravagant" life by North Korean standards- until they were imprisoned.

"We lived "well," Kang Chul-hwan told me. "We lived in central Pyongyang and went to the schools attended by the children of the elite. My three uncles went to Kim Il-sung University." Not being the firstborn, the uncles as they married established separate households.

After a while, the North Korean authorities began to find it inconvenient to host the returnees from j.a.pan and started banishing them to remote areas or sending them to camps or prisons. Fifteen years after his arrival, the elder Kang's turn came. "Grandfather was taken away at the time when the regime was getting rid of Koreans from j.a.pan," Chul-hwan told me. "He was one of the last taken away. We didn't know what they did with him." The grandson explained that conflicts had arisen broadly because "the Korean residents of j.a.pan who returned to North Korea were not used to a closed society. They often badmouthed what they saw-and got penalized for it. But in Grandfather's case we speculate that it was opposition to Han Duk-su, chairman of the Chongryon back in j.a.pan, that got him in trouble."

When the grandfather was taken away, Kang Chul-hwan told me, "they sent the rest of the household including me and my youngest uncle to a concentration camp. The married aunts and uncles weren't sent to the camp, but they were expelled from Pyongyang and sent to mountainous areas in the north. They became coal miners there, at Musangun, North Hamgyong Province. My family and I were sent to the camp at Yodok. There was a separate complex there for people who had migrated from foreign countries, including j.a.pan and Russia. We were a.s.signed there."

Only nine at the time, Chul-hwan at first "thought I was going on something like a family camping trip. It was the first time I had seen mountains. Ithought they were beautiful. But when I saw the gates with armed guards, they reminded me of a j.a.panese concentration camp I had seen in a movie about the evil j.a.panese and I thought, 'Oh! Are there such camps in Korea?' I thought only the cruel j.a.panese would do such a thing. I was so surprised to hear that the Beloved Fatherly Leader would build a camp so cruel. We asked "why we were sent there and they said, 'Oh, you did a very wicked thing. You should be punished to death. But thanks to the benevolence of the Great Leader you are being allowed to live.' They never explained what we were accused of, but lots of Korean former residents of j.a.pan were there and they speculated it was because Grandfather opposed Han Duk-su's chairmanship of Chongryon."

Chul-hwan attended the camp school. "The school was not for education, though," he told me. "It was for brain-washing. They weren't real teachers. They were all sent from State Security. We didn't have regular courses but they taught us courses on Kim Il-sung's revolutionary history and his thought." Even though he was a prisoner, Kang Chul-hwan believed what he was taught, for a while. "After junior high, I started to turn against Kim Il-sung. But when you're young, you believe the propaganda. Parents can't say anything, because little kids would blab and the parents would get in trouble."

Whenever the young prisoners were not being indoctrinated, Kang Chul-hwan told me, "we were used as forced labor. The princ.i.p.al gave us a speech: 'Your parents are political criminals, but thanks to the benevolence of the Great Leader the government is being very generous to you. It will educate you even though your parents did terrible things. To repay this generosity, you must work very hard for the country' We had to go out and gather fire-wood, and also medicinal herbs that could be exported for foreign exchange. We went to the mountains to search for thick, old trees that could be cut down, and we had to help with the farming."

Brutality was the rule in the camp, Kang Chul-hwan said. "In North Korea a person has two lives, natural and political. But once you get sent to a prison camp your political life is over and you have only your natural life. You're nothing, an animal, a savage. The guards have the right to kill you without penalty because you're just an animal. If you disobey them or talk back, the guards. .h.i.t you. It's human nature then to fight back, but if you do they'll shoot you. In one year's time they would stage public executions fifteen or twenty times. People who tried to escape and didn't get far were simply shot on the spot. But if you cost the guards a lot of time and trouble before they recaptured you, they would have a public execution.

"When reunification comes, people should go to the sites of the prison camps. Alongside the camps, in the mountain areas, there are so many unmarked graves. In ten years I think about twenty thousand people died at my camp. The part of the camp I was in had a population of about twenty thousand. Enough people kept dying to make room for all the newcomers. Ihad about eighty cla.s.smates. By the time Igraduated from junior high, half-were dead, mostly from malnutrition and overwork."

Kang Chul-hwan told me that the camp his family inhabited was in fact "one of the more comfortable" of some twenty camps in the North Korean gulag. I wondered how he knew that. "Most people know about those camps," he told me. "And some people in my camp came from other camps, so I heard about those."

Kang Chul-hwan described himself as one of the stronger prisoners. "I was able to survive a decade in the camp-nine years and eight months, to be precise, from August 4, 1977, to February 28, 1987." His family members came out alive, but some were not as strong as he. His grandmother and his father died soon after their release. "Grandmother had been hanging on just to get out of the camp before dying." Her motive: Dying before release makes traditional ancestral rites difficult if not impossible. Although the regime formally disapproved of such observances, "it couldn't be stopped even by Kim Il-sung," Chul-hwan said. "But the graves of people who died in the camp are there adjoining the camp, so their descendants can't go and pay homage. We were very fortunate."

Kang said the family was released only after relatives in j.a.pan applied great pressure. "The question of restoring diplomatic ties between North Korea and j.a.pan came up during 1986 and 1987. A lot of Chongryon members visited North Korea to see what had become of their relatives. The lucky people who had relatives in j.a.pan filing complaints were let out of the camps. We had lots of relatives in j.a.pan. Relatives came twice to North Korea to find us, but each time the government told them we had gone on vacation. After that, instead of coming over, they filed complaints. They finally got to meet some of the family in North Korea. Lots of relatives in j.a.pan sent a lot of money. My uncles and aunts, who had been sent to the mountains as miners, ended up with cars and color television sets.

