In Order to Live Read online

  Hongwei gambled away all the money as soon as we got back to Shenyang.

  Now I was separated from my mother again, and miserable. Hongwei was broke and frustrated and taking it out on me. But as depressed as I was, I realized that there was a force inside me that would not give up. Maybe it was just anger, or maybe it was an inexplicable sense that my life might mean something someday. I had no word in my vocabulary for “dignity,” or the concept of morality. I just knew what felt wrong, and what I would not accept. This situation was something I could no longer accept. I had to find a way out.

  There was a large population of North Korean refugees in Shenyang. Most of them were in hiding, but some had managed to get Chinese identification cards to pass themselves off as ethnic-Korean citizens. An ID was the key to getting a job and living without fear, so I started asking Hongwei’s friends if they knew where I could get one. Even Hongwei realized I had to start taking care of myself, and he agreed to give me some independence.

  One of his gangster friends named Li had a fake ID made for me, but it was such poor quality that it didn’t fool anyone. Then one day I had lunch at a Korean restaurant with Li and a gangster couple, and I told them my predicament. The girlfriend said she knew some people who might help me get a real ID, or at least a convincing forgery.

  After lunch, the gangster’s girlfriend walked with me to a very fancy place filled with rich-looking people. It was a kind of private club or restaurant, because there was food being served to men in expensive suits who sat in comfortable leather chairs. I was amazed to see a dozen very tall, beautiful young women in elegant dresses sitting next to the men.

  The girlfriend seemed to know a lot of people there and said hello to them as she led me over to a table where a conservatively dressed man in his early forties was sitting alone. In fact, he was the only man in the room without a woman by his side. But everybody in the place seemed to know this man and spoke to him with respect.

  “This girl is from North Korea and she wants to work, but she needs an ID,” she said.

  “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair beside him. I sat. He called himself Huang, although I don’t know if that was his real name.

  “Have you ever been here before?” Huang asked me. I told him it was my first time. He checked my hands and arms for track marks and tattoos that might show I was a prostitute. There were none.

  “Do you drink or smoke?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “You should never drink or smoke.” He called the waiters and the managers and even the tall, sexy ladies over to the table to ask them if I worked there, and they all said no.

  “This is a bad place for you,” the man said. “You don’t want to end up like those girls.”

  “I just want an ID so I can get a job in a restaurant,” I told him.

  “I have some people in the police, and I might be able to help you,” he said casually. It was a life-and-death issue for me, but he made it sound like it was no big deal to him.

  I told him I would be grateful for his help.

  He asked me if I wanted to go sit in a park where it was quiet, to talk some more. He seemed so nice and polite that I couldn’t see any problem with that, so I agreed. All I can say is that I should have known better, but somehow I still had trust in people. I had been taught to believe lies all my life, and it had become a dangerous habit.

  The car that was waiting for him in the parking lot looked like a tank, with a row of lights over the cab and a custom-built bed behind the seats.

  “What do you think of it?” he asked. “There are only a few of these in China.”

  We drove to a huge public park in the north of the city, where we sat in the car and talked.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “How old are you?”

  I was only fourteen but I told him I was eighteen, which is how old you need to be to get an ID in China.

  “Do you have any family?” he asked.

  “I have a mother,” I said, “and I’m trying to find my sister. That’s why I need an ID card to work.”

  “How about a boyfriend?”

  “There’s a man who takes care of me, but we are becoming more independent.”

  “Then you’ll need an apartment,” he said. “I have lots of them in the city. In fact, there is one right across from this park. You could stay there while you’re waiting to get your ID. Do you want to see it?”

  Huang drove me to one of the most luxurious buildings in Shenyang. His huge twenty-seventh-floor apartment looked like a museum. He told me he was a big art and antiques dealer who came from humble beginnings and now was one of the richest and most powerful men in Shenyang. I later found out that he had never finished elementary school and could barely write his name. But he seemed so sophisticated to me. Not like a gangster at all.

  His apartment was decorated with paintings, antique ivory Buddhas, and porcelain vases covering every surface. He pointed out an elaborately carved wooden chair that he said was worth about $650,000.

  There were guards in the lobby and a security system that sounded an alarm if you tried to go out on the balcony or opened the wrong door. It was like a fortress.

  “If you’ll stay here, I’ll get you your card. I’ll take care of everything for you.”

  At first I was very grateful to Huang. I called my mother and told her I was in a good situation with someone who would get me an ID. Hongwei kept leaving messages, but I told him not to worry. And for a short time it seemed like everything would work out fine.

  • • •

  The next day, Huang picked me up in his car and took me to his antiques shop. Then he took me to a friend’s giant apartment to watch him play golf at an indoor putting range. He took me to visit his mother’s grave, and then to an old fortune-teller who told him I would bring good luck. The fortune-teller saw a son in my palms.

