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1974.
    Despite the twentieth-century lingo of social engineering, this process was akin to an updating of the feudal system that had stifled Koreans in prior centuries. In the past, Koreans were bound by a caste system nearly as rigid as that of India. Noblemen wore white shirts and high black horsehair hats, while slaves wore wooden tags around their necks. The old class structure drew heavily on the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who believed that humans fit strictly into a social pyramid. Kim Il-sung took the leasthumane elements of Confucianism and combined them with Stalinism. At the top of the pyramid, instead of an emperor, resided Kim Il-sung and his family. From there began a downward progression of fifty-one categories that were lumped into three broad classes—the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class.
    The hostile class included the
kisaeng
(female entertainers who, like the Japanese geisha, might provide a bit more for high-paying clients), fortune-tellers, and
mudang
(shamans, who were also in the lower classes during the dynastic period). Also included were the politically suspect, as defined by a white paper on human rights in North Korea based on testimony of defectors living in South Korea.
    People from families of wealthy farmers, merchants, industrialists, landowners, or those whose private assets have been completely confiscated; pro-Japan and pro-U.S. people; reactionary bureaucrats; defectors from the South … Buddhists, Catholics, expelled public officials, those who helped South Korea during the Korean War.
    As a former South Korean soldier, Tae-woo’s ranking was toward the bottom of the heap—not the very bottom, because those people (about 200,000, or 1 percent of the population) were permanently banished to labor camps modeled after the Soviet gulag. North Koreans of the lower ranks were banned from living in the showcase capital of Pyongyang or the nicer patches of countryside toward the south where the soil was more fertile and the weather warmer. Tae-woo couldn’t dream of joining the Workers’ Party, which, like the Communist Party in China and the Soviet Union, controlled the plum jobs.
    People of his rank would be closely watched by their neighbors. North Koreans are organized into what are called the
inminban—
literally, “people’s group”—cooperatives of twenty or so families whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood. The
inminban
have an elected leader, usually a middle-aged woman, who reports anything suspicious to higher-ranking authorities. It was almost impossible for a North Korean of low rank to improve his status. Personal files were locked away in local offices ofthe Ministry for the Protection of State Security and, for extra safekeeping, just in case someone dared to think of tampering with the records, in the mountainous Yanggang province. The only mobility within the class system was downward. Even if you were in the core class—reserved for relatives of the ruling family and party cadres—you could get demoted for bad behavior. But once in the hostile class, you remained there for life. Whatever your original stain, it was permanent and immutable. And just like the caste system of old Korea, family status was hereditary. The sins of the father were the sins of the children and the grandchildren.
    The North Koreans called these people
beidsun—
“tainted blood,” or impure.
    Mi-ran and her four siblings would carry that taint in their blood. They had to expect that their horizons would be as limited as those of their father.
    AS A CHILD , Mi-ran was unaware of the catastrophe that had befallen her even before she was born. Her parents thought it best if they said nothing at all to the children about their father’s roots in South Korea. What was the point in burdening them with the knowledge that they would be barred from the best schools and the best jobs, that their lives would soon reach a dead