"After release we were sent to a farm in Yodok County. Then our relatives in j.a.pan bribed high officials to send us to a more comfortable city in the same county. With the help of our relatives we were able to get nice clothes and other luxuries. When we met our relatives after the deaths of my father and grandmother, we weren't supposed to tell them about the camp. When the word came that they would visit us, a State Security official came and instructed us not to say anything about it. Also, State Security sent people to repair the house. They told us to say, 'We are living a very affluent life under the care of the Great Leader.' In North Korea you are supposed to get free medical care, retirement benefits when you get to be sixty and other benefits. State Security told us to show the relatives the ent.i.tlement cards. We did, but our relatives said, 'Oh, we have that in j.a.pan, too.' "7 Kang Chul-hwan eventually encountered further trouble with the regime and defected from North Korea, as we shall see in chapter 34.

Kang Chul-ho and Kang Chul-hwan were not related, despite the similiarity of their names. But each could trace his troubles with the authorities back to a grandfather who was out of favor with the regime. Kang Chul-ho could not even remember the name of his grandfather. All he knew was that the old man was a respected veteran of the anti-j.a.panese resistance movement who was working as a party official in the east coast city of Hamhung when the authorities barged into the house at night, seized a book ma.n.u.script in which he had written critically about Kim Il-sung and took him away. The family never heard from him again. The grandmother always spoke favorably of Pak Hon-yong-the "domestic faction" leader who had been condemned to death in 1955 and presumably executed-so perhaps Kang Chul-ho's grandfather had been purged as a remnant of that faction.

What happened afterward to Kang Chul-ho is one of the more gut-wrenching of the stories I heard in my interviews with defectors. His father had been working as a management official in an electrical products factory in Hamhung. Five days after the authorities seized the grandfather, they banished the rest of the family-Chul-ho's grandmother, parents and elder brother-to Koyang in remote Hamju County. After the move, his father worked as a bricklayer and "was questioned repeatedly by Public Security," Kang Chul-ho told me. The hot-blooded father was so annoyed by the constant questions that he set fire to the local State Security building. For that he was executed, in 1976. "It was a public execution by shooting. I was there with my family when my father was executed. I witnessed it, at the public execution site near the riverside, close to Hamhung." Could it get any worse for a little boy? Oh, yes. "My mother committed suicide when my father was executed. Grandmother lived far away, and was too old to help. Local people discriminated against my family, shunned us because of what had happened," he continued. Thinking of-what this poor fellow had been through at the age of eight, I already felt like hugging him.

Alas, the sudden deaths of his parents and the unkindness of his neighbors had been by no means the end of his woes. Chul-ho continued in school, and the indoctrination he received there made him blame his parents and grandfather for their misfortunes. "I believed in the party," he told me. Indeed, when the time came he applied to join the military-but was rejected. "I checked the record. There was a rule against having people of bad family background in the military. I was sent to a mine instead." Only then did he start to question the system. "I had expected to live a normal life but it was all a dream."

Whenever I heard stories like this one I could not help noting the irony: The regime acted as if blood "were more important than ideology--while people like Kang Chul-ho were more than willing to forget blood ties and buy into the ideology if only the authorities would permit them to do so. This, even more than he-wing religiously to the personality cult and refusing to adjust an imperfect Marxist vision, may prove to have been the central tragedy of the Kim regime.

At the phosphorous mine in Tanchon, Tongam County Kang Chul-ho "suffered from the tough rules. At criticism meetings I had many arguments with group leaders, so I got a worse and worse reputation. When I was late for work, I was questioned while others weren't. We were supposed to get gloves and rabbit skins to send to the military. But since I didn't have family members I was always behind in meeting the quota.

"They pointed out my bad family background. I couldn't stand that. They used the issue of my father and grandfather as the final card. 'Because you had a bad father and grandfather you behave this way' I argued that my father was my father; my grandfather, my grandfather. I'm not them. But that didn't faze them.

"At first they didn't use the issue in the beginning of a criticism session. They would bring it up at the end. Fellow workers didn't know about my family background. But local officials did, so they brought it up at the end of the session. We had those sessions weekly They would a.s.semble a group of forty or so and then choose around five people who were the worst-for family background or other reasons-and put them on the stage, then question them continuously. It takes around one hour and twenty minutes. Two or three times a month I was one of those up on the stage. The party secretaries chose us. Mainly people who had no backing or support were selected, people with no influential family members to help us. They started selecting me for criticism about a month after I arrived.

"One day I had failed to obey an order to obtain gloves and rabbit skins. Others got them from their parents or other relatives who raised rabbits or knitted gloves. My monthly quota was five pair of gloves and two rabbit skins. But I couldn't steal them so I ignored it. Since I didn't have any a.s.sets, or influential family background, I argued with the secretary. After that, they said, 'Because you have a bad family background you didn't obey'"

Following that incident, having spent only a year at the mine, Kang Chul-ho was sent to a maximum-security prison camp. I asked about the trial, and he told me there had been none. "The local party secretary and youth league leader wrote the report on me and signed it. The charge was that I didn't follow the party's orders and had a bad att.i.tude against the party. The party worried about my influence on colleagues. They wanted to make an example of me."

He arrived at prison camp No. 19, Taeheung-dong, Tanchon, in the northeastern corner of South Hamgyong Province, on December 28, 1987.

"I remember that date because after three days in prison I realized it was New Year's Day." The prisoners were employed mining magnesite clinker, which was used to make fire bricks and was one of North Korea's main exports. Foreign exchange from its sales went to a national security fund.8 "Once I got to prison I had no time to complain, the rules were so tough. All I could do was follow the rules." Electric fences surrounded the camp. "During working hours we were taken to the mine and guards watched us. It was both an open-pit and an underground mine." "Once I got to prison I had no time to complain, the rules were so tough. All I could do was follow the rules." Electric fences surrounded the camp. "During working hours we were taken to the mine and guards watched us. It was both an open-pit and an underground mine."

