like crazy. My corn pancakes reappeared on our table. I was grateful; the first time my mother served them again, I swore I had never tasted anything so good.
Hunger no longer tormented my family, and so everything should have been good with us. We’d survived a disaster that had carried off hundreds of thousands of people and nearly destroyed the country. But life isn’t that way; when a problem disappears—even death!—a new one hurries to take its place. And soon one arrived in the house in Manyang: my grades.
In North Korea, grades range from 1 (failing horribly) to 5 (perfect). I routinely got 1’s and 2’s in school, except for phys ed, where I was always at the top of the class. I was just a terrible student. I can’t really explain my lack of motivation. During the past few years, academics had seemed pointless, but I don’t know how much of my awfulness at school had to do with the famine. A bit, certainly. The past few years had shortened my focus to the next twenty-four hours: what was I going to eat for my next meal?
I had also missed a lot of school during the famine years, pulled out of class to scavenge for food or to help plant an emergency garden. But I can’t blame all my 1’s and 2’s on hunger. It was more and more in my nature to be rebellious. The famine only accelerated this tendency.
Instead of school, I was concerned with other things: gaining respect by fighting stronger boys, for example, who picked on me for being a country bumpkin. I was often forced to defend myself more than once a day, scrapping in the dust of the schoolyard while my classmates—connoisseurs of the art—watched how I took a punch and what I gave back. Everyone at the school had been together since first grade except for me. I wanted to be accepted, to be popular. Good grades weren’t going to get me those things.
There was one boy in particular who tormented me that year. His name was Jung Choon Hyuk. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he was a dangerous, sneaky fighter. Choon Hyuk wasn’t very popular when I arrived; I think he saw his chance to rise in the rankings and to have some fun being mean to the country boy.
If I whip the new kid,
he must have thought,
maybe more people will like me.
And he did whip me. We fought twenty times that fall and winter, and he beat me every time. This was a terrible disappointment to me, but it was worse for my few friends, who cheered me on fervently, only to find me lying spread-eagled in the dust every time. They were nasty fights, with Choon Hyuk trying to scratch my eyes out and cutting my cheeks. I would rake his face with my fingers, too, and by the end we’d both be bloody and dirty. But no matter how hard I tried, and no matter the technical advice my friends gave me—
Hit him with your forearm, not your fist! Kick him in the privates!
—I never walked away the winner.
So I dreaded going to school. It was a bore, and Choon Hyuk was always lurking, hoping to rack up another win. I didn’t want to be there.
This broke my father’s heart. As a boy, he had survived an epidemic that nearly wiped out his family. He lost almost all his brothers and sisters. But instead of being defeated by this tragedy, he’d studied intensely and gradually worked his way out of rural poverty, rising to become a respectable man.
My father tried again and again to get me to read my textbooks, but I refused. As far as he was concerned, I was failing him. I was his only son. He wanted me to use his own life as a foundation for bigger things. He would say to me, “Oh, Kwang Jin, I can’t wait until the day you pull up in your big car and I come out the door and you give me a big bag of fish.” Only important, powerful people in North Korea had cars, and fish was a delicacy in the North, far beyond our means. This was how he saw me in twenty years: as an important man in the government, an army general, or a diplomat. I’m sure the famine had only intensified his desire for
Hunger no longer tormented my family, and so everything should have been good with us. We’d survived a disaster that had carried off hundreds of thousands of people and nearly destroyed the country. But life isn’t that way; when a problem disappears—even death!—a new one hurries to take its place. And soon one arrived in the house in Manyang: my grades.
In North Korea, grades range from 1 (failing horribly) to 5 (perfect). I routinely got 1’s and 2’s in school, except for phys ed, where I was always at the top of the class. I was just a terrible student. I can’t really explain my lack of motivation. During the past few years, academics had seemed pointless, but I don’t know how much of my awfulness at school had to do with the famine. A bit, certainly. The past few years had shortened my focus to the next twenty-four hours: what was I going to eat for my next meal?
I had also missed a lot of school during the famine years, pulled out of class to scavenge for food or to help plant an emergency garden. But I can’t blame all my 1’s and 2’s on hunger. It was more and more in my nature to be rebellious. The famine only accelerated this tendency.
Instead of school, I was concerned with other things: gaining respect by fighting stronger boys, for example, who picked on me for being a country bumpkin. I was often forced to defend myself more than once a day, scrapping in the dust of the schoolyard while my classmates—connoisseurs of the art—watched how I took a punch and what I gave back. Everyone at the school had been together since first grade except for me. I wanted to be accepted, to be popular. Good grades weren’t going to get me those things.
There was one boy in particular who tormented me that year. His name was Jung Choon Hyuk. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he was a dangerous, sneaky fighter. Choon Hyuk wasn’t very popular when I arrived; I think he saw his chance to rise in the rankings and to have some fun being mean to the country boy.
If I whip the new kid,
he must have thought,
maybe more people will like me.
And he did whip me. We fought twenty times that fall and winter, and he beat me every time. This was a terrible disappointment to me, but it was worse for my few friends, who cheered me on fervently, only to find me lying spread-eagled in the dust every time. They were nasty fights, with Choon Hyuk trying to scratch my eyes out and cutting my cheeks. I would rake his face with my fingers, too, and by the end we’d both be bloody and dirty. But no matter how hard I tried, and no matter the technical advice my friends gave me—
Hit him with your forearm, not your fist! Kick him in the privates!
—I never walked away the winner.
So I dreaded going to school. It was a bore, and Choon Hyuk was always lurking, hoping to rack up another win. I didn’t want to be there.
This broke my father’s heart. As a boy, he had survived an epidemic that nearly wiped out his family. He lost almost all his brothers and sisters. But instead of being defeated by this tragedy, he’d studied intensely and gradually worked his way out of rural poverty, rising to become a respectable man.
My father tried again and again to get me to read my textbooks, but I refused. As far as he was concerned, I was failing him. I was his only son. He wanted me to use his own life as a foundation for bigger things. He would say to me, “Oh, Kwang Jin, I can’t wait until the day you pull up in your big car and I come out the door and you give me a big bag of fish.” Only important, powerful people in North Korea had cars, and fish was a delicacy in the North, far beyond our means. This was how he saw me in twenty years: as an important man in the government, an army general, or a diplomat. I’m sure the famine had only intensified his desire for
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