The Invitation-Only Zone Read Free

of his being abducted from Japan. Using a combination of pantomime and primitive Korean, he described being beaten, put in a bag, and dragged to a boat.Kaoru had been instructed by his minder to keep the episode secret, but he hoped that Granny Kim and the others would show some sympathy for the ordeal he had been through. At first the women refused to believe it. How could their beloved country do such a thing? “But in their expressions, if not in their words, I knew that they felt empathy for me,” Kaoru says. 3 It felt good to have bonded witha few other people. But a week later, his minder scolded him for divulging the state secret. Evidently, one woman’s sense of duty had trumped her empathy, and she reported Kaoru’s indiscretion. He was beginning to understand that in North Korea, loyalty to the state is the highest value.
    As a married couple, Kaoru and Yukiko received the standard allotments of food, delivered three times a week,even in the 1990s, when many North Koreans experienced hardship and famine. Food rationing is the regime’s primary means of social control, and with the exception of small farmers’ markets and home-grown produce, all staples (rice, vegetables, meat, poultry, and fish) are allocated through the public distribution system. In normal times, a working adult, depending on his occupation, receives 700–800grams of grain a day. The elderly receive 300–600 grams, and children get 100–500 grams, depending on their age. White rice is the most prized staple, and any shortfall is filled with less desirable grains like wheat, corn, and barley. In addition, as “employees” of the state, Kaoru and Yukiko were each paid ten won per day, with which they could purchase additional food in private markets,usually at exorbitant prices. Chinese cabbage, cucumber, and eggplant were cheap, but apples, pears, and meat were expensive. If Kaoru was lucky enough to find a store selling pork, the meat was usually half fat. It wasn’t anything like the abundance he had experienced in Japan, but he was grateful for what he got. One day an encounter with someone living outside the zone made him appreciate howwell off he and Yukiko were, relative to ordinary people. “If the people could all eat as you do in the Invitation-Only Zone, then I guess we could say that the true Communist society had been realized,” a man told him. “I sensed he was jealous, and in the future I was careful not to talk about how much food we had.”
    Kaoru did what he could to make the house feel more like a home. “In the sameway that, as a child, I made up games without toys or playmates, I found ways to play by myself in the Invitation-Only Zone.” 4 He carved a mahjong set out of wood and taught his wife to play. Although he hadn’t played golf in Japan, he spent several weeks clearing a nearby area to create a five-hole golf course. He drew on his memories of watching the game on television to come up with somethingapproximating the rules, and played obsessively, using balls made from glued-together cotton swabs. “As idiotic as it may seem, I was so starved for play that my golf course was a lot of fun.” On occasion he’d dream he was back home. He’d stare out the living room window at a hill that resembled one in Kashiwazaki that he used to climb to look out over the ocean. “I’m going to climb to the topof that hill so I can see the water on the other side,” he told himself, well aware that Pyongyang is a landlocked city and the quest for the ocean view was folly. Still, one day he sneaked out and scrambled up to the top of the steep hill just to see what was there. On the other side was a flat, dusty landscape. “The crazy thing is that even after I saw it with my own eyes, I still felt there shouldbe an ocean behind that hill.” 5
    The newlyweds fell into a routine. Every morning, after being woken up by the announcement coming from the loudspeaker that is installed in every North Korean house and