After a 5 A.M. wake-up call, the prisoners rotated into the mess hall for breakfast. There followed a one-hour period for washing up and preparing for their thirteen-and-a-half-hour workday after which they went to the mine at 6:30. Lunch break was from 12:00 to 1:00, supper break from 8:00 to 9:00 and the working day ended at 10 P.M. when the men returned to their cells.

"There was no mining machinery such as railroad cars. We mined with pick and shovel. We were truly confined at hard labor. Clothing was distributed every six months. The workplace was so dusty we had to wear dust coats. There was one bathroom in each cell for the forty inmates in that cell. At least the cell was relatively clean, because there were duty shifts among prisoners for the cleaning detail.

"But the most unbearable thing was hunger. The prisoners were always hungry," Kang told me. "The standard was 700 grams of staple food a day, but we were given only 300 grams a day-and that only if-we mined our daily quota. If you couldn't mine enough you got a percentage accordingly. Less than 40 percent of your quota, you only got 10 to 20 percent of the ration, 50 percent got 40 percent and 70 got 70. The food was beans and corn. Only a tenth of the prisoners could make the full quota, generally. Normally we could get only 70 percent or so. This was done intentionally to keep people working hard." Although the guards didn't normally steal prisoners' food, "at the manager level there was lots of corruption."

It wasn't possible to work and survive on just 200 grams or so a day, so supplemental efforts were necessary. "I was so hungry I caught frogs in the mountains. I sometimes ate elm bark, which can be used to make noodles. I chewed the bark, dried it and ate it.

"To the guards, prisoners are animals, not human. They're beaten and mistreated all the time. But we were so hungry, if we noticed anything edible-or a cigarette b.u.t.t on the ground--we tried to pick it up. Then they'd beat us. I was beaten severely many times. It's very natural to want to eat or smoke, but the guards didn't allow it. The guards were well educated and trained. They regarded prisoners as 'enemy cla.s.s.'

"There were around five thousand prisoners in four divisions. Once you were in, there was no way out except escape, as a practical matter. Many were shot to death trying to escape. Theoretically you can get out for good behavior but it's very hard. I tried that approach for three years before I decided to escape. I behaved myself very well. It was so painful for me to be there that my only hope was to get out. So I was very careful not to disobey. But it takes ten years before you're eligible for parole."

What happened to those who disobeyed? "They suddenly disappeared, during the night. People a.s.sumed they were killed. There were seventy prisoners in my unit. During my stay ten disappeared-not including attempted escapees."

There were many other deaths as well. "In any one year fifteen to twenty people died of malnutrition-related causes. A total of thirty to forty people either died or went unconscious and were taken out while the authorities called family members. I guess in fact they all died. That's the other way to get out. People died of malnutrition. Some ate poisonous plants. Others had accidents with the machinery and lost arms or legs. Most died after going to the medical section.

"It's impossible to escape from there," Kang Chul-ho told me. And yet he himself managed to escape. How? "Not from the prison directly. I went to a local hospital for an appendectomy and escaped from the hospital."

After he escaped from the hospital, he told me, "I had no money until I reached China. I wasn't sure I could make it but I had no choice. I walked eight days and nights to the Chinese border, eating corn and potatoes from farms. I got to the Yalu River around 2 A.M., chose a spot where the water was up to my waist and waded across. That was on August 30, 1990. I wanted to come to South Korea but couldn't, because there were so many other North Koreans in China-who wanted the same thing. I got a job at a Chinese company-the manager helped me a lot. I did an interview with Chosun Ilbo Chosun Ilbo [a South Korean daily newspaper]. The North Korean emba.s.sy people came to my company, with Chinese police, trying to catch me, but the manager of the Chinese company helped me get a Chinese pa.s.sport. Finally I arranged a job in Osaka. On the way flying on Korean Air, I came to Seoul." That was in March 1997, after he had been in China for more than six years. [a South Korean daily newspaper]. The North Korean emba.s.sy people came to my company, with Chinese police, trying to catch me, but the manager of the Chinese company helped me get a Chinese pa.s.sport. Finally I arranged a job in Osaka. On the way flying on Korean Air, I came to Seoul." That was in March 1997, after he had been in China for more than six years.

When I interviewed him in 1998, Kang had combed his hair down over his forehead, according to the Seoul fashion of the time. He was by no means a handsome man-his teeth were yellow, his chin receded and he had no eyelashes that I could see. But in a gesture typical of many defectors who began new lives in the capitalist half of Korea, he sported a gold Rolex watch.

I asked about his health after the ordeal he had been through. "I'd been trained physically when I was young, so I was OK," he said, "but spiritually ..." Now, he said, he was studying theology, attending seminary as a follower of a new Protestant Christian denomination that had branched off from the Presbyterians.

SEVENTEEN.

Two Women Born in December 1949 in mountainous Yanggang Province, not far from the scene of Kim Il-sung's daring 1937 guerrilla attack on the town of Pochonbo, Lee Ok-keum was just one among millions of North Koreans who would be raised to revere the Fatherly Leader. But by the time she and her family fled to South Korea in 1994, 1994, their lives had come close to intersecting with Kim's in a way that would have been hard to predict. When I interviewed her that year I found her a simple woman, modest and soft-spoken- yet quite helpful to my research, thanks to a homemaker's steel-trap memory for prices and other details of living standards. their lives had come close to intersecting with Kim's in a way that would have been hard to predict. When I interviewed her that year I found her a simple woman, modest and soft-spoken- yet quite helpful to my research, thanks to a homemaker's steel-trap memory for prices and other details of living standards.

Lee's family still owned a rice farm when she was born. Like so many other youngsters of that time, she lost her father during the Korean War. That left her mother to do the farm work along with five children (three older, one younger than Ok-keum), both before and after the farm collectivization that came in 1955.

