[sample translations]jung myung lee, the boy who escaped from paradise eng by LTI Korea Library

Sample Translations

Jung-myung Lee The Boy Who Escaped From Paradise E ng l i s h

Book Information

The Boy Who Escaped From Paradise (천국의 소년) Yolimwon Publishing corp. / 2013 / 37 p. / ISBN 9788970637730,9788970637747 For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772

This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea. Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr

The Boy Who Escaped From Paradise Written by Jung-myung Lee

Day One: Pyongyang February 1987窶年ovember 2000

New York Daily News Man in Queens Found Shot to Death at Home February 28, 2009

Officials at the New York Police Department said Saturday that a man in his fifties was found shot to death in a house in Queens. The police arrived on the scene around 2 a.m. in response to a 911 call reporting several gunshots. The victim, Steve Yoon, was granted asylum from North Korea two years ago and was the head of a human rights organization called Friends of Freedom. The victim’s face had been wiped with disinfectant and various numbers and pictures were scrawled in blood around the body, the police said. Officials are investigating an unidentified man arrested at the scene, who is said to be in stable condition after being taken to the hospital to treat a bullet wound to the thigh. Sources report that he is refusing to speak. According to hospital sources, disinfectant and the victim’s blood were detected on his hands. U.S. intelligence officials are focusing on the victim’s past employment at important facilities in North Korea, as well as his provision of information about the secluded country’s nuclear program upon arrival to the U.S. A police official said, “We aren’t sure if this is a straightforward murder or something beyond that. We are considering every possibility, including an intricate terror act by North Korea to punish the leak of information about its nuclear program.” Officials are focusing on decoding the mysterious symbols left at the scene as well as identifying the suspect and his motive.

***

Numbers: 1 11 21 1211 111221 312211.

Drawings: The sentence: I’m a liar. Am I a liar? 4 I open my eyes. I’m in a square windowless room with bars on one side. I’m lying on a bed. Pain shoots up my right thigh. It’s wrapped in white bandages. A man comes up to me. He says I was arrested at a murder scene. He says I was discovered unconscious. Apparently someone died and I killed him. Who? I killed someone? I can’t remember. I don’t remember why I was there. Why did I kill him? Who killed him? Death is a complicated, unsolvable formula with three unknown quantities. If 1 is death, 2 is the murderer, and 3 is me. To find 1 I have to find 2, and to find 2 I have to know 3. The unknowns are linked together, the way the earth revolves around the sun and the moon circles the earth. To find , I need to make a formula with the constants I know. Someone is dead and I’m the murderer. 2=3. But what if I’m not 2? What do I know about 1? Death is like flicking off a switch to kill the lights. Eyes that used to twinkle are closed and breath no longer puffs out of the nose and the heart that once beat sixty times a minute is stopped. Nothing continues. It ends. 1 becomes 0. Life and death is a binary system. 2=10, 3=11, 4=100, 5=101, 6=110, 7=111, 8=1000, 9=1001, 10=1010. A world where being and not being, existence and extinction, reality and illusion, me and you, life and death continue. In the most complex world composed of the simplest numbers, 0 isn’t nonexistence, extinction, or the end, but the shadow of 1. It grows and completes it. The way death is half of life and life is completed through death. The door opens and other men enter. One is tall, one is short, one has a crooked nose, one is muscular, and the last has a receding hairline. They look like Rodin sculptures, their

expressions serious. They lob questions at me. I’m reminded of Randy Jonhson’s fastballs. “Name?” “Age?” “Birthplace?” “Address?” “Where were you on the night of February 27?” “How do you know the victim?” “Why did you kill him?” “What happened that night?” These aren’t questions. This is chaos. I can’t stand it. I start screaming. The man with the crooked nose clamps his hand over my mouth. His nose looms over me, his grip as unrelenting as a lobster claw. I notice his face is asymmetrical. He hauls me up and throws me on a chair. He announces that he is CIA Agent Russell Banks. He calls me a murderer and a terrorist. Banks and his team search me and my backpack. They find the following. On my body: A blue dragon tattoo on my right forearm. A bullet wound on my thigh. Four scars on my upper body, seven on my lower body that measure at least 4 centimeters. Evidence of my left pinky having been broken. In my backpack: A 750ml bottle of disinfectant and cotton balls. Old newspapers in Chinese, English, Korean and clippings from Newsweek and other magazines.

Nineteen sheets written in formulas and an unidentifiable language. A small worn notepad titled Possibilities of the Impossible. Two triangles, a 3 meter-long tape measure, an old Japanese calculator. Banks takes the backpack and shakes it upside down. Colorful cards fall onto the table. I like cards. But I know they aren’t cards. They’re passports from China, Macao, South Korea, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Japan, and the Arab Emirates. Banks bares his teeth. “All these fake passports! And all these aliases. Zhang Jia-jie, Philip Han, An Gil-mo, Matsumoto Yoji, James Gunn, Seth Ghotbi, Mohammed Faizal. Which one of these are you? What is your relationship to all of these names?” I am silent. It’s not that I don’t know the meaning of “relationship.” The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected. I know what it means to “have a relationship.” I understand mathematical and scientific relationships, such as the relationship between Mercury and Venus, the black hole and the stars, function relationships, symmetrical relationships, proportionate relationships. But the relationship between me and someone else? Or me and the world? Does that even exist? Banks’ eyebrows furrow. “Say something!” He wants me to be frightened, but I never do. People are scared of the incomprehensible and uncertain fate, but I’m not, since I’m unable to make relationships with the world. I am in the same space as he but we are looking into different worlds. Banks grabs me by the front of my shirt and throws me onto the floor. Hard fists and shiny shoes pummel me. I become a crumpled wet tissue. He can break me apart physically, but my silence will stay intact. The hallway on the other side of the bars grows dim as the chair, desk, and the gray walls surrounding me melt away like Dali’s paintings. Banks’ glaring face is becoming faint. Suddenly, the door clangs open. I hear a sharp female voice. “Stop!”

