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be. The temperature outside was higher than in the sunless classroom, and all of us were swaddled in winter coats, warming our fingers swollen blue with cold and breathing in the air that caught like glass in our throats.
    That evening I returned home from a parade drill, exhausted. For some it was a beautiful spectacle, a point of civic pride, but for me it was only another garish gathering I was forced to participate in. As I took off my shoes, I heard the traditional folk song “Arirang” playing, the kind of music that my modern parents would never listen to in private.
    At first I didn’t believe what I saw. A stranger was burning photos and documents in our kitchen, standing over a flame that made his cheeks glow yellow and red. “Arirang” continued to undulate through the room. The image enchanted me and from the door I watched the material curl in the wastebasket, until my father’s and mother’s glossy faces turned to ash and I began to understand. My stomach seized up. The stranger was erasing us.
    He looked so ordinary in his black wool coat and suit. He had the tidy haircut I expected for a man of his age, and his diffidentair reminded me of someone in a cold office who typed up dull reports all day. I assumed he was half-alive, half-conscious in his environment, as I was, sleepwalking through the orders that had brought him into our house. He looked perplexed as he stared at the fire curling and rising, then looked up at me and pointed at the walls around us. The walls are listening, he meant. I understood immediately.
    He said, “You must be back from classes,” sounding official and uninterested, unlike his eyes. He made a bowl with his hands, then pointed at the fire. “Where are your parents?”
    I said, “I don’t know. Working?” I felt strangely calm, as if I were talking about another person in someone else’s house.
    I trusted that if you did what you were told, you would be left alone, so I went quickly, quietly, to the cabinet and withdrew a large steel bowl, then held the bowl to the faucet and turned the water on at low force so there was no noise. I brought some cornstarch as well. He smothered the fire in the cornstarch and only then drizzled what was left with water. As we watched, a cloud of smoke rose from the charred remains.
    â€œMy parents—they . . . they’re coming back, yes?” I said. Had they been taken away? My head filled with thoughts and images that I hadn’t known were there: the camps farther north of us. The world suddenly much bigger, and lonelier, than I had imagined it.
    â€œLook, you should have a seat.” The man’s voice was calm, but his hands trembled. “I’m doing a routine inspection,” he explained as his eyes danced across the room, landing everywhere but on me. We were not the kind of family used to such inspections.
    I waited to discover who the man was and if he had discovered all the usual illegal possessions: shelves of Western VCDs and music, foreign novels and poetry books that were available to select students, questionable gifts that foreign diplomat friends had given my
abeoji
on their trips to the West, and most of all the stacks of foreign currency hidden throughout the house that I had found by accident. When I discovered the false wall built into the closet a few months ago, my mind had begun to spin, uncertain of what else I didn’t know.
    â€œMy
abeoji
is a loyal, powerful member of the party. There must be some mistake.” I picked my words carefully, imagining someone far away listening in. It seemed impossible that a few hours ago I had felt so safe.
    â€œLook at this,” I said, and I led him to a letter signed by the Great General. “This is addressed to my
abeoji.
And you know who my
eomeoni
is.” Everyone knew who she was.
    I anxiously showed him my
abeoji
’s honors and official party photos, a party publication