In 1959 the family gave up farming and moved to the county seat, where Lee's mother got a job doing road repairs. That work hardly paid enough to support the whole family, so an uncle suggested that the eldest son halt his education after the seventh grade and get a job. He did drop out, but it turned out there were no unskilled jobs available for him. Thus, after a time, the young man entered the army. Army enlisted men made very little. The brother didn't send money home.

Although the family budget was tight, Lee positively recalled the 1950s and 1960s as a time of optimism and of satisfaction, to a degree, with developing living standards. "After the war Kim Il-sung put all his effort into developing the economy," she told me. The main problem then was that "the people didn't have money to buy goods." Lee's mother brought home around thirty won won a month, and much of that went to clothe the five family members who remained at home. Clothes in the stores were too expensive, so she used her wages to buy cheap, synthetic material-natural fibers were priced out of her range-and hired a tailor to make it into clothing. a month, and much of that went to clothe the five family members who remained at home. Clothes in the stores were too expensive, so she used her wages to buy cheap, synthetic material-natural fibers were priced out of her range-and hired a tailor to make it into clothing.

A family member's wardrobe, like those of most other North Koreans both then and later, would consist of no more than one outfit at a time- basically a uniform. "Here in South Korea people change clothes every day," Lee marveled. In North Korea, she said, "you just wear one outfit until it's too tattered and filthy to wear any longer. Before I came to South Korea I had three outfits to wear outside the home: one for winter, one for summer and one for autumn and spring. At home we wore pants. I had two pair and would wear one while washing the other."

Lee's first uniform, of course, was a school uniform. "There was no kindergarten then," in the mid-1950s. "We started with elementary school from age seven. Schools were different then. Although we learned about Kim Il-sung, we also studied history and cla.s.sical literature. We had much more freedom to study what we wanted. That changed from 1965, the year we really started to idolize Kim Il-sung."

That was the year when, having completed the four years of elementary school and three years of junior middle school, Lee enrolled in a two-year vocational school that was divided into agricultural and mechanical programs. "I took agriculture, but after about three months I decided to switch to mechanics. If I'd stayed in agriculture I'd have had to go to a farm. So I studied tractors and such." The mechanical training was "only theoretical," she recalled. The students had no hands-on experience with machinery parts.

At that time there was no high school for her to attend. Lee was sent off to a job not as a mechanic but as a food-processing worker. On the mechanical side of the graduating cla.s.s, "everyone had a similar experience," she said. "After graduation there was no correlation between what you had studied and what your work a.s.signment would be." At the food-processing plant she helped to make soy sauce and related products as well as candy. She lived at home then and contributed her salary to household expenses. The following year she moved to a textile plant.

After two years of factory work, Lee volunteered for the army. Her second brother was also in the army at the time, driving for an officer, and during one home leave he introduced her to his close friend and fellow driver Yeo Man-cheol, who took a fancy to her. (Although North Korean women, because of all the privation they had to endure, tended not to age well, my guess from looking at Lee during our interview was that she had been pretty as a young woman.) "Since I didn't have any dowry I resisted him," Lee recalled. "But my mother was very sick. We had no way to treat her." High-quality medicines were in short supply and doctors were under instruction not to prescribe, for any patient, medicine that the pharmacists were unable to supply to that person. "You had to be elite cla.s.s or know someone in the hospital to get the right prescription," Lee said. "Without connections, you'd go to the hospital and they would write a prescription but what they gave you wouldn't cure you. If you had a liver problem, it was accompanied by digestive problems. They'd just give you indigestion medicine even though they knew your basic ailment was in the liver. The problem was a shortage of medicine."

(The regime not only acknowledged but boasted that some people deemed especially important got state-of-the-art medicine. Kim Il-sung, referring in his memoirs to one special case, wrote that "Kim Ryang-nam was one of the people who rendered distinguished service in the creation of the Mansudae Art Troupe and its development into one of the world's first troupes under the personal guidance of Secretary Kim Jong-il." When Kim Ryang-nam "contracted a fatal disease, Kim Jong-il organized an efficient medical team to provide him with intensive medical treatment around the clock; he also transmitted his diagnosis to our emba.s.sies in foreign countries in order to obtain adequate supplies of expensive medicines, and sent special airplanes to countries which were said to have a developed pharmaceutical industry. Kim Ryang-nam underwent operations ten times and this intensive care lengthened the span of his lifetime by almost two years.")1 Soldiers were considered more important than widowed road repair-women. Thus, the People's Army had "plenty of medicine," as Lee recalled. Yeo, smitten as he was with Lee, managed to obtain appropriate medicine for her mother. After that, "Mother persuaded me that he was a good man," Lee recalled. They married in 1973, despite Lee's worries about having no do-wry "The basic do-wry then was a suit for your husband-to-be, underwear for him, presents for his family and basic necessities for the household. I think it's more these days. Lack of a do-wry doesn't keep you from marrying, but sometimes your in-laws may be a bit harsh on you for not bringing enough. My in-laws were a little mean, but not all that harsh. I understand."

The young couple set up housekeeping in the northeastern industrial city of Hamhung. Yeo moved from the army to the Public Security force-the police. Lee (keeping her maiden name as Korean wives do) worked for ten years in a nursery and then started working from her home, as a photographer, in what was called a neighborhood cooperation scheme. "That brought in good money, so the government abolished the job," she told me with unexpected sarcasm. "Then I turned to mending clothing."