Banks’ hand loosens. The blood shoots to my head. I drag my stiff leg to push myself up. “I’m in the middle of an interrogation!” Banks barks. “This guy is on the Interpol’s most wanted list.” “Physical violence is forbidden. This man is a patient. You know it’s against policy.” “Policy? We don’t have time to sit here and debate. I’m interrogating a terrorist.” Russell huffs and shoves me into a chair. He turns to glare at the intruder. “I’ve already made progress. All these passports are fake. He’s linked to ten crimes, ranging from murder to gambling fraud to drug trafficking. He can talk or he can continue to stay quiet, but either way he’s going to be in prison for the rest of his life.” “You don’t understand the whole picture, though,” the woman insists. “What do you mean?” “This young man has Asperger’s.” “Asperger’s?” “You can’t make him talk. Your threats and questions mean nothing to him.” “And how do you know that?” “People with Asperger Syndrome have difficulties in relationships and in social situations. They have limited interests and activities, and they have repetitive patterns of behavior. I’m telling you, he won’t respond to normal interrogation.” “What are you talking about? This guy has done unimaginable things. Someone who’s slow couldn’t commit all these crimes.” “That’s the thing,” the woman explains. “He’s not slow. He has no problem with linguistic development. The issue is that he uses pedantic and indirect expressions so it can be difficult to have regular conversations with him.” Now that the blood has resumed coursing through my body, I can see. She’s wearing

white. Her hair is blonde. Her cheeks are starting to sag a bit, her body slightly round. Like a steadfast rock having gone through years of erosion, she is standing there confidently. “And who are you?” Banks snaps. “Angela Stowe, nurse in charge. I need you to consult me before you interrogate him. I have to check him right now, so please step outside.” Banks hesitates for a moment before leaving. Angela measures my temperature and writes it down in the chart. Asperger’s. Asperger’s? I like puzzles. Simplicity is extracted from complexity; chaos is quickly organized. I revel in the solitary moment I encounter a problem, the time I spend wrestling with it, the urge to give up. When I solve it, I’m able to understand the incomprehensible, change anguish into glee. All kinds of puzzles are fascinating to me: marbles, folding paper, dice, magic squares, stars, triangles, squares, pentagons, concentric circles and ovals, matches, ladybugs, knots, curves, and straight lines. But what I enjoy even more than that is creating puzzles. If I observe how someone approaches and solves a puzzle, I understand him or her. An impatient man will give up quickly, a cunning woman will guess the answer and work backward to figure out how that is the case. And who is this Angela? Is she impatient? Cunning? Something else? I write the following on a piece of paper.

I think about my temperature. 36.5. My body is 36.5, the same as one year, which has 365 days. Angela picks up the sheet of paper. She places it on the chart and scribbles. She holds

it out:

Correct! Now I know—she thinks the same way I do. If I’m cunning, that means she is, too, and if I lie it means she would as well. “Symmetry is the most beautiful characteristic in the world,” Angela declares. “The way the most beautiful number is a prime number.” She understands who I am. She gets the secret of symmetry and prime numbers that is hidden in these symbols. The first symbol, the heart, is a symmetrical representation of the number 2, the first prime number. The second, the clover, is a symmetrical representation of 3, the next prime number. The final symbol of the key is a mirror image of 5, the following prime number. She has inferred the next three sequences. “The great thing about symmetry is that it never changes, no matter what you do to it,” Angela continues. “If you flip a heart, it’s still a heart. If you flip a clover to the left or to the right, or up and down, it’s still a clover. A circle is always a circle, and a sphere is always that. If you love symmetry, it means you believe in the truth. Because no matter what you do to it, the truth remains the same.” I wonder if she likes ABBA’s songs, since the name of the band is a perfect symmetry. Feeling better, I begin talking. “The = sign completes a symmetry like a decalcomania. No matter how complicated and long a formula, if there is an = sign, both sides are always symmetrical.” I begin drawing a triangle on the paper with = in the middle. That is my favorite symbol and the triangle is my favorite geometric shape. 1x1=1

11x11=121 111x111=12321 1111x1111=1234321 11111x11111=123454321 111111x111111=12345654321 Angela looks at me and then at the pyramid. “Where are you from?” Her question is different from Banks’. Hers is uttered so gently and smoothly, as if she’s coaxing the words from my mouth. I look down at my beautiful pyramid and think about where I’m from. “That doesn’t matter. What’s important is where we are and where we’re going.” “That’s true,” Angela says, nodding. “It might not be important. It’s just that the puzzle you drew is identical to what was found at the murder scene. It’s over now. Just tell me. Tell me whatever you remember.” I keep looking down at the sheet of paper. Beyond the fog of my memories, a giant pyramid rises. I see the city of weeping willows, the one I left a long time ago, and the pointy steeple that I could see no matter where I was in that city.

I Was Born on February 29

West Pyongyang. People referred to the Ryugyong Hotel in the Potonggang District as the 105 Building. It was designed to be 100 stories but grew to 105 stories in celebration of the 105th Shock Troops directly under the Party Central Committee in charge of its construction. The hotel consisted of 435,000 square meters and 3,700 rooms, and had 70 high-speed elevators, an underground swimming pool, five rotating observatory restaurants, a TV switching center, a meteorological station, among other amenities. From above, it looked like a polygon, a combination of triangles and pentagons. From the front, it appeared to be a pyramid, with 40-story peaks surrounding the 105-story center. Both the 105 Building and I were born in 1987 but neither was completed. The construction was supposed to be completed in April 1992 to commemorate the 80th birthday of the Great Leader, but the French joint engineering team left Pyongyang in May1989 after the construction of the outer frame. The outside was eventually completed but the inside remained empty. In that way we were similar. Although I am twenty-two, people say Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m mentally six years old. I was born on February 29. The earth takes a year to circle the sun, precisely 365.2564 days. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 365 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes and 23.04 seconds. The day that is left over every four years is my birthday. Since I age one year every four years, I am about six years old now. I like my birthday. The numbers 2 and 29 are prime numbers. 2 plus 29 is 31, which is also a prime number. A prime number is lonely, as am I, having been born on a prime number day on a prime number month. But I also like 4. I like the Olympics and the World Cup, and the math Olympiad, which occur every four years. I like the American presidency, which cycles every four years, as well as four-year colleges and four-person tables. I like baseball where you have to go past first, second, third base, then the fourth, home plate, to

