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  Then the soldiers tied the condemned man to the post in three places, at his eyes, chest and legs, and placed a large open body bag at his feet. Sunhee was near the front, with the other kids, hoping that after the soldiers had fired their rounds they might retrieve the spent shells as souvenirs.

  Now the drama began. Three soldiers raised their rifles and aimed. Their commanding officer gave the order. They fired first at the eyes. The rope snapped and the man’s head collapsed, as if he were bowing to the crowd. At the same time his head exploded with a burst of steam and his brains cascaded into the body bag. A second volley at the chest sent him crashing head-first - or what remained of the head - towards the body bag. A final volley at the legs snapped the ropes there, and the entire body fell into the bag. A couple of young soldiers then swiftly dumped the bag onto the back of a truck, for later disposal in the mountains.

  As intended, it was all quite theatrical. Sunhee’s two brothers later told her that this quick execution was reserved for relatively minor crimes. Those convicted of significant offenses against the state received a public hanging, which in North Korea meant a rope around the neck, then being hauled slowly upwards into the air and left to die a lingering, kicking, screaming death.

  Sunhee and her family lived in a concrete-block apartment with just one room and a tiny kitchen. A coal fire was there, with pipes from it going under the house to provide warmth. This heating system, called an ondol, was especially needed in winter, because they slept on the floor - all five of them, together - and the temperature fell below zero. On the walls were photographs of the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. Their radio could receive just one solitary station, devoted to patriotic music, praise of the leadership and condemnation of the West. Loudspeakers attached to many of the houses broadcast the same propaganda at various times during the day.

  At night, while her father and brothers sat at a table eating rice, Sunhee and her mother were at another, smaller table, eating cornmeal. Sunhee railed against this iniquity often, to no avail.

  Perhaps it was this early lesson in the unfairness of life that led to a sense that her future prospects in North Korea were limited.

  Or perhaps it was because she fell in love.

  She was seventeen and still at school. Yongjin was one year older. Their place of residence, Kyongsong, was a small town, and their homes were very close.

  Teenage boys and girls were not supposed to meet together. So they would wait until after dark, and then go walking. It was the 1990s. The Soviet Union had fallen, and cheap oil stopped arriving in North Korea. Industry ground to a halt. There was seldom electricity at night, so the town lay in utter darkness. The cinema and all the restaurants had closed down. So no one would see them.

  They would head for the woods, and stroll through groves of pines, maples and gingko. Sometimes they even held hands, though little more than that. A couple of times they tried walking to the beach, but long rows of wire fencing made access dangerous. Added to that, the citizens’ patrols were liable to appear at any time.

  This was also the time of the first famine. Sunhee was an active girl. She wasn’t going to starve. She and her friends would hunt down field rats to eat, smoking them out of their burrows and then harpooning them with homemade spears. They also caught and ate sparrows, crows, grasshoppers and dragonflies.

  In those days Sunhee was not regarded as beautiful. The North Koreans liked pale skin and a round face. Sunhee, with her olive skin and high cheekbones, looked suspiciously Western. But Yongjin clearly loved her, and it seemed that he too had dreams of a life beyond the increasingly harsh confines of North Korea.

  At some point she broached with him the idea of fleeing. The rail line from the North Korean capital Pyongyang passed through their town of Kyongsong on its way to the Chinese border. She had heard her father talk about the traitors who smuggled themselves on the trains, in order to escape the country.

  For months they talked about it. She had no money, but Yongjin somehow managed to acquire a little. She didn’t dare ask how. She suspected he stole it.

  And so one evening, not telling anyone, and with only a few scraps of food, they walked in the darkness to the rail line. They waited just past the station. When the train pulled out, still moving at a slow speed, they jumped on board one of the freight carriages.

  For Sunhee, now living at Prayer Mountain, that was where the good memories ended. Up to that point, despite all the privations of her life, she had been an exuberant young lady, full of hope. The system had not beaten her down.

  The next years were the difficult ones, the years she tried not to recall. She and Yongjin made it to the border, and somehow he knew how to find a man to lead them across the icy Yalu River into China.

  It was during the treacherous crossing - sometimes waist-deep in the water, then stepping from stone to stone - that they were apprehended by a couple of North Korean soldiers.

  Sunhee never quite knew why she did what she did next - it was just what came naturally - but she fought with the two men in order to allow Yongjin to escape. Perhaps she assumed he would come back for her. Probably she wasn’t really thinking. In any case, during the struggle one of the soldiers fell and smashed his head on the rocks. He later died.

  Sunhee was arrested and placed in prison. She knew she was going to be executed.

  Each day she was sent out to work on a construction project, from dawn until dusk. One day, when she slipped away to the edge of the prison compound in order to relieve herself, she could see that someone had made some cuts in the fence. It was almost certainly carried out deliberately, as it seemed just big enough for a skinny body to squeeze through. It must have been done very recently, because the guards still had not noticed.

  She made an instant decision. It wasn’t difficult. She knew she had nothing to lose. She crouched low and ran to the fence.