Meanwhile, like most other North Korean women, she was taking care of the housework for her husband and children. It's no wonder she learned to rattle off figures for the grain ration ent.i.tlements of various categories of people: as of 1975, 1975, 600 grams for workers; 300 for non-workers including babies and pre-school children; 400 for elementary school pupils, 500 for older students through high school, 700 for college or university students. It was after 600 grams for workers; 300 for non-workers including babies and pre-school children; 400 for elementary school pupils, 500 for older students through high school, 700 for college or university students. It was after 1975, 1975, she told me, that the youngest children's rations were reduced to 100 grams each for up to eighteen months of age, 200 grams after that. From that year, "you had to be twenty-three months old to get 300 grams." Then, starting in the early 1980s, "10 percent was cut from rations with no specific explanation, probably due to food shortages." she told me, that the youngest children's rations were reduced to 100 grams each for up to eighteen months of age, 200 grams after that. From that year, "you had to be twenty-three months old to get 300 grams." Then, starting in the early 1980s, "10 percent was cut from rations with no specific explanation, probably due to food shortages."

From 1990, the food shortage became far worse. "That year we started selling the sewing machine and other possessions and asking for help from relatives in Pyongyang," Lee said. From 1993, there was nowhere left to turn. In August that year food rations ended entirely in South Hamgyong Province, where the family lived. "I never saw rations resumed," said Lee. Seven months later the Yeo family was in South Korea, unable to ignore the fact that their son came up only to the shoulders of South Korean youngsters a year younger. "He was 148 centimeters (four feet eleven inches) tall when we arrived and he grew 6 centimeters in just two months in South Korea," she told me.

Of course Lee took minute mental note of what was available in the stores over the decades. The quality of goods improved from 1967, she told me, and the North Korean shoppers' heyday lasted until around 1975. During that time "it was possible to buy goods in stores with money you had." It was after 1975 that the authorities stopped rationing items such as shoes and clothing. While rationing normally bespeaks shortages, in that case the end of rationing did not mean plenty-it was just the opposite. "You had to go to the stores, where it was 'first come, first serve,' and the stocks of those items weren't sufficient."

From around 1977 to 1978, products were mainly displayed for show, Lee told me. And from mid-1987, "everything in North Korea is a display. You can buy maybe an eraser or a bobby pin. If we go to Pyongyang now and see goods in the stores, they won't sell to us."

I asked Lee what explanation consumers had received. The authorities "don't know the word 'explanation,'" she replied bitterly. "Sometimes in speeches they told people that although times were hard we should be loyal to the loving father Kim Il-sung."

Did the black market make up for the lack of goods in the official stores? "Take my family and socks," Lee told me. "Each family member needs about one new pair a month. When we could buy them in the stores we paid three and a half to four won won a pair for nylon socks. In the black market, you had to pay forty-five to fifty a pair for nylon socks. In the black market, you had to pay forty-five to fifty won. won. So for the average worker one month's pay would go for one pair of socks. In fact we just had to keep wearing old, ripped socks." So for the average worker one month's pay would go for one pair of socks. In fact we just had to keep wearing old, ripped socks."

If 1987 was tough on North Koreans in general, due to the increasing shortages, it was the beginning of special hardships for Yeo and Lee and their family. Yeo lost his job as a policeman that year. That happened after the family's next-door neighbor was involved in a road accident, injuring someone, Lee told me. Ordinarily the neighbor would have had to pay a fine of a month's or half a month's salary. "But my husband let him off because he was a neighbor. The neighbor was grateful and gave my husband a bottle of ginseng liquor as a show of grat.i.tude. Public Security inspectors found out. Also, while my husband was drunk, he got into a fight with a colleague at Public Security."2 The Yeo-Lee couple's pretty daughter had been one of the elementary school pupils singled out by county party officials as candidates for Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il's mansion service corps. The officials had not contacted the parents but had simply told the girl that if she made the final cut she would start at age sixteen or seventeen and work until her marriage, which the party would arrange. They asked her not to have a boyfriend in the meantime. Some other girls in South Hamgyong Province, where the family lived, started in the mansions corps around thirteen or fourteen. Those were usually the prettiest ones.

Lee had been delighted to think her daughter might be accepted into the corps. "I thought they worked as comedians, actresses, singers and dancers to cheer up Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il," she told me. She had no idea at the time that s.e.x might be part of the job. "I only knew we would have a more comfortable life." A girl's selection was "considered a great honor, and also an economic benefit. She could send 1,000 won won back to the family each month." That was many times an average factory worker's wage. back to the family each month." That was many times an average factory worker's wage.

After Yeo Man-cheol lost his police job and took up a new career as a distributor of imported materials, "it was very hard for us to get by," his wife Lee told me. To make matters worse, people around them and "the system" began to treat not only Yeo but also his wife and children differently. His disgrace inflicted on all of them a big drop in socioeconomic status. Particularly affected was their daughter.

In 1991, when the daughter was seventeen and graduating from school, she failed to make it through the final selection process for the mansions corps. Out of seventy girls in South Hamgyong Province who were finalists to join the unit that she hoped to enter, eight were selected. Her exclusion was a major blow to the family. The country was in the midst of a prolonged food shortage. Lee's fingernails had started to grow back-ward from malnutrition, she told me; neighbors advised eating dog to reverse the condition. The household had counted on the girl's income to stave off hunger.

Instead, the daughter went to work as a kindergarten teacher. When she applied for what many North Koreans considered a better job, as a typist, she was turned down-because of her father's problems with Public Security, she was told. Whether or not those same problems had been the reason for her exclusion from the mansions corps, it was clear that she and other family members were expected to suffer indefinitely for their father's sins. That and the hunger that became progressively worse through the early 1990s helped persuade the family to defect, Lee told me. They had illegally listened to radio broadcasts from South Korea that suggested life there was better. Chinese traders, who had been operating in the border area of North Korea since the late 1980s, had confirmed that information.

It was only after the family had crossed over the Chinese border in March 1994 that one of them read in a South Korean bookabout the duties that many of the mansions corps women actually were expected to perform, including sleeping with the Great or Dear Leader. The mother told me that she had realized only then what a close call it had been for her daughter. "I was very relieved that she hadn't been accepted," she said.

