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North Korea.
    “Forward, forward, forward!”
    “Break through the enemy lines!”
    We goofed as if we were still practicing military drills and dashed toward the flickering light. As hungry as we were, we all howled like famished wolves, dreaming of stuffing our empty bellies. But alas, the illusion of nocturnal light came not from a restaurant but from the rigs on the ship floating on the ocean. Even though with its size and population, Cheongjin deserved the legitimate title of a city—North Korea’s third largest urban area—it was not even close to Pyongyang in its living standards. Hearing the gurgling sound of our stomachs, we collapsed by the harbor and laughed. We laughed and we sat there the rest of the night. We had to deceive hunger with more talk until we finally could have our first breakfast in the strange port town at daybreak.
    Local people in Cheongjin greeted us with kindness and respect. Compared to Pyongyangites I knew, they were plain, stoic, and taciturn. They had heard that we were from the prestigious Pyongyang Revolutionary School, and nobody dared to mess around with us. Out of nineteen graduates dispatched to Cheongjin, eight of us were put in the same room and formed an inseparable group. We spent practically every day together and did everything together. Everyone seemed to be in agreement that the graduates of the Revolutionary School were untouchable, which naturally put us on a pedestal. Except for one roommate who was given an internship at an automobile factory, the rest were given positions as intern engineers at the construction site to observe and learn how to construct ports and use excavators and floating cranes. Our job was to get up early in the morning, clean and fuel machines, observe how the engineers handled them, and once the daily work was over, to clean and prepare the machines for the next day. Sometimes we would spot octopi stuck in the machines. They were fresh from the sea, large and succulent looking. We would crowd over those marvelous sea creatures and wonder whether we could catch them for a special dinner. The kind of work we provided was by no means coveted by the average person, but everything we were supposed to master amused us. After all, we were so young, just liberated from the regimented environment of military school, and feeling completely happy about the new chapter in our lives. In retrospect, we would have felt the same if the work had been as tedious as wiping the floor or polishing cars, because it was enthusiasm, not the kind of work we did, that made us happy. We were fully embracing the new circumstances and imbibing the youth of our existence. I fell in love with the machines that saved us from backbreaking labor. There was nothing more attractive than technology and construction. What could be a greater way to flaunt budding masculinity than handling such machines? Life in the port of Cheongjin was quickly turning a quirky teenager into a man.
    The most exciting event in Cheongjin is associated with a man named X, who was a rare guru of a variety of martial arts—taekwondo, karate, judo, you name it. Formerly he had been in a special squad sent to South Korea on a special mission. All of his comrades were killed, but he miraculously survived and came back to the north. X always carried that incredibly painful aura of a survivor and martyr, which impressed us greatly. Moreover, there were other stories that made us respect him even more. When X returned to the north as the lone survivor, instead of being given a hero’s welcome, he was suspected of being a double agent and demoted to a provincial post. On his way to a newly assigned workplace in exile on a train, a conductor started picking on him for a fight. X was already in a terrible state of mind, so he vented his anger and frustration at the conductor by beating him nearly to death. For his violent crime, X was sent to a penal labor camp ( gyo-hwa-so ); when he’d served his sentence, he