score, and my favorite is the clean-up hitter. I’m also partial to when the clock says 11:11—a perfect bilateral symmetry that adds up to 4. It isn’t so bad to age one year every four years. When my peers are 100 years old, I will be a youthful 25. “I may become mature later but I’ll live longer,” I once told Father, who nodded hesitantly. I was fascinated by this enormous unfinished pyramid. I looked up at the empty building and calculated the radial angle of a triangle whose bottom is 160 meters and whose height is unknown; the area of the ground floor; and how much the 88th floor shakes when the wind blows past at 30km per hour. Sometimes I solved several questions quickly and other times a single one took me many days. One day, Father opened a two-day-old copy of the paper, Rodong Sinmun, and murmured, “Apparently when you go up to the top of the Ryugyong Hotel you can see Daesong Mountain and the Nohak Mountain range. On a clear day you can even see the smoke from the Nampo smelter that’s 100 ri away. How tall it must be!” The next day I ran over to the building. The pyramid was as silent as a secretive giant. The outer concrete, colored with rust from the steel beams, had fallen off in chunks. Soldiers stationed at the entrance ignored me, having determined that I was not a threat. The sun glinted at the top of the steeple. Time inched along. As the sun set to the west, the shadow of the steeple grew wispy. I stood at the edge of the shadow that blanketed the plaza. It silently revealed its secrets—the space appeared on the flat surface, its height transformed into distance. The sun shined on me and the pyramid at the same angle. My shadow and the pyramid’s reflected the same solar angle as we stood at ninety degrees to the ground, the same right-angle triangle. So the ratio between my height and my shadow would be the same as the pyramid’s height and the length of its shadow. Thus:

a:b=x:c Where a is my height, b is the length of my shadow, x is the pyramid’s height, and c is the length of the pyramid’s shadow. Since proportions can be expressed as ratios, so: a/b=x/c Then solve for x: x=ac/b Thus if I multiplied my height and the shadow of the pyramid and divided it by the length of my shadow, I could calculate the height of the pyramid. The next day, I went back to the hotel with a thirty centimeter wood ruler and a long string. I laid the string against the pyramid’s shadow and mine at 9 a.m., at 2 p.m., and right before sunset, then measured with the ruler. The problem was calculating the distance from the outer wall to the center of the building without going inside, but that turned out to be simple. I could determine the distance between the three wings that supported the building at a 120 degree angle by dividing it in half; the angle of each corner was 60 degrees and the bottom of a right-angle triangle. Using trigonometry, the length of the hypotenuse that was the diameter of the circle circumscribing the three wings became the distance between the outer wall and the center of the building. Over nine measurements in three days, the average height of the pyramid was 323 meters. Three hundred twenty-three meters compared to my 127 centimeters. Although different in size and shape, at that moment we were twins. Incomplete and empty, nobody wanted us. We were congruent right-angle triangles, standing on the ground with the same hypotenuse angle. We were furled like an old jib pregnant with the afternoon sunlight and the Potong River’s warm wind. We shared the same truth under the same sun.

“Agent Banks thinks you killed him,” Angela says. I think of the person I used to be and the death of a man I might have killed. I don’t know what the truth is. But I can figure it out, the way I calculated the height of the pyramid. “I know about death,” I tell her. “Death is my friend.” But who could possibly know anyone’s deep inner thoughts, even a friend’s?

Father Was a Deliveryman of Death

I saw the pale face of death fourteen years ago at the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in Mount Taesong. The cemetery was as dark as a black-and-white photograph. The dark forest, ashy sky, even darker tombstones, firmly closed lips, white silence, the black hole in the ground. People stood as still as stones, swallowing sobs. The black coffin was lowered into the black hole and wet dirt filled it up. Voices rolled along the ground, weeping splashed like raindrops, and the ceremonious volley of rifles broke through all of that. The shots sounded like a hammer striking nails. I imagined the dead floating up to become stars in the night sky. People shared pale words before turning to leave. Father was a deliveryman of death. He polished death as if it were a machine. The way a shoeshine made shoes gleam or an electrical engineer fixed radios, he worked death with his hands. He straightened crooked expressions, stitched wounds, and straightened postures. He wiped faces with disinfectant and painted lips red. Death was reborn elegantly under my father’s fingertips. Before he began to deliver death, Father was a young, talented surgeon working at Pyongyang Medical School. One day, during my father’s shift in the emergency room, the highest ranking officer in the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces was wheeled in, covered in burns from an explosion. The death of that officer took away my father’s medical license, thanks to the superior institution’s assessment that my father’s faltering loyalty to the Party was the reason for the death. It was a fortunate turn of events that the authorities took into account the patient’s critical condition and demoted Father to an undertaker, instead of meting out severe punishment. Father’s new job was at a hospital morgue, located in a residential neighborhood in the Potonggang District inhabited by high-level Party members. The man my father failed to save became his first client. Soon after that, Party leaders and

high-level military personnel lined up for the talented former surgeon’s services. Looking at the damp mound of dirt, I asked Father, “Where do you deliver death to?” The muscle under Father’s chin tensed. It was the expression that could be made only by a father who had a son that people called an idiot, a boy who couldn’t understand another person’s feelings or forge a relationship, a child in whose head floated numbers and formulas instead of knowing how to play soccer or roughhouse. “In your body there is an invisible cord, and something like electricity flows through it,” Father began. “One day, fate pulls out the cord. If the power goes out, 1 becomes 0. Then you can’t breathe, talk, eat, or carry out revolutionary tasks.” Father always knew how to explain something so that I would understand. “Death causes belongings to scatter,” I offered. “A bed with rusted springs goes to a colleague, an old teacup goes to a married daughter, a worn uniform goes to a son. In the winter the family will use his worn desk for kindling. The things that are left behind are burned, discarded, and given away.” “Don’t try to understand death,” advised Father. “Nobody really knows about it. Even I can’t speak to it. And I work with it every day.” But I wanted to know. I wanted to know about the funeral home, the cemetery, the graves, the people wearing black mourning clothes. Sometimes I wandered around the Revolutionary Cemetery until I got lost. Often, I didn’t return home, falling asleep in the cemetery after dark. On nights like that Father would find me by the dark graves and carry my sleeping form on his back toward home. “You’re brave not to be afraid of death.” But that wasn’t it. I just didn’t have the skills to deal with emotions. I didn’t fear death because I didn’t understand what it was. I studied death, the way I did numbers. Numbers revealed the secrets of an existence; if I could understand something in a numerical