Born and raised in Sinuiju on the Yalu River across from China, Shu Chung-shin was twenty-five in May 1997 when she joined her husband's family in defecting as a group of fourteen to South Korea. "I didn't know where they were going," she told me. "I just followed. Everything was arranged by my father-in-law, who had a brother in America. Uncle-in-law bought a vessel from some Chinese and in that we came to South Korea."

Shu had worked as a dancer. "I attended a college of arts for five years and learned dance," she said. "After graduation, I worked with an art troupe doing propaganda. We went around Sinuiju. We were told that Kim Jong-il had organized the dance troupe. I never met him, but I did see him at the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students, at the stadium. There was a shortage of dancers. So the order came to Sinuiju to get more dancers. We danced in the stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies."

The family defected after having grown weary of the consequences of a bad background. "My grandfather-in-law on my father-in-law's side was a church preacher. Father-in-law's mother and younger brother had fled to South Korea during the Korean War. He wanted to follow them. The father of my mother-in-law was a landlord. So the authorities were watching us. In North Korea, if you are from a bad family background, they follow you and spy on you. Eventually somebody realized that the old woman next door was spying on us. The family had given this woman food. Grandmother-in-law was so annoyed! She said, 'How can you do this?' There was a big fuss, and we worried about the children's future. That was just the last straw. Father-in-law actually had been preparing for eight years. At first he wanted to cross the border by land so he arranged excuses in advance, staying away for a while on business. There was a spy following him. He didn't know that at first. When changing trains at Sinuiju station, he saw he was followed. So he gave up on the land route."

Shu herself came from a background that had become, as time pa.s.sed, problematic: Her family were former residents of j.a.pan. Generally returnees from j.a.pan "are regarded as rich," she noted. "Families from j.a.pan or from America receive money from our relatives. Officials expect bribes. If they don't get them, they find something to criticize. My mother did some business-she bought goods from China and resold them. But the police came and confiscated all the goods. She asked for them back, but they didn't return them. She had to give the police ten packs of cigarettes, or they would insist on splitting the goods. She gave them the cigarettes." Her father also had many problems, Shu told me. "He was a surgeon. He took pride in his work. But he was not allowed to be a party member, even though his a.s.sistants were members. He had to leave the room before meetings started. In school, we had a session to draw our family trees. Where you filled in the names, there was a place to check if they were party members. My schoolmates proudly checked there. When I got home I complained to my father. I think that hurt his feelings."

I asked if Shu had been a loyal believer. "The new generation in Sinuiju is different from the old," she said. "They prefer friends from overseas and they're very open-minded. For example, they like wearing jeans. The authorities forbid it, telling them that jeans came from America originally- and in the Korean War, GIs wore them while they killed North Koreans. Younger generation people reply, 'What's the problem? If you have correct ideology, what do jeans matter?' There's no organized anti-government activity. Still I heard a rumor that when Kim Jong-il visited Sinuiju he supposedly said he was worried about the young of Sinuiju in case war breaks out because they are like capitalists in their att.i.tudes, so he must do something. Anyhow, my mother taught me to follow the party's teachings. Although I'm of the new generation, I accepted her advice. Because of our family background I knew I had to be very careful. I trusted the regime. It was only when I came to South Korea that I realized I'd been lied to. For example, Kim Jong-il had been born in Khabarovsk, not on the holy Mount Paektu."

In their vulnerable position, her parents had wanted their daughter to marry someone of good family background. They were dismayed when Shu picked a man with many strikes against him politically. "I had a lot of trouble from my parents," she told me. "But we were in love, and I insisted on going through with the marriage. I had met my husband when I was seventeen and in college. He was twenty-three then. We married when I was twenty-four, in 1995. He was a student. After our marriage, he worked as a physics teacher at a middle school. In South Korea now he studies theology. No one had followed his grandfather's example and become a minister, and his father wanted one of the children to do that."

Her husband's family, like her own, enjoyed relatively good economic circ.u.mstances, thanks to remittances from the relatives in America. "But by 1995, the whole economy had slowed down. So it was getting harder to get rice," Shu said. "Until I married, I had regarded my family as middle-cla.s.s. We kept a one-year reserve of rice-100 or 200 kilograms. After I married, in 1994 and 1995, it was different. Subsidized rice rations stopped in the Sinuiju area in 1995, for a whole year. In other areas they had stopped in 1994." Still the family did not go hungry. "I didn't have any difficulties, thanks to the dollars sent from America. Also, my father-in-law worked in foreign exchange. He moved around in North Korea and made money. He was a trader. He raised silk-worms and grew seed plants, sold them to the Chinese and in exchange got wheat, as well as money that we could use to buy food." There were some things money could not readily buy. The medical system was "very poor. There is no intravenous equipment and virtually no medicine. Anesthesia is scarce, and the doctors use it only at the precise time of surgery. There are not even sleeping pills. With no medicine, the doctors have nothing to do. They collect sc.r.a.p metal to sell to Chinese traders."

Here I must mention that Shu, although a bit on the gaunt side as befitted a recent arrival from North Korea, was very pretty, especially when animated by memories of love or indignation. Even the no-nonsense blue blouse and gray slacks that she wore to meet me looked good on her lithe dancer's body. Although already a mother-her three-year-old son, in Mickey Mouse shirt and sneakers, slept in her lap as we spoke-she still wore her hair attractively long. (Once East Asian women became matrons they used to exhibit a lamentable tendency to chop off their flowing tresses in favor of more practical hairdos, wishing to look the new role and no longer feeling much need to attract men. But I am told younger women have taken a different view.) Her only ornaments were a silver-colored watch and a diamond pendant on a gold neck chain. I noticed in particular her full, pouty red lips, which reminded me of those of a former girlfriend. Shu was soft-spoken, charming-face it: she was a babe. Now, if I am beginning to sound like one of Kim Jong-il's operatives salivating over a particularly choice candidate for the mansion service corps, that is precisely the point. As soon as I caught a glimpse of Shu I felt pretty sure she would not have escaped the recruiters' notice. So after a decent interval spent talking about other matters I posed a general question, asking whether she had heard anything about girls being taken to Pyongyang for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