  “There’s something special about you,” Huang told me. “I want you to have this son with me.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew that it was time for me to try to get away from this man, but I didn’t know how because now he wouldn’t let me out of his sight.

  We drove to another luxury apartment building on the other side of town, and he brought me to an apartment where seven beautiful young women were living.

  “See, if you stay with me, you’ll have plenty of friends,” he said. “You won’t be lonely.”

  Most of the girls were in their teens, but I was the youngest by far. One of them was going to college and had her books out to study. Huang stretched out in a comfortable chair, and while some of the girls began massaging his hands and his feet, I took the opportunity to follow one of the other ones into the kitchen.

  “I don’t want to be here,” I whispered to her. “Can you help me escape?”

  “Are you insane?” she said. “Why would you want to do that? This man is rich and he’s generous.”

  That night Huang took me back to his art-filled apartment. While he was in another room, I took out my cell phone and called my mother again.

  “I don’t think this is a good place for me, Umma,” I said in Korean. “Something’s wrong with this guy. He has women massaging him and he says he wants me to have his baby because he’s been lucky in everything in life except having a son. . . .”

  The next thing I knew, Huang was standing next to me. I don’t think he understood what I was saying, but he must have read my tone of voice because he grabbed the phone out of my hand.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” he told my mother in Chinese. “I’m going to get your daughter an ID, and I’ll send you money every month. It will all be fine.” She still didn’t speak the language, so she didn’t really understand what was going on except that I was being kidnapped.

  Huang hung up and put my phone in his pocket.

  Then he
grabbed me. I pulled away.

  “No, that’s not what I want,” I said. “I want to work.”

  Suddenly his voice went cold.

  “Do you know what they do to defectors when they are sent back to North Korea?” he said. “They string them together with wire, through the muscle on the top of their shoulders, so they can’t run away. I could have you sent back tonight. Or I could have you killed and nobody would ever know what happened to you.”

  He tried to grab me again, and I bit him. He hit me across the face so hard that blood seeped from my mouth.

  Then he stepped back.

  “You know, I don’t have to do this,” he said. “I can have any girl I want. They all love me, even university girls. And I’m going to make you want me, too.”

  At that he left me alone in his apartment and locked the door.

  All I could think about was getting out of that place. I didn’t escape from North Korea to be this man’s slave, a trophy like something in his jewel collection. Hongwei was bad, but at least he had a human heart. This man had ice in his veins, like a reptile. I had never met anyone so terrifying.

  All night I kept testing the doors, but the alarms went off and the guards came running. I was kidnapped, and nobody knew where I was.

  The next day, Huang returned and tried a different tactic. He brought me beautiful clothes and jewelry and told me to try them on. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll buy it for you,” he said.

  “I want you to let me go,” I said.

  “No, you’re going to beg for me by the time I am finished with you.”

  I don’t know how long I was with this kidnapper. It might have been a week, maybe longer.

  I was watched constantly. When I wasn’t with Huang, I was under the eyes of his mistresses. I felt as trapped as I had ever been in my life. Just like in North Korea, I lived with a fear so deep and heavy that it could fill up the night sky and pin my soul to the ground with its weight. I could see no way out.

  Huang didn’t try to rape me again, but he could be very cruel and rough. When I refused to eat, he tried to force the food down my throat. He would threaten me, then suddenly be nice again. I thought I would never get away from him alive.

  Then one day when I was sitting with a group of his mistresses in Huang’s main antiques shop, Hongwei’s friend Li walked in the door. Huang came out of his office to see who it was.

  “Hello, big brother Huang,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  “How do you know who I am?” Huang asked.

  “Who would not know your name?” Li said. Then he gestured in my direction. “This girl’s mother misses her. And I’ve been sent with a message from Hongwei. He wants her back, too.”

  “Tell Hongwei she doesn’t need him anymore,” Huang said. “Isn’t that right, girl?”

  He looked at me, and I nodded yes. I was afraid he was going to kill us all, including Hongwei and my mother, if I hesitated.

  “Tell him how well I’ve been treating you,” he said.

  “He’s been treating me very well,” I told Hongwei’s friend.

  Huang told him to go.

  A short time later, my cell phone rang in Huang’s pocket, where he had been keeping it to monitor my calls. When he saw it was Hongwei, he answered.

  Hongwei had been turning Shenyang inside out looking for me. He was frantic when he finally got in touch with my mother, and she helped him track me down. He later told me what he’d said to Huang.

  “Give her back or we go to war,” Hongwei said. “You can have it either black or white. If you want to play with police, I’ll bring the police. If you want to play with gangs, I’ll bring the gangs.”

  “Do you really want to make this a big deal because of one girl?” Huang said.

  “No, the question is do you want to die for her and leave all that money behind?” said Hongwei.

