Read Online How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee - Free Book Online Page A

a stranger who acted like he knew you, so I insisted on being dropped off at the bus station. It was my hometown, too, and a small one at that. My dad objected.
    â€œHalf the people in town know us,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
    â€œYou’re not going unescorted for a minute, after what you did.”
    â€œDad, I’ve taken survival tests and camped across half the Sierra Nevada practically alone. And I’m of legal age to drive a car, pilot a glider, even get married. I’ll be more than fine.”
    When a dot of a man across the hall waved at me and started walking my way, I pretended to give in but began drafting plans. After years of surviving American public schools, I was pretty fearless.
    â€œDaehan!” The man, whose upper torso reminded me of an Asian Santa Claus, and the lower, a sparerib, thumped me on my back as if he was my friend. “I haven’t seen you since you used to spit on your favorite foods, so no one else could have any of it. I’ll never forget how you sucked your toes, too.”
    â€œAll babies do that.”
    He laughed. “You were six. Not exactly a baby.”
    It didn’t get any better in the eatery we settled into. Mr. Ku was even more heavy-handed with the memories than I’d expected. Halfway through breakfast, I said I needed the bathroom, which was located conveniently on the building’s second floor, and gave him the slip. I tucked a note of apology under the car’s window wipers before jumping on the first local busheading out of town that passed me, avoiding the central bus station. Wherever I ended up, I trusted I could eventually transfer to the one I needed since buses were a way of life in China.
    I transferred onto a second bus, then later a third. I kept my feet a safe distance from my seat partner’s chicken, which was squashed into a cage. “I’m going home,” I whispered. “I’m finally going home.”
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    My hometown wedged in a forgotten corner of China felt like it belonged to another self. After six years away, its buildings seemed to me as plain as the people, worn out like saggy granny panties. On the main strip there were song rooms, bars, and clubs with Korean signs in neon displayed above the scarlet-red Chinese characters. It was hard to imagine my bow-and-arrow-gripping ancestors roaming these stark mountains and plains, a fact that China tried hard to ignore so that it could claim the land had always been theirs. Or to imagine North Korea’s so-called Great Leader journeying through the land with his bandit group of rebels and first wife in tow, on his way to Russia. Those times must have required desperate courage.
    I hitched up my belt, heavy with emergency rations of dried tofu and nuts, bought a chunk of fresh tofu from a vendor, and bargained with a cyclo driver. When he tried to rip me off, I began walking toward my mom’s apartment through the landscape of comforting faces that looked so similar to mine.
    I headed down a ventricle of paved streets in the town—there were more than I’d expected—and mapped a grid of old apartments in my head as I walked. I passed snack stalls, cornerswhere kids might target the ones in uniforms from better schools and, just maybe, target me. I sampled dumplings, spun sugar, and grilled chicken on a stick until my mouth flooded with the tastes of my childhood. The crowd thickened and thinned around me like oil. I passed twelve people treading by slowly, nine trotting onward rapidly, approximately one out of five of them wearing lace-up shoes. I dodged a car that rumbled onto the sidewalk and had to dart into an outdoor market when I saw the owner of a Han Chinese restaurant that my family knew. Inside, I observed a moment of silence for seven slaughtered carcasses of pigs. Finally, I felt it: the thrill of being out of my time line, in China, a body returning to the past to escape