way, I understood everything. I could calculate the value of death without dying, the way I figured out the height of the 105 Building without climbing it. But Father had a different idea. He wanted me to figure out how to live. Every time he suggested as much, I held my hands over my ears and screamed. I was eight the first time I followed Father into the room where he washed and clothed corpses. I strode toward death calmly, the way other children went to school holding their parents’ hands. The glistening metal gurney, the wet, shiny wooden floor, the bright white incandescent light bulb, the sting of the alcohol, the cool air, the body lying neatly there, his cord unplugged. “The value of death is 0 and the value of life is 1. After that there is 10 and 11. Then 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000,” I said. I liked 1.The number signified being alone but not lonely. The way one can live life alone but not feel deprived. I liked 0, too. 0 encompassed everything and completed 1. “Gil-mo, death isn’t as simple as the binary system.” Father fixed his white hygienic cap and stepped toward the body. If the body’s switch were flipped up, would he be jolted with electricity? If one were to look at the earth from a faraway star, countless lights would be buzzing about, all of them people, blinking like fireflies, looking for mates, having children, laughing, crying, living, dying. “This work leads the dead to paradise.” Father wiped the man’s forehead with a cotton ball dipped in disinfectant. “Is there another paradise other than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?” “Paradise is where souls go to live. People die but souls survive, the way a heart dies but the medals of revolutionary martyrs hanging over it stay constant. The way eyes die but the glasses remain. I’ll die but you’ll survive.” He gazed at me, as if wishing his words were wrong, as if he were desperately wishing I would die one day before him. I understood: today

will die but tomorrow will remain. About a year later, when Father wasn’t there, I took a disinfectant-soaked cotton ball and wiped a corpse. Father came upon me. Horrified, he slapped the back of my hand. I dropped the cotton ball on the floor. Soon, however, Father stopped hitting the back of my hand. Going against Father’s wishes, I started helping him with his work. As I was unable to feel fear, I was a decent deliveryman of death.

Father’s career as a doctor was cut short by his homeland but he loved it anyway and respected and loved the Great Leader Comrade and the Dear Leader Comrade. He believed that the blessing of the Fatherly Leader Comrade allowed him to deliver the deaths of the revolutionary martyrs, labor heroes, and merited actors. On July 8, 1994, Father, along with 38 undertakers, doctors, chemists, and biologists, sealed the Respected and Beloved Leader in a glass coffin. Although the Dear Leader passed away, hardship remained with us. The following summer saw several floods and droughts. And on January 1, 1996, Rodong Sinmun’s New Year editorial began with an exhortation: “Remembering the pathetic hardship and indomitable spirit of the anti-Japanese Partisans who shared insufficient food together and struggled against the Japanese military, we must live with the spirit of the Arduous March born in the dense forest of Paektu and continue to fight.” Father explained to me what that meant: “The Arduous March was a one-hundredday march beginning in December 1938 of an anti-Japanese partisan troop led by the Dear Leader. They went through endless battles in minus 40 degrees of bitter cold, snow piled up to their chests, and survived even famine, evading the Japanese imperialist enemies. They went from Jilin Province in China to Changbai Mountains near the Yalu River. Self-reliance! It is an indomitable revolutionary spirit that does not know defeat or agitation in the face of

adversity.” With hardship came hunger. And with that, death. If the relationship between death and hardship were a figure it would be a congruence, and if it were a mathematical expression it would be an equation. When hardship reaches an extreme it becomes death and when death mounts hardship grows exponentially. Father delivered many deaths and more deaths and even more after that. As the years passed the deaths grew, as did hardship. The continuation of hunger, death, and terror. Crowds dwindled from Pyongyang’s streets. Father listened carefully to a static-filled old radio and sang along to the revolutionary songs broadcast by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Party. “I want to believe that our hardship will be overcome. I want to believe that our future is bright. Even though the day to day is difficult to live through we tighten our belts and follow the General.” Rations diminished. I yearned for gleaming rice. Hunger ate through our flesh and terror devoured our minds. Because of hunger, numbers tangled like a spool of thread in my head. When I untangled the threads I was even hungrier. According to official statistics, from 1995 to 1998, 220,000 citizens of the Republic died from hunger. According to my calculations I’ve discovered that one must multiply the statistics announced by the Republic by 9.8 to 11 to arrive at the truthful number, so 2 to 3 million died in actuality.

How to Prove Hunger

In the spring of 1998, I entered Pyongyang First Senior Secondary School following a special action of the Party Central Committee decreeing the admission of talented students with superior mathematics skills. Father brought me to school, telling me: “That you, who haven’t even gone to People’s School, can be at the best secondary school in the Republic is entirely thanks to the Respected and Beloved Leader’s special consideration.” The school was in Sinwon-dong in the Potonggang District. It was a 2,800 square meter 10-story building and contained a music room, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and a library, along with 20 labs with thousands of scientific equipment. The teacher placed a sheet of paper on the desk and motioned to my father to leave the room as he patted my shoulder. My father backed out awkwardly. When the door closed, it was just me and the paper. I saw the questions on the paper and was sucked in, like a hunting dog discovering a piece of meat. I stroked and wrestled with the numbers. I don’t know how much time passed. When I looked up, the teacher’s mouth was hanging open. After a long time, he asked, “Young man, where did you learn all of this?” I rubbed my eyes, sleepy. My father came back in to explain. “He’s never learned anything in a formal environment. Because of the illness in his head, he couldn’t even attend People’s School.” “Your son has just solved the test that are given to first year math students at Kim Chaek University of Technology. He can enroll in the 5th grade! He didn’t go to People’s School and clearly has autistic tendencies, but he is crucial for the revolutionary task specially ordered by the Dear Leader.” “What kind of revolutionary task needs a child who hasn’t even gone to school?” asked my father.