  After that phone call, Huang took me back to the apartment that was protected by guards and alarms. I knew what Hongwei was capable of doing, but I also knew this kidnapper well enough to believe that he could not let Hongwei win. So I decided to try another approach. “I can see how wrong I was,” I told Huang. “I don’t want to go back to Hongwei. You are a much bigger man. And why should you get into a war with him? He has nothing to lose, and you have everything at stake. I’ll tell him I don’t want him anymore.”

  I convinced the dealer that all I wanted to do was to see my mother again. “I’ve been so miserable only because I miss her so much,” I said.

  I knew that even though this man was a ruthless criminal, he was also a devout Buddhist and he had loved his mother. “Please let me go and see my mother one more time. She lives in Chaoyang. After that, I’ll come back to you and we’ll forget about Hongwei.”

  I made him believe me. The next day, he offered to send me to Chaoyang with one of his drivers, but I said no, he could just put me on the bus. It was easier. He was so convinced that he had won me over that he agreed. He even gave me back my cell phone.

  As soon as the bus pulled out of the terminal, I called Hongwei.

  • • •

  Hongwei met me at the bus station in Chaoyang. He cried when he saw me.

  “Oh, my Yeonmi-ya. What were you thinking?” he sobbed. “You don’t understand how the world works.”

  He drove me to the farm where my mother lived. Nobody else knew where she was, and he thought I would be safe there when Huang came looking for me.

  It occurred to me that Hongwei missed me only when I had been stolen from him. And I was amazed that he would risk going to war with such a rich and powerful man just to get me back. I think it may have surprised Hongwei, too. He later told me he had never risked anything for love before.

  The kind farm family welcomed me and let me live with my mother. We might have stayed for quite a while except that it was now July 2008, and the Beijing Olympics were about to begin in early August. Police had been going house to house in neighboring villages, looking for illegals. We heard of several North Korean women who had already been deported. Our Chinese family was worried that someone in town would inform on us and their farm would also be raided. So we called Hongwei, who arranged for us to hide in the town where my father was buried. But we were quickly recognized there as North Korean refugees, so Hongwei moved us again to his hometown of Chaoyang. We all lived together for a while, but we had no money. During this time my mother called the cell phone number of our friend Myung Ok, the woman who kept running away from her Chinese husband. Myung Ok was back in Shenyang, she said. And she had a job.

  “What kind of job?” my mother asked.

  “Nothing too strange,” Myung Ok said. “If you come to Shenyang, I’ll introduce you to my boss.”

  My mother and I were desperate again. And we were constantly changing apartments, not only to stay ahead of the police, but also because Hongwei was sure he was being haunted by my father’s ghost.

  At first, my father came to him in nightmares. But recently Hongwei would walk into the apartment when it was empty and find my father making something in the rice cooker. Or my father would just be sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. Hongwei cried and told me he knew my father could never forgive him for what he had done to me. And now he knew he had to let me go. He told me he regretted taking my innocence and was sorry for all the times he hurt me, although he knew it was too late for that. But he promised he would always watch out for me, and he would honor my father’s spirit and tend his grave for the rest of his life.

  I had such complicated feelings for this man. I had hated him for so long and I didn’t think I could ever forgive him, but my heart was not so hard anymore. He was not all bad. And he had been a miracle for me, really. He had brought my mother back, brought my father to China, and helped me bury him there. I know he had tried hard to find my sister, too.

  When we
lived together, he had bought me lots of gold jewelry, and I had kept it hidden all this time. Now I gave it back to him. He needed it more than I did. In a way I was buying my own freedom.

  I thanked him for all he had done for me, and then I said good-bye.

  My mother and I took the next bus to Shenyang.

  Seventeen

  Like Bread from the Sky

  When my mother and I arrived at Myung Ok’s apartment in Shenyang, she finally told us about the job she could get for us. All we had to do, she said, was talk to men on a computer.

  Myung Ok worked for a Chinese boss, or laoban, who rented several apartments equipped with computer terminals and Internet connections. The laoban was a small-time operator who worked for a bigger crime boss in Shenyang’s adult chat-room underworld. At the bottom of the chain were North Korean women who had run out of choices. The women lived in small bedrooms where they could “chat” online around the clock. The customers—almost all South Korean men—searched different sites for women they liked, and then they paid by the minute to type questions and watch the women online. Most of the women took off their clothes for the men, but some just teased them into sexy conversations. The goal was to keep them online for as long as possible while their credit cards were charged for the time. The laobans pocketed most of the money.

  I had never even heard of a webcam before; to my mother and me, this seemed like an very strange way to make a living. I tried first to find work in a restaurant, but it was impossible to get a job without an ID. The police had been raiding places, checking for illegals. Our options for employment were extremely limited. I was still only fourteen, but I had seen all kinds of ugly things people would do to survive—and many of them were much worse than an adult chat room. As bad as my situation had been, at least Hongwei never drugged me or passed me around to other men. And compared with what might become of my mother and me once we no longer had his protection, the chat room seemed like an easy choice.