  It wasn’t much of a gap - just a slit in the wiring with a few of the wires twisted back. She felt the wire slicing at her body as she threaded her way through, but very quickly she was there, on the other side. She lay panting. Her body had been weakened by the stay in prison. She had always been strong, but now even a minor exertion like this was tiring.

  She knew she had to get well away from the prison, but in which direction should she head? She looked around. She appeared to be in a field. And that was when she realized that this was a trap.

  A soldier was waiting behind a tree, his gun resting casually on his lap. He was clearly of quite high rank, judging from his uniform and also because he was able to be alone like this. He pointed his gun at her and then forced her onto the ground. He was strong and she was weak. He raped her. And then, while he watched, she fled across the field, wondering if a bullet was about to strike her down, and partly wishing that it might.

  It was only when she was well away from the man that she could sit among tall bushes and consider her plight. She had nothing. Literally nothing, apart from her prison rags. She could not go back to her town, because the first people who spotted her - possibly even her own family members - would alert the authorities.

  She had no choice but to try to make it back to the Chinese border.

  Chapter 21

  North Korea/China

  And so for three weeks Sunhee lived by her wits. Three weeks that she wanted to forget, but that still sometimes gave her nightmares. Three weeks in which she lived by stealing whatever she needed. Now, when she was sitting in the prayer grottoes at Prayer Mountain, crying out to God, as likely as not she was also asking, one more time, for forgiveness for all her sins of those three weeks.

  She slept during the day in forests, and traveled by night. She even twice managed to smuggle herself onto trains. And so after three weeks she reached the border again. This time she needed no guide. But now it was spring, the ice had melted and the water flowed strongly.

  She found a place to cross and waited until the early hours of the morning. Somewhere in the distance
she could hear the soldiers. She began the walk. Water was up to her waist as she moved from rock to rock. There was just one place where she knew she might have to swim. Except that she didn’t know how to swim. It was a five-yard gap between two large rocks, with a current gushing between them.

  It was then she heard a shout from the North Korean riverbank. It was still dark, and she would be no more than a silhouette. But she was still a visible target if someone decided to shoot.

  She made another instant decision, and took a futile leap to the far rock. Of course, she plunged straight into the water, which began sweeping her away. She screamed, and desperately tried paddling to the Chinese shore. But in her weakness, and lacking swimming ability, she instead felt herself being carried downstream. And then she smashed up against another rock.

  She wrapped her arms around it and held on. For at least a minute she just hung there, panting and unable to move. But then gradually she was able to start pulling herself out of the water, onto the crag.

  To her amazement she found she was atop a kind of rocky reef that seemed to lead to the Chinese side. She stepped onto the next boulder, and the next, and the next, until she was almost there.

  It was then that she saw the soldier, on the Chinese side, just a few yards away. She had no choice. She knew there was no escape. The soldier had a long pole which he thrust at her. She grabbed hold and he pulled her through the water to safety. Drenched and exhausted, she struggled to her feet, expecting to be arrested. The man had other plans. He pushed her to the ground and raped her.

  But then something strange happened. She waited for him to shoot her, or push her back into the river, or summon a squad of fellow guards. Instead he dragged her up and pulled her a short distance to some kind of guard post. It was unoccupied.

  “You wash,” he said in heavily accented Korean, pointing at a doorway. It wasn’t really an order, more an invitation. He handed her a towel. “Your clothes,” he said, and pointed to an oil heater.

  She didn’t know what was going on. From somewhere he took a jug of hot water and handed it to her. She entered the tiny bathroom. It comprised a washbasin and a toilet. She removed her clothes and with one hand squeezed them through the door to the man. He took them.

  Then she closed the door. There was no lock. She didn’t care. Soap was in the washbasin, the sweetest smelling soap she had ever known. A hand towel was there too. She washed herself with hot water and soap. It was luxury. What was this man planning?

  She dried herself, and then opened the door a touch. “My clothes,” she called out.

  “Wet,” said the man.’

  “I don’t care. I want my clothes.”

  To her surprise the man thrust her hot, damp clothes through the gap in the doorway. She put them back on, then walked into the room.

  “Sit,” said the man. From a drawer he took a bottle of fruit juice and handed it to her. She drank. Then he handed her a pork bun and an apple. It was the best food she had encountered in many years. She wolfed it down.

  When she had finished the man smiled at her. “You,” he said, pointing. “You my wife.”

  She managed to contain her shock. Despite his brutal violation of her, this man looked surprisingly meek and simple, a little backward even. She said nothing. From his drawer he took another apple, and proffered it to her, as if it were a wedding gift. She accepted it and began eating.

  He possibly took this action as a sign of assent. He smiled happily. Then he stood and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Sunhee’s strength had returned sufficiently that she was able to push the man’s small desk in front of the bathroom door, to prevent it from being opened. Then she ran outside.

  A narrow road ran past the guard house and she fled down it. After about five minutes she came to a village of small apartment buildings and shops. It was still too early for any life. But then she spotted an old lady sitting on her front steps smoking a long cigarette. With her heart in her mouth Sunhee approached.