Indeed she had. "There is a group called fifth division-in Korean, okwa. okwa. They are all women-dancers and so on. Since I lived in Sinuiju, I don't know exactly what happens in Pyongyang. But I heard that Kim Jong-il would call in some dancers from the They are all women-dancers and so on. Since I lived in Sinuiju, I don't know exactly what happens in Pyongyang. But I heard that Kim Jong-il would call in some dancers from the kippeunjo kippeunjo when he was depressed at night and they would dance naked in front of him. I also heard a story that once, when some communist secretaries came from overseas, they were out driving and saw a pretty woman. North Korean officials who were with them stopped the car and had her spend the night with them. Later they sent her to a mental hospital and locked her up. One of my family members went to Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages. He heard the story there." So far, all that she had told me about the leaders' treatment of women was hearsay but I pressed on with my questioning: Were the girls recruited from all over the country? "Recruiting officials go to every province looking for beautiful girls," Shu replied. when he was depressed at night and they would dance naked in front of him. I also heard a story that once, when some communist secretaries came from overseas, they were out driving and saw a pretty woman. North Korean officials who were with them stopped the car and had her spend the night with them. Later they sent her to a mental hospital and locked her up. One of my family members went to Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages. He heard the story there." So far, all that she had told me about the leaders' treatment of women was hearsay but I pressed on with my questioning: Were the girls recruited from all over the country? "Recruiting officials go to every province looking for beautiful girls," Shu replied.

And then she came out with it. "Actually I myself was initially chosen when I was a student at the college of fine arts, when I was seventeen," Shu said. "But then I was turned down because my family was from j.a.pan. This was for okwa. okwa. They didn't tell me what unit, but they did tell me I'd be with the w.a.n.gjaesan Band." They didn't tell me what unit, but they did tell me I'd be with the w.a.n.gjaesan Band."

The recruiters, Shu explained further, "go to arts-related inst.i.tutions. They prefer actresses and other fine arts majors, because they a.s.sume the beauties are studying in those fields." In Sinuiju, "they distributed numbers from one to ten, looked at the girls' faces and chose us by number. Then there was a second local round." Shu laughed fetchingly "People like big eyes-that's their idea of beauty-so I did "well locally and got chosen to go to Pyongyang for the third round. In the first and second rounds they just looked at our faces, judged us by our appearance. In Pyongyang they interviewed us, consulting official doc.u.ments. They asked me whether my father was a party member, the ages and the dates and places of birth of my parents, their jobs and so on. Finally they said, 'You can go. We'll let you know by mail if you are chosen.' I didn't get an acceptance. They realized that my family was from j.a.pan, so they rejected me. I know this because my mother-in-law's friend's son worked in that band, but he had to leave because his family were returnees from j.a.pan. The government was afraid that news about okwa okwa would spread to the world." would spread to the world."

I asked Shu if she had been disappointed not to make the final cut. "I wasn't sorry at all," she said at first. "My parents had heard in the neighborhood that if I got in I wouldn't be allowed out, I would be spoiled. Most North Koreans know the purpose of okwa." okwa." Her rejection mainly made her think about what sort of career she could have in the performing arts. "I was worried about whether my family background would affect my chances to perform in Pyongyang." A bit later in our conversation, though, she gestured beautifully, touching the long, gracefully tapered fingers of one hand to her face and then to her heart. "Actually," she then confessed, "I wanted to go. I would have nice clothes, French makeup, imported lingerie, good food- fruit, b.u.t.ter, milk-that was hard to find in our local area. At the time I was young, so I didn't know the bottom line. I didn't realize s.e.x might be part of the deal. I just thought I'd dance and live well. My parents had heard about the Her rejection mainly made her think about what sort of career she could have in the performing arts. "I was worried about whether my family background would affect my chances to perform in Pyongyang." A bit later in our conversation, though, she gestured beautifully, touching the long, gracefully tapered fingers of one hand to her face and then to her heart. "Actually," she then confessed, "I wanted to go. I would have nice clothes, French makeup, imported lingerie, good food- fruit, b.u.t.ter, milk-that was hard to find in our local area. At the time I was young, so I didn't know the bottom line. I didn't realize s.e.x might be part of the deal. I just thought I'd dance and live well. My parents had heard about the kippeunjo kippeunjo and didn't want me to go to Pyongyang. But I wasn't afraid because being a band dancer in and didn't want me to go to Pyongyang. But I wasn't afraid because being a band dancer in kippeunjo kippeunjo was different from being in another was different from being in another okwa okwa unit that was explicitly for s.e.xual services. unit that was explicitly for s.e.xual services. Kippeunjo Kippeunjo members are supposed to give pleasure but not s.e.xual services. s.e.x is not their basic job." members are supposed to give pleasure but not s.e.xual services. s.e.x is not their basic job."

