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was released into the harsh environment of Cheongjin. It was our sheer luck that he agreed to become our trainer in martial arts. The eight of us were exhausted as we trained our still supple bodies under X’s astringent guidance. He made us run for miles with sandbags attached to both legs and swing bats at a hefty sack filled with rocks. As we grew stronger day by day, nobody in the city dared to bother us. Cheongjin back then was crowded with 3,000 new employees from all over the country. The construction of the new port was under way, and the construction of a railroad and other infrastructure followed. All kinds of riffraff flocked to the city, which needed a large workforce. Kim Il-sung gave orders for each workplace in North Korea to draft a certain number of workers to be sent, and the managers took it as a golden opportunity to get rid of their worst people. With few exceptions, these newly arrived workers were neither intelligent nor strong, and my friends and I made sure that we gave the county bumpkins a good beating with our iron fists and legs tempered by master coach X. For the two years we stayed there, from 1968 to 1970, not a single day passed without a spectacular fight with other workers—small or big, fast or slow, compliant or rebellious … it did not matter. We simply had to fight somebody as part of the everyday routine. We even lost our appetite when we skipped fighting. In hindsight, we were nothing but typical incarnations of juvenile cockiness, but at that time we felt we were up to something magnificent, which made us the happiest kids on the entire planet.
Sporting for the Military and Kim Chaek Technological Institute
    As 1970 arrived, the North Korean military started to organize its own sports teams. Head coaches toured the country, recruiting gifted athletes. One day, my former judo coach from the Revolutionary School showed up in Cheongjin. He claimed to have spent six months looking for me and wanted to recruit me for his military judo team. The coach pleaded that I join the team, which would fulfill my official military obligation. Like every North Korean man, I had to serve in the army anyway, so I gladly accepted his offer. However, it was difficult to let go of the ideal community I’d found in Cheongjin. My dear friends and the martial arts master were my precious family members, and we pledged that we should stay like brothers till death parted us. As I sat on a train waving at my friends, who stood on the platform watching me depart, my heart ached with sorrow while tears welled up in my eyes. “So long, dear comrades”—I wasn’t murmuring “Good-bye” then, but instead, “See you again.” Those dear comrades, my fellow travelers whose faces still warm my heart, where are they today? We live under the same sky, but there is no way of knowing. As long as I live, I shall never forsake the hope of meeting them again someday.
    Thus I returned to where I came from, my dear Pyongyang, the city of our Great Leader’s glory. The heart of revolution, the red capital of our socialist fatherland! I began my military service with aplomb, in the special guard sector where my main priority was to compete on the judo team. The most memorable thing that happened to me in the military took place in 1972, when I was drafted to join the final stage of the construction of the presidential residence that North Koreans call Mansu Hill Memorial Palace ( Mansudae ginyeom gungjeon ). An effort to build underground bunkers was under way when I joined the project. By then the monumental building had been under construction for almost ten years on a site where a large orchard used to stand; from this location one could have a good panoramic view of the entire city, and especially Heungbu Pavilion ( Heungbugak ) across the Daedong River, a special quarter where foreign dignitaries, such as Sihanouk of Cambodia, stayed on state visits. The ground-level construction of the building commenced in 1970