  “Do you speak Korean?”

  The lady nodded.

  “Can you help me?”

  The lady looked at her for a long time. “Have you arrived from Korea?” Like the guard, her Korean was rough and accented.

  Sunhee nodded.

  The lady looked at her for another lengthy period, apparently summing her up.

  “I have no money,” blurted out Sunhee. “But I can work.”

  “We are not allowed to help Koreans who are escaping here. It is against the law.” She looked at Sunhee again, then she opened her front door. She beckoned for Sunhee to come inside. “Wait,” she whispered. She walked quietly to another room.

  Sunhee stood by the door, ready to flee. She was in a small room. On the floor slept a mother and child. It reminded her of her own home back in Kyongsong, except that the furnishings were lavish. She watched with trepidation as the child stirred and the mother, apparently still sleeping, placed a comforting arm on her.

  Something struck her. On the wall was a large cross.

  The old lady returned with a cotton bag. She opened the front door again and pushed Sunhee out, then handed her the bag. “Food,” she said.

  They walked into a forest, and along a track until they came to a rocky clearing with no trees and just a few small bushes. The lady pointed to a track that seemed to lead up a rocky incline. “That track leads to the caves,” she said. “About a one-hour walk. Ask for Pastor Choi. Tell her ajima - auntie - sent you. Pastor Choi will know which ajima.”

  Sunhee looked at the woman. “Thank you, ajima,” she muttered.

  “God be with you,” said the lady. She turned and began walking back to the village.

  “Thank you,” Sunhee muttered again, and set off up the track.

  It was at least one hour later, with a bright sun shining, when she turned a corner in the path and spotted a cluster of ladies, apparently cooking over an open fire.

  They watched as she approached, and then one stood and walked forward.

  “I’m looking for Pastor Choi,” said Sunhee.

  “That’s me,” said the lady, catching Sunhee as she collapsed.

  Pastor Choi was part of a group that worked to smuggle North Korean escapees into South Korea. But that wasn’t Sunhee’s immediate concern. Because throughout all her ordeals since fleeing her hometown, she had, at least in part, been sustained by the conviction that Yongjin was waiting somewhere for her.

  So for two weeks she lived in the caves with an ever-changing stream of escapees, mainly women, some with children, cooking, washing, applying first aid, listening to the horrible stories, and waiting while Pastor Choi used her contacts to seek out news of Yongjin.

  When it came it was grim. Yongjin was living with a Chinese widow and her kids in a nearby city. The widow was pregnant. Sunhee walked into the woods and slashed her wrists.

  She awoke inside one of the caves.

  “A kid found you in time,” said the pastor. “We’re going to speed up plans to smuggle you to Seoul.” She looked hard at Sunhee, and added, “Before you waste more of our time.”

  She walked away, then returned with a bowl of rice for her charge. “There is a church in Seoul,” she said. “A very large church. We have alerted them. They will be looking after you. You will be in good hands.”

  “Thank you,” said Sunhee.

  “Though, now that I know all your story, it is clear that you are already in God’s hands. Take this.”

  She handed Sunhee a small, metallic object. Sunhee looked. It was a cross, a miniature version of the one she had sighted hanging from a wall of the house back in the Chinese village. Why did people around here value crosses?

  “That’s a crucifix,” said Pastor Choi. “A sister in one of the North Korean death camps made that from a stray piece of metal that she found. She made it with her hands.” She paused. “And her teeth. The shine has gone from the metal. That’s from the stains of her blood.”

  “Thank you,” said Sunhee,
sensing that this gift was precious, though still not fully comprehending.

  “That sister also had a miraculous escape. She gave me this crucifix, and told me to pass it to someone who needs to understand the touch and the love and the power of Jesus.”

  Chapter 22

  Prayer Mountain, South Korea

  Sunhee sat in semi-darkness inside the grotto, still muttering prayers, but also wondering what was going on. She had committed herself to God, put herself in His hands, and she knew that whatever occurred, it was His will. But she couldn’t help wishing the elders would hurry up.

  When she arrived in Seoul, after her escape from the North, she had devoted herself to the martial art of taekwondo, determined that no man would ever violate her again. She had also undertaken intensive English study, with the desire to get to America, where she knew she could never be reached by North Koreans. But in the end she had found her place in the church, and so she remained in South Korea. And now she was being told that it was her near-fluent English skills that made her a likely choice for this operation.

  She heard someone calling her name. She emerged from the grotto, and was led to the Sanctum. The governing elders applauded as she walked into the room. She gave a slight bow of the head in acknowledgement. Then she knelt as Bishop Lee and several of the men laid hands on her and prayed.

  The bishop spoke. “Sister Sunhee. You know what has been going on. You are one of our New Mercedarians. We are happy and proud that we believe it is God’s will that you should join this mission. It could be a difficult assignment, but we believe that you will do an excellent job. We believe that you will honor God, you will honor Korea and you will honor our church. What you are going to do is set to change Christianity and change the world.”

  He indicated that the meeting was over. The men stood and left the room, until only Bishop Lee and Brother Half Angel remained.