“The International Mathematical Olympiad that will take place in three years.” “What is that?” “It’s an international competition that youth from a hundred countries participate in. The Republic participated for the first time in 1990 but in 1991 at the Sweden Olympiad we were disqualified for cheating. Oh, it was all caused by the host country’s trickery. So we haven’t participated since 1992. But following the Great General’s promotion of the math and sciences, we decided to re-enter. Because of the eligibility rules, which allow only those under 20 who have not been in university, the students at Kim Il Sung University or Kim Chaek University of Technology are out. This school must be the representative. This boy’s talent in math is in the top 0.1% of the Republic. If we teach him well, he will become a revolutionary pillar who will raise the Republic’s banner throughout the entire world.” About two weeks later, a letter came to our apartment, notifying us that I was accepted. The day before school started, Father brought home a paper-wrapped parcel. Inside was a clean school uniform. In his other hand there was a large ration bag filled with rice. That night, for the first time in two years, we each ate a bowl of rice that glistened and gave off white steam. “Pyongyang First Senior Secondary School is the alma mater of the Respected and Beloved Leader and a superior school that teaches all the talented youth from all across the country,” Father murmured, helping me put on the uniform. “Dr. Kim Man-ho of Biology is a former professor at the Pyongyang Medical University, and Ahn Chi-woo in Math holds a doctorate, so they are university-level teachers. You’re not an idiot. You’re a genius, and you have finally found your rightful place.” Father explained once again that what I had was an illness in my head, and that it was actually a positive, as my abilities allowed me to traverse through the world of numbers while remaining in my own world. He said this was something that only geniuses could do. “You

know Dr. So Sang-guk, the head of the Physics department at Kim Il Sung University who launched the rocket Kwangmyongsong-1? The genius theoretical physicist to whom the Dear Leader kindly arranged to deliver a 60th-birthday feast. You will become a math genius like him, so you just forget about death.” Father didn’t know then that I was designed to be unable to forget death. Every morning he tied a red Children’s Union scarf around my neck and looked at me with pride, as if revering the statue of the Dear Leader standing tall at Mansudae. “You know how much the Great Father loves us, right? You must work hard to be his honorable son.” Father reached over to embrace me before catching himself. He had remembered I couldn’t stand being touched. I was in a world Father couldn’t breach; he couldn’t place a hand on my shoulder, hold my hand, or meet my eyes. I was a faraway island he could never reach, no matter how often he circled around in a boat. The Respected and Beloved General didn’t get rid of my hunger but he did admit me to the second grade of Pyongyang First Senior Secondary School. The principal didn’t place me in the preparation class for the Olympiad; he thought it was important to first gain systematic mathematical knowledge through the general curriculum. It would be more advantageous to be at least a year older at the Olympiad, so they were going to train me, waiting for me to get older. I was three years younger than my classmates, which allowed me plenty of time to prepare for the Olympiad. On my way to school every morning, I filed away street scenes in my head as if they were photographs. The date and day of the week, the temperature and the wind’s direction, the time the sun rose and any changes in weather, the signs on the stores that hadn’t opened yet and the people’s clothing, and the license numbers of the passing cars. To this day I can remember the weather in Pyongyang on September 9, 1998, even the stores lining the sidewalk and the expressions of people who walked past me. The car

license plates I met along the way told me everything about the car: area-unit number-car number. 02 was the Central Party’s finance and accounting department, 11-12 were the party organs, 13-14 were cabinet and administration unit, 15-17 were the Ministry of People’s Security, 18-20 were State Security Department, 21 was judicial and prosecutorial organs, 90 was the Central Committee liaison office. When I spotted one starting with 216 like the Dear Leader’s birthday, February 16, I became happy. 2+1+6=9. I was certain that the Dear Leader liked 9, just like I did.

Chang Jae-ha was the first and only friend I made in school. Jae-ha was transferred to the second grade of Pyongyang First Senior Secondary School under the special measure from Sinuiju First Senior Secondary School. Dark and skinny and from the countryside, Jae-ha was out of place among the best students of the Republic. After class, Jae-ha ran to the rest area toward a table flanked by a red velvet chair and a wooden one. A Go game sat between the chairs, and the first one to get there would take the red chair. The red chair soon became Jae-ha’s. Having blown away the first opponent like a dandelion seed, he knew it was his seat to defend. He knew he would have to give it up if he lost even once, leaving him no place to go anywhere on campus. Nobody was his match, not the math teacher who had taught at Kim Hyong Jik University of Education or the physics teacher who used to be a researcher at the Scientific Isotopic Research Institute. In three months he marked his territory with a legendary 372 wins out of 372 games. He thrived in that world of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. I was caught up in geometric curiosity, calculating the number of corners created by the 38 lines and figuring out the length of the diagonal lines. I wanted to place the black and white Go pieces in the squares and arrange them in a symmetrical pattern, so that they would be joined if I folded the Go board in half or in fourths. I laid out the pieces and said, “19

times 19 is 361. If you multiply 19 horizontal lines with 19 vertical lines, there are 361 meeting points.” “It isn’t 361, it’s 360 plus 1. Three hundred sixty is how long it takes the earth to circle the sun and the remaining one is the Black Hole. Four corners are the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and the four intersections are the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice. Three hundred sixty-one Go pieces signify the sky and the earth.” Jae-ha rolled white pieces between his fingers as he explained how the game contained the universe. I watched the glistening pieces at the end of Jae-ha’s long, brown fingers, then grabbed a handful of pieces and placed them in three piles on the Go board:

Jae-ha stared at them, then grabbed twenty-five pieces and put them down next to my pile. Twenty-five is what followed after 1, 5, 13. “If you subtract the first clause out of the second, it’s 5-1=4, if you subtract the second clause from the third, it’s 13-5=8, which is 4x2. If you subtract the third from the fourth it’s 25-13=12=4x3. If you calculate it the same way the fifth clause is 41. 41-25=16=4x4!” He laid out ten pieces on the board.