Shu told me she had once "met a woman from okwa. okwa. Her father-in-law had been sent to Sinuiju from Pyongyang because he had done something wrong. The woman was married; she had already retired from the mansions corps. But one day her husband was drinking with his friends. He had no money so he left a watch with Kim Il-sung's signature engraved on the back, as a guarantee until he could get money. The watch was a gift for high-ranking officials. The husband was so drunk, he handed the watch to the clerk, who reported the incident directly to the police. The husband was punished and had to follow his father to Sinuiju, and she came too. When I first met her I thought she might have come from overseas, because she looked totally different from ordinary people. That woman had no idea how ordinary people lived. The husband had been a foreign exchange trader and had been making big money, so his wife could spend $ 500 at a time. In Pyongyang, there was plenty for her to buy; it was just a matter of money. But in Sinuiju there was simply nothing to buy. It shocked her a lot." I asked if the husband had known about his wife's past. "Yes," Shu said. "It's not out of the ordinary for sons of high officials to live with former Her father-in-law had been sent to Sinuiju from Pyongyang because he had done something wrong. The woman was married; she had already retired from the mansions corps. But one day her husband was drinking with his friends. He had no money so he left a watch with Kim Il-sung's signature engraved on the back, as a guarantee until he could get money. The watch was a gift for high-ranking officials. The husband was so drunk, he handed the watch to the clerk, who reported the incident directly to the police. The husband was punished and had to follow his father to Sinuiju, and she came too. When I first met her I thought she might have come from overseas, because she looked totally different from ordinary people. That woman had no idea how ordinary people lived. The husband had been a foreign exchange trader and had been making big money, so his wife could spend $ 500 at a time. In Pyongyang, there was plenty for her to buy; it was just a matter of money. But in Sinuiju there was simply nothing to buy. It shocked her a lot." I asked if the husband had known about his wife's past. "Yes," Shu said. "It's not out of the ordinary for sons of high officials to live with former okwa okwa members. Kim Jong-il orders it." members. Kim Jong-il orders it."

Shu told me how the women recruited for explicitly s.e.xual duties were rounded up. "The recruiters came in a Mercedes-Benz, went to middle schools, chose seventeen-to-eighteen-year-olds and took them away. The parents didn't know what had happened, and searched for their daughters. When they gave up, officials came with gifts from Pyongyang and said, 'Your daughter is well. Don't worry' After that the parents gave up, thinking, 'Now our daughter belongs to the state.' Some families think it's a kind of sacrifice to the country. Some families who had been hungry think it's a benefit."

I received confirmation regarding the duties of the mansions corps from several men who said they had been in contact with members. Oh Young-nam, a former captain of State Security, told me in 1996 that his "first love" had been one of the mansions corps women available for s.e.xual services to the leaders. "I first thought they were all naive virgins. I had a s.e.xual relationship with this woman and I realized that she wasn't a virgin. She worked at Munsu Mansion. That mansion is for the Ministry of People's Armed Forces. You can see her in North Korean films. She became a movie star with Kim Jong-il's help. She spent a couple of nights with Kim Jong-il and then had a relationship with Kim Kang-jin, vice-minister of armed forces. You enter that service at twelve and retire at twenty-two. Usually the women promise not to tell anyone, but we were thinking of marriage. My mother opposed it. The woman told me all about the training: mental training, skin treatment, light exercise to keep her figure. She had to learn ma.s.sage, dance, striptease, mambo, samba and so on. She said she was noticed when she was twelve when returning home from school. Somebody took her by car; they do not ask the parents' permission.

Those who are selected for the mansions service and for antiSouth Korea espionage-their parents are just told they have been given to the country. They do not try to find where their children have gone."

Kang Myong-do was a son-in-law of Kang Song-san, who was prime minister around the time of the son-in-law's defection. The defector said he also was distantly related to Kim Il-sung as a grandnephew of the late Vice-President Kang Ryang-uk, born in Chilgol, Kim Il-sung's native village, of the same clan as Kim's mother.3 While Kang said he did meet Kim Jong-il on occasion, some of the information he was able to provide falls into the category of hearsay rather than eye-witness reports. "Kim Jong-il and I are relatives, but not too close," Kang told me in an interview. "Basically-what I tell you comes from the buzz, the talkamong the elite of the elite-about sixty people who run the country, and their families. I was a member of that group. While Kang said he did meet Kim Jong-il on occasion, some of the information he was able to provide falls into the category of hearsay rather than eye-witness reports. "Kim Jong-il and I are relatives, but not too close," Kang told me in an interview. "Basically-what I tell you comes from the buzz, the talkamong the elite of the elite-about sixty people who run the country, and their families. I was a member of that group.4 Having offered the reader that caveat regarding hearsay, let me say that Kang's reports generally ring true when they can be compared with the accounts of other North Koreans, including those who boasted greater seniority and more direct contact with the leadership. Having offered the reader that caveat regarding hearsay, let me say that Kang's reports generally ring true when they can be compared with the accounts of other North Koreans, including those who boasted greater seniority and more direct contact with the leadership.

Kang told me that the party Central Committee's fifth division, or okwa, okwa, was in charge of the palace women's corps, with staff members in each province and county to handle recruiting. The officials would check on the family backgrounds of the likeliest prospects, to make sure of their loyalty to the regime, then watch them to make sure they did not get involved with boys. The young women who made the cut at the time of graduation from senior middle school, at age fifteen or sixteen, would be given physical examinations to confirm their virginity. was in charge of the palace women's corps, with staff members in each province and county to handle recruiting. The officials would check on the family backgrounds of the likeliest prospects, to make sure of their loyalty to the regime, then watch them to make sure they did not get involved with boys. The young women who made the cut at the time of graduation from senior middle school, at age fifteen or sixteen, would be given physical examinations to confirm their virginity.5 About two thousand girls were selected each year and given a year of training. Some five to six hundred who were expected to be available for s.e.x would be a.s.signed to the lodges and villas (chodeso) (chodeso) and to other mansions and to other mansions (t.i.tka) (t.i.tka) where the rulers held receptions; some also went to the bodyguard service. Others were given secretarial and other jobs where, officially, they were not expected to provide s.e.xual services. where the rulers held receptions; some also went to the bodyguard service. Others were given secretarial and other jobs where, officially, they were not expected to provide s.e.xual services.

Kang told me that many of his friends working for the Central Committee had married mansions corps retirees, in a sort of lottery procedure.6 Slips of paper with the women's names written on them were placed in a pile. Most of the dragooned bridegrooms he knew were aware that the women might have been available to th