Princess Bari

Mother cried quietly to herself; then, after a little while, she picked me up and carried me out of the house to a patch of woods a long way from our neighbourhood where no one ever went. There she tossed me into some dry underbrush among the pine trees, and covered my face with the blanket. She probably meant for me to smother to death, or to free

My family and I had no idea what was happening in the outside world, but we were able to guess what shape other parts of the country were in from looking at the changes around us. At school, the classrooms weren’t even half-full. Our homeroom teacher was nowhere to be seen, and the number of teachers who did stick around dropped to just four or fiv

With the start of autumn, starving people descended upon the banks of the Tumen River in droves. Those who had relatives in China crossed over in search of food and money; survivors who’d lost loved ones surged across the border along with workers from factories that had shut down, vowing to bring back money and save their families. No one dared to

But once rumours started going around that the Soviet Union had collapsed some years earlier, the grown-ups began whispering about the poor shape the Republic was in. Chongjin had it better than other cities, though not as good as Pyongyang, of course; even so, there were times when rations were cut off for two months and then three months, and sha

“South and North …” Uncle Salamander held his thumbs up next to each other. “Face to face.” “That is even less likely than Heaven being a real place.” “No, it’s true. I saw it on Chinese TV.” “As if those Big Nose Yankees will ever let us be.” “If North and South worked together instead of fighting each other, then everyone would be better off, and

A short distance away from the body, I saw his spirit sitting on the branch of a pine tree. He looked like a puff of smoke emerging from a chimney on a cloudy day. Where ya going? he asked. To find my parents. No point in that, he muttered. They’re all dead.

“Watch your mouth! Don’t you know what kind of trouble we could get in if you start spreading that nonsense around?” “But when I married you, everyone in your village knew that your great-grandmother and your great-great-grandmother were powerful shamans before Liberation …” “Damn it, woman! Keep it down! We’re descended from poor farmers. That mea

“Elder Brother, I’ve been worried sick about you. But things will be better now … Look back there. There’s a shipment of food coming through customs.” The first thing he unpacked when he got inside was a box of moon cakes for us kids to eat, followed by a sack of rice, three bags of cornmeal, two cans of cooking oil and some wheat flour. Before any

He took my hand gently and stroked it. “I don’t know what this life-giving water is that you were hoping for, but we have to weep for each other in order to save ourselves. No matter what awful things we go through, we cannot abandon hope in the world or in others.”