“You think you can move only one piece and make it five across and five down?” he asked. I liked puzzles like this. I picked up the piece at the very bottom and placed it gently on top of the middle piece. Then the pieces that had bilateral symmetry became symmetrical on the top and bottom, too.

“I love symmetry,” I announced. “Symmetry never changes.” The Go pieces gently glimmered. “Symmetry exists between people, too,” Jae-ha said. “Friends are symmetrical. Because friendship doesn’t ever change.” I didn’t understand what friends were for, but I understood this. That was the day we became symmetrical.

The Arduous March continued, as did days with missed meals, people who lost their smiles, and stores with firmly shuttered doors. Hardship ravaged our lives. Everyone was silent. Hunger had taught us the functional formula that the more we talked the more we grew hungry. Instead of meals, I solved inequalities, geometry problems, numerical progressions, and equations and sought beautiful solutions and proofs. Mathematical problems were intangible and didn’t fill my empty belly, but they allowed me to momentarily forget my hunger. I shouldered the problems and walked through the hunger stubbornly, like a trader crossing a desert with a limping camel. Working on a problem was akin to driving a cart drawn by numbers. The road was bumpy and the destination remained far away and time disappeared. My pencil skipped across the paper. “What are you doing?” asked Jae-ha from behind me, looking down at the complicated numbers and symbols. “I’m mathematically proving the Battle of Pochonbo where the Great Fatherly Leader crossed Yalu River on a single leaf and smashed the Japs.” Jae-ha looked around before whispering into my ear: “You believe that? It’s a myth.

It’s impossible!” “No, it’s not. If you consider all of the variables like the specific gravity of the leaf, the buoyancy of the water, the Great Leader’s weight, the height of the tide and the speed at which the leaf becomes wet, then I need to figure out how many leaves are needed to make a boat to cross the river.” I checked my work. Jae-ha inched closer. “You’re just being stubborn,” he said in a low voice. “The Battle of Pochonbo is a complete lie. The partisans killed civilians and children. The Great Leader’s brigade of partisans crossed the river on a raft and attacked the police substation, but it was after the Japanese policemen had already fled. The partisans burned the fire house, the township office, and the post office, and in that chaos a Japanese restaurant owner and a son of a Japanese policeman died.” I believed that the world was filled with truth. I didn’t understand that there were lies. There were only things that were mathematically impossible and possible. Math proved obvious things but also made impossible things possible. Everything was provable through math—the fact that the space we live in is a sphere, that if we fold the space we can move to another star in the universe, that we can go back in time. Crossing the Yalu River on a single piece of leaf was not impossible, either. I wanted to prove that possibility.

With numbers and Go pieces, Jae-ha and I built our own world. The world, made of round, shiny pieces, was quiet and changed constantly. Sometimes when the world collapsed, we giggled like children who knocked down carefully constructed sand castles. Jae-ha couldn’t wait for me to join the Olympiad Preparation class; he counted down the days until the Olympiad. “When you go to the Olympiad, you have to have Coca-Cola,” Jae-ha insisted. “And

a hamburger from McDonald’s.” “I don’t want to.” “Please? You have to try them and then tell me what they taste like.” I promised I would. In the shaded garden outside school, we discovered ant kingdoms. The ants cut up dead cicadas with their strong jaws, tossed them on their backs, and crossed the garden, waddling under the weight. The shiny line of ants was long and black. We looked down the ant holes into another universe. In an attempt to flee the holes that were sucking us in, we then ran across the playing fields until our faces turned red from exertion. Time passed us by like warm breeze brushing against the peach fuzz on our arms. Jae-ha and I leaned on a large oak tree on either side, like two sides of an isosceles. Inside us those memories became engraved. It would soon be summer vacation.

Banks tosses an old, yellowed notebook onto the table. He picks it up and shoves it under my eyes, spitting out, “This came out of your backpack. The year 1968 is written on it. Since it’s before you were born, it’s obviously not yours. Where did you get this? Whose is it?” I don’t say a word. He grabs me by the throat and shoves me to the wall. My two feet are limp, like Judas being hanged. I can’t breathe; blood rushes to my head. I hear the door opening. Angela. He drops me. Angela rushes over and flips open my eyelids. Incensed, Banks kicks open the door and leaves. Angela seats me on the chair, then unwraps the bandages on my leg to clean the wound. She puts on a new bandage. “You need to talk about this notebook.”

“Why?” “They’re going to harass you until you do.” “I have to meet Mr. Knight Miecher.” “Who’s that?” “I don’t know. But I have to return this notebook to him.” “How?” “I just need to calculate the probability of meeting him. There are six billion people in the world, 2,200,000 people in the Republic, and 280 million Americans, so I can figure out what the odds are that one citizen of the Republic would meet one American.” “But that would be less than one out of several million or tens of million. Or even less. 99.999% chance you won’t meet him.” “Even with the odds of 0.001%, something that should occur will. No matter how rare it is, it will happen. Even the least possible thing isn’t completely impossible. It’s science, you know?” “Probability isn’t science. It’s just a trick.” “I don’t know how to trick anyone,” I say. “Probability is objective data that everyone can trust, but it’s relative depending on the time and place and person. Numbers are truthful but people aren’t. People try to trick others or they’re prejudiced or they hate or they’re suspicious. They pollute numbers. You can’t trust them.” “I don’t trust probabilities. Just numbers.” “But as I said, you can be yanked around by numbers.” She looks annoyed. I ask her the same question she’s asked me. “Do you not love math?” It’s only fair. “No. I hate it.” But I’m certain she loves it. You end up hating something if you love it too much.

There’s no reason to hate if you don’t love something. And if she loves math, she must love symmetry and prime numbers and pi, as well as the Riemann hypothesis and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Perelman’s solution of the Poincaré conjecture and many other proofs and problems. She picks up the notebook and flips through it. “How did you end up with this?” I close my eyes. I remember Pyongyang in 1999, the streets on which the sunlight shattered, the Taedong River where gray mullet leapt up, their scales flashing, and the dark cabin of the USS Pueblo that was moored to the riverbank.

The Possibilities of the Impossible

With reddened cheeks, Jae-ha and I walked down the light-filled streets of East Pyongyang. Leaves fallen on the streets were flapping, revealing their pale underbellies to the sky. The streetcar running along the rain-drenched streets sounded its horn. A female police officer wearing a sky-blue uniform and ink-blue hat was directing traffic with white-gloved hands. Passing cars smelled of metallic but fragrant gasoline. We were on our way to confirm a legend. Jae-ha had said, “A huge ship, bigger than a whale, is moored in the Taedong River. I heard that a soldier who caught that huge whale 31 years ago is guarding it. Do you want to go find it?” Although it had been his idea to go on an adventure, Jae-ha was silent as we crossed Okryu Bridge and then Taedong Bridge. ‘Could a whale fit in a ship that’s bigger than a whale?’ I wondered. Gray apartment buildings loomed above us as we passed Pyongyang Grand Theater. Emaciated dogs ran along the riverbanks, their tongues lolling out. A young man walking next to a young woman under the green thuja trees was sweating through his white shirt. An enormous steel mass appeared as we passed the loyalty bridge erected where the American steamer, General Sherman, sank under siege by Pyongyang citizens in 1886. Jae-ha perked up. “The ship has a displacement of 906 tons. She’s 54 meters long and 10 meters wide, and is armed with a machine gun. She can travel up to 12 knots. She’s called the Pueblo and the soldier guarding it is Senior Colonel Park In-ho.” He crept closer, as if the sleeping gray monster would awaken. My heart hammered at 215 bpm. The gray steel mass looked as if it would swallow us whole. The welded sheets of steel were corroded and the two tall transmission towers were bent. We hopped aboard, using the steel stairs toward the stern. An old man stood erect on top

of the deck where the machine gun was mounted. He looked like a toy soldier in his tall cap, a small part of the large hulking ship, a useless part so old and worn that it couldn’t do its role but left in place anyway. Colorful medals glinted on the chest of his white dress uniform. Jae-ha went up to the old man. “Are you Senior Colonel Park In-ho, the hero who captured the USS Pueblo and have been serving for thirty-one years?” The old man nodded. His drooping eyelids flew open. “We’re students at Pyongyang First Senior Secondary School,” Jae-ha said. “We walked all morning to hear your story.” “What story?” the old man asked. “The story of what happened on January 23, 1968.” The colonel straightened up, but his shoulders, curved inward over several decades, remained hunched. He balled his thin hand into a fist. “Well, it was off the coast of Wonsan. I was a soldier on a Navy SO-1 patrol ship. Just after noon, a shabby unidentified boat, a converted cargo ship, appeared. It was the USS Pueblo, America’s National Security Agency spy ship loaded with cutting-edge wiretapping devices.” Jae-ha swallowed loudly enough for me to hear. The colonel, whose waxy face became flushed, continued energetically about how he aimed the artillery at the vessel and demanded answers by radio, how the American flag was raised and four torpedo boats arrived from Wonsan, how the Americans claimed to be conducting marine science research, a hydrographical survey, before fleeing to open waters, and how he was one of seven do-or-die squad members who leapt on a torpedo boat to chase the fleeing ship. When they caught up, they boarded her and captured the men setting fire to classified documents. Out of 83 men, they captured 82 and brought the ship to the harbor in Wonsan. The colonel seemed sprightly now, a young man with hot blood coursing through his veins, whose voice rang out clearly. “These are the artillery holes we made,” he said, shoving

his rake-like finger into a dark hole in the body of the ship. Jae-ha was impressed, but it was getting dark. “Can we come back tomorrow?” “Of course! This is a vaunted memorial that celebrates our victory over the Yankees. Come back anytime.” I shrugged off the colonel’s hand as he tried to pat my head. I hated other people touching me, the way a cat despises water.

The next day, we followed the riverbank along Taedong River, like gray mullets swimming with the current. Taedong River flowed silently, unlike the Potong River, which slapped against the banks. I wondered if it had anything to do with what was contained in the water, which carved bluffs to create gorges and slithered here from 450.3 kilometers away: anthracite, zinc, and brown alluvial soil, as well as different species of trout, gray mullet, carp, catfish, and cornet fish. “Boys, this is the bridge,” the colonel announced, waving out the small glass window flecked with paint. “This is where I talked to the captain of the Pueblo, using body language.” The gesture was powerful, like a ragged flag whipped by the wind. We could smell rusted metal and dry paint. Because of the dirty glass, the outside world looked foggy. The colonel led us down the narrow, metallic-scented hallway and brought us into a cabin converted into a display area exhibiting American Navy uniforms, personal effects, and hats. I glimpsed the PUEBL on the insignia. Yellowed English documents were displayed inside a glass case—an apology from the American government guaranteeing that it would stop spying, evidentiary documents about the Pueblo’s spying activities, the spies’ confessions and apologies, and a public letter sent by the American president. “The Yankees insisted on a ridiculous version of the story, that they were working in

open waters but that the Republic’s patrol ships blasted them with 57 mm machine guns,” the colonel explained. “They called it an illegal military provocation. Americans screamed about retaliation because it was the first time in their history that an American warship was seized by another country. So they dispatched the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, a nuclear submarine, a destroyer from the United States Seventh Fleet, and several hundred bombers and fighter jets.” “Wow…an aircraft carrier, a submarine, and fighter jets!” Jae-ha exclaimed. “Oh, yes. But the Republic wasn’t cowed at all. The Yankees threatened all of this publicly, but in the meantime they went through 28 humiliating secret negotiations. Finally, on December 23, 1968, they officially released a statement apologizing for their violation of our territorial waters. After 236 days, the Republic returned 82 men and a body, but confiscated the ship and equipment. The Yanks begged for us to return the ship for thirty years but we have been resolute.” The colonel was triumphant. I read the English apology and the Korean translation. The English and Korean words and sentences organized themselves neatly in my head. At the mess hall, which was transformed into a multimedia theater, black and white footage from the time was continuing on a loop. I memorized the apology spoken by the American military personnel. The Pueblo became my English class and the documents were my textbooks; the American sailors and President were my teachers. In the communications room I spotted a complicated piece of equipment with numerous buttons and switches. Curious, I opened the equipment panel and saw smooth and shiny diode parts. I flipped through the English signal corpsman’s manual, which explained the fundamentals of radio frequency. The colonel blinked his sleep-crusted eyes. “If the Yanks heard your English, they would say you are very polite and humble.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’ve learned it through apologies and confessions,” he chortled. He took us to the end of the narrow hallway and turned the handle of the cabin door. Inside was even more gear. On the shelves were hats, boots, rubber boots, rain coats, compasses, lighters, and fountain pens, and a small notebook. The colonel handed me the notebook. It was old and the corners were puffed up, having gotten wet at some point. The spotted cover had faint writing on it. The Possibilities of the Impossible —Odysseus, returning to Ithaca Inside, the words had eroded from the seawater. The careful script floated among blue ink spots, like a shipwreck. When I return to you a sentence started, while another stated abeth, tonight, too, I will see you in your dreams. I found another fragment: your dress on our wedding day. “What does it say?” asked the colonel. “They’re letters from Odysseus to a woman named Abeth.” “His name wasn’t Odysseus,” the colonel cut in. “His name was Captain Knight Miecher. He was the signal officer of the Pueblo.” “He forgot his notebook,” I murmured. “No, no. He begged for his notebook back, but I couldn’t. It was loot that a Republic’s soldier got from an enemy fighter.” “So you wanted to return it to him?” I asked. “Because you said you couldn’t, not didn’t.” The colonel nodded. “Maybe so. I thought I understood what he felt. He was captured far away from home, away from his wife, facing death. Because my wife was waiting for me back home, too.”

“Were you friends?” Jae-ha asked. The colonel looked around him, as if Knight Miecher was standing there, eavesdropping. He rubbed his wrinkled mouth. “Not friends. Strictly speaking, we were enemies.” “Did you fight him?” asked Jae-ha. “When I volunteered to be one of the seven men on the do-or-die squad, we had the following mission. First, we had to get on the boat quickly and subdue them. Second, we had to wrest away their weapons and dominate them. Third, cut communications. Fourth, bring the boat back to Wonsan. We got on a torpedo boat and pursued them, battering them with bullets. When we stopped them, the men were running around, panicked. We jumped aboard during the chaos.” “Did they surrender?” Jae-ha asked, leaning forward eagerly. “Or did they attack you?” “They quickly started smashing the electronics with axes and hammers and set fire to secret documents. They tossed documents and equipment they couldn’t get to overboard. I ran up to the bridge, kicked the door open, and aimed my machine gun. I was going to let them have it. Four of them aimed their pistols at me and yelled at me. I didn’t know what they were saying, but they were probably warning me to put my weapon down. I looked around and realized I was alone. All the other men had gone below deck, where most of the enemy soldiers were. I could shoot, but then I would only kill one and the rest of them would get me. My hair stood on end. I thought of my wife at home. I thought, I’m a dead man now.” Jae-ha’s eyes grew bigger. “We were all screaming at each other, unable to understand anything. It was tense. We were about to start shooting. And then an officer said something to the others, who yelled back at him. The officer reached out and took one of his men’s guns. Then the rest laid down

their weapons. I was still standing there, not knowing what to do, when our support troops came onboard and took over. An American sergeant died under fire and 13 were wounded. The surviving 82 men became our prisoners. I received the highest accolades for my role. But to think, if it weren’t for Captain Knight Miecher, I might have ended up a corpse.” “And then what happened?” Jae-ha asked breathlessly. “Well, we disarmed them and brought the Pueblo into Wonsan. I had my gun on the captain. The sea was quiet again and I was still tense but tired. The sun began to set. When you think about it, we were at the most glorious moment in our lives. We were young, confident, and filled with curiosity about the world. We couldn’t communicate, but when I looked into his blue eyes I could tell we were dreaming the same dreams. He was missing someone he loved. You can always tell what someone’s thinking if you feel the same way.” “How did you know what his name was?” “He told me. I paused and said, ‘I’m Park In-ho.’ He offered me his cigarette. That was all he could do. I mean, he’d just lost control of his ship. We shared the cigarette on the deck, looking out at the sunset. He took out his wallet from inside his uniform and showed me a photograph; he and a blonde woman, were smiling, holding a young boy. I showed him a photo of my wife, too. Did we become friends then? I don’t think so. We were still enemies.” “Actually, he was your captive. Because you captured him during battle.” I thought Jae-ha was very smart for pointing that out. The colonel continued. “In Wonsan, we searched the men and confiscated their belongings. I took his watch and ring and dog tags. When I took this notebook out of his pocket, I felt as if I were pulling his heart out. The notebook was wet from the skirmish. He looked at me pleadingly but there was no way I could arbitrarily let him keep it. All the confiscated items were kept right here. While he was being questioned, I felt that he was longing for something. Not his wife, mind you, but the notebook that contained his love for

her. When I was able to get my hands on the notebook, he had already been taken to Pyongyang with the other captives. So the notebook never made it back to its owner.” “Did you ever meet Captain Miecher again?” The colonel shook his head. A warm wind blew up from downstream and made his white hair puff up like a cotton ball. He put his cap back on. “Eleven months later, he was returned to the U.S. I wonder what might have happened if I could have given his notebook back? I suppose it would have gone back home with him. His wife would have known how much he missed her on the seas far away from home. Or maybe she would have known that without the notebook. Because he was a gentleman. But when I look at the notebook, I always feel displeased with myself. Maybe I was disturbing his love. Maybe I stole away a piece of it.” “Then you can return it to him!” Jae-ha exclaimed. “His notebook should go back to him.” “I told you, he went home thirty years ago. I won’t meet him again. Unless it’s after we die. It can’t be too far away. He was around my age, so if he’s still alive he would be over sixty.” “He’s old like you,” I said. “But I’m young, so I can give it back to him.” The colonel looked down at his wrinkly hands with dim eyes. “Yes, I’m old. But an old hero is still a hero.” That was what he was—a shrunken, graceless hero subsisting on a